Chapter Thirteen
Troy vanished the next morning. Vish woke up alone in his bed, and there was no sign of her. It was still dark in his bedroom. He squinted at the clock. Just after six.
He pulled on his bathrobe and ventured into the living room. Troy kept odd hours, thanks to her television schedule, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to rise early and make coffee, then sit by herself on the couch, reading a magazine while patiently waiting for him to wake up.
She wasn’t there. Strange that she’d leave without telling him. She hadn’t mentioned anything she needed to do this morning—no auditions, no errands, no appointments. Maybe she’d run out to grab breakfast.
No. She’d taken her gladiator costume with her. Presumably she wasn’t wearing it right now, which meant she’d changed into the clothes she kept in Vish’s room. He checked.
Gone.
Everything of hers was gone, the small armful of sweatshirts and underwear and leggings she’d stashed in one of his dresser drawers.
Huh. That was odd, odd enough to give him an uneasy prickle in his chest. But they’d had a great evening together, all sex and giggles, despite the bizarre events at Kelsey’s party, so it wasn’t like Troy had left permanently.
He called her. Her phone rang five times, then went to voicemail. He paused, about to leave a message, then hung up instead.
He measured grounds into the coffee pot and tried not to worry.
He didn’t hear from Troy all day.
He called her two more times, leaving artfully breezy voicemails. He needed groceries, but he stayed home, struck by a sense of foreboding, some kind of homing instinct that compelled him to stay indoors.
He read online reports about Kelsey’s party. The explosion hadn’t been important enough to warrant more than a quick mention in the national news, but the gossip sites were all over it. It was a stink bomb, they claimed, a juvenile prank, likely planted by one of Kelsey’s former ‘tween-star rivals. Speculation as to the perpetrator was rife. No one had been injured, and the general consensus seemed to be that it was all pretty lame. Vish watched some blurry video footage of evacuated party guests standing outside the restaurant; he caught a brief, fuzzy glimpse of Troy standing next to him, and it made him feel melancholy.
Troy finally answered her phone the next morning. Her voice sounded thin and uncertain, and this scared him almost as much as her words.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday,” she said. “I just…” She trailed off. Vish heard her inhale on the other end of the line, a million miles away from him, then try again. “I just didn’t feel well.”
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” he asked. “Troy, is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I think I caught a cold or something.” She paused, then her words came out in a tumbled rush. “I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Vish was stunned into silence. “Why?” he finally asked.
“It’s just… it’s not working out,” she said.
“Did I do something?” His voice sounded calm and level, which was odd, because he was screaming inside.
“No. Not really. It’s…” She made some kind of noise, an indeterminate sigh. “I don’t think I can explain. I just don’t want to see you again. Ever.”
“Can we meet to talk about this?” he asked. Still calm.
“I don’t think so,” she said. A long pause, during which Vish felt his heart crumble. “Goodbye.” She disconnected the call.
Vish held his phone to his ear with cold fingers and listened to the dial tone. From the start, he’d expected Troy to exit his life as swiftly as she’d entered, but not like this. She would’ve been kind about it, full of brisk reassurances that it wasn’t anything he’d done, that they’d keep in touch, that he’d find someone better for him soon. That was Troy, not that uncertain, inarticulate creature on the phone.
Not really. What had he done? How had he ruined things?
He almost called her again. Some remaining scrap of pride prevented him from hitting the redial button. She wouldn’t answer. She’d spent all of yesterday avoiding his calls; she hadn’t wanted to talk to him now, though she’d probably figured it’d be better to cut him out of her life now than spend the next several days dodging him.
Later that day, the flu struck, an especially pernicious and incapacitating strain. He spent the evening sitting on the bathroom floor, clutching his stomach, staying within easy barfing distance of the toilet.
He sweated and vomited. He sat in the shower, knees to his chest, and let hot water pound down on him, too shaky to stand up and too exhausted to shave or shampoo his hair. He made endless cups of herbal tea that he never touched, because even a tiny swallow would start him vomiting again. He nibbled on unbuttered toast. He cried a lot, alone in his bed, and felt feeble and ridiculous for it.
He didn’t leave his apartment for three days.
