Collision Theory

by Adrian Todd Zuniga

  My first thought is: let the doors close, go back downstairs. Start over without Carly on the ground floor. But I point to the right without saying a word, so Carly goes to the right. But when I don’t immediately follow, she says, “Thomas? You coming?”

  The jig is up. I sheepishly step forward out of the elevator into stark, harsh light. I look right, then left, into the empty, soundless hallway.

  Sarah, much to my relief, much to my disappointment, is nowhere to be seen. And Carly, welcoming, awaits.

  Twenty

  I wake in the middle of the night to the whispering hiss of Sarah’s scratch-scratch-scratches at my hotel door. My heart goes into overdrive—Carly’s naked and asleep against me, breathing. Battling a rush of shame, a sense that I’ve cheated, I ease away from Carly without a word and tiptoe to the room’s front door. I open it with deft, quiet care. In the low-lit hallway, all haze and wonder, there’s Sarah: her face unblemished beauty, eyes gray and infinite.

  I stand aside, and in she walks.

  In the bathroom, I thumb toward the wall that separates us from Carly. I tell Sarah, “I don’t know her.”

  Sarah, who’s sitting on the counter next to a dry, white washcloth covered in my toiletries, looks at me like, Yeah, right.

  “We were drunk,” I say. “And nothing happened.”

  Sarah nods at the trash can. In the bathroom’s blinding light, it’s easy to see a torn condom wrapper caught on the edge of a thin, translucent trash bag.

  I take a moment to soak in the bathroom’s details—the baby-blue fixtures, the white and off-white checkered floor, a spot of toothpaste on the mirror—so later I can remember this moment for maximum despair.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But she’s no one to me.”

  Sarah recoils, makes a face. On her arm she writes, Don’t be mean.

  “I just want you to understand.”

  Sarah’s face softens. She erases her arm, then lets out a mute exhale. Then she writes, I understand just fine.

  Desperate for clarity, I ask her, “Understand what?”

  Sarah erases. Then writes, That you’re still here. She slides off the counter and moves toward the closed door.

  “No,” I say. “Please.”

  Sarah underlines you’re and still and here, then drops her arms to her side like she’s given up.

  I move past her and open the door. The hot, concentrated light of the bathroom spills into the black room, tinged with the scent of maple syrup from last night’s late-night meal.

  “Thomas?” Carly whispers from bed.

  I don’t mean to, but I react with a quick shush I’m able to almost quell.

  Sarah’s dusty eyes lock on to mine, she gives a look like, Go get her, tiger. Then she backs toward the door, and shows what she’s written on her arm: If you won’t go, then I will.

  “Sorry I fell asleep,” Carly says.

  Where? I mouth to Sarah, as I open the door.

  HOME, she writes.

  My face goes slack and my lungs empty. A tingle spreads in my jaw—an early warning I might throw up. Then Sarah steps forward, steps out. She exits without looking back, then she’s gone.

  “What time is it?” Carly says. I hear her sit up, the rustle of sheets and blankets. I let the door auto-close and wait for the metal-on-metal scrape of hotel room door parts to click shut. “Is everything okay?”

  The door closes and I tell Carly, “Maybe.”

  When I turn off the bathroom light, there’s a flash of white before everything goes immediately, impossibly black.

  “You sure?” she asks, a voice in utter dark.

  Hands out in front of me, I move toward the bed guided by a single, slim blur of streetlamp light that’s tricked its way through a narrow crack in the curtains. When my knees gently meet the foot of the king-size bed, Carly turns on a small reading lamp bolted into the headboard. The bedspread is clamped between her arms to cover her breasts. A look of concern on her face that might be fear.

  “That was Sarah,” I say.

  “She called?”

  “She was here.”

  “I didn’t hear her.”

  “She doesn’t really speak, anymore.”

  Carly’s eyes squint as she juts her head forward and slightly to the side. She searches my face for clues. “I’m not sure what that means,” she says.

