Are You Sitting Down? (15 page)

I hate to sound like I wanted to take advantage of her situation.
A sad lonely girl losing a military boyfriend and passing out alone in a bar can seem awfully vulnerable.
Lind was pre
t
ty.
She had full sandy blond hair right from a shampoo commercial.
Her green eyes were probably
colored
contacts and her glossy pink lips were painted on.
With a nice
rack
, an hou
r
glass figure, and a heart shaped ass, she’d have another boyfriend in no time.

I admired the fact that she appeared sensitive right now at the table with Shelly.
No one would have eve
r
believed
how sloppy
drunk
she was that night.
Her slow buzz tonight must have cured her grief because she winked at me when she came up to the bar to buy the next round.
She giggled and tossed her hair to flirt.
It was much more innocent than the loud pig snort laugh I remembered from before.

“This one’s on me,” I said pushing her money back across the bar.

I was a bit surprised when they left shortly after, but I knew she’
d be back.
And
it was
sooner than expected.
She was waiting for me outside that night when the bar closed.
B
e
fore I had a chance to speak, she’d pinned me against the wall and kissed me.
Since it was a week night, the only place still open was the diner just a few doors down.
She suggested we go back to my place.
I liked her idea better.

The love we made that night was exciting and familiar.
I’d had plenty of one night stands before, but usually only after a night on the other side of the bar when I’d had a chance to drink and socialize.
Exploring a girl’s body for the first time was always a thrill.
I remember studying her appendix scar while kissing her stomach, something I’d never taken time to notice on a girl before.

I don’t remember ever having had sex sober before that
night
.
It’d never been this easy.
I think it was the only time Lind and I would ever make such clean love.
Smoking pot was a bit simple for her and pretty much a staple for me.
She preferred
cocaine,
and
ecstasy
on the weekends
if we went out dancing
.
Her purse was a
n illegal
medicine cabinet and reminded me of my younger sister.

The Lind I’d seen that very first night soon reappeared, and stayed around quite often.
There was never a night we went out that she didn’t drink too much.
We’d end up having to call it an early night because she’d pass out.
I’d get pissed and
try to dump her off at her apartment, but she always conve
n
iently w
o
ke up in my car and want
ed
to go back to my place.
She’d beg me to make love to her and then pass out again in the mi
d
dle of it.
This practice
was also a little too familiar, but it was usually me who fell asleep.

If we had not had sex that first night, if she had not been such an easy piece, I think I could have fallen in love with her.
She was a trophy on my arm in the eyes of my buddies, but it wasn’t even fair to call her a “catch.”
There had never been a hunt or chase.
I knew that sooner or later I’d call it off before she got too serious.
I’d break her heart before she wanted to
leave a toothbrush and some clothes at my apartment
.
When I found out the spill about the boyfriend in
Iraq
had just been a lie to reel me in, I didn’t feel so bad about letting her go.

It all started when I decided not to call her for a few days.
I ignored her voice messages and went out alone.
I think I even took a different girl home one night.
Dating girls I met at work doesn’t make the break-up so easy though.
A few nights later, Lind was there waiting for me when my shift started.
She yelled.
I ignored her.
She dumped a bowl of popcorn across the bar.

I’m glad there were only two other guys in the bar to see this, and I knew both of them.
It was still embarrassing, but I’m sure they understood such trouble with girls.
I walked around the bar and grabbed Lind by the shoulders.
She tried to pull away, arms flailing.
When she’d stopped and calmed down long enough for me to say something, I told her
to
go home.
She left in tears.
I look back on that moment now and wish I had broken up with her.
Things might
have been
a lot different now.

Instead, I picked up the phone and called her the next day.
When you aren’t getting laid, apologies come much easier.
She came over that night for what was to be a quiet evening at home with just the two of us.
I was bored.
We were drinking.
Soon, Lind was scraping lines of cocaine across a mirror on my coffee table.

Lying on the floor naked,
I woke up when it was still dark outside.
The sun had just barely touched the sky but I squinted my eyes as if
it were
rising right there in my apar
t
ment.
My crotch ached from sex I didn’t remember having.
Lind was
l
y
ing
in bed.
I crawled into bed and threw my arm around here.
When I woke up again, it was
noon
.
I crawled out of bed and took a hot shower.
My head throbbed.
I didn’t have any aspirin, so I was going to make a trip to the
drug store
.

After getting dressed, I sat down on the edge of the bed to put my shoes on.
I reached over to wake Lind.
She wouldn’t wake up.
I put my hand on her chest and put my head up close to her nose and mouth.
Her heart wasn’t beating, and she wasn’t breathing.
I called emergency services.
They let me ride in the ambulance.
Again, I knew what it must have felt like to be my mother, leaning over an emergency technician in the back of an ambulance as they tr
ied
to revive someone right there in front of you but c
ouldn
’t.

The only difference was that I didn’t love Lind the way my mother loved my father.
Before, I didn’t think I loved Lind at all.
Now that she was gone, some feeling from deep inside kept interfering with the pain, overwhelming me with conf
u
sion.
I was still coming down from the alcohol and the drugs from last night.
I passed out before
the
ambulance
had
reached the hosp
i
tal.

*
*
*
*

“Is Sebastian there?”
I could hear my Mom asking Travis on the phone.

“Yeah, Mom.
He’s here.”

“What has he done?”

They were four little words I’d heard her say quite a bit over the years.
What had I done?
Doctors had revived me in the hospital.
Knowing that Lind was gone, I panicked.
I was hysterical, and on the verge of a breakdown.
I managed to keep myself together long enough to sneak out of the hospital.
I caught a cab back to my apartment.
I threw some clothes in a bag, and without even thinking about what to do or where to go, I drove to
Memphis
.
When I got to the city, I called Travis and told him where I was.
He gave me directions to his apar
t
ment.
I had already told Travis what happened before Mom called.
The police had come to her house looking for me.
They’d told her about Lind.
She had never met Lind and didn’t even know who she was.

“They just want to ask you some questions,” Mom said on the phone.

“I’m a suspect now.”

“You should have thought about that before you ran away,” Mom told me.

A detective and two cops were knocking on Travis’s door an hour after we hung up with Mom.
They didn’t arrest me.
The detective told me Lind had died of a lethal concoction of alcohol, cocaine, and valium.
An overdose.
Doctors had tested my blood when I passed out and found the same levels of alcohol and cocaine, but no valium.
Passing out in the
amb
u
lance
was the only thing that saved me from going to jail for murder.

The detective asked about the valium.
I told him about Lind’s pill addiction.
Her purse was in my apartment and its contents would prove it.
I agreed to take him there.
It wasn’t the first time I’d ever been in the back of a cop car, but it was the longest ride I’d ever taken in one.
The eighty miles from
Memphis
back to
Ruby Dregs
only took about twenty minutes at the speed the cop was driving.
Travis agreed to go with me.

“Why is my door open?
Did you send someone here a
l
ready?”
I asked the detective.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

With guns pulled, they ran up the stairs and flanked
the
doorway.
They glided around the wall and into my apartment.
I heard them yell “
P
olice
!
”
Travis looked at me wi
de-eyed when we heard scuffling inside.

“Do you have a roommate?”
h
e asked.