Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “You what?”

  “Just for a minute—that’s all, I swear. You know, I just wanted to take a moment. Take you all in.” He poked around in the plastic bag. “I hope you like hot wings. They gave me, like, two dozen cause the kitchen was closing.”

  “Oh. Good God.”

  “I wanted to bring over a pitcher of margaritas, but of course, they won’t let you take drinks off the premises. But I had a six-pack in my truck.” He waggled two bottles of Heineken at me. Grabbing a bottle opener from his belt, he uncapped one with a dramatic flourish, letting the top drop on the floor. “Want?” He took a swig.

  I reached for it, then stopped. “Nuh-uh. I’m good for now.” I tried to sound casual, though my heart kicked up a notch.

  It was only then, when Zack paused and stared at me, that I realized just how nervous he was. This touched me to the core, somehow. “Wow. Donna Cohen. It’s really you.”

  We just stood there for a moment, grinning at each other stupidly. I forgave him for watching me from the bar. Twenty-six years. It was a lot to deal with.

  He had a light scar under his left eye now, I noticed, and in person, he was bulkier than he’d been in high school. I could see the crinkliness around his eyes, the slight erosions on his brow. Yet, in a way, he looked even better than when we were teenagers. The coiled skittishness had disappeared from his face. He was sturdier. I cringed slightly imagining how I, in turn, must really look to him, now that he could see me live, in full, from the neck down. Softer, rounder, my lushness diminished, no doubt: I was more powdered jelly donut than ripe peach. My hair was askew, my new clothes rumpled. Certainly, this was not at all how I’d planned it.

  From down the hall came the belch and rattle of an ice machine.

  “Wow, okay,” Zack said awkwardly. “This is weird, isn’t it?”

  “I know.” I laughed nervously. “I’ve never seen you speechless before.” After a moment I added, “Look, if this is all wrong for you, you know you can go. I’ll understand. No harm, no foul.” I tried to sound gentle and generous, though, in truth, my heart was burning.

  “No, no. Not at all,” he said quickly.

  “So what do we do now?”

  He took another swig of beer and set the bottle down beside him on the counter. “What does the lady want?”

  “I don’t know. Should we hug maybe?”

  A hug seemed safe, all-in, but skewing heavily toward affection. I opened my arms. Zack pushed off from the counter toward me. We hugged extravagantly, stepping back and forth, right-to-left, completely fused, as if we were dancing slightly. His breath was beery. His shirt smelled of detergent and limes and something unmistakably musky and Zack-ish. He was in astonishingly good shape: all muscle, his shoulders and back as hard and smooth as polished agate. He must have felt my surprise because he disengaged and stepped back and flexed both his biceps. “I know. Check out these guns, right? You like? I’m like fucking Rambo now. All day long, I’m hauling chain.”

  I made a big production out of squeezing his bicep like a caliper, quietly thrilled to have an excuse to keep touching him. “What’re you? In a prison gang?”

  “Ha! No. C’mon, I told you. I’m a rigger. The guy who does all the lighting and scaffolding and stuff at events. I’ll take you by the site tomorrow. You can see for yourself.”

  “Hug me more first.” He fit into me perfectly. As I smoothed my hands slowly over his back, it felt like matches over flint. He stroked my hair, one hand desperately gripping my waist. Neither of us seemed inclined to let go. I was too exhausted at that point, or too engaged, to care whether my belly and hips felt bigger or too soft to him now. He pulled me closer and closer, and nuzzled my neck. “Oh, Belladonna,” he murmured.

  “Welcome back,” I said.

  After more than a quarter of a century, there was so much to discuss, so many blanks to fill in. A library’s worth of history.

  But instead, we kissed. We kissed like two people about to burn at the stake. Zack’s mouth and his tongue, they tasted of beer. It was a kiss that winded me like a tornado, that lit me up like a Roman candle, that almost made me fall to my knees. It consumed and liquefied me. It was a kiss you wait a quarter of a century for. All I knew then was that I wanted another. My drug of choice above all others. It was back.

  “Wow.” Zack stepped away and stared at me with unabashed hunger. “Jesus Christ. Do you know how badly I want to rip off all your clothes and carry you into the bedroom right now and fuck your brains out?”

