Seeking Enrique

by Austin Bates

  “Are you okay?” Jules asked.

  “Hm? Oh, yes, I’m fine, completely fine,” Rick said, unconvincingly.

  “Sure you are. What do you need?”

  “Nothing, really. Honestly, I’m as fine as I could possibly be. It’s weird, to be out. I can’t remember the last time I went out to eat. It’s actually… it’s actually kind of nice, you know, eating off fancy plates instead of a takeout box. I could eventually, mind you, get used to it.”

  Jules smiled.

  “You think so? There’s this little place in New York I’d like to take you to when we get there. You know, if you’re up for it by then.”

  “Is it like this?”

  “Sort of. It’s got this big revolving fish tank in the middle of the room, and mirrors on the walls, so it’s like eating underwater. But it’s dim, like this, and it doesn’t get very busy.”

  “It sounds like fun,” Rick said. “Sort of magical.”

  They made it through dinner with Rick in one piece, a little worn out from the experience, but really no worse for the wear. They slept together that night; it promised to become habitual, which Rick was pleased about. He chose not to examine their relationship too closely; he suspected it was unstable and dysfunctional, but he couldn’t bear to be burdened trying to figure it out. For now, they were working. They made a good team, both in bed and out of it; Jules with his drive, Rick with his imagination.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was the end of their fourth week on tour. Stress was kept to a minimum, avoided all day and worked off with romantic exercise every night. Rick had found safety in the stories people brought him and was becoming more comfortable with his role as a public figure. He hadn’t had to drink or smoke in weeks; in spite of that, he began to feel ill before every book signing.

  Everything seemed to make him sick. Waking up, traveling by car or plane, and even the aromas of food and coffee made his stomach rebel. He couldn’t seem to keep anything down but saltine crackers and water, and by the fifth week, his gaunt and sallow face had Jules worried.

  “I want you to see a doctor,” Jules told him one morning. “We have a couple of days before your next appearance. I found an urgent care, I’ll take you today.”

  Rick didn’t like doctors, but he was too drained by his illness to argue. Jules drove him to the urgent care, pulling over once to let Rick empty his stomach by the side of the road. The urgent care was busy that morning, and they were forced to sit in the middle of the well-lit room. Jules worried that Rick would panic and run; but Rick simply pulled his hood over his head and slumped in his chair. He was called relatively quickly and asked Jules to wait outside. He was nervous about the exam, and Jules’ presence would only make that worse.

  The examination wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. The nurse was a friendly guy, about Rick’s age. The doctor reminded Rick of his mother. They did their jobs and left him alone. Rick sat on the cold table and swung his legs. The nurse said they were waiting on test results, but it seemed to be taking forever. He was arguing with himself about leaving when the doctor knocked and entered.

  “We have your test results,” she told him. “First things first, you are terribly dehydrated and showing signs of malnourishment. I want you to check into the hospital for a few days so we can get you stabilized.”

  “Okay… but why am I so sick?”

  “Everybody has a different reaction to this. Some people breeze through and don’t even realize that anything’s changed, others, like you, get terribly ill.”

  “What is this?” Rick asked impatiently.

  She gave him an odd look.

  “You do know that you’re pregnant, don’t you?”

  Time froze. He could feel his heart beat fast in his chest as her words bounced around inside his brain.

  “Pregnant?” he whispered in disbelief.

  “Yes. Four to six weeks, it’s difficult to know for sure at this point.”

  Rick’s head was buzzing, he couldn’t catch his breath. He tried to talk, but his mouth didn’t seem to be working. He wheezed, and she crossed the room to catch him as he passed out.

  Awareness came in flashes. The whine of a siren. Long, thin lights flashing one after another. People talking briskly. A poke in his arm. The stuffy, metallic taste of intravenous saline in the back of his throat. Then everything was quiet, and he fell gratefully into sleep’s sweet embrace.

