She nods and agrees, going back to her car. I duck into mine and reach for my glovebox. I’m not even sure my insurance card is in here. It’s one of those things you don’t think you’ll ever need, so you shove it to the back of some dark place and forget about it.
Turns out I have it. And my registration too. Apparently I’m more than prepared to get in an accident or interact with law enforcement. Speaking of, I’d like to wrap this up before any red and blue lights arrive and start directing traffic away from us. People are figuring out to go around us without any help from the boys in blue. I meet her on the passenger side of her car. We snap photos of each other’s insurance cards.
And that’s it. It took all of eight minutes for my life to get just a little bit worse. I’m not even going to wonder how much worse my day could get from here, because at this point it might actually come true.
* * *
You should extend your stay.That’s what my grandma said this afternoon when I called to tell her about the bakery. I told her I’d think about it, but really, what is there to think about?
Relationship? That’s gone.
Career? Vanished.
Reason to stay in Chicago? Also elusive.
I want the outdoors. I want air that smells like earth, not exhaust and a mix of cuisines. I want soft dirt that slips through my fingers, leaves and twigs crunching under my boots. I want my grandma. And I’m sure she could use some help running her bed and breakfast.
Planning a visit home to Lonesome, Oregon is what put Vivienne on the warpath. If she didn’t want me going to Oregon, she could’ve just said it. As it is, her behavior has had the opposite effect. My visit just morphed into a trip without a return date.
There are things to do now. Matters to handle. My apartment, or I guess mine and Warren’s apartment, will go up for rent, fully furnished. In this market and in this neighborhood, it’ll be snapped up.
I called Ashton and told her what I couldn’t bear to tell her this morning. She said she’d assumed such, and I offered my name as a reference when she starts looking for a job.
I gathered personal items and put them in boxes, and then realized I needed help getting the boxes to the storage unit I rented. The problem was easily fixed by knocking on the door of the apartment across from mine and recruiting the two teenage boys who live there with their mom.
It’s shocking how easy it is to rearrange a life. It’s happening faster than I can keep up. This day has been punishing, bloated with change, and I haven’t had a chance to really breathe. I’m not sure how I’ll feel when the dust settles.
The boys from across the hall show up and help me load my car with the new dent. They’re sixteen and eighteen, miniature men, filling out but not quite there yet. Warren was the same way; I’ve seen pictures.
We make six trips in total. There isn’t much in my apartment anymore. Vivienne came and cleared out Warren’s things two weeks ago when I told her I planned a visit to my grandma. Too bad I didn’t realize she was planning to clear out my career along with his favorite shirts and running shoes. She doesn’t have everything though. Before she arrived, I hid some of his things, mostly his concert shirts, ones she couldn’t possibly know about because they were concerts he and I went to together.
After the final trip to the unit, I pay each kid (man child?) a hundred dollars. Money well spent.
I make my way back to the apartment for my final night for who knows how long. I pass an upscale restaurant, the kind of place that is more bar than restaurant. It’s crawling with the after-work, happy hour crowd. Men in collared shirts with the sleeves rolled up, their blazers hung over the backs of chairs, and women in pencil skirts and blouses. They must be hot wearing that in the summer.
After a lingering glance in the window, I move on. I’d like to have a glass of wine, dull the sting of the day just a little, but I don’t have time. Instead, I pick up a bottle from the little store on the corner, and drink more than I should while I scrub countertops and floors, checking every drawer and forgotten corner for artifacts of my life with Warren.
When I finally collapse into bed, mentally and emotionally exhausted, I can’t fall asleep. I look up, seeking out the design in the textured ceiling that resembles a strawberry. I only know it’s there because of all the time I spent on my back in this bed, Warren moving on top of me. It wasn’t always that way, but I’d be lying if I said I’d never mentally sifted through the contents of my refrigerator while Warren was hard at work.
That was back when life was normal.
Then the stable surface I’d been standing on transformed to vapor, and I fell down, down, down.
2
Brady
“We’resure going to miss you, buddy.”
Gabriel winds an arm around my shoulders and sips from his vodka and soda. Gabriel’s the biggest asshole at my firm, and I don’t believe for one second that what he just said is true. This is his third drink, and it’s doing the talking for him.
“Where is it you’re going again?” His question is directed at me, but his eyes are on a woman seated at the bar, her long legs extending from under a short skirt.
“Oregon.” I sip from my own drink and wait for him to respond with some comment about what could possibly be in any place that’s not a major metropolitan city like Chicago.
His gaze stays on the woman, and after a few seconds he mumbles, “Ohio, that’s great.”
“Sure is,” I agree. I’m not interested in correcting him.
