She asks what the hell I’m doing in Harrisburg, how I got there and when
I’ll be back. I interrupt all these stupid questions with one short sentence:
“I’m with Andy.” She’s silent.
This is the statement that brings everything to a mind-numbing
halt. I try to speak but no voice escapes my lips. Running away with
Andy, having sex with him, cuddling after sex, these facts all tell me “yes,
you’re with Andy” and suddenly I want to run back home. I want to erase
the entire day.
“I don’t know what it means,” I manage to say a minute later.
“But the reason why I’m calling is because I left a lot of money in my
room and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I was hoping you could send it
to me.”
“I guess. Where is it?” I tell her she can break into my room with
a credit card and open the power outlet next to my bed with a screwdriver
that’s hidden in a sweatshirt in the middle drawer. I make it sound as
simple as possible, but yet she whines and asks why I didn’t just deposit
the money.
“Because I don’t like banks. Do you think you could put it in the
mail by tomorrow?”
“I mean I can, but do you really trust the U.S. Postal Service to
not lose two grand in cash?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, alright then. I’ll swing by your place tomorrow.” I tell her
goodnight and then head back to bed, but I still can’t sleep. Despite the
darkness of the room I can still make out Andy’s features. His bone structure is sharp and his dark hair falls into his eyes and he lays beside me,
completely still except for his rising and compressing chest. You know
how when you first start dating someone everything about them seems
perfect? Even the shape of their nostrils or the structure of their eyebrows
appear magnificent? I try to find Andy’s attributes charming and infatuating, but they’re not. I don’t find him magnificent and I never have,
but he’s always found me amazing, he’s always looked at me the way I’ve
looked at Johnny, and for that reason I stay.
The next day Heather calls and tells me she opened my power
socket but there was nothing inside it. She keeps going on about if I was
sure it was that socket that had the money or something. I don’t know,
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