Page 96 of Dirty Ink

In the kitchen beer bottles were still spread out everywhere. Mason wasn’t exactly tidy either. I grabbed one from the fridge. Laughed as I popped the top.

“I kind of hope you have one,” I called out toward the living room. “’Cause maybe it is a burn. God, did I try to twirl firesticks? For some reason I always get that urge when I’m drunk and, like, why can’t I want to, I don’t know, cuddle with stuffed animals after drinking a big glass of water when I’m drunk, you know?”

I kicked off my shoes as I walked toward the living room.

“Mason?”

I was surprised to find the couch empty. The TV on, but no one there to watch it. I checked the balcony overlooking the strip. A cigarette still burned in the ashtray, but Mason was not out there either.

“Mason?”

I went toward the bedroom. If he felt anywhere near as bad as I did during my performance, a nap might have been a very smart thing. The sheets were a mess. Just the way we’d left them. A mess and empty.

The bathroom, too. A mess of vodka bottles, travel-size shampoos and my dildo. But empty of the one thing I was looking for.

“Hmm,” I said and walked back out to the kitchen.

I said “Hmm” because it sounded like something someone who wasn’t worried would say. “Hmm.” It had an ambivalence I wished a felt. A carefreeness I longed for even as my heartrate quickened. “Hmm” seemed to say to the emptiness around me, “Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Hmm” was everything I wanted to be. “Hmm” was everything I was not.

Seated on the edge of the kitchen counter, I sipped my beer and kicked my feet about and tried to imagine what takeout Mason was picking up for us to eat at a quarter past two in the morning. I sipped my beer and kicked my feet about and tried to pretend that was what I was imagining. Plastic containers. Grease-stained receipts. Crumpled brown paper bags.

Not a suitcase gone from beneath the bed.

Not a jacket torn from the hanger in the entryway closet.

Not a seat on a plane soaring over the country that was supposed to be empty.

I made it through one sitcom, God knows which one, before allowing myself to chew at my lip. There were plenty of places in Vegas far enough away to take longer than a sitcom to get there and back. There was traffic sometimes. Even at night. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it was Vegas, what was I freaking out about?

No.

No, I was not freaking out. Especially because I hadn’t even looked around for a note. I downed the rest of my beer in one gulp and hopped up from the couch. A new sense of purpose helped me swallow down the panic that I definitely was not feeling. I had a whole apartment to check for a note. That was potentially hours of searching. Hours of business. Hours of something else to think about.

There’s no way Mason wouldn’t be back by then.

But when the first dagger of morning light slipped between the ribs of the blinds and found my wide, unblinking eyes, Mason was still not back.

I sat like a forgotten rag doll on the floor in my living room. Back stooped over. Arms heavy at my sides. Palms facing up like a beggar who no longer even had the strength or desire to lift his hands to the passing crowds. My bare legs, extended straight in front of me, still had some glitter left over from the show. It sparkled in the light. A betrayal to how I felt.

The slight breeze from the cracked window shuffled the downy feathers around my ice-cold feet, toes pale, frozen like a white marble statue atop a tomb. I’d torn at the cushions of the couch when there was nowhere else to look. It didn’t make any sense at all that Mason would have stuffed a note for me into a place only accessible by ripping, tearing, screaming, but it didn’t make any sense at all that Mason would have left either. So I’d ripped the cushions. I tore at them with clawing fingernails and hot tears, screaming as feathers erupted all around like the grand opening of a burlesque show.

Drawers from my bedroom dresser were littered around me. They looked like little barges on the foamy white seas. I emptied them first in the lamplight of my bedroom. I went methodically at the start. My bra drawer made the most sense as a place Mason would leave a note, something like,

Thought you needed more of these for me to tear from you. Be back soon ~ M.

I made tidy stacks of my bras and then my panties and then my pyjamas on top of the dresser. I fought back my panic by focusing on keeping the straps tucked in, the thongs folded along the edge perfectly, careful not to snag the silk on the wood grain of the dresser.

By the time I reached my period sweatpants at the very bottom of the very last dresser drawer, I was flinging things out behind me like some kind of crazed wood chipper. When the drawers were empty, when there was no chance at all that there was a note in them, I took the drawers out and carried them in a towering stack to the living room where I told myself there was more light.

Trying to find a hammer made me feel okay for a little while. It was something else to think about. Something else to focus on. More time to occupy so that Mason would be back sooner and we would be laughing about this little mix-up sooner. Joking about how insane I went throwing my clothes everywhere. Arguing about where the appropriate place to put a note for someone is. When I failed to find a hammer, I used a meat mallet. I pounded at the corners of the drawer because sometimes little scraps of paper get caught there.

I could almost see it. Mason with a wry smile placing the note gently. Turning already as he closed the drawer. The little draught wafting the light piece of paper to the back. It getting wedged when I pushed everything around, searching.

But there was no trapped little piece of paper. No note. No note in the drawers. No note on the fridge. In the fridge. Behind or underneath the fridge. No note on any of the counters: bathroom, kitchen, living room, balcony. I even leaned out over the edge of the railing, hot summer night wind tangling my hair and imagined Mason’s note fluttering away. It would be impossible to find. Just like he was. Just like he wanted to be.

There was no note in the cabinets. No “You’re out of soy sauce and how can you have duck without soy sauce. Be back soon ~ M” in the junk drawer of rubber bands and takeout menus. No note on the mirror. Not in lipstick. Not even in the steam of a long, hot shower; I checked. In the madness of the middle of the night, I ran the shower at full heat and tore at my lower lip as I sat hunched on the edge of the tub.

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