  I kneel on the bed so it’s less awkward.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yeah?” I say.

  “This just got super weird super fast.”

  “Oh,” I say, looking at the two empty champagne glasses on each of our bedside tables.

  “I’m gonna go,” she says, and turns so her legs emerge from under the blanket.

  “It’s fine, now,” I say, as her feet touch the floor. She reaches down for her clothing, and lays it on the bed next to her. “I don’t think she’ll come back.”

  “I don’t think that qualifies as fine,” she says as she checks her phone. Then she looks at me. “Do you?”

  As I look down, Carly rises up. She clasps her bra behind her back with impressive ease. Once her skirt’s back on, and she’s buttoned her blouse, she pulls on her jacket. Then her phone screen goes bright.

  “My Uber’s here,” she says and walks around the bed toward the exit. She stops a few feet away from where I sit slump-shouldered, wearing only boxer shorts. I breathe in and force my shoulders back.

  “So, this finished strong,” she says, and points to herself, then me, then herself with a few flicks of her index finger. When I don’t answer, she says, “Cool.” Then heads toward the door.

  After I hear the handle turn, hear the door open, I stand and tell her, “Wait.”

  But Carly’s gone. The momentum of the door spring brings it closer to be closed. Closer, closer, and then click.

  Twenty-One

  With Carly hours gone, it’s a call from my father that wakes me up.

  “Hello?” I ask as I turn over to check the time. The crinkle of hotel pillows gobbles up the opening of my father telling me, “…is here with your mother.”

  “Who is?” I ask.

  “Sarah,” he repeats. I sit up, sparked awake.

  “No,” I say, bracing.

  “Yes,” Dad says, which looses in me a whorl of panic. Without me home, Sarah is able to tell them—without nuance, without proper shading—how hard she tried to get me to go home. They won’t understand that I wanted to be the good son, but couldn’t be. They’ll only know what I have been: a coward. “Now will you please just come home?”

  I stare at the far wall with great, unblinking concentration and tell him, “With her there, we both know I have to.”

  It’s only 9:21 a.m.

  Twenty-Two

  At exactly 10:00 a.m., I get a call from EveryOther Films.

  “Thomas Mullen?” a cheery male voice asks.

  “Yes?” I say, as I zip my luggage, give the room a final check.

  “Please hold for Carly Doherty.”

  While on hold, I pull my nearly forgotten phone charger from an outlet at the base of the bedside lamp.

  “Thomas,” Carly says, affable. “First, I just want to make sure we’re…”

  “Something’s come up,” I say.

  “Okay?” she says, lightly annoyed, and waits.

  I wait, too.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Something’s come up.”

  “You said.” Already, she’s lost patience.

  I unzip my bag, stuff the phone charger inside.

  “Can you tell me where?” Carly asks.

  “Where?”

  “Where we met.”

  “I don’t know,” I say with force, and exhale into the phone.

>   “Fine,” she says.

  I watch the digital clock turn to 10:01 a.m. and, right when it does, there’s a call on my other line.

  “I have another call,” I say.

  “Thomas, wait. I’m calling because of EO. Your agent hasn’t been in touch.”

  “Just one sec.”

  “My bosses are pushing to finalize a…”

  I click over to the other line and say hello.

  “Hey, Thomas, it’s Mimi from Anarchy Productions. Sam Gerrard would like to speak to you right away.”

  “Something’s come up.”

  “Let me just transfer you to Sam,” Mimi says. “Hold one sec.”

  There’s a crackle of static and I click over to Carly. “I have to call you back,” I say.

  “Thomas,” she says.

  “I said…” I start, my voice breaking.

  “I know. ‘Something’s come up.’”

  “Yes,” I say, then I click back over to talk to Sam. After two purring phone rings, he says, “All right, Tommy!”

  “I can’t right now,” I say.

  “Is your agent having a giraffe? It’s radio silence!”

  A broken record, I’m about to crack when I say, “Something’s come up.”