  The world came into fuzzy focus. Jules was watching him with a grim, worried expression. Rick blinked a few times, counting the steady beats of the machine by his head.

  “You’re awake,” Jules said hoarsely. “Rick, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

  “I agreed to it,” Rick coughed. “Pretty sure we’re both responsible.”

  “No, no, I pushed you. I pushed you and I kept pushing, I wasn’t thinking about you. It’s my fault you collapsed. This tour… it was a bad idea from the beginning, and that idea was mine. I was going to cancel the rest of the tour, but I’ll leave that up to you. Totally your choice.”

  “Yes, please,” Rick whispered. “Please cancel it. In my condition—”

  “Yeah,” Jules interrupted. “Dehydrated, malnourished, exhausted… God, I should have taken better care of you.”

  “Did they tell you?” Rick asked.

  “No, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, look at you. Half an hour on the drip and you look a hundred times better.”

  He doesn’t know, Rick thought to himself.

  “I have to make some phone calls,” Jules said. “But I’ll be back. Do you want anything?”

  “Don’t think I could keep anything down,” Rick admitted, shaking his head.

  “Okay. Back in a while. Try to get some sleep. And Rick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really am sorry.”

  Jules strode out of the room, leaving Rick alone with his thoughts.

  “He doesn’t know,” Rick whispered.

  Could he keep it a secret? Should he? His head throbbed painfully, and he wished he was at home. The woman who lived beside him would make tea, and they would sit on the patio and watch the world walk by as Rick posed the problem to her. She’d ask him all the right questions, and he’d find his way to a conclusion. He felt momentarily guilty for not realizing before how valuable her friendship was.

  Alright, he thought. What would she ask? She’d ask him if he wanted the baby, first of all. That question was a sticking point, so Rick moved on to the next. Would Jules want the baby? Answering that properly would require psychic abilities, and he was fairly certain he didn’t have any. Third question. Did he love Jules?

  He startled himself with his own question, and began arguing internally. Why did it matter? He could have a baby or not with or without Jules. Jules could be a part of the kid’s life without having to be in love with Rick. It was a ridiculous and pointless question, he didn’t have time for ridiculous and pointless questions!

  He’d worked himself up into a fierce glower by the time Jules returned. He hadn’t answered any of his own questions or made any progress in deciding how to deal with the pregnancy, and he didn’t think that would change even if Jules was gone all day.

  “Are you angry with me?” Jules asked softly. “You have every right to be, if you are.”

  “I’m not angry with you,” Rick said.

  “That snarl on your face says otherwise,” Jules pointed out. “Want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

  Rick rolled his answer around in his mind, refining it, restructuring it.

  “Do you like kids?” he asked finally.

  “What?” Jules asked, surprised.

  “Changing the subject, just trying to distract myself,” Rick lied. “I don’t like hospitals.”

  “Oh, gotcha. Well no, I don’t particularly like kids. I don’t hate them, but they’re high maintenance, high energy mess-makers. I babysat a couple times growing up, and that sort of solidified my distaste.”

  “Oh,” Rick s
aid.

  He felt as if Jules had just punched him in the gut.

  “Do you like them?” Jules asked.

  “Yeah,” Rick said. “Kids are honest and transparent. They haven’t had time to build walls around themselves, they say whatever they think. They’re easy to get along with.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” Jules said. “Anything else you’d like to know about me?”

  Rick chewed his lip.

  “What was your family like, growing up? Do you have brothers? Sisters? What are your parents like?”

  Jules glanced at his watch.

  “Oh… you have work to do,” Rick said mournfully.

  “No, no, I have some time. My parents… well, my mom raised me by herself. I met my dad a few times, but he eventually dropped off the planet. My stepdad’s been around since I was six, and he’s a great guy. We had the usual issues when I was a teenager, but overall… it’s a pretty normal relationship. I have two half-brothers, ten and twelve years younger than me. I see them a few times a year, but I was already grown and gone by the time they were old enough for memories. I babysat them a few times, but I never really did the neighborhood babysitter thing.”

