Sublimate

Chapter 4 #3

“You’re not very talkative either,” he pointed out, and he still didn’t eat.

I wondered if he would start if I did, so I removed some of the paper around a burger.

He mimicked me and also took one, which was good.

He needed something inside him besides alcohol, because I wasn’t sure if he had told me the truth and that he really had quit.

Maybe so, but maybe he had some other motivation to show up at Kolter’s house and then lie…

but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what that motivation might have been.

“Vivi?”

“I don’t have a lot to say at the moment.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my situation, and not just my fear of bears,” I said, and I sighed again and then briefly described the scenario in which I’d get eaten but I didn’t have dental records because I’d never had my teeth checked, and my mom and my sister were now in the wind like my father, so who would provide DNA to match with my skeletal remains?

“But more immediately than the bear problem, I’m going to have to do something tonight and I don’t want to. But I can’t see any other choice.”

“What do you have to do? Something about your boyfriend? You’re still living together,” he stated, but I shook my head.

“Kolter doesn’t really live in his house anymore. I think he might come back now that it’s getting warmer but he hasn’t slept over since January. That was when the furnace broke.”

“Have you been staying there without heat?” His eyebrow shot up.

“It worked a little,” I explained. “It was enough to keep the pipes unfrozen but it was cold. So he went to his mom’s house to sleep, but she hates me and I wasn’t invited.”

“Why didn’t you find a new place, then?”

“How?” I asked him back. “I don’t have any money. He found the cash I was hiding—I always try to keep some back for an emergency, but he found it, and he took it.”

“What an asshat.”

Nolan looked furious, which put more color into his face. I wasn’t worried because this anger wasn’t directed at me and actually, it was nice that he was upset but in my favor. I was encouraged by that into saying more.

“He took my phone and broke it, so I had to get a new one that he doesn’t know about.

” And just in case, I wasn’t putting anything incriminating on it, like searches for a new place to live or text conversations with anyone besides clients.

Except, I had lost a lot of them when I’d disappeared for a while due to the other problems with Kolter.

“Why? Why did he do that your phone?”

“He saw that I had been looking into leaving and he thought that breaking it would stop me,” I answered. “He does things like that, like when he slashed up my old coat last fall. He had wanted to stop me from going out so often.”

Nolan just stared at me, like this was something totally foreign, like I was speaking French or something.

“Now I hide the new phone behind the panel of the oven door, because he’d never think to look there. I should have put my money there, too.” I sighed again. “I’m trying to get out of Michigan but it’s really hard. I’m barely making anything and then he takes most of it.”

“You could put your money in a bank,” he suggested. “He wouldn’t have access to that.”

I stared back and almost laughed. “Do you think he would let me have my own bank account? I could have tried to sneak it past him before, but he’s being much more careful now.

He searches my car and the whole house when he comes over.

Anyway, you need paperwork to do banking stuff. I don’t have it,” I said.

“I think it’s just your driver’s license,” Nolan countered and I nodded.

“I don’t have that. I never got one when I lived in Nevada, and I couldn’t get one here without the paperwork.”

“The paperwork,” he echoed. “Do you mean a birth certificate? A passport? Bills, to prove residency? What else would you need?”

“All of it,” I said. My voice had gotten quieter because I sounded so dumb.

Why wouldn’t I have that stuff? A normal person would.

“I’m not on a lease at Kolter’s house. I don’t get a paycheck because I work in cash.

I probably had a Social Security card and a birth certificate but my mom never kept track of things like that.

I’ve tried to get copies but you have to have one thing to get another. ”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one. I’m sure,” I said. “I definitely know my date of birth because my mom got a baby book from the hospital when I was born and she filled in the first page.” That book was long gone, but I remembered seeing it when I was a kid.

“And she sometimes she gave me a cupcake or said happy birthday. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” he responded briefly. “Have you been driving around with no license?”

“Yeah, for years,” I said. “I got my car from one of my mom’s boyfriends and as soon as I did, I was behind the wheel. That dent in the hood is because I was so bad at braking at first, but I got the hang of it.”

“This is wild,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone living like this.”

“I guess you wouldn’t. I read about your college and it said that there was a spa there and valet parking,” I answered, and he did the funny smile, the angry one.

“My grandparents were desperate for me to get a degree and that place accepted me, so I went to make them happy,” he said, but he wasn’t done with talking about my paperwork problem. “How did you end up in Michigan?”

“Well, it’s kind of funny. I had moved to Las Vegas and I had a boyfriend who said that he was going to kill me.”

“That’s not funny,” he immediately countered.

“No, the funny part was that I got in the car and started driving east-ish without knowing where I was going at all,” I explained.

“I ended up on I-80 and then made a left just past Chicago, and I went north through Michigan until I stopped at the biggest lake I’d ever seen.

And I stayed. He’s too lazy to follow me this far but I’ll still never register to vote. People can see your address that way.”

Nolan sat back and breathed in and out. “That’s an amazing story.”

“That was why last fall, it made sense to me that you were off in the woods by yourself,” I said. “I thought you might have been running away like I did. But then I saw your hair.”

“What?” He self-consciously put his hand on his head. “What about it?”

“You must have gotten it cut all the time. I went to cosmetology school very briefly, just until they figured out that I didn’t have all the paperwork, and I recognized that about you.

I figured that you had enough money to run away properly.

You didn’t have to walk off into the woods with no coat on, but there you were. ”

“And you stopped and saved me,” he stated, and then he frowned at the french fries before looking back up. “School.” He pointed at me. “Somewhere, at some time, someone enrolled you. I don’t think you can do that without documentation.”

“You’re right! My mom must have had it back then,” I agreed. I had attended elementary school and middle school, too. I had attended at times.

