Something Missing (27 page)

“What’s her name?” Laura asked.

Thankfully Martin had just placed a slice of bread into his
mouth, so he had a moment to consider the question before answering. The first name to enter his mind was Jillian, but it didn’t seem right to give his fictional sister that name. He took an extra moment to chew before deciding.

“Wendy,” he answered, placing the image of the character from the Peter Pan stories into his mind. Associating the thought with a mental image would help to keep the idea fixed in his mind. “How about you?” he asked, looking to redirect the conversation away from himself. “Any siblings?”

“Nope. Just me. My father died when I was ten, and my mom lives in Coventry. Same house I grew up in.”

“I’m sorry about your father.”

“Thanks. But it was a long time ago.”

Once again Martin desperately wished that he could be more honest with this woman. Having lost his own mother, he knew how much it could still hurt from time to time, and he wanted to tell Laura that he understood how difficult it was to lose a parent. But his fictional parents were alive and well, still married, and preparing to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary together. The empathy that he felt for this woman, who had brushed off his condolence with a timeworn expression and a touch of sadness in her eyes, was useless to him.

It had never hurt Martin so much to lie.

This time Laura turned the conversation away from thoughts of her father and onto travel. Martin had never traveled outside New England, so he was able to turn the question back toward Laura rather quickly. Thankfully, she had seen much of the United States as a child and had recently been skiing in Cortina, Italy. Without much prompting, Laura was happy to spend more than fifteen minutes extolling the virtues of the Italian Alps.

As their entrees arrived, Martin excused himself to use the restroom. He had needed to urinate for some time and had
hoped to avoid using the public restroom, but the discomfort finally became too much.

Martin despised public restrooms and avoided them whenever possible. Even in the finest establishments, he thought of them as germ-infested closets. As he approached the men’s room, just past the kitchen, he was pleased to see that the door opened out, necessitating a pull on the handle in order to gain entry. This meant that after washing his hands, he would be able to push the door with his foot or elbow in order to exit, allowing him to avoid the skin-to-handle contact that made him want to retch.

Not that the washing of his hands appealed to him, either. Though Martin wanted every other human being in the world to wash his or her hands after using the bathroom, this was because of a lack of trust in the personal hygiene of others. His own, he knew, was impeccable. As a result, Martin never understood the need to wash his hands after touching his penis. After all, his penis was clean, probably cleaner than his hands or any other part of his body that had been exposed to the world. He had washed it, dried it, and then covered it by underwear and pants. Two layers of protection that remained firmly in place throughout the day. This was the same penis that women would theoretically come into contact with during sex (Martin hadn’t had sex since high school, and even that had been a poor effort at best). A woman might touch it with her fingers, place it in her mouth, or allow it inside her vagina. Yet it wasn’t clean enough for Martin to touch it without immediately needing to wash his hands? In fact, Martin thought, his penis might well be the cleanest part of his body. Yet after urinating, he was expected to wash his hands thoroughly. This meant that he would need to touch faucet knobs and soap dispensers that had previously been touched by men who had just spent ten minutes sitting on a toilet touching their own disgusting penises.

Surely his penis was more germ-free than these bacteria farms.

But if Martin was able to avoid the restroom door entirely, by trailing behind another man or pulling it open with a napkin, he found that he could often enter, sidle up to a urinal, and complete his business without coming into contact with anything save the his pants buttons and his penis. On these occasions, if the restroom was empty, he would exit without washing his hands.

Sadly, this didn’t happen very often.

On this particular evening, two older men were occupying the restroom with Martin, discussing the degree to which they hated their boss, so he was forced to use the faucets and soap dispensers lest the men see how “unsanitary” he was. Because of an absence of paper towels (the restroom was equipped with hand dryers), Martin chose to leave the water running when finished rather than placing his clean hands on the faucet knobs once again. Someone else could turn it off after he had left. Using his foot, he pushed the door open without coming into contact with any part of it, and made his way toward the front of the restaurant.

As Martin approached the table, he noticed that Laura was speaking on her cell phone. As he came closer, she looked at him and smiled, unable to contain her excitement. “Just a minute,” she said to the person on the other end of the line before asking Martin, “What time is your parents’ anniversary party on Saturday?”

Unsure of what might be the best answer, Martin answered “Noon,” sticking with his strategy of avoiding numbers while fabricating.

“So you’ll be done by seven?”

“Yeah, I should be,” he answered, almost immediately wishing he hadn’t. “Why?”

“You’ve just been invited to Daniel Ashley’s surprise party. A guest of honor of sorts. The man who saved the surprise from ruin.”

Martin sat down and placed his napkin back in his lap, trying to contemplate what had just happened as Laura finished her call.

“Okay Justine. Let me run … I can’t. We’re still having dinner. I’ll call you tomorrow … Okay okay. I’ll call you tonight. Bye.”

Martin waited until she had closed her phone before beginning. “Laura, I can’t…”

“Yes you can,” she interrupted. “You’ll be my guest. It’s perfect. You’re already going to be in Westbrook, so why not? If it hadn’t been for you, Justine’s planning would’ve been ruined and I would be in the doghouse. Justine wants you to be there, and I want you to be there, too.”

It was the mixture of her gratitude, combined with the words
I want you to be there, too
that made refusing her invitation impossible. He couldn’t believe how fast his heart was racing.

