The Point of Vanishing, Maryka Biaggio [top inspirational books TXT] 📗

she was back and couldn’t wait to see him. But the phone only rang and rang, jarring as a clanging bell. Perhaps he was still at his office. Or on his way home. She took the bus to their neighborhood and plodded the two blocks to the apartment, weighed down with her suitcase and duffle bag.

She dropped her luggage inside the door and called out for Nick. All was quiet. Two envelopes—the electricity bill and a letter from Nick’s sister—lay strewn beneath the mail slot. She walked to the kitchen and checked the counter. No note, not even any of the lists he obsessively kept. She hurried to their bedroom. The bed was neatly made, and his side of the dresser devoid of the items he donned for work—his watch and pocket pen case.

She flung open the closet. His suitcase was missing.

“No,” she cried. She collapsed on the bed, and the wails she’d stifled all through her excruciating journey poured out.

She must have dozed. When she blinked back to consciousness, the apartment’s quiet stillness invaded her. Her ears hummed with the dull vibration of distress. God, she felt alone. Where was Nick?

She telephoned his brother. Did he know where Nick was? On business in New York, he thought, until Friday. Staying where? That he didn’t know. She called a fellow worker of Nick’s at Polaroid and told him she’d returned unexpectedly and needed to get in touch with him. He might be at Hotel Breslin, he said. But when Barbara checked with the hotel, they had no record of him. She telephoned their friend Dunbar, who knew about the troubles she and Nick had been having. She told him she was sick with fear that Nick might be leaving her and begged him to come around.

When he knocked, she rushed to the door. He stood smiling, a paper sack nestled against his pudgy torso. “Hello, my dear.”

She waved him in. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Dunbar was a short fellow with a chubby face and wispy blond hair, the kind of man it’s hard to take seriously, which, she supposed, was why he’d become a doctor. Nick and Dunbar had chummed around in college, though they didn’t have all that much in common. They only went to a Red Sox game or science lecture when Barbara agreed to join them. Barbara sensed Dunbar’s friendship with the two of them had more to do with his infatuation with her than any allegiance to Nick, not that Nick cared or even noticed.

“I’ve brought some medicinals for you,” Dunbar said. “Get us some plates and glasses, and I’ll administer the doses.”

Barbara led the way to the kitchen, and he helped her set out their meal. The late afternoon sun had overheated the west-facing kitchen. Although dusk had descended, the day’s lingering mugginess permeated the apartment, leaving it soggy and spiritless.

“Let’s settle on the couch,” Barbara said.

They took their plates and drinks to the living room. Barbara retrieved the small electric fan from the bedroom and set it up on the coffee table.

“To your health,” Dunbar said, lifting his drink to hers.

Barbara clinked his glass and took a sip. Whiskey wasn’t her drink, but Dunbar had mixed hers with lemon-lime soda and insisted that it—and the hamburgers—would calm her down.

She bit into the squishy hamburger bun and chewed. Dunbar, sitting at the other end of the sofa, asked her to explain what had happened. As she told him about Nick’s letter, he gulped down his burger.

“Hmm,” he said, “with only one letter to go on, it’s hard to say how serious he might be.”

She asked him when he’d last seen Nick and what they’d talked about. Nothing of any consequence, he said, and ordered her to finish her hamburger. So she did. She even found it palatable. For the first time in days, her stomach felt pleasantly full. But dread hounded her. She’d yet to ask Dunbar the most important question.

She eased her empty plate onto the coffee table and pressed her palms to her knees. “Do you know if Nick has met somebody?”

“If he has, he hasn’t told me.”

Barbara bit at her lip. “I want to know—and I don’t want to know.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t bring it up. Don’t start off accusing him of something like that.”

“No, of course not. I only wonder what my chances are.”

“He’s not the type to rush a decision. You know that.”

“Yes, but we’ve had such terrible arguments lately. And he didn’t want me to go to California. Now I wish I hadn’t.”

Dunbar patted his chest, barely stifling a belch, and threw his arm over the sofa back. “That’s in the past. You have to think about what to do now.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do if he leaves me.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You need to talk to him about all this.”

“He said we’d both be happier apart. Only that’s not true for me.”

“Then tell him that. He’s a kind man. Maybe you two can still work this out.”

“Yes, yes, he is kind.”

Dunbar picked up her glass and handed it to her. “Now, take your medicine.”

She took a big gulp, and the refreshing carbonation tingled all the way down. Relaxing into the nook of the sofa, she said, “I’ve hardly slept since I got his letter.”

“Just as I suspected,” said Dunbar, getting up and walking to the kitchen. He returned with the sack he’d brought, reached into it, and pulled out a palm-sized bottle. “I brought you some sleeping pills. If you can’t sleep tonight, just take one or two of these. That and the whiskey ought to do the trick.”

✭

The whiskey helped Barbara fall asleep, but she bolted awake at one in the morning and thrashed about for an hour. She took one of the pills and succumbed to sleep.

When she woke, a little before ten, she felt odd, quivery and ponderous at the same time—and starving, as if her stomach was hollow. She checked the refrigerator and scanned the cupboards, but nothing appealed