  Hearing this, I actually started to giggle like a sixteen-year-old. Who else in the world ever spoke like that to me?

  Except we weren’t sixteen anymore, of course. “The thing is, I’ve got to be on-site tomorrow first thing,” he said. “They need the whole thing set up by, like, 3 p.m. for the sound checks.”

  “Yeah. I hear you. I’ve been driving since sunrise,” I said. “I’m about ready to pass out.”

  “But damn.” Looking me up and down, Zack wiggled his eyebrows in his old cartoonish fashion. He ran his finger teasingly down the front of my jeans. “Well then. I guess this is just one present I’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow to unwrap. It’ll be like Christmas fucking morning.”

  “Oh my God. You really haven’t changed at all, have you.”

  “Yeah? You like that line? Pretty good, huh?”

  “The East German judge gives it a solid seven.”

  “Boo-yah!” He leaned over and kissed me again. Long, tenderly. “Okay, if I don’t leave now, I never will.”

  “Yeah, I need my beauty sleep.”

  “No. No you don’t.”

  “Oh, that’s even better. That’s a solid eight.”

  “Hey, well. I checked you out in the parking lot, Ms. Cohen.” He glanced at the food he had brought. “You want me to leave that for you?”

  “No. Take it. Take it all. Please.”

  Rapidly, he wrapped it all back up in the bag. “When does your music stuff start?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said you had to come down here for some music business?”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah.”

  “Because, if you’re free tomorrow during the day, I can get us a tour of Fontanel. You will fucking love it. It’s this estate that used to belong to Barbara Mandrell. Totally sick. It’s got its own heliport and a gun range. And then, of course, I can give you an exclusive private behind-the-scenes look at Kid Rock.”

  Barbara Mandrell and Kid Rock? Club me over the head with a polo mallet and be done with it. But I said, “Sure. Sure. Absolutely. I’m all yours.” I added pointedly, “Day and night, in fact.”

  “Well then.” He gazed at me, seeming to decide something. “You know. And this is just a suggestion. If you want to save a little money on lodging, you could stay at my place tomorrow instead. You can see the Zack Shack.”

  “I thought you said you were based in LA.”

  “LA? Oh, yeah. And Miami. I’ve got a whole fucking empire. But just for right now, I happen to be based mostly here. Tomorrow, whenever you get up, check out, bring all your stuff with you, and come meet me at Fontanel. Afterwards, we’ll head back to my place together. You can see where the magic really happens.”

  I looked at him. Something clicked suddenly. “Oh my God. You stinker. That’s why you were spying on me from across the street. You wanted to make sure that I was still hot before you committed to anything else.”

  “Well, you were hedging your bets, too, weren’t you? Asking me to book you a hotel?”

  He leaned over and kissed me again, long and lingering. When we finally pulled apart, we stood with our foreheads pressed together, the way we always had in high school, blinking at each other so close our eyes nearly crossed, breathing in each other’s breath. With my pupils fixed on his, I suddenly felt like I could see into his soul. I felt like I was stepping through doorway after doorway in his irises, going back in time to when we were eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, screaming in the parking lot, laughing toget
her in the rain by a pay phone, Zack with his sax, me with my guitar, backward, backward, fucking in the grass by the train tracks after we’d nearly let ourselves get killed, him unscrewing the bottle of rum and handing it to me, me lying down alone on the rails, my mother dying, him sauntering toward Rooster’s truck spinning the ignition key around on his finger, me spying Zack in the mudroom of Anne-Marie’s, backward still, through time, rocketing through a thousand different lives together like a deck of flip cards, back, back, through a vortex of space and stars and nebula to the very birth of the universe itself.

  Slowly, he brought my hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  Chapter 11

  When I awoke in the purgatory of my hotel room, it was well past eleven. Sun sliced through a gap in the blackout curtains. All I could hear was a distant whoosh of cars from the highway. Snatching up my phone, I scrolled through dozens of alerts: messages from Joey and Joey again and the Privileged Kitchen and an events manager at the West Bloomfield Mall and Brenda (You cleaned my house? You really did not have to do that. Thanx—its tone indecipherable) and some kid on Facebook who’d invited Kayla McMullins to play Farmville—how the hell did I shut that fucking thing off already—until finally, to my relief, I came upon a text from Zack:

  Hard at work @Fontanel. We still on for this afternoon? Txt me when u get this.