“Can you ask her if she has it now?”

“I’m sure she doesn’t. I left home when I was fifteen and we used to talk sometimes but I haven’t reached out in years,” I said.

“I have no idea how to find her, not even using Cadence’s tricks.

Cadence is a librarian and she knows you because you went to school together.

” He looked blank. “She played volleyball,” I hinted further, but he only shook his head.

“Fifteen is young,” he commented.

“I was an old fifteen. I had been taking care of myself for a while, so I was ok. I moved in with my boyfriend.”

“And then he threatened to kill you.”

“No, that was a different guy. But the one when I was fifteen also wasn’t very nice, and when I found someplace else, I left him. I moved in with my new boyfriend, and then the one after him was the guy who wanted to kill me.”

“You went from man to man.”

I put down the burger I’d been eating. “I was in relationships. And what difference does it make if I did that?”

“It doesn’t make a difference and I’m sorry it sounded that way. I was trying to say that you were forced to depend on them, rather than getting by on your own.”

“I probably could have gotten by. You can rent places if you have enough money, even if you don’t have a passport or whatever.

You can find jobs that don’t require you to fill out tons of details in an application,” I said.

“But…I don’t know, I guess I’m used to being with someone.

” I shrugged. “By the time I showed up here in Michigan, I was at the end. I was hungry and I had nowhere to go. I met Kolter and he said I could stay with him. He was nice to me. He was,” I insisted when Nolan looked doubtful.

“He didn’t have to let me move in and he introduced me to everyone as his girlfriend—well, not to his mom, because she hated me at first sight.

I’ve never had anyone react to me that strongly, except once, I thought I made a girl throw up.

It turned out to be food poisoning that happened to kick in at the moment I walked into the room, so it was only bad luck.

” I thought for a moment. “I must be feeling better because I’m being a blabbermouth again. ”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he answered. “It seemed strange that you were so quiet when before, you had a lot of interesting things to say.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for this meal.” It was all empty paper now, because I’d plowed through a lot of it. “I talked so much that I didn’t ask you what your plans are.”

“Mine?” He looked over at the menu painted on the wall and thought for a while. “I want to stay sober.”

“Are you doing anything to make sure of that? I mean…” I hesitated, but he had never given me any indication that he would react like freshly baked bread and get steamed up. “I was thinking about your friends.”

“What about them?”

“The first time we met, it was because one of those people had done something really mean to you as a joke. I wonder if they’re nice,” I explained.

“Do you have nice friends?”

“I like Cadence at the library. I like you, too.”

Nolan seemed very surprised and his eyebrow went back up. “Thank you,” he told me.

“You’re welcome. I was going to say that I don’t know either of you well enough to count you as friends.

I thought that you and I were going to see each other more this winter but I’m glad you dried out instead.

” I wished that I had been aware of that, rather than thinking that I had annoyed him so he was staying away.

It didn’t hurt my feelings but that would have been good to know.

“Maybe we could become friends now,” he suggested.

“It’s something I keep hearing, recommendations to steer clear of people and situations that aren’t going to help with my sobriety.

The crowd I’m usually with doesn’t count it as a virtue.

” Now he looked out the window of the restaurant, toward his new car.

“How are they reacting to the changes you made?”

“Some of them knew I was going to rehab and they wanted to know why, because they didn’t see a problem. Some of them thought I was joking when I said that I was an alcoholic. One guy found out that I was back in town and he invited me to meet for drinks.”

“Holy bells. I mean, I don’t know a lot of stuff, but that’s obviously wrong. Or, is it nasty?” I wondered. “Like, he wants you to fail?”

“Why? Why would he want that?”

“He could be a genuinely awful person who gets happy when other people crash out. Or maybe he wants to keep things as they are, with you as his bar buddy. Would your friendship change a lot if you two went for coffee or…I don’t know. What do people do in a relationship besides drinking and sex?”

“They eat cheeseburgers and talk,” he suggested. “That’s a good way to be with someone.”

“I like it, too.” I smiled at him and he did back at me. “I’m concerned about you, though. You shouldn’t hang out with people who encourage bad habits.”

“You shouldn’t live with a guy who steals your money and tries to control you by smashing your phone.”

I didn’t mention that Kolter had disabled my car for a while, too. I had that back now and it was running ok, since the engine parts in the yard didn’t belong to me. “I’m working on that,” I simply said.

“Good for you. I could help,” he told me.

“How?”

“I could give you money.”

Really? But I hesitated. “I don’t know if I would pay it back. I would try, but I can’t make a promise.”

“That was why I said ‘give,’ not ‘loan,’” he said. “I’ve never gotten back a dime when I helped out my friends and I didn’t expect it.”

I thought about what I was going to do tonight and I realized that I was acting stupid.

Why wasn’t I holding out my palm and telling him yeah, stack the bills right here?

“If you don’t mind, I would like that,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to—” I stopped and rethought what I was admitting to him.

“I was going to do something, but now I won’t have to. I would appreciate your help a lot.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. He took out his wallet and I saw that it was full of money. He removed a large stack of bills, everything in there, then slid it over to my side. This was really not a big deal for him, so I was acting stupid again to feel so embarrassed about it.

“Thank you.” I carefully picked up the money and put it in my bag. “I’m going to use this to leave town so I won’t see you again after today. Good luck with everything.”

“Thank you. Good luck to you, too,” he said.

I sat on the steps of the house after he dropped me off, wasting time that I should have spent getting my stuff together and getting out.

I was hoping so much that he would be able to figure out his life and stay sober.

But again, Nolan Whitaker was like a shooting star.

This had been another blip, and now its glow had permanently faded to black.