  “But we’re talking offer over here, mate. Elvis! Brilliant fuckin’ Elvis.”

  “He’ll be in touch,” I say.

  “Tell him to get his skates on, the plank!”

  Off the phone, overwhelmed, I text Ryan, Your agent isn’t calling anyone back!

  My phone immediately rings, a call from Ryan. “It’s all part of Peter’s plan, but I’m on it. Just focus on getting home safe.”

  “But people keep calling!” I shout, in a state of near panic.

  “I said I’ll sort it,” he says, severe. Which tells me I’ve fractured something precious between us.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Did you get my voicemail?”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “I’ll check now.” But once I’m off the phone, I don’t.

  •••

  In my rental car, nearly at LAX, my phone rings and the area code’s 646. I think: something’s come up. I answer, but don’t speak.

  “I’m sorry to call again, but EO still hasn’t heard from your agent,” Carly’s voice says. She speaks slowly, full of calm. “You know my feelings about it, but they’re going to hound me to call you until they get an answer.”

  “Call Ryan,” I say.

  “Will he actually answer me, since you won’t?”

  “I have to get home,” I say. “My mother’s going to die.”

  Twenty-Three

  At LAX, I board a direct to STL. Once I’m buckled in, I text Ryan to tell him I’m on the plane home.

  Finally, he writes back. And I’m so sorry. So is Elsa.

  Jesus. Elsa. Who I would like to never see again.

  I snap my phone shut and see the closed envelope on my screen, a signal that Ryan’s voicemail is still waiting for me. But the effort to dial in feels too exhausting. Later, I tell myself, and slip the phone into my pocket. Then lean my head back and close my eyes.

  •••

  Midflight, I gasp awake in a panic. A rocket shot of certainty blasts through me, so rich I feel it in my teeth: my mother has passed away.

  I press my heels into the plane’s thin carpet and whisper, “No, no, no.”

  The man to my left thinks I’m talking to him. I shake my head only a little, then close my eyes. Clamp my hands on the armrests and push back into the seat, trying to catch my breath. Lean my head back and expose my hard-swallowing throat.

  My mother, who asked me, “How would you do it? I’m thinking pills.”

  My mother who said over the phone, “I can’t do this without seeing you one last time.”

  Great, Mom! I thought. Let’s make a weekend of it!

  My mother, who said, “Come home, Thomas. I’m dying. Please give me this.”

  And I gave her nothing, except a name. Sarah. To make her feel like, He’ll be okay. He’ll be looked after once I’m gone.

  But then she asked, “What’s she like?”

  I told her, “Mom, please. I can’t do this, Mom. Mom, I love you, but, Mom, Mom, Mom,” I said.

  And she said, “Okay, Thomas. But before it gets too bad, I want to die.”

  I raise the shade and rest my elbow on my knee, my chin on my fist, and I watch the outside for some image of my mother. I stay frozen that way, watching. But all I see is a blanket of darkening gray wool below the wing that goes infinitely on and on and on into the sunless, dimming forever.

  Twenty-Four

  I use my near-maxed credit card to rent a car at STL, and in a fog I drive the speed limit from this bustling middle of nowhere toward the middle of nowhere else. This past I’ve abandoned. Where Sarah now waits.

  I park in my parents’ driveway, the same as when I was last home, as if no time’s passed. As I walk toward their front door, alongside Dad’s always-perfect lawn, an invisible fist squeezes inside my chest, making it hard to breathe. When I step onto the porch, I twist the doorknob. Of course it’s locked, so I knock.

  When the door opens, Elsa Morris is the one who answers. Her shoes are off and she’s wearing lime- and lemon-colored striped socks.

  “What?” I finally say, so confused, and tilt my head like a dog intently listening. Half questions speed to the tip of my tongue: Isn’t this? How are you? Why is?

  Elsa’s eyes and the tip of her nose go red. She looks down and whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

  “But what are you doing here?” I snap.

  “I’m really, very sorry,” she says.