  Rick nodded, absorbing the information. Any more questions would blow his cover, and he wouldn’t have the chance to decide whether or not to tell Jules what they’d done.

  “What about you?” Jules asked.

  “Single child, normal parents. I’m not feeling very well, maybe you should go.”

  Jules looked momentarily hurt.

  “So… you being sick, that is just exhaustion, right?” he asked, overly casual.

  Rick didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, pretending to be asleep.

  “Right,” Jules sighed. “Exhaustion.”

  He wasn’t entirely wrong. Pretend sleep led to real slumber in moments, and Rick escaped into a dream.

  Jules busied himself with work for the rest of the day. A press release, dozens of phone calls, and hundreds of emails later, he grabbed a bite to eat before heading back to the hospital. He was stopped just outside Rick’s door by a stern-looking nurse with steel gray hair.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But visiting hours are over.”

  “Oh. When do they open again?”

  “You can come back at nine tomorrow morning,” she told him, looking him over sharply. “You should get some sleep, you look almost as bad as he does.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said with a tired smile.

  It was hard to fall asleep. He’d grown accustomed to Rick curling against him, or at least breathing in the other bed; suddenly, sleeping alone seemed wrong. He tossed and turned for hours, finally falling into an exhausted sleep as the clock flipped from 3:59 to 4:00.

  He pried his eyes open at ten in the morning. His phone was alight with missed calls, texts, and emails demanding his attention, but he didn’t have time. He needed to get to the hospital, he could work from there. He raced through showering and brushing his teeth, dressed himself quickly, and made it out the door in a blur. He picked up coffee on his way and finished it before he made it to Rick’s floor; he knew how the smell of it was affecting Rick these days.

  So it was with a scalded tongue and inside-out shirt that Jules arrived at the hospital, looking for Rick. He waved vaguely at hospital staff as he wound his way through the corridors; one of them moved as if to stop him, and he dodged her. It was visiting hours, dammit, and he’d missed Rick enough to make him irritable.

  “Good morning, sunshine!” he said as he pushed into the room.

  The bed was empty. He checked the bathroom, which was also empty. The nurse who had attempted to stop him walked into the room, her face apologetic.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried to tell you. He checked himself out this morning.”

  “Checked out? What time? Where did he go?”

  “Let me see… he checked out at five this morning. I couldn’t tell you where he went, I’m afraid. Are you the father?”

  “Oh come on, we’re practically the same age, of course I’m not his father,” Jules snapped.

  He raced out of the room, his phone to his ear. Rick’s phone was going straight to voicemail. Jules cursed. Five in the morning? Where on earth would he go at five in the morning?

  Jules hurried back to their hotel. No matter where Rick went, he wouldn’t leave his laptop behind. Jules burst into their room and looked for the computer. He searched frantically for several minutes until it dawned on him that he was rifling through his own things.

  Rick’s were gone.

  He closed his eyes and tried to visualize the room the way it had been when he’d woken up. He’d gotten dressed out of his suitcase. He’d brushed his teeth… his eyes flew open. There had only been one toothbrush on the sink, he hadn’t even noticed.

  “Goddammit, Rick,” he swore, sinking to the bed. “Where the hell did you go?”

  He must have crept in while Jules was dead asleep and taken his things. Jules cursed a blue streak as he tossed his things back into his suitcase. How was he supposed to find Rick? If it were anybody else, Jules would start with the hotels in the area. But this was Rick. Where would Rick go if he suddenly decided he needed to be alone?

  “Maybe he left town,” Jules muttered, dialing the airport.

  “Hi, can you tell me if a particular person bought a ticket this morning? He’s sick and mentally unstable, I need to locate him.”

  “What’s the name?”

  Jules told her.

  “I’m sorry sir, we have no record of him. Is there another name he may have used?”

  “Um… try Enrique R. Dominguez.”

