The Girlfriend Who Wasn't from Delaware Read online

  The wings come.

  “Aw, no‌—‌” I say as the lady sets down two dishes.

  “Yes,” he tells her before she can whisk my plate away. “Look, it’s a mountain of bird parts. I’ll never be able to eat all of them. It’s cool. And put that away, I got this.”

  I’d reached towards my back pocket for my wallet, but I guess I was getting wings whether I wanted ’em or not. Shucks.

  I roll a few pieces of orange chicken mountain off with my fork. They conveniently do NOT over-roll and try to stain my best shirt, which I appreciate.

  We eat, watching the ESPN commercials, except for when Darryl waves down the lady for more napkins.

  The waitress steps back from filling Darryl’s drink, and I see her sitting at the bar‌—‌Miss-’Alo-rhymes-with-Halo, the salt fiend. There’s a bowl of hard pretzels in front of her. I must make a noise or something when I watch her grab the salt shaker and jackhammer it over the bowl, because Darryl gives me a weird look and asks, “What?”

  I lift my chin to indicate over his shoulder, then swipe my eyes down to my food when he turns and looks, not at all subtle.

  “Wow! She’s a looker.”

  “No! I don’t like her‌—‌I mean‌—‌I’ve seen her before. At the mall, eating a soft pretzel drowning in salt.” I’m pleased with how smoothly I’ve avoided mentioning my current job. “And now look at her‌—‌but not so obvious!”

  He ignores me, turning around in his seat. “Does seem to like the sodium. Wonder if she has a condition.” He turns back, grabs a wad of napkins and starts bashing them against his fingers. Like magic, they turn from crisp white to buffalo orange. He’s dropped ’em on the table and stood up before it hits me‌—‌he’s gonna go over there!

  “You can’t!” Although, if this guy’s willing to go up to a gal at a bar and ask if she has a condition, maybe he deserves to have his accounts kicked out from under him. Maybe I was wrong.

  “Relax,” he says. “Just going to chat.”

  I plant my elbow on the table and hide my head behind my knuckles, pretending to look over my tasty wings when I’m not glancing up at Darryl, walking up to Ms. Halo. He’s standing so he blocks her, but in a few minutes I can see the bulge of his cheek as he smiles, and my old skills kick in‌—‌the sale’s going well.

  Well, well.

  I reconsider. She may not be a bombshell, but she did have legs up to her neck. And the only thing wrong with her‌—‌besides being a little rude‌—‌was the salt thing. If she’s his type and a messed-up craving for salt’s the biggest thing wrong with her, good for him.

  All at once, the barbell smacks me square between the shoulder blades. I drop a couple singles for a tip, leave my wings on the table (which I’ll regret the next afternoon when I have to buy a soggy taco on my lunch break) and leave quickly so I don’t crash while driving.

  * * *

  It’s not as bad as with the other neighbor, but I forget to call or text Darryl about bailing on him at the bar. I mean to, I really do, but believe it or not, now that I’ve got a barbell, part-time pretzel slinging wipes me out at the end of the day. And most the time I’m only good for sleeping after it.

  It sucks when the only thing you have to live for is sleep.

  Luckily‌—‌well, it seemed lucky at the time‌—‌I catch Darryl getting into the elevator in the lobby. I’ve just come back from work (puff pretzel getup stuffed in a gym bag, though you know I haven’t stepped into a gym since I got my own very personal piece of weightlifting equipment) and I’m fried, but I remember Bowling Guy and put my head down and hustle for the elevator door before it closes. That stunt’ll cost me one extra hour of sleep‌—‌you do NOT fight the barbell’s demands without payin’ for it‌—‌but seeing the guy put his hand out to keep the doors from closing on me, that’s worth it.

  “Darryl!” I almost yelp it, I’m so pleased I found him, and happy he didn’t cold-shoulder me out of the elevator, but I try to knock it down, don’t want to actually turn into a slobbery dog. “Darryl, buddy, sorry I bailed on you the other night, something came up, and you looked like you were doin’ well with the girl…‌ehhh?” I give him The Eyebrow.

  He tries to wave it off, casual-like, but there’s an eaten-canary grin pulling on the corners of his mouth, and hard.

