Chapter 38 Miz
38
MIZ
“What in the absolute fuck?” Flat on my back on the carpet of my walk-in closet, I scowl at Daniel’s upside-down face looming above me. Time and the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end, my heart throbbing like a tiny sedated drum. I roll over onto all fours—whimpering in pain all the way. Everest moves to help me up while Daniel stands, feet planted apart, arms crossed, as if my injury is wasting his time.
“No, no, it’s okay,” I say to Everest. He has no business picking me up with his bad back. But he insists, half lifting, half dragging me over to my bed like a rag doll.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Mizan,” Everest says, wringing his hands once he’s ensured I am sufficiently propped up. “I thought you are at work. He promised he was to pick up only one thing. He’s been begging me for months! He said it would take no time. I would have stayed with him!”
Daniel doesn’t say a word, but his eyes are scanning my bedroom like he’s the Terminator. I let out a long breath, trying to push aside the pulsing waves of pain.
“Everest, Everest,” I say. “It’s okay.”
If it had to come to this, Daniel barging in on me, I’m actually glad that Everest is here. It will make the next part pass quicker, like the NyQuil that’s become my new best friend does to all my unoccupied time. “It’s in there,” I say to Daniel, flopping my hand toward my nightstand drawer.
He makes to move but stops himself. “What is?” he says, trying to be all cryptic.
“Daniel, please just take it. It’s in the bottom drawer. And don’t ask me shit.”
He points at the drawer, then swivels his finger to point at Everest. “You want me to open that in front of him?”
I fall back on my bed. “Go nuts.”
I hear Daniel yank the drawer open, rummage around, then pull the whole thing out and dump the contents on my bedroom carpet. At the same time, poor Everest lets out a huge gasp, obviously seeing my Womanizer, Magic Bunny, Plunger, feathers, tassels, lubes, cock rings, you name it, sprawled on the floor. “ Santa Maria! ” Everest exclaims, the keys jangling in his hand as he crosses himself. “Miss, I—I—I will be by the hallway,” he stammers, then vamooses in a cloud of dust bunnies.
I raise myself up on my elbows and watch Daniel pick the ring out of all that debris. He cradles it in his palms tenderly like a wounded bird, naked joy on his face. I swear his eyes glisten with tears. Wow, he must really love Naomi. And she him, I guess. Age ain’t nothing but a number, as they say. Hope she is still in the picture after months of waiting for a ring that he’d probably given her good reason to expect.
“Get that insured, if you want my advice,” I say, shimmying my body up to my pillows. “And good luck. Marriage is a fucking beast.”
Daniel shakes his head at me, then gets up, first putting the ring in the breast pocket of his shirt and buttoning it carefully. God forbid something should happen to the ring while he’s going from kneeling to standing. He turns away, about to leave without another word to me.
What’s that thing they say is worse than hate? Indifference. “Are you going to say something or just pretend I’m not even here?” I say, galled by the idea that it could have been this easy: me just giving it back, no questions asked.
He pauses, sighs at the ceiling. “What is there to say to you, Miz? You dicked me around for months and almost cost me my happiness, purposely ! I’ve been losing my mind since August, as if my mom’s surgery wasn’t stressful enough, trying to remember where I could have last seen the ring.”
“I didn’t take it purposely! I swear! You didn’t give back my AirPods and I was looking for them and I found it then I freaked out thinking the ring was for me and I hid it because…well, it made sense to do so at the time, but only for a short time, I swear, then—”
But most of what I would say is stopped by Daniel’s laughter. He hollers from the very bottom of his pelvic floor. Hell, from the bottoms of his toes , even stumbling around, his shoulders slouched for effect. The kind of laughter that would be infectious even if I weren’t buzzing on NyQuil. But since I very much am, I join him, little by little, until we’re both busting a gut, while somewhere in the far foggy back of my mind, I’m wondering whether I’m laughing at myself or with him .
“Oh, Miz, you entertain me,” Daniel says, cooling down. He starts tossing my toys back in the drawer. “Whoo! See, this is why I never planned to stop seeing you.”
“Say what?” I say, wiping the corners of my eyes.
