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Not a suitcase gone from beneath the bed.
Not a jacket torn from the hanger in the entryway closet.
Not a seat on a plane soaring over the country that was supposed to be empty.
I made it through one sitcom, God knows which one, before allowing myself to chew at my lip. There were plenty of places in Vegas far enough away to take longer than a sitcom to get there and back. There was traffic sometimes. Even at night. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it was Vegas, what was I freaking out about?
No.
No, I was not freaking out. Especially because I hadn’t even looked around for a note. I downed the rest of my beer in one gulp and hopped up from the couch. A new sense of purpose helped me swallow down the panic that I definitely was not feeling. I had a whole apartment to check for a note. That was potentially hours of searching. Hours of business. Hours of something else to think about.
There’s no way Mason wouldn’t be back by then.
But when the first dagger of morning light slipped between the ribs of the blinds and found my wide, unblinking eyes, Mason was still not back.
I sat like a forgotten rag doll on the floor in my living room. Back stooped over. Arms heavy at my sides. Palms facing up like a beggar who no longer even had the strength or desire to lift his hands to the passing crowds. My bare legs, extended straight in front of me, still had some glitter left over from the show. It sparkled in the light. A betrayal to how I felt.
The slight breeze from the cracked window shuffled the downy feathers around my ice-cold feet, toes pale, frozen like a white marble statue atop a tomb. I’d torn at the cushions of the couch when there was nowhere else to look. It didn’t make any sense at all that Mason would have stuffed a note for me into a place only accessible by ripping, tearing, screaming, but it didn’t make any sense at all that Mason would have left either. So I’d ripped the cushions. I tore at them with clawing fingernails and hot tears, screaming as feathers erupted all around like the grand opening of a burlesque show.
Drawers from my bedroom dresser were littered around me. They looked like little barges on the foamy white seas. I emptied them first in the lamplight of my bedroom. I went methodically at the start. My bra drawer made the most sense as a place Mason would leave a note, something like,
Thought you needed more of these for me to tear from you. Be back soon ~ M.
I made tidy stacks of my bras and then my panties and then my pyjamas on top of the dresser. I fought back my panic by focusing on keeping the straps tucked in, the thongs folded along the edge perfectly, careful not to snag the silk on the wood grain of the dresser.
By the time I reached my period sweatpants at the very bottom of the very last dresser drawer, I was flinging things out behind me like some kind of crazed wood chipper. When the drawers were empty, when there was no chance at all that there was a note in them, I took the drawers out and carried them in a towering stack to the living room where I told myself there was more light.
Trying to find a hammer made me feel okay for a little while. It was something else to think about. Something else to focus on. More time to occupy so that Mason would be back sooner and we would be laughing about this little mix-up sooner. Joking about how insane I went throwing my clothes everywhere. Arguing about where the appropriate place to put a note for someone is. When I failed to find a hammer, I used a meat mallet. I pounded at the corners of the drawer because sometimes little scraps of paper get caught there.
I could almost see it. Mason with a wry smile placing the note gently. Turning already as he closed the drawer. The little draught wafting the light piece of paper to the back. It getting wedged when I pushed everything around, searching.
But there was no trapped little piece of paper. No note. No note in the drawers. No note on the fridge. In the fridge. Behind or underneath the fridge. No note on any of the counters: bathroom, kitchen, living room, balcony. I even leaned out over the edge of the railing, hot summer night wind tangling my hair and imagined Mason’s note fluttering away. It would be impossible to find. Just like he was. Just like he wanted to be.
There was no note in the cabinets. No “You’re out of soy sauce and how can you have duck without soy sauce. Be back soon ~ M” in the junk drawer of rubber bands and takeout menus. No note on the mirror. Not in lipstick. Not even in the steam of a long, hot shower; I checked. In the madness of the middle of the night, I ran the shower at full heat and tore at my lower lip as I sat hunched on the edge of the tub.
There was no answer on his phone. The only time I stopped searching was to try Mason’s number again. And the only time I stopped praying on each and every ring was when I heard his voice, distant, unreachable at the very end, “It’s Mason. If you know me, leave a message. If you don’t, fuck off.”
I never left a message. I could never quite convince myself that I knew him. At least not anymore. I’d been able to believe that there was no one else I knew better in the entire world. But I’d also been able to believe that he would be there when I returned. Like he said. Like he promised. So what the fuck did it matter what I believed or didn’t?
As I sat there on the floor, in the mess, unblinking, unseeing, the bands of light from the blinds travelled across my face. Across my body. Hours passed like that. Nothing moving but those bars. Nothing changing but their shade as sunset painted them red and the flickering on of the streetlamps doused them with yellow.
Only the itch of my skin beneath the bandage at the small of my back stirred me. It was healing, this wound I hadn’t even known I’d received. The pieces were stitching back together and yet I couldn’t even remember getting torn in two.
My body was stiff as I pushed myself up from the floor, down feathers stuck to my palms. I gathered them on the bottom of my feet as I padded toward the darkened mirror. My stiff muscles protested as I twisted to see around behind me. I pulled at the bandage. I hadn’t realised how numb I’d become till I felt the tape peeling off the fine hair there at the base of my spine.
It was a tattoo. A tattoo of a feather. The kind that topped my headdresses. The kind that extended out from the back of my corset like old-fashioned bustles. It lay across the top of the cheeks of my ass like it had floated down there naturally. Like my clothes had been torn from my body and it came loose and fell, fell, fell. It followed my curves seductively. It was somehow raunchy and tender and beautiful. It was somehow fully Mason. Somehow fully me.
This tattoo was evidence.
He knew me.
He would never just…leave.
My fingers trembled as I dialled Mason’s number again in the dark. I prepared myself for the rings. Long and anguishing rings. The terrible space between them. The little catches in the noise where I was positive for a second that it was the sound of him picking up, only for another ring to come. I was ready for all that.
What I wasn’t ready for was a robotic voice to declare before any of that that the line had been disconnected. The caller no longer available.
I didn’t cry. Crying is for when you lose hope.