  “Ooooh-hoho!” I give him a little shoulder punch, just like I do my pretzel kids when they get a new date. “You get her number?”

  He nods. “We’ve been out once. She’s really…‌”

  My brain races ahead, filling in the upcoming blanks: hot weird frizzy quiet crazy addicted to margaritas

  “…‌extraordinary,” is what he winds up on.

  “How so?” I ask as the elevator doors clunk open on an empty floor. Apartment doors stand at attention, remain closed. Somebody got tired of waitin’. The elevator doors slide closed and we’re heading upwards again.

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Like…‌you know Celine Dion?”

  “Kinda.” Where’s he going with this?

  “Ever seen her do an interview?”

  I shake my head. “Uh-uh.”

  “Well, she comes off as a little…‌loopy.”

  “A little ‘French’?” I try.

  “Mneeyh…‌.” He shakes his head at that. “She’s just offbeat, you know? And…‌I never thought I’d like that, but with Jane‌—‌”

  “That’s her name?”

  He nods. “Yeah, Jane Smith, from Delaware.”

  Delaware, huh? I never met anyone from there before.

  “Well, I guess it could be Jane Smit, I can’t tell with her accent, exactly. Anyway, she’s offbeat, but I kinda like it on her.”

  I grunt, trying to sound appreciative. But in my head I’m wonderin’ if there was a thing or two he liked off her, if you know what I mean.

  The elevator stumbles to a halt, a preamble to opening its doors. I realize none of the other buttons are illuminated. I swear as Darryl gets out. He looks over his shoulder, question on his face.

  “Missed my floor,” I say. “That’s what I get for yakkin’. Hey, uh, wanna go back to Stuckey’s sometime? Or anyplace else.”

  “Sure,” he says, but I’m not so sure, not with Jane Smith/Smit/Saltshaker in his life.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” I say. The doors close on my words, chopping them like a horizontal guillotine. I hit the button for my floor with the side of my fist, but I still have to ride the stinkin’ thing up ten extra floors before it starts back down again.

  When my hand’s wrapped around my apartment’s doorknob, it hits me.

  I forgot to ask him about her condition! I curse under my breath. But I guess if I’d asked it would have seemed rude.

  Still. Inquiring pretzel guys want to know.

  * * *

  It’s the next week when things start going wrong in my apartment. I’m asleep when it first happens. I’m dead asleep, and then the lids fly up my eyes like someone raising a window shade. I don’t move, but dart my eyes left and right. I’m still alone. Sun manages to peek around the edges of my pinned-up blackout shades, but it’s cool-sun‌—‌probably not even noon yet. It’s my day off, my recovery day.

  Usually a little sun like that don’t bother me at all. What is it?

  Then I take a deep breath‌—‌and I can hear myself‌—‌and then I know.

  I roll up, snarling. “Stupid thing!”

  Sure enough, my white noise machine is dead on my nightstand. It was the silence that woke me. A death knell, but silent.

  “How the hell‌—‌?”

  Groaning because I have to flop over onto my fat gut and wriggle my hand into the narrow no-man’s-land that is the space behind the nightstand and the wall, I spider my fingers around down there until I feel the plug and outlet. It’s still plugged in!

  “Stupid friggen piece of junk.” But I feel bad the second I say the words, ’cuz it was a sister gift, a really good one, never gave me any p
roblems in the two-year-plus since I got it. I never told her all the way about my barbell, but I think she knew how important sleep was getting to be for me, ’cuz she didn’t skimp on the machine, and I know she could have. Or told me to get with the times get a flat screen phone with a kerjillion apps that’d just keep me up when I needed rest.

  And now, it was dead. I unplug it and hold it in my hands; a heavy piece of plastic electronic magic. I study the little speaker ridges on the top like it’s a face.

  Maybe it’ll get better. Maybe it’s just on the fritz.

  I set it back on its spot on the nightstand (you can see the dust surrounding its square footprint on all sides, besieging it) and flop on my side, cord in hand, and plug it in again. Holding my breath, I switch it on.

  Nothing.

  I tap it light, to see if that’ll wake it up. But it sits there, mute.