He flips my Magic Bunny in the air like a baton and catches it by the ears. “Marriage doesn’t mean monogamy.”
“Uh, does Boo Thang Naomi know that?”
“What does Naomi have to do with it?”
Suddenly Kal walks in.
“What’s up, man?” Daniel says to Kal, all friendly.
“Hey!” I say happily, as if Daniel and Kal, who know each other only by reputation, being in my bedroom at the same time is totes normal. “You caaaame!” He’s carrying a bag of fruit. “With groceries!” Such a sweetie.
It takes Kal dropping the bag to the floor, a whole bunch of lemons and limes going everywhere on my carpet, for me to realize this looks bad! It’s not what it looks like!
Daniel clocks Kal’s wedding ring. His face lights up as if he just found a kindred spirit. “Oh, congrats! When did you get married?”
“Okay, Daniel, bye!” I sing out desperately. “Bye, Daniel!” I even kick my one good foot on the bed for emphasis. Kal, who has been staring at Daniel as if he can’t believe his eyes, now trains them on me.
“Him? Still?” he says, scary calm.
“No!” I say, offended. “God no! Not since last summer!”
“So…what’s going on? Why is he here?”
Daniel throws the Bunny in my drawer and shoves the drawer back in the nightstand. “And I’m out. I just came to get something, man. Peace.” He makes a V sign but checks me. “Miz, you good?”
“What are you implying?” Kal says, his eyes sizzling as if he’s about to punch Daniel’s lights out.
Daniel puffs his chest, his good humour now gone. Kal sneers at that. They take a half step toward each other. How sick am I that I’m kind of turned on right now? It’s just…I’ve never seen Kal this angry before.
“Excuse you, Daniel,” I say, breaking from my daydream to be the adult here. “You can go now. I’m good. Sorry about…” I nod my head at his breast pocket.
He fist-bumps me from afar. “You owe me one, eh? Keep in touch.” With a wink, he leaves.
Kal turns to stare at me, stone faced. Is he serious? “Kal, come on,” I say playfully. I lean over the edge of the mattress, pick up a lemon, and toss it at him gently. He doesn’t react to it bouncing off his chest. “Hello? I’m choosing you. Remember?”
“What was he doing here?” His voice is bone-chillingly flat, but I am determined to have everything be okay again. Enough with the foolishness. There are no innocents here. We’ve both hurt, and been hurt (some of us literally).
“You heard him. He was grabbing something.”
“Care to be more specific?”
That gets my back up. I frown, my playfulness going down a notch. “Care to mind your business?”
He rolls his shoulders back, as if he just got more justification for his victim act. “Must be he left whatever it is more recently. Because otherwise, he’s had five months to pick it up, right?”
He’s being a total jerk, but for the sake of getting this over with, I waver on the cusp of telling him. Five months ago, I found a diamond ring, snooping where I had no business. I thought it was for me, and …
And what? I took it?
I took it briefly and …
And what? I’ve been giving the owner the runaround since?
Because …
Because I’m…fill in the blank with any unflattering adjective.
“Does loyalty mean nothing to you?” he suddenly shouts full blast.
Since when do Kal and I shout at each other? But the brakes are totally snapped now. “Are you really asking me that?” I yell back.
“At the bare minimum, Miz! At the barest minimum, I thought we were enough for each other.”
This is why I don’t fucking do relationships! “First of all, we never had that talk, and even if, that doesn’t entitle you to my whole privacy.”
“That’s how—”
“What?! How husbands and wives are supposed to roll? Maybe your perfect mom—”
He turns and leaves. Shit. I went too far. Why did I have to go there ?
“I’m sorry!” I call out, struggling to get off the bed like a bug on its back. “Wait!”
I roll to free myself and land on my face. I squirm my way up, coming first onto my hands and knees, then my good foot and both hands. I hear commotion on my balcony. A second later, Kal carries his bike past the bedroom door.
I hobble out as my front door slams shut. “Would you fucking wait!”
Next thing I know, I’m crashing again, falling through citrusy fresh air and slamming into the hardwood. “Waait,” I wail pitifully, starfished on the floor, knowing it’s hopeless. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the lemon I must have stepped on, destroyed beyond recognition, like my entire life.