I drank beer on the couch in my apartment while a basketball game I didn’t care about played on the TV. A pile of work waited in my briefcase, but I ignored it. I never did that, but after seeing the girl in the store, I did. I ate some cheese and crackers but gave up on my plan to cook the spaghetti I’d bought. My only company that night was Riley, the aging mutt I’d rescued from the local humane society shortly after my divorce two years earlier. I volunteered there to keep myself busy and to give something back. Eventually, they convinced me to take a dog home. He looked to be a mixture of German shepherd and retriever, and the humane society had estimated his age to be at least eight when I adopted him, maybe older.
The humane society didn’t know much about Riley’s life before he was abandoned to their care, but they suspected he’d suffered some neglect or abuse, because he was so passive and skittish when I adopted him. He used to jump and cower at every noise, and he rarely if ever barked or growled. He’d grown slowly more comfortable and confident over the previous couple of years, and I’d grown used to having him around. As I lounged on the couch, brooding, he sat at my feet, hoping for cracker crumbs.
Marissa and I had met during our freshman year at Eastland University. When I thought of who I was when I arrived at college, I realized I was just an awkward man-boy who only dreamed of meeting his soul mate. Marissa was beautiful, confident, outgoing, determined. Meeting her unlocked things in me that might never have been unlocked otherwise. She got me like no one ever had. And no one has since. We understood each other without words. I felt my connection to her in the deepest core of my being. How many people meet someone like that in their lives? Not many, but I did. And then, two years later, she was taken away from me in a house fire on a warm fall weekend.
That was why seeing the girl in the grocery store shook me to the core. I had managed to get on with my life. I had managed to tell myself I’d gotten over losing Marissa.
But I hadn’t.
I went into my bedroom and dug around in the bottom of my closet. I kept a shoebox there full of items from my time in college, mostly things from my relationship with Marissa. Letters, notes, ticket stubs. And the multiple-time-zone watch she gave me on my twentieth birthday.
We were supposed to travel after college, which explained the need for a multiple-time-zone watch. We never got to take those trips, and I never wore the watch again after Marissa died. But I kept it, and from time to time I’d take it out of the box. When the battery died every few years, I’d take the watch to the jewelry store and have it replaced. I liked to think about that watch being there, close by me, and always running like a beating heart.
I brought it back to the couch with me and slumped down into the cushions, opening another beer. I was supposed to play in my basketball league, but I just didn’t feel like it. I never drank very much, never more than one a day, if that, but when I came home from the grocery store that night, I threw back three and then four and opened a fifth, staring at my watch and wondering who that girl was. And why she’d acted so damn spooked when I simply spoke to her.
? ? ?
I fell asleep on the couch, the TV still playing, the open but unfinished fifth beer on the coffee table before me. My neck felt like hell from sleeping at an odd angle, and a trail of drool ran down my chin.
I slept until something started beating against my apartment door.
Someone was there, pounding on the outside. Each heavy knock caused a miniature earthquake in my skull. I winced. A hangover at my age. Pathetic. I vowed never to have more than one beer again. I vowed to stop thinking about Marissa.
I probably would have agreed to anything to get the pounding on the door to stop. But it didn’t.
I turned my head to the right, looking at the watch Marissa gave me. 6:53 a.m. 12:53 a.m. the next day in New Zealand, as if I needed to know that.
I normally woke up around eight. Made it to the office by nine. But I felt like shit. I needed a shower. Coffee. Food. I stood up, feeling a little wobbly. I looked down at Riley. He hadn’t barked despite the pounding on the door. He never barked.
“Nothing?” I said to him. “Not even a growl?”
His tail thumped against the floor, and he yawned.
“One of these days I’m really going to need your help,” I said. “I hope you’re ready.”
Riley walked off toward the kitchen, which meant he was hungry.
I was still wearing my work clothes from the day before. My tie and my shoes were off, and I needed to pee. But whoever was outside the door really wanted to talk to me. The person beat on the door again, shaking my brain like dice in a cup.
“Stop,” I said. “Jesus.”
I thought about calling the apartment complex security guard and asking him to find out who was making the endless racket. But he was an elderly man, the owner’s uncle, and he usually didn’t arrive until late morning and was gone by five. The noise wasn’t the knock of a friend or someone selling something. It sounded urgent, determined. But my desire to make it stop overwhelmed any fears I had about who was out there. I stumbled to the door and looked through the peephole.
It took a moment for the scene outside to make sense to me, but when it did, my heart started racing.
I understood immediately why the knock was so heavy.
Through the peephole I saw two uniformed police officers and a detective I already knew.
“Mr. Hansen,” the detective said. “It’s the Eastland Police. We know you’re in there. Open up.”
“Damn,” I said.
An already rough morning became totally shitty.