  I run my hand through my hair. Sweaty. Sweaty! Look at me, like a junkie! I spent most my life sleepin’ like a babe without this stuff‌—‌curtains, noise‌—‌what’d I need them for?

  I roll back into Ray’s Canyon of Sleep. The memory foam topper snuggles in close, like it missed me. (Sometimes I like that thought. Other times it scares the hell outta me.)

  The barbell presses me into a drowse. I’m just about to go under, down past that surreal drifting to where the real logs are kept, when a noise jolts me to. But I don’t have to guess this time: it’s a throbbing thudding coming from the apartment upstairs.

  I groan. No pillow sandwiched around my head’s gonna block THAT racket out.

  I can’t even tell what it is, only that it’s pissed off the barbell, which pisses me off, and I gotta get to the store, pronto. I throw on my clothes. I need a noise machine. Even a cheap one will do.

  * * *

  My new sleep machine is a square weight in a white Target sack hanging from my fist. A Diet Coke’s in my other hand, a dollar special from the golden arches‌—‌the caffeine in it the main brace keeping my eyelids up, but falling into the canyon sounds like heaven now as I slump before the elevator in the lobby.

  I try to watch the lights on the indicator above, to keep track of the elevator, but looking upwards just makes my eyelids feel heavier than they already are, so after sucking out the dregs of my Coke, I stare at my feet. Not long now, not long now.

  The elevator lands with a chud! and shudder that I know from experience hurts your knees if you’re standing the wrong way inside. I angle my sight upwards enough only to catch the lights of the car when it opens up.

  Two pairs of legs: one wearing chino shorts and brown sandals; the other, white loose shorts and women’s high heels that show the toes.

  I stand there silently urging them to exit so I can get back to sleeping, when Darryl says, “Ray? That you? Ray!”

  Oh, crap. It’s him all right, and the Saltshaker Blonde herself is on his arm, fingers wrapped around his lower arm.

  Funny, he looks like a kid who just nabbed the prom queen, but there’s something off about his smile.

  “Yeah‌—‌uh, had to run out and get something,” I say.

  “Wanna go…‌” The word stalls, goooo, while he tries to think where to invite me, but even if I weren’t dead on my feet (and wearing white socks with my Skecher sandals on those feet, besides), I ain’t nobody’s third wheel. So I fire off my next sentence before he can think of his. “Sorry, can’t‌—‌not feelin’ well. Don’t want you two to catch it.”

  Blondie’s claws squeeze his elbow twice. “Darryl.” And at this command, he steps off the elevator with her.

  “Ma’am,” I mumble before I barrel inside.

  I reach out and slap the button for my floor before I’ve even turned around inside. I don’t think she recognized me.

  Back in my room, whatever hubbub was going on upstairs has stopped.

  I plug in the new sound machine AND shove in the batteries I bought to go with it. It’s curved like macaroni, and black, high-tech lookin’ next to my sister’s gift, an off-white box. Wasn’t even that expensive.

  Maybe that made it feel a little disloyal. Throwin’ over a nice sister gift for the first cheap sound box I find in a big box store.

  That slug of guilt alters the trajectory of my finger, switching its approach from the new machine’s power button to the old machine’s switch.

  I don’t expect anything to happen. Honestly. I felt silly even doing it‌—‌hadn’t I checked thoroughly before I left? It was busted, ghost-gone, and this‌—‌this was just honoring its years of service.

  So when the hush of white noise streams out of its speaker-holes like nothing bad ever happened, it scrambles my brain for a sec and I sit there gawping at it. I learn down, put my ear right next to it, make sure I’m really hearing the soothing buzz from the speaker and not some imaginary test sound from inside my wishful noggin.

  But no. It works!

  Smiling, I lie back into my canyon.

  Hiccups happen in life. Some are big, like growing a barbell that muscles you out of your career. But some…‌some are just little. And when you’ve had nothing but big hiccups come at you fast and furious, you learn to welcome the little ones, the flexible hics.

  I’ll return the new one back to the store tomorrow, on my way to work.

  It’s my last thought before sinking into dreamland, full of the satisfaction of not being a traitor to my sister and her gift.

