BooksBarbecue
Back At Dawn
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

I WAS STILL IN bed when Carolyn left the next morning. I stayed there for most of the day. It was again hot and humid, which made the apartment almost unbearable. I considered taking a cold shower. I had the shakes, partly from hunger, partly from the miserable belief that my relationship was coming to an end.

I got up and walked to Carolyn’s side of the apartment and sorted through her things. It had been a while since I had last snooped. I sifted through her clothes, her papers, little jewelry boxes that housed knickknacks, searching first for my father’s letters, and then, failing those, anything else that seemed suspicious—phone numbers on slips of paper, pictures of ex-boyfriends, old love letters. I found nothing and wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed, and then I wondered where else she might be keeping his letters, because surely she wasn’t throwing them away, was she?

I sat in front of the window. It was two thirty and Carolyn would be home any minute. I didn’t want her to see me like that—unshowered, stinking, downtrodden—so I undressed and took a cold one. When I stepped out she still wasn’t home. I considered going for a walk but just then I heard footsteps and a thud on the floor above me, and in hearing it, I thought my head might explode. I snatched the rent check from the desk and took the stairs three at a time.

I pounded on his door. He answered it wearing a full beard, his hair long and shaggy.

“Jesus, where in the hell have you been?”

“Come on in, kiddo. I’ve been everywhere.”

His apartment was suffocating, all the windows closed, the blinds drawn. A large suitcase sat in the middle of the living room, explaining the thud I had heard. I handed him the rent check. “I guess I’ll have to give you another in a few days.”

“Thank you, thank you. Going to need this after the trip I just had. Only walked in thirty seconds ago.”

He coasted through the apartment turning on the air conditioners he had mounted in various windows. Once they were all on, we sat at the dining room table.

“Where in the hell did you go?” I asked.

“Well, first off, let me apologize for your birthday. The day kind of slipped away from me and I drank too much, and as sometimes happens when I drink too much, everything came flooding back.”

“Yeah, of course, don’t worry about it, Gene. What happened, anyway? ”