“Hello? Cal?”
Ronnie entered the apartment with caution—why, she didn’t know. There was no need for her to feel like she was entering somewhere she shouldn’t have been, but it was unusual that she had to use her key. He almost always left the door unlocked in anticipation of her coming over.
The living room was dark, as was the tiny kitchen just off the living room, and by the lack of light beneath the closed door to his bedroom, she concluded that Calvin was sleeping.
The pizza would get cold, but what the hell.
Compassion sunk in and she felt sorry for him. Let him sleep.
Ronnie set the pizza on top of the oven and began tidying up. Calvin wasn’t a pig, but just as any bachelor there were always a few dishes in the sink and the room could use a good dusting, not to mention straightening up the pillows on the couch and the sloppy array of DVDs around the television, and clutter on the coffee table.
It didn’t take long for her to make his place look like a model home, and with a glance at her watch it was already five-thirty.
“Wakee wakee,” she said as she made her way to the bedroom door. She wasn’t going to allow him to sleep the whole day away. If this was what the night shift did to him then forget about it.
At the door she thought about knocking, but that was preposterous, right? She was his girlfriend, after all, not to mention his lover. She had his child growing in her belly. There was no reason to knock before entering. It was the very fact that she hesitated and considered knocking that caused her further alarm. There had been a feeling of unease since she showed up that seemed to swell within.
Ronnie turned the handle and gently swung the door inward. There were several things at play in the back of her mind, things she wished could be banished. It was the jealous streak in her that reared its ugly head, insisting on the preposterous, but what she saw in the room wasn’t Calvin in bed with the whore next door.
Given a start, Ronnie took a step back, not fully entering the room. She squinted her eyes, as if what she saw was a living dream and would dissipate into the vision she expected of Calvin lying solitarily and snug in bed.
Blinking her eyes several times, she couldn’t shake the image of him sitting cross-legged on his bed, eyes open and just about popping out of his head, mouth slightly agape, lips cracked and dry. He stared at the television screen, face aglow in a radiant blue hue.
“Cal?” Ronnie asked, voice just a hair above a whisper. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
Calvin didn’t move.
“Cal?” She was a bit louder this time, yet he remained as if frozen. For a moment she wondered if he had died like that, and if she touched him he would be stiff and cold and good God she couldn’t deal with finding him dead. Not after her father and his heart attacks.
What was so entertaining as to leave him asleep with his eyes open like that? It was eerie. The worst part was that he appeared to have been amazed into a state of awe and just… froze that way.
A shiver ran up her spine. It was creepy and she was beginning to feel dread as she looked upon him, his breathing so shallow that the threat of him not breathing became a reality.
This time, with a gentle shake, she said, “Cal, wake up. It’s five-thirty in the afternoon. Time to rise and shine.”
Nothing.
At least he was warm. She couldn’t fathom discovering another loved one dead. That would do her in, put her in the hospital with the white walls and jackets that wrapped her arms up and buckled in the back. She had actually waited longer than she wanted to touch Calvin for fear that his skin would have that clammy feeling her father’s had by the time the paramedics and police pulled her away from him. It was the fear—one of many that she couldn’t shake—that she would discover the bodies of her loved ones, dead. More than anything, that was why she hated having to use her key. There was always that thought that he might be dead or dying, and she knew from experience that the paramedics didn’t always get there in time.
Ronnie sighed. “Calvin, this isn’t funny. Wake up.”
Still nothing, but then his lips pursed, and he began mumbling nonsense, something that sounded like, “Ister ass-tee…”
Now Ronnie smiled. She’d be damned, but he really was in one hell of a deep sleep, strange as it were, sitting up in bed gazing upon the TV’s blue screen.
“Cal, wake up.”
She shook him more vigorously this time and he woke with a start as if suddenly pulled into another dimension without warning. He retreated for a moment, and the general fear displayed upon his face put a chill up Ronnie’s spine. He looked as if he had seen something truly awful and lived to tell the tale.
“Are you all right, Cal?”
His eyes shifted about the room from one corner to another, from his computer desk to the bookshelf, and then they rested their gaze upon Ronnie. He licked his lips, so dry they were beginning to crack. There was a small drop of blood there. He took a deep breath, feigned a smile, then winced at the pain of his cracked dry lips.
“I’m fine. That was one hell of a nightmare.” There was pregnant pause, as if he had been contemplating sharing his nightmare with Ronnie before saying, “I’m starving. Do I smell pizza?”
“So you’re telling me you don’t even remember talking to me?” asked Ronnie.
Calvin sat on the couch scarfing down pizza like it was his first time eating such cheesy perfection. His appetite was gluttonous with a thirst for cold beer to match.
“Nope. Must have been too tired to think.”
Ronnie picked at her pizza and sipped her beer. “Well, what were you watching when you went to bed? It was so weird the way you were sitting there asleep with your eyes open. You don’t normally sleep with your eyes open, do you?”
“No,” with his mouth full of pizza—his third slice in record time. He swallowed the chewed up dough with a gulp of beer, then belched triumphantly.
“Very nice, Cal. You probably disrupted the party next door with that one.”
Calvin laughed and she smiled. It wasn’t that his lack of manners was something she valued, but that he was beginning to cut loose for the first time in days. It was good to see him shake the funk he’d been in.
“That’s three nights straight that they’ve been partying,” Calvin said. “They’re all going to need a liver transplant by the end of the week.”
“So, you never answered my question.”
“What’s that?”
“What were you watching that so captivated you to fall asleep sitting up?”
For just an instant, Calvin’s expression altered, but he caught himself and smiled. When in doubt, smile and act stupid. He was happy that it was his own voice in his mind and not Mr. Ghastly.
“You know, I don’t really remember. I put the TV on and… I guess I was so tired I just passed out sitting up.”
Ronnie gave him a sly smile, perhaps one of the expressions she practiced in her mirror yet rarely used. “You’re sure you weren’t watching a porno or something.”
Calvin laughed, a bit nervously. “Oh sure, what do I need porno for when I have”—Death’s Door—“you.”
Ronnie smiled again and took a rather large bite of her pizza. It seemed as though her appetite finally made an appearance.
Calvin’s appetite was sated, but there was something tugging at his mind. It felt good to get all that sleep (refreshing, in fact), but something was missing. Sure, Ronnie was there, and he loved her dearly, but there was a piece of the puzzle out of place, a void that she no longer seemed to fill. That alone was a bizarre conclusion to consider. Only a week ago he had been thinking about taking their relationship to the next level and moving in together, which wasn’t something he took lightly, and here he was with some newfound realization that he was empty inside and she didn’t have the stuff to fill him up with.