  I’m awake! I typed back frantically. Just got up!!!!

  My phone pinged. Glad you got some rest. Save your nrg!!! U r gonna need it! LOL.

  Staring at this as I lay in bed, I began fantasizing about the sex that awaited. It didn’t take much. For years, I’d imagined being in bed with Zack.

  But. Does anyone ever have the discipline to rein in their daydreams once they take off? There is no modesty in fantasy. Surely, there’s not an athlete in the world who spends time picturing herself coming in sixth at the Olympics or a musician who lies in bed at night dreaming about playing bar mitzvahs. Quickly I found myself fantasizing about not only the sex, but embroidering entire, elaborate scenarios in which I would join Zack on the road when he left for LA. How exciting and romantic would it be to jet-set around with him for a while? Where else did he say he had apartments? Miami? I pictured us having sex in hotel rooms in various cities with room service and panoramic views—him fucking me up against the enormous, plate-glass windows high above the skylines, in mirrored elevators—and also on the various concert stages he was assembling—while I would do what, I wondered? Okay, here I hit a snag—but I was determined to fit all the puzzle pieces into place—surely, with Zack and his work, I could figure out some way to get back into some aspect of the music business, reignite something I loved.

  The more I let myself get lost in this alternative life—imagining the witty things we’d say to each other in airports, the endearing and wildly romantic gestures he’d make, until—c’mon, okay, I told myself, earth to Donna!—I saw how it could actually happen. Zack and I, we were great, eternal lovers. Who knew how many lifetimes we had known each other? Twenty-six years—and bam! Those first few kisses were all it took. We were both nomads at heart—we still made each other laugh—we knew where we came from, knew each other’s fucked-up families.

  Families. Okay. On that, I got stuck. In my fantasies, I could easily jettison Joey. (In the past, I’d sometimes dispatched him in daydreams by imagining he’d had a heart attack while heroically rescuing children and puppies from a burning building, thereby leaving me, the grieving widow, to be comforted by George Clooney. Now, just thinking about him with Mistress Tanya was enough.) But Ashley and Austin? How, exactly, would they fit into all this? I told myself that I’d spent all my life taking care of them—and they were almost all grown up anyway—couldn’t I have just this one erotic adventure? Didn’t I deserve at least this?

  Besides, if I took off for a few months, would they even really notice? Or care? Neither of them needed me much anymore—beyond money and occasional rides, there was so little I could do for them—I was essentially obsolete. So?

  My phone binged again. Hey, you checked out yet? I should be done in another hour or so. xoxo

  Hurrying into the bathroom, I swallowed an Ativan and an Adderall—one to get me going, the other to calm me down—thank you, children—these were absolutely the very last ones I was borrowing from their stash—then showered, shaved, moisturized, plucked, deodorized, perfumed, and blow-dried. Standing before the mirror, I gently lifted my breasts and twisted my torso from side to side as I had when I was a teenager, assessing myself. Small love handles like fleshy commas flopped on either side of my waist now; my breasts were certainly more elongated. The beauty mark just to the right of my navel had grown darker with time. Yet I was still curvy in a compact, sturdy way. There was still a lusciousness to me. “Not bad for a middle-aged broad, right, Aggie?” I said.

  As I wriggled into a leopard-print miniskirt and a clingy black pullover I’d found at Macy’s in New Jersey, I remembered Ashley at age fifteen, sprawled across my bed, watching as I got dressed for a Privileged Kitchen sales luncheon. I’d chosen a chic little rose-colored dress with metallic ankle boots not unlike a pair she herself owned. “The problem, Mom,” she’d said, “is that your face just doesn’t match your clothing.”

  Well, fuck it, I thought now. From here on in, I was a rock star, and most rock stars’ faces that I knew these days didn’t match their clothing, either, thank you very much. Why was the world so hostile to older women trying to remain attractive? Did people subconsciously fear that we might actually trick all men into falling for us—diverting all the world’s sperm away from the younger, more fertile women—until the entire human race died out? The vitriol and contempt and mockery directed at us was astonishing. Not that I was necessarily any better: How many hours had I spent clicking on websites showing “bad celebrity plastic surgery” photos and forwarding them to my book club? Well, that was over now.

