Written by D. Lane Sharp
I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep last night. My tongue is thick and hot and stuck to the roof of my mouth. I shuffle to the bathroom sink and take the paper hat off the amber colored drinking glass. I imagine the harried maid who instead of replacing this glass with a new one, wipes it off—the already used one—using a cleaning rag. I imagine her face. She’s sweaty and tired with heavy tired eyes, itching with fatigue. Her baby boy has kept her up all night the night before with a fever and a hacking cough. She uses the last $5 she has to buy store brand baby Tylenol, but his fever doesn’t budge. She walks him outside hoping the fresh air might help. When he’s not coughing, he rests his tired, little head on her shoulder. She holds a cool damp washcloth the back of his neck. She walks and murmurs and kisses his burning temple.
In my mind, I see her. I see her reflection in the mirror. She’s worn out and worried. She has left her baby with an elderly neighbor. She holds up the glass and sees the greasy imprint of lips. She sees the fingerprints. She’s out of clean drinking glasses in her cart. To get more she’d have to go back to the cleaning closet. She doesn’t. She’s conflicted. She wipes it, shines it, plunks it down on the plastic tray on the bathroom counter, and puts on a new paper cover.
I fill the glass up to the top. Put my lips on the wiped away lip marks of the man who slept in the same bed the night before I slept in it. I look into the mirror. Into my own tired eyes and glug, glug down the tap water. It tastes like chlorine.
Today I am meeting with a police detective—the one assigned to Mars’s case. He only agreed to meet with me after I acquired his personal cell phone number and text-bombed him for days and days requesting a meet-up. His name is Lance Charles. We are meeting at a Starbucks, the one closest to his precinct.
I shower and dress and brush my teeth.
This hotel is surprisingly busy, and I had to park David Tenant at the far end of the parking lot. Poor David Tenant, my little blue Mini Cooper. He’s covered in layers of travel dust, horizontal road strata. The last 800 miles or so, he began acting iffy, and this morning he didn’t want to crank the first two times I tried.
“C’mon, dude,” I say. I take my foot off the clutch and press down again. I turn the key, and he chugs to life.
Location Starbucks—y’know how they are, the same everywhere, only the people who work in each are different, but only minutely so, variations of each other—different saturation of the same colors. The guy behind the counter in this Starbucks is a dark, rich burgundy color. His eyes are a clear, glacier blue with smile crinkles at the corners. He has a beard too because Portland—even though he’s early twenty-something.
I ask for a large, black, iced coffee, and blue-eyed burgundy, smiles at me. His teeth are so straight and he laughs for no reason, and I think in another life I could have loved him.
“Boon?” he says. “Did I hear that right?”
He’s writing my name on the cup.
“Yes,” I say.
“Do you work around here?” he asks.
“No.”
“Visiting?” he asks.
“In a way.”
He leans into the smile, this beautiful smile that in the other life I would rank number one on my list of favorite things.
The cop is 20 minutes late. I know it’s him as soon as he walks in. He has the way about him that all cops have. He looks around at those of us sitting at the tables, and though I look directly at him, he doesn’t see me.
He twirls his car keys in his hands and goes to the counter to order coffee, a fluffy, whip cream topped drink and a small black coffee. He carries both of them and looks around the seating area again. Again, I am looking directly at him—in truth, I’ve been looking at him the whole time, since he came through the doors—but still he doesn’t make eye contact with me.
“Detective Charles?” I say.
“Boon?” he says.
“That’s me,” I smile, showing all my teeth.
“You’re not what I expected,” he says.
“Oh, really?” I say. “What did you expect?”
He grunts. He sits down. He pushes the fluffy drink away from him. “For someone back at the office,” he says before putting the black coffee to his lips.
He looks at the door and then over my right shoulder and then finally at me.
“I think you came a long way for nothing,” he says.
“My best friend is missing. How is that nothing?”
He sets a large manila envelope on the table. He rests his forearm on it and takes another sip of coffee. “There’s just nothing. He vanished. No leads. Nothing.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s possible.”
“No,” I say. “Not without a trace. I don’t buy it.”
“Look,” Lance Charles says. “Sometimes, these guys, these people who disappear, are motivated. If you’re motivated enough—someone smart, like your friend Mathias, he’s a smart guy, right?—someone like him, they can just do it. Disappear.”
“Mars wouldn’t do that.”
“You sure? Sometimes we think we know what people will do, but we don’t really when it comes down to it. We don’t really know. We can’t.”
“No,” I shake my head. “No he wouldn’t. That’s not him.”
“Maybe. Maybe.” He leans back in the chair and taps the manila folder. “Here’s what I’ve got. Don’t say you got it from me.”
I shake my head. “I need your help. You’re the police. This is your job. Finding people. Mars is out there somewhere. He needs to be found.”
“We’ve done what we can do. The case isn’t closed, but it’s been months. It’s not a priority anymore. We’ve got other things.”
“That’s bullshit.”
He shrugs. “Look, I’m just being honest with you. Setting appropriate expectations,” he air-quotes. “We looked for this guy. There was no evidence of foul play. None. We have no more resources to devote to a maybe missing man, who has a record, who likely just disappeared himself.”
“His record has nothing to do with this. He’s a good person. He’s conscientious. Something went wrong. He wouldn’t just disappear. His mother is sick. She has cancer. She doesn’t have much time. He would never just leave her like this. Never.”
“Sure. Of course. Maybe something did go wrong.” Another sip of coffee. Another shrug. “Probably. Probably something did happen, but there’s no evidence. Nothing to follow. Nothing. There’s no where to look.” He stands up, picks up the fluffy coffee. “I really wish I had something more to tell you. Something better. You’re a good friend, Boon. You care. A lot of times in cases like this there’s nobody to care. Well…” his voice trails off. “Goodbye.”
He leaves. His shoulders slope. Someone holds the door open for him because of the two coffees in his hands.
I rub my head. I put the envelope in my bag.
I’m going to have to do this myself.
Such f-ing bullshit.
I stand up.
“See you, Boon,” burgundy man calls. He’s writing a customer’s name on a cup at the register. There’s a line of people waiting. He’s been watching me, off and on, the whole time. He feels the alternate reality us but doesn’t know it.
“Cheers,” I say.
I feel his eyes on my back as I walk out.
When I get back to David Tenant. There’s a piece of paper under his windshield wiper. Shit, a parking ticket?
Nope.
“What’s this, David?” I pull the note out from the wiper.
In blue ball point pen on lined notebook paper, two words—GO HOME
D. Lane Sharp 