  * * *

  All is right with the world. But only for three days.

  Day one: I return the new sound machine back to Target and manage the pretzel rush with my kids. The barbell leaves me alone for once and I stay up after and watch a whole movie on TV before going to bed!

  Day two: Like day one, minus the return, and instead of a movie after work I read a little. My eyes don’t droop, either‌—‌at least, not ’til bedtime.

  Day three: By this time I’m feeling real good‌—‌even with work, I celebrate three days without the barbell like some folks a paid weeklong vacation‌—‌and I perk up when Darryl’s number pops up on the window of my flip phone. I get it before the first ring even ends.

  “Darr’, my man! How you doin’?”

  “Not so…‌Hey, can we meet up tonight?”

  The pitch of his voice makes me rein in my cheer. “All right. At Stuckeys?”

  “Not Stuckey’s,” he says quickly.

  This sounds serious. “You in trouble?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you wanna meet now?” I glance at my duffel bag. I’d have to tighten my belt for the rest of the month, but he’s got me a little scared, I guess. Let’s put it this way: you’d call in sick to help someone who sounded as bad as Darryl did right now, trust me. You wouldn’t even bat an eye.

  “No. No, it’s not…‌I got work. I’ll be safe ’til then.”

  “Safe?”

  “Fine. I’ll be fine ’til then. Bad connection. Look, when can we meet up?”

  “Tonight‌—‌seven thirty,” I said. That’d give me time to come home, shower, then drive out to wherever he wanted me.

  “Kay. Let’s meet at the Skyline Grill at the airport. You got your ID, right?”

  “Well, yeah!”

  At the airport? With all that security?!

  “I’ll buy you a round,” he said, “and maybe you can help…‌”

  “Sure thing. You sure you’re…‌’fine’?” I make sure he hears the quotes.

  “I will be. See you then.”

  “Sure. See ya…‌” but the line is already dead.

  By rush time, my kids notice I’m a little distracted, but they’re good and pick up the slack. I remember at the end of the shift to tell them I’m proud of them.

  “Feel better,” says our youngest girl, Laurie, when I hang up my apron to leave. I think it’s a weird thing to say when my barbell’s been gone so long. But I guess Darryl’s call’s got me a little spooked. Is it just work drama, or is he in trouble with someone? It’s occurring to me I don’t
know much about the guy at all, and yet here I am drivin’ out to the airport, steeling myself to be frisked by the TSA jackwagons for the guy.

  Maybe I’m a better friend than I thought.

  Or dumber.

  * * *

  I wait ’til nine friggen o’clock before I head back home. He’s a no-show.

  Driving back, my anger changes in waves‌—‌pissed that he might be in trouble and I can’t help him, then pissed that he might not be in trouble and I wasted another day free of my curse. You didn’t know pissed off came in so many different flavors.

  It’s eleven by the time I roll back in, with nothing to show for it. I skin off my clothes, fall into the canyon, and promise myself I’ll call Darryl in the morning, and the police right after if I can’t get a hold of him. I’d tried to reach him every half-hour at the airport bar, but it’d always gone straight to voicemail.

  Sis’s white noise machine has been churning out sleep-inducing static ever since its miraculous healing, and I soon fall asleep to it.

  But my flight to snoozeland is shot down when the static shuts off an hour later. I lie in the silence, pop-eyed, the piddling sigh of my A/C the only background noise left in the air.

  I fling myself up, seated, before crawling back behind the nightstand to unplug the machine. Maybe it needs a rest. I’d been letting it run uninterrupted since the healing…‌heck, I usually let it run while I’m awake, and away at work, too. Apartments are noisy places most times of days.

  While my box rested, I fumbled around my desk drawer for some earplugs and stuck them in.

  I remold myself to the canyon, but the nubbins stopping up my ears seem to build pressure inside my cranium. The headache would start any second. I knew I couldn’t sleep with these!

  Disgusted, I pull ’em out and flick ’em into the dark. I’d get ’em tomorrow.

  I try sis’s machine again. No dice.

  I sigh, lie back, and stare at the ceiling. Maybe with this run of good luck, I’d just fall asleep naturally.

  Yeah, and then I’d grow wings and fly.