“His transfer was probably already in the works. These kinds of things are planned months in advance. You know how that goes.”
“I feel like the information was intentionally kept from me.”
Adam looks up from his lunch.
“And Nicholas has been a fixture in this place for years. Why now?”
“Could be for any number of reasons. New complications, new treatments.”
We continue eating.
A few minutes later, I say, “It’s from Shakespeare.”
“What is?”
“?‘That sleep of death.’?”
“Okay . . .” He chews but doesn’t say anything more.
“Adam, everyone on that floor was acting very strange yesterday. I told you about it.”
He stops chewing, stares at his food for a few seconds, then looks up at me. “Chris, they’re mental patients.”
The conversation stalls out, and for the rest of lunch, neither of us speaks.
31
I leave the building to head home when my phone vibrates. After checking the screen, I see two missed calls from Jenna.
Wait a minute.
Why is my ringer turned off?
Wait, again. Jenna’s cell?
She usually calls from home at this time of day, because she’s usually getting dinner ready. I click the answer button, but before I can speak, she says, “Where are you?”
“I’m just leaving work.” I glance at my watch and wonder if I’ve once again lost time. Nope. I’m good.
“Leaving work,” she says.
“Yeah. What’s wrong?”
“Why are you just now leaving?”
“Because that’s what I do when I’m done?”
“But you’re supposed to be here.”
“Be where?”
“Chris, we spoke about it this afternoon. On the phone? You couldn’t have possibly forgotten. You were supposed to take off early. Adam’s already here.”
I still don’t know where here is, so I ask.
“At Adam and Kayla’s. For dinner.” Her voice trails into apprehensive concern. I feel her on that one. “Chris, what’s going on?”
I’m not so sure that I know. I don’t recall her telling me about this, don’t recall agreeing to leave work early; but I do remember losing a block of time during our conversation.
“Didn’t you see Adam this afternoon?” she asks. “He was supposed to remind you.”
“I actually did. At lunch. But he didn’t mention anything.”
It was intentional.
What was?
Adam didn’t tell you on purpose. He doesn’t want you in his house. That’s where he keeps the files.
Which files?
The ones with all the information he’s been gathering on you.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” I say, trying to block out the voice and get back to my wife. “I got really busy after we spoke. It completely slipped my mind.” Not exactly a lie but perhaps my biggest understatement of the year.
Jenna sighs. “It’s okay. Just get here as soon as you can, all right?”
“On my way.” I hang up and hurry through the parking lot.
32
The lost time during my earlier call with Jenna.
Stanley’s frightening and hysterical declarations.
Nicholas’ unexplained and secretive disappearance.
The list keeps growing, my stress keeps cannonballing, and any attempt to hold my mind together seems like a job unto itself.
On the road, I make a concentrated effort to gather myself, to block out the crazy taking up residence in my mind. At the same time, I’m well aware this dinner may only throw more hurdles into my path, because there is yet another problem waiting for me there.
When I met Adam, he was single. A few years later, Hurricane Kayla blew in, and before I knew it, she was part of the deal. Not that I have a problem with Adam finding love—it’s just that he really didn’t. He instead found Kayla, a woman incapable of giving or receiving anything of the sort. It’s my professional opinion that Kayla suffers from an acute personality disorder. Diagnosis: Histrionic Hot Mess.
Drama queen on steroids pretty much nails it. Kayla is ridiculously eager for attention, inappropriately demonstrative, and if pretentiousness and superficiality are her goals, she’s cornered the market. As much as I love Adam, I could have predicted that Kayla—or someone like her—was a problem waiting to happen. His judgment is fairly sound in most aspects of life, but somewhere deeply embedded within him is a noncognitive wrinkle, a psychic blemish that greatly impacts his relationships with women. Because of that deficit, he drifts into the same hapless pattern, making mistakes that seem to fall far beyond his learning curve. To put it plainly, Adam turns to Silly Putty for any woman with good looks and a rocking body. Kayla has both, and she works them with skill—or as other friends have rather crudely observed, Kayla has Adam’s dick in an iron vise. But because I care a great deal for Adam, I force tolerance and try my best to ignore his wife’s antics.
However, it’s not always easy.
When I walk through the entryway, Jenna and Kayla are sitting and talking. Actually Kayla is talking, and my wife is making a valiant effort to listen. Jenna looks at me in that special and subtle way we have, the one that speaks our universal language: Get me out of here.
“Christopher!” Kayla says with a nerve-grinding shriek. She deploys from her wing chair like it’s got a built-in ejection handle, the under-seat rocket motor launching her the distance between us. She lands against my chest, throws her arms around me, and kisses the air next to my head on both sides. Over her shoulder, I catch one of those corny leg lifts you see in movies but never in real life.
Jenna looks like she’s about to barf.
I work to paint a smile on my face and swallow bile.
I’m also trying to suppress a malicious laugh over Kayla’s clothing choice for the evening—or perhaps, more appropriately, her costume. An angora sweater, pink, fuzzy, and barely legal within a public context. Same goes for the skirt—or at least I think that’s what it is—with a hemline that would leave nothing to even a sailor’s imagination.
A pink beret. Eyeglasses without any lenses.