Chapter 10 #2
Upon arriving to my apartment, I flipped on the TV. This was a mistake. An entertainment TV show was airing the grainy clip of me climbing the chair and belting out my confession. I continued watching just long enough to hear the commentators bad-mouth Nico’s alleged abandonment of our love child.
For a brief moment—despite the danger involved—I wished I’d yelled fire! instead of the child is yours.
I felt sick with remorse at what I’d done, especially since Nico was now paying the price in the court of public opinion. I wanted so badly to apologize for my ridiculous outburst, but I felt fairly confident that he’d never want to see me again, so I figured it didn’t matter anymore.
Disgusted, I flipped off the TV and listened to boy bands loudly.
I organized Janie’s comic books. I ordered Marie a set of Addi Click knitting needles that she’d been lusting after for a just because present.
I alphabetized my records. I read for an hour then searched AskMetafilter for questions related to odd yarn materials and recycle crafts: plastic grocery bags = plarn; T-shirts = tarn.
I busied myself. I was getting more practice at avoiding.
However, even without turning on the TV, life post-Nico/love child/apocalypse quickly became less than pleasant.
The fallout of the YouTube video began to take shape.
My voicemail filled up first. After the fortieth text message, I called my cell phone provider to remove texting ability from my phone and change my number.
The change would take twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
After another twenty minutes of rejecting phone calls from unknown numbers, I finally turned the damn thing off.
Then I made the mistake of checking my Gmail account. I had seven hundred new messages.
How did these people find my contact information so quickly?
Throughout all of this, Nico was never far from my thoughts.
I worried about him and the trouble I’d caused him.
His security guards were absolute crap. Then there was the psycho stalker he’d mentioned.
And now I had an email account full of obsessed crazy people.
I wished I’d successfully talked him into switching security firms. I kicked myself for not giving him Quinn’s number when I had the chance.
With these concerns for his safety also came daydreams. More than once I found myself caught up in a fantasy about him, about our brief time together over the weekend: dancing at the reunion, later in my room, telling me he loved me, at the restaurant, his hands on me, his mouth on mine, the way he looked at me like I was the only person in the world.
The daydreams were wonderful and awful and confusing. Every time I slipped into one, I wanted to cry again. I was officially a crying female.
I made a concerted effort to focus on the not-so-bad aspects of the whole situation, otherwise known as it could have been worse or look on the bright side or at least you’re not a hobo.
I thanked my lucky stars that the quality of the video was spotty at best, though it was clearly me.
The idiot who posted it on YouTube listed my name beneath the clip.
However, on the bright side, he or she never got a full shot of my face.
The amateur videographer seemed to be mostly preoccupied with capturing Nico.
I also thanked my lucky stars that I never felt the need to set up a Facebook account or other form of social media.
My ambivalence to social media was another way that Janie had rubbed off on me.
I didn’t have friends other than my small circle, and I didn’t much care for connecting with people.
Therefore, the only picture of me linked to the video was my high school graduation photo.
I thanked my lucky stars a third time that I now looked almost entirely different. My teenage self could have passed for a picture of my younger brother, if I had one.
The weird celebrity stalkers had my name, a dark video of me, and my high school yearbook photo; and that was basically it.
I felt some measure of relief for my own sake, but I struggled with how to make things right for Nico.
I told myself that I’d overreacted, and the likelihood of it all blowing over was almost certain.
I was wrong, but it took me until lunch on Sunday to understand the depth and breadth of the situation.
When I returned to work on Sunday, I braced myself for…
something. Meg had the day off. Everyone else appeared to be oblivious to the Nico/love child/video/apocalypse.
That, or they were too polite to mention it.
I was able to go about my day with no disruption, which helped me feel calmer and more relaxed about the kerfuffle.
Ashley and I had made a date the week prior to meet for lunch Sunday afternoon.
Since the day was unseasonably nice for April in Chicago—at forty-nine degrees and sunny—we bundled up and decided to eat on the stone patio benches in the garden, a small green space beside the hospital, but presently the area was more brown than green.
“So….” she openly studied me as we settled on the cold bench. Ashley took a bite of her carrot. It snapped with staccato perfection. “How was the reunion?”
My lids drifted shut as unbidden images of Nico—at the restaurant, blocking my way, holding the bathroom door closed, his expression full of hurt—flashed before my eyes. I rubbed my forehead. My heart thudded painfully for three or four beats.
“Can we save this conversation for Tuesday? I know the ladies will want to hear all about it, and I just don’t think I can tell the story twice.”
“That good, huh?” Ashley smiled, then continued her carrot munching.
“That…strange.” I handed Ashley a peanut butter cookie. As was my habit, I always brought her a cookie when we had lunch together. She always brought me a mango soda.
I’d just unwrapped my egg salad on pumpernickel when Ashley stopped chewing her carrot. She blinked then squinted at a bush some distance away, at the end of the hospital garden.
“What the…?” She tilted her head to the side, looked behind us, then glared at the bush again. “Elizabeth.”
My mouth was watering and I was starving. I grunted, “What?” Then I stuffed a quarter of the sandwich in my mouth.
“There’s some weirdo in the bushes over there, taking pictures of us.” She pointed to the edge of the garden.
I wrinkled my nose and squinted in the direction she indicated. Sure enough, a weirdo was in the bushes taking pictures of us with the largest lens I’d ever seen. I stared at the lens and the weirdo as I chewed my sandwich.
Ashley set her lunch to the side and stood. “I’m going to ask him to please stop taking pictures.”
“You’re going over there?” I managed to ask through my mouthful of sandwich.
“Jeepers, yeah. I don’t want to have pictures of me eating carrots just floating around out there for all those carrot fetish people to leer at.”
I watched her saunter over to the man with the camera and took another bite of my sandwich.
She was about halfway to the weirdo before it occurred to me that the weirdo might actually be paparazzi and that I, and not Ashley’s propensity for eating carrots, was the real purpose of their photographic endeavors.
I tried to yell at Ashley to turn around but then abandoned the plan, the unchewed egg salad and pumpernickel a sound barrier. I was forced to swallow a painful and inadequately masticated lump of sandwich, which I washed down quickly with water, and then I stood and shouted at her to come back.
But I was too late. She was already talking to the man.