On the fourth day, he ran out of tea. He didn’t have anything stronger than aspirin on hand, and he needed something that would dull the ache in his bones, would dry up the thick mucous that had staged a hostile takeover of his upper respiratory system, would help him get some badly-needed sleep. He pulled a sweatshirt over the sweatpants he used as pajama bottoms, slid on his sandals, and headed on foot to the grocery store.
It was cold outside. Every time he breathed in, the chill in the air seared his lungs, and he’d explode into a paroxysm of coughing. His throat was nothing but swollen, shredded tissue. His mouth tasted of blood.
He got lost along the way, and he ended up stumbling around the canals, which turned into a maze designed to confound him. The water in the canals had gone green and foamy and stank of rotting fish. Vish gripped the railing of one of the quaint wooden bridges and didn’t inhale or look down, because the sight and smell of the water made his stomach clench.
At the grocery store, where he clutched his basket with both hands and tried not to sway on his feet, Vish ran into Mariposa. He was focusing so intently on picking up the handful of items on his shopping list and returning home without incident that he failed to recognize her, until she stood right in front of him and waved with both hands to get his attention.
“Hey, you,” she said. She was resplendent in an electric blue parka with a pink fur collar over a denim skirt and flip-flops. “Did you walk here? I could have given you a ride.”
“Hi, Mariposa.”
She looked into his basket and spotted the orange juice, the cans of soup, the virulent green cold medicine, the extra-large box of tissues. “Oh, you’ve got that, huh?”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Whatever’s going around. Mama’s got it, everyone’s got it. Some kind of flu or whatever.”
“Don’t get too close. I don’t want to spread it,” Vish said.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m immune, seriously. If I don’t have it by now, I’m not going to get it, right?” She observed him for a moment, her mouth twisting in concern. Vish hadn’t looked in a mirror for a few days. He probably looked like death. “Come on. If you’re done here, I can give you a ride home.”
He wasn’t done, not quite, but he was in no shape to decline the offer. He paid for his groceries, the checkout process seeming ridiculously complicated. Mariposa whisked the bag of purchases out of his arms before he could protest and guided him to her car, which had a crumpled fender and the handle fasted to the passenger door by a gigantic wad of duct tape. She stashed his groceries in her trunk and got in. “Put your seat belt on,” she told him. “And don’t tell my mother about this. I promised her I wouldn’t give any rides to boys, otherwise she’ll take the car away.”
“I promise.”
She drove toward their building. “You still with that girl?” she asked. “The one with the reddish hair?”
“No.” Vish almost burst into tears just saying that, his first public acknowledgment that Troy was no longer a part of his life. “She’s gone.”
“Sorry. I guess
. Are you sorry about it?”
“Yes. I am,” he said.
“She looked kind of snotty. Was she snotty?”
“No. She was nice.” Vish closed his eyes and leaned his head against the door. The glass of the window was cool against his forehead.
Mariposa was quiet for a while. Then: “You know there’s something living in that hole?”
His brain wasn’t at its best these days. As much as he tried, he couldn’t make sense of that. He straightened up and looked at her. “What?”
“The hole in the corner of the building. From the earthquake, remember? There’s something in it. I’ve seen something moving in there, lots of times.”
“Probably rats. Or possums,” Vish said. “I’ve seen possums in the neighborhood before.”
“Yeah.” Mariposa didn’t sound convinced. “But the weird thing is, I’ve shone a flashlight around in there. Like, there’s a shadow, and the shadow moves, but there’s nothing causing the shadow.”
Vish looked at her, confused. “There must be something,” he said.
“I know.” She frowned. She pulled into her assigned space in front of the gate. “I guess, but it doesn’t seem like it.”
They walked toward the stairs. Vish looked at the crumbled corner, which was still blocked off with an orange safety cone. Mariposa glanced over at it too. Her brow creased.
“I don’t like looking at it. It scares me.” She shrugged. “Mom says I’m being stupid.”
She probably was being stupid. So was Vish, because he didn’t like looking at it either.
“You should stay away from it. Might be dangerous,” he said. He tried to make his voice nonchalant. “If there’s rats or something, I mean. You could get rabies.”
Mariposa gave him a sidelong glance, like she knew he was full of crap. “You too,” she said.
It seemed like good advice.