  “The author?” The girl squealed.

  “Did he get on a plane or not?” Jules snapped.

  “Sorry. No, sir, no records under either name.”

  Jules cursed and ended the call. Rick must still be in town somewhere. He called every hotel and motel in the area, but came up empty. He’s sick, Jules thought. He’s sick, and alone, out there somewhere. What if he collapses?

  He called three hospitals, including the one Rick had checked out of that morning. He hadn’t turned up. Jules paced the floor, and dialed Rick’s number again. Voicemail. Jules cursed. He didn’t leave. He didn’t stay. So where the hell did he go? Jules went back to the hospital. He was going to have to retrace Rick’s steps.

  “Hi,” he said to the valet. “Did you happen to see this guy this morning?”

  He showed the man Rick’s picture, taken from the back of a book.

  “Enrique R. Dominguez? Nah. I would’ve remembered.”

  Jules thanked him, and went inside. He asked a receptionist if he could see the security tapes from that morning.

  “Sorry, sir. Not without a warrant.”

  “I’m not a cop!” Jules exploded. “I’m his boyfr— his agent, and he disappeared this morning!”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Doesn’t matter who you are, I can’t give you anything without a warrant.”

  Jules growled in frustration and slammed out of the hospital. There was only one thing left to do. He hailed a cab.

  The police station was intimidating, a tall, solid, grey building accented by steel blue. Jules swallowed hard. He stood on the steps, staring up at the building, and wondered if he’d missed anything. Was there anyone he could call that he hadn’t called? He couldn’t think of anyone. He marched into the police station, worried and angry.

  The station was as busy as the urgent care had been the day before. People sat in uncomfortable-looking chairs or milled around. Everyone spoke in muted tones, so the impression, to Jules, was that he’d stumbled into singles’ night at a library.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the burly man at the counter. “I need to file a missing person’s report.”

  The man shuffled through some papers, and pulled one out. He slid it across the counter.

  “Fill this out,” he said. “How old is the missing person?”

  “Um�
�.” Jules did some calculations. “Twenty-seven.”

  “And how long have they been missing?”

  “Since five this morning. I know, I know,” he said as the cop gave him a look. “But he’s physically sick and mentally unstable. I’m sort of in charge of him, but he checked himself out of the hospital this morning and disappeared.”

  “Fair enough,” the man said.

  Jules filled out the paperwork and gave the officer every detail he could think of. He left him with his contact info and was told that they would get back to him as soon as they knew anything. Jules thanked him and left. He thought he would feel relieved. Instead, he was beyond frustrated. The precinct was obviously busy and overloaded. How much time would they really have to track down a full-grown man? At the end of his rope, Jules called Ernest.

  “Hey. Um. Do you still have P.I.s on the payroll?”

  “Just Bones. Why, what happened?”

  “Rick took off,” Jules told him. “He got sick, we got him to the hospital, they wanted him to stay two or three days, and he checked himself out this morning. Disappeared.”

  Ernest cursed.

  “Anything happen between you two to make him want to run? Did you fight?”

  “No, we didn’t fight. Nothing like that. He just collapsed. I cancelled the rest of the tour at his request; hospitalization sort of gets me off the hook for that one, so it was no big thing. Then talked to him for a while and left.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing important. Our families, I think. Just little nonsense to keep his mind off of being in the hospital.”

  “Hm. And no arguments or anything?”

  “No, it was completely friendly.”

  “Well, think over it. If I were a betting man—and I am—I would say that something in that conversation set him off.”

  “Alright,” Jules sighed. “Anything else?”

  “I’ll get ahold of Bones and see if he can help. You keep looking. Focus on hospitals between where you are and Rick’s home; if he’s sick, he might end up in one before he gets to where he’s going.”

  “Thanks,” Jules said miserably.

  He hung up the phone. He needed a plan. More than that, he needed a drink. He gathered his things and checked out of the hotel, stopping for a quick pity party in the hotel bar.