“Okay, I’ll go. It sounds like fun.”

As they ate and chatted about their lives, Martin tried to assess the damage that might come from attending the Ashley surprise party and meeting a client face-to-face for the first time, but he found himself unable to focus, distracted by the woman across the table whom he couldn’t take his eyes off of. Other than his fictional family and career, he had managed to stick to the truth throughout the rest of dinner, telling Laura about his home, his friends, and answering questions about religion (he was a nonpracticing, skeptical Christian) and favorite films
(Field of Dreams
and
As Good as It Gets)
. When the check came, Martin made a perfunctory attempt to pay the bill but
knew that Laura would insist. He allowed her to pay without complaint, wishing that he had thought ahead and found a way to hand the waiter his credit card before the bill had ever hit the table.

Had there been time to prepare, he would have found a way.

As they left the restaurant, Laura suggested ice cream at a shop less than a block down the street and on the way back to the town-hall parking lot. Martin agreed. Laura ordered a double scoop of chocolate in a waffle cone, and though Martin never ordered ice cream in a cone because of the mess that it typically made, he said, “The same for me” when the tattooed teenage girl asked him what he wanted.

He wasn’t even sure why.

Laura allowed Martin to pay for the ice cream, and the couple licked double scoops of chocolate while strolling past the window displays that lined Farmington Avenue and the newly developed section of the town center. Familiar with this area, Martin pointed out Vintage Vinyl, a record store owned and operated by two of the most unfriendly brothers ever to walk the face of the earth. Martin had been in their store on several occasions, and though he had managed to avoid their venom so far, he had heard the owners responding rudely and sarcastically to several customers, both in person and over the phone. One look at their front door, plastered with signs warning against cell phones, dogs, unattended children, and ice cream, and you knew that this was not an accommodating merchant.

“Why do you shop here if the owners are so rude?” Laura asked.

“It’s entertaining. I never know what they might say next. And I’m kind of hoping that they come after me someday. I’m ready for them.”

“Ready for them?”

“I’ve practiced my one-liners and zingers. I’m ready to put them in their place and make a scene. Someday I’m going to walk in there, yapping on my cell phone, with a melting ice cream cone in one hand, two dogs in the other, and trailed by three random kids from the street. I can’t wait to see what they say.”

“I’d like to be there when you do.”

“I’ll let you know,” Martin assured her.

Laura smiled.

As they crossed Main Street, Laura reached out and took Martin’s hand, a move that startled him so much that he dropped his ice cream in the middle of the street. He paused in the crosswalk, staring at the upside-down cone before Laura tugged on him, offering to share the rest of hers with him.

It was a moment that Martin would never forget.

As they turned past the town hall and began walking down the hill toward the parking lot, Martin suddenly grew panicky. They were still holding hands, which Martin could barely believe, and now he wasn’t sure what might happen next. Should he walk Laura to her car, or should they separate at the most logical spot, halfway between the two vehicles? Should he open her car door? Could he, considering he didn’t have the key? Should he attempt to kiss her? The last girl that he had kissed had been Katie Neelon, a girl who had been working at Dunkin’ Donuts around the same time that Martin was employed there. She had just graduated from college, was a couple of years younger than Martin, and was working the overnight shift while trying to find a teaching job in the local school district. Katie had asked Martin out after the two had spent an evening together in the drive-thru, pouring coffee for bleary-eyed plow drivers and scores of young people who disregarded the foot and a half of snow that had already fallen on the roads. After an
evening of chili dogs at Doogie’s and a movie
(Four Weddings and a Funeral
, which Martin had adored and Katie had not), he had managed an awkward kiss on Katie’s parents’ doorstep. Martin could remember feeling the same way then as he did now. Unsure. Afraid. Desperately wanting to do the right thing. He wanted to kiss Laura, that was certain, but he was also terrified about where that first kiss might lead.

More uncertainty, to be certain.

Fortunately for Martin, Laura didn’t leave the decision making to him. Still holding his hand, she led him past his Subaru and over to her Honda Accord. Stopping beside the door, she turned, took hold of his other hand as well, and smiled. “Thank you for a delightful evening, Martin. And thank you for keeping me out of trouble with my friend. You really saved the day.” And with that, she leaned in and briefly kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks,” was all that Martin could manage at first, but after Laura giggled at his response, he added, “I mean, thank you for a terrific evening, too. I mean it. I’m not just repeating.”

“You’re welcome,” Laura said with a smile and kissed him one more time on the same cheek. The two exchanged phone numbers and a promise to speak in a day or two. Martin wasn’t quick enough to open the car door for Laura, but once she was inside, he closed it for her before attempting to walk back to his car with as much ease as he could muster.

It had been one of the finest days of his life.

Sitting in front of his computer later that night, he began to type.

Martin had kept his promise and begun his novel.

Martin’s excitement over his dinner with Laura had begun to wane during the week. Though his enthusiasm had reached an all-time high during the date, the return to his environment and routines had brought a sobering reality to his circumstances. In thirty-six hours, he was to attend a surprise party for one of his longtime clients, and his date was a woman whose house he had entered without her knowledge. Though he was enjoying the new sense of adventure, he was also becoming concerned about where these changes might lead. Chaos led to unpredictability, and Martin’s life was becoming more chaotic than he could remember it ever having been.