  My knees turn to licorice. My throat fills with gravel. Elsa’s tone confirms my mother’s raindrop of cancer became a puddle became her entire lung, and now she’s dead.

  Dizzied, I step inside, and ask Elsa, “Where’s Sarah?” My ears are clogged from the flight. My voice shotguns around inside my head.

  Behind me, Elsa says, “Thomas.”

  “Where is she?” I ask, out of patience with this interfering random. All I want right now is to tell Sarah she was right all along, that I should have come home much, much sooner.

  “Sarah?” I say, weakly into the foyer of my parents’ home. I feel like maybe I’m hyperventilating. Like maybe I’m on the edge of collapse.

  Elsa grabs my arm, insistent. “Thomas.”

  I jerk my arm away hard and look at her with violence in my eyes. “Don’t.”

  Elsa backs away, looking afraid.

  I turn and step forward. Louder now, I say down the hallway, “Sarah?”

  “Oh, no,” Elsa says behind me. “You didn’t listen to Ryan’s voicemail.”

  My father appears from the direction of the dining room, carrying the same go-to coffee mug he’s used for ages: World’s Okayest Husband. The one Mom gave him, way before her asteroid of cancer grew into a meteor that’s now grown into her entire lung.

  “Sherlock,” he says with a pursed smile, happy I’m home. He motions behind me with the hand holding the mug. “You need glasses?”

  I turn but it’s only Elsa behind me. Her cheeks flushed with red.

  I turn back to Dad with a blank expression. He gives me his look that says, Then I can’t help you.

  My lungs spread open to inhale more hysterical air so I can shout for Sarah one hysterical time, when Elsa gently touches my arm. “I know coming here is hard,” she says. “But it’s okay. I’m right here. Me. Sarah.”

  The air pushes out of me in a huffed torrent. I turn to Elsa, who makes an effort not to withdraw. Quiet and fierce, I say to her, “What the fuck?”

  “Language, please,” my father says.

  “I said I was sorry,” Elsa says.

  Then behind me, my mother
’s wounded, songbird voice asks, “Thomas?”

  “Mom?” I whimper, as tears fill my eyes.

  She materializes in the doorway. Resurrected, standing next to my father.

  “My little Pop-Tart,” she says.

  I wipe my eyes clean, in case she’s real. “Mom?” I say.

  “In the flesh,” my father says.

  I take a long look at her. “Oh, no,” I whisper, confronted by the truth of her cancer’s progress. This is what I couldn’t bear to see. My mother a skeleton draped in loose skin.

  “My baby,” my mother says coming to me. “My beautiful boy.”

  Everything inside me cracks open.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to catch my breath. At first, my feet won’t move. I nearly trip when I take a step toward her. “Mama, I’m so sorry.”

  I wrap my arms around her. She’s no more than a butterfly.

  “I’d cry, I’m so happy,” she says. “But my tear ducts are blocked.” She giggles while she holds me. “Oh, finally,” she says.

  An mmm sound eases from the back of her throat, she’s so pleased.

  Twenty-Five

  Soon after my arrival, while I hold my mother’s hand, she tells us, “I need to head upstairs for a LLD.”

  “LLD?” Elsa asks.

  “A little lie down,” Mom says with a wink. “I don’t feel worth a shit.”

  I don’t want to be away from her, not for a second, so I help her up the stairs and into my parents’ bed.

  “Do you need a blanket or water?” I ask, once she’s lying down. “I can fluff your pillow.”

  With her eyes closed, she shakes her head. “Don’t fuss,” she says, and falls right to sleep. I watch her breathe in pained, shallow gulps.

  Minutes later, I head downstairs to overhear Elsa—the phone returner, the unwelcome—fielding questions from my father in the living room.

  “Sarah, where’d you grow up?” he asks.

  “Sad sack Sacramento.”

  Dad laughs. “Oh, it can’t be that bad.”

  “I think it might be.”

  When I enter the room, Dad asks if Mom’s okay. I tell him, “She fell asleep like that.”