Finding Charlie

Chapter One

Chapter One (Tuesday)

            It was the neighbor’s dog that woke me.

            The curtained window was outlined in sunlight. The thick fabric had been advertised as “black-out curtains”, but there are some things that are simply too much to ask for. Even this early, there was no keeping the day outside.

            Rick’s arm was heavy across my chest, trapping me in the bed like a stupid metaphor for this relationship. As if I needed it underlined. Officially, we’d broken up three months ago. But, in that time, I’d managed to wake up this way more times than I wanted to count.

            I pushed his arm off me, my anger at myself coming out as anger at him. He groaned and rolled over, smiling sleepily without opening his eyes. As he reached for me, I jumped out of bed.

            “Gotta pee,” I said, shutting myself in the bathroom. I sat on the toilet with my head in my hands.

            This bathroom was the worst thing about the apartment. When I’d moved here a year ago, I’d been sure that the mildew smell was something I could get rid of easily. I was wrong. The small, rectangular window was painted shut, making for humid, unventilated showers. The linoleum flooring curled along the edge of the tub. The toilet seat was pink and cracked and didn’t match the beige sink, making it hard to find a shower curtain that didn‘t clash. I’d gone with solid black..

            But what sold me on the place were the old wood floors and the exposed brick walls. It was one of seven units, on the end so it only shared one wall, with a private, shady back patio. It had charm and personality - which was lacking in my previous apartment in one of those big, generic complexes that were constantly having move-in specials. This place hadn’t even advertised. I had a coworker who knew the landlady. I had never known my neighbors before, but here I knew them all. I watered Mrs. Rosen’s plants when she went to visit her daughter in Scottsdale. The landlady’s son, Manny, lived next door. He did repairs and fed my cat whenever Rick and I went away for a weekend.

            Rick had spent a weekend sanding and staining the scratched floors, something my landlady was more than happy to allow.

            He was a good guy. We’d met my senior year of college at a party thrown by a friend of mine whose name I no longer remember. I hadn’t realized at the time that it was a set up, that we’d been left alone together in the back yard on purpose. He was chatty, which I loved. Listening is good too, but growing up with the strong, silent type as a father made me appreciate a man who could hold up his end of a conversation. Conversations were my favorite.

            I flushed and went to the sink. There, Oscar was curled into a  ball, looking like a sink-full of liquid fur. It’d be hard to tell one end from the other, except that I knew the brightest orange stripe was on his forehead. I imagined I could pull the stopper and he’d be sucked down the drain. He had just started sleeping in the sink this week, a sign that the weather had shifted to summer, the longest season in Tucson. It occurred to me that I should bump up the cooler, but that would mean leaving the bathroom.

            I had dated Rick for six years before it became clear it wasn’t going anywhere, whatever that meant. I think it meant that he wanted babies, and I didn’t. He came from an unbroken home; his parents were still together. Whether they liked each other was up for debate as far as I could tell, but they never fought in front of their children and they passed on this idea, that this was not just possible; it’s what you did. You settled down, popped out a few kids, worked like hell to put them through school and never took time to consider whether this was what you wanted.