  “Oh. Aggie. Have I mentioned?” I tossed my head seductively toward my guitar. “I’m taking a lover.” I delighted in the words, the anachronistic licentiousness of them. And Zack’s kiss. That kiss.

  As I rolled my new violet suitcase down the corridor, I passed the maids chatting by their towel trolley. I could see their eyes following me. They could tell instantly what I was up to; I was certain of it. Every smoke alarm in the hotel, I imagined, was starting to whoop as I sauntered past.

  Having slept through breakfast, I was ravenous. Down the road, I found a country buffet restaurant, where I piled a plate with mac-and-cheese, hush puppies, fried chicken, creamed spinach, even a spoonful of blueberry cobbler—refusing to track the calories—certainly, I’d earned this, too—plus, it was likely I’d be unable to eat around Zack out of nerves and erotic propriety for days—so what was a little splurge—plus, this was the South—okay, yeah, there was also an Indian restaurant and a Thai place right nearby in the same strip mall—globalization had come to Goodlettsville, apparently—but it was only polite, of course, to eat the local cuisine, and I was nothing if not a gracious tourist. I poured myself a glass of sweet tea, which proved hard to balance on my tray. Then my phone started ringing in my bag.

  “Fuck.” I knocked over the glass. By the time I managed to set everything down and dig out my phone—I assumed it would be Zack, with his velvety, aphrodisiac voice—I saw that it was actually Joey calling. Yet it was too late; reflexively, I’d answered. I felt trapped. I said something that came out sounding like “Yuuuhhhh?”

  “Donna?” he said in an oddly formal way.

  “Joseph?”

  There was a long silence.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for two days now.”

  “Well, I didn’t feel like talking.”

  “Ever?”

  I was quiet.

  “Okay. Donna. Look. Please. Tell me. No judgment. But are you sober right now?” Perhaps because his nose was broken, “sober” came out sounding like “somber.” “Can we at least have some sort of co
nversation?”

  “Jesus, Joey. Yes, I’m sober.” I jabbed a plastic fork into the mac-and-cheese and shook my head. An elderly couple in plaid shirts glanced over. “I’ve been sober for five years, six months, and eighteen days now.”

  “Donna, you went to a roadhouse. I saw on the internet.”

  “Yeah, well, if you’d bothered to really investigate, you’d have found out that I just ate chicken wings with the Knights of Kiwanis, Joey. For charity. For children in western Pennsylvania with hiatal hernias.” I knew I was on thin ice here and laying it on thick, but I didn’t care. I started to shovel up some of the spinach, then saw it was soaked with sweet tea and set my fork back down.

  I heard him sigh. “Donna. C’mon. What about the meds?”

  “I’m not a pill-head! Jesus Christ, who do you think I am?” More people at the buffet looked over at me, so I stood up and stalked outside and paced on the sidewalk where I could still keep an eye on my lunch.

  “Yes. Okay. I filled Austin’s and Ashley’s prescriptions for them. Like I always do. Because I’m a mom. Because I’m always keeping a running list in my head of everything they need. I was multitasking. And I thought I’d be coming home. But then I changed my mind. So what?”

  “So what are you saying?” His voice shrank. “You are coming back, Donna, aren’t you. I mean, c’mon.”

  For the first time since our fight, my anger wavered and I felt a flicker of pity. Joey. Poor, fucked-up Joey, with his broken nose and his desperate, fetishy pinafores. He had no idea just how far gone I was now.

  “Just write them another prescription, Joey. You’re a dentist. You want to be subservient? So you be the mom for a while,” I said. “You make time in your busy workday to go to Walmart or Walgreen’s or wherever, and get Austin his Adderall and Ashley her Ativan, and then you go through the hassle of mailing it to her overseas. Just like I do. It’s not rocket science.” Though I couldn’t help adding, “But use Express Mail instead of FedEx, because it’s cheaper internationally. Oh, and make sure Ashley knows it’s coming first, because she’ll have to be there to sign for it. And use WhatsApp or email or Skype because, trust me, she never picks up her phone.”