Benny Abbott Day Three
Benny Abbott
Day Three
I return home after midnight and wake at sunrise to Richie licking my face. From the foot of the bed, Potsie stares at us with disappointment, as if he can’t believe he’s still here. I coax him toward me and rub his floppy ears. “We’ll find her,” I whisper.
I check my phone and am again overwhelmed by the influx of messages across all communication channels—DMs, texts, links to articles and videos with ever more far-fetched theories as to where Joy and Xander might be or what might have happened.
There are tearful TikTok posts with hundreds of thousands of likes.
I have no fewer than thirty requests for a public statement.
Joy’s parents are still six days out from Port Canaveral. When the charter boat idea failed, they tried to commission an emergency helicopter. To no avail.
“I feel like the mom from Home Alone,” Gail says in her voice message. “Only it’s so much worse. Please call me back as soon as you can, Benny. I talked to Detective Keller, but I don’t think she’s giving us the full picture.”
Her number goes straight to voicemail, so I detail everything I know before the beep cuts me off.
I then leave a message with our corporate lawyer, saying I’ll catch up with him after the search party.
I sound detached, even to my ears. A month ago, I could never have imagined feeling this ambivalent about the distribution deal, considering how much money is on the table.
I also could never have imagined Joy and Xander going missing.
The fact is, there’s nothing anyone can do. Not until they’re found.
I let the dogs out, make coffee, and return to Joy’s computer, hoping the few hours of sleep I managed will allow me to come at this puzzle with fresh ears. I pull up Joy’s “deadly appliances” episode from three weeks ago and start where I last left off.
“Quiz time!” Joy says. “What is the most dangerous home appliance? I’ll give you three guesses.”
“Three? Too easy. Garbage disposal.”
“Not even in the top ten.”
“But your hand—you stick your hand in there, and the blades spin?”
“Is that how you use your garbage disposal?”
“That’s my greatest fear. That it’s gonna turn on the moment I stick my fingers in there.”
“Second guess?” She starts humming the Jeopardy! theme song.
“I don’t know, dishwasher?”
“Benny.”
“What? I couldn’t think. You were making smart-people music at me.”
“Making smart-people…” She laughs for several seconds. “Speaking of dishwashers, did you know we just got ours replaced? Have you seen it?”
“I have. It’s very pretty.”
“It has nine different rack positions. Nine! And do you know what I was thinking about this morning? Remember the dishwasher from my old apartment?”
“The completely nonfunctioning hunk of junk that you used as a minibar? Yes.”
“Glassware on top, bottles on the bottom.”
“Upcycling at its best.”
“I remember, I was so certain I’d feel like I’d made it if I could just have a brand-new dishwasher someday. Like, to me that was the very apex of civility.”
“Funny how our goalposts keep moving, isn’t it?”
She made a sound I couldn’t quite read at the time. I still can’t read it now. “All right, third guess?”
I guessed the stove. Burns and all that. Who knew refrigerators were responsible for the most ER visits of any other appliance? Clearly not me.
I make notes on the rest of the episode, jotting down everything that feels potentially relevant, but when I read the list over at the end, it makes no sense.
I guessed at all of the ways refrigerators might cause injury.
She read a listener survivor story about a child who nearly suffocated while hiding inside an out-of-service refrigerator during a game of hide-and-seek.
We had an extended conversation about the Punky Brewster episode where Punky’s friend did the same.
Joy mentioned jelly beans three separate times.
We talked about ice makers for a full seven minutes.
Joy made smart-people music at me twice.
Lord help me, what am I doing?
I take my coffee out to the back porch, where the scent of toppled eucalyptus hits like a medicinal punch. It’s already warm at this early hour, and the air is calm. It’s going to be a scorcher.
Richie and Potsie sniff purposefully at the wreckage, padding carefully from edge to edge like two long-eared archaeologists preparing to excavate a site. They have no idea the significance of what was lost.
You have to see it in person, Joy wrote, back when the house first went on the market. There’s something special about it.
It was a chilly March morning, just seven months ago.
My divorce wasn’t final yet, and I was only reluctantly house shopping.
The listing agent, a waify bottle blonde with thin red lips, was waiting at the curb when Joy and I arrived.
I stared at the house, confused, as we all made our introductions.
From what I could tell, it was a typical mid-century ranch.
I’d seen a thousand of its kind, and because Joy lived on the hill I was already familiar with the neighborhood. I saw nothing special about it.
The interior offered no further explanation. Well-maintained, nicely updated, but typical. I couldn’t even say I was impressed with the view. There are a lot of hills in Los Angeles. A lot of views. It wasn’t until we stepped into the backyard that Joy elbowed me and said, “This.”
She was referring to the twenty-by-fifteen shed near the back of the yard. It had a sloped roof, two windows, and a small porch in need of repair. Beyond it was a raked gravel garden lined with climbing vines and a rock wall fountain. “Okay,” I said, still not getting it.
Grinning, she pointed to the hand-carved wooden sign on the shed door: THE ZEN DEN.
“Do I look like I need to take up meditation?”
“You look like you need a lobotomy.”
The agent chuckled at this and then covered it up with a cough before scuttling away.
I crossed the threshold into the dim, empty space, observing the warped wood-paneled walls and parquet floors, the acoustic ceiling tiles. Beneath the musty odor of what was almost certainly mold, I could just barely make out the lingering smell of cigars.
Joy squeezed my elbow. “It was a recording studio. You could fix it up. We could do the podcast here.”
“But we record at your house.”
She bit her lip. “Maybe if there’s another studio within walking distance, we could change that.”
If she’d dangled any other carrot, I would have thanked the real estate agent for her time and driven away without another thought.
I wasn’t ready to buy a house. My divorce was too fresh.
I didn’t have any furniture, nor did I think I could muster the enthusiasm necessary to furnish a whole-ass home.
I was miserable, plain and simple, and I wanted to wallow in it.
Only then, without taking another step, my imagination ignited.
A recording studio. Even though Xander could no longer stand to be in the same room with me, he was still always there, always watching.
Micromanaging. Microaggressing. A proper sound studio in my backyard might be the fix Joy and I needed to record in peace.
Even if it was only on occasion. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this Zen Den could be a way to rewind the clock, back to the last time Joy and I lived within walking distance of each other, before everything and everyone else got in our way.
I bought the house.
The shed needed a lot of work, but I was down for the challenge, determined to make it a timeless extension of my mid-century ranch.
I hired the best contractor I could find on short notice, and together we updated the electricity, installed a new roof, ran new air-conditioning, and sprayed foam insulation.
We put in energy-efficient skylights, and herringbone oak flooring.
On the south wall, we cut out a giant window to capture the sprawling LA skyline.
For the north wall, I found an ultra-plush navy sofa, long enough for Joy to nap on whenever the need struck.
I bought a soft rug, a large desk, and all the recording equipment two comedy survival podcasters could ever need.
The exterior was outfitted with new siding and an updated porch, and I hand-planted a perimeter of Spanish lavender.
The Zen Den was not just improved; it was a goddamn masterpiece.
And we never once used it. Just as renovations were wrapping up, all hell broke loose, and Joy stopped leaving her house. And now …
I’m resurfacing from this memory when I spot Paparazzo Ted a few feet from the fence. “Any news?” he shouts before I have a chance to turn around.
I shake my head.
“Hey, so…” He steps closer. “I ran into Joy at the grocery store a few months ago.” When I don’t respond, he adds, “She was in the produce section, and I was at the bakery.”
“Listen,” I say through clenched teeth, “I don’t know what your deal is, but you are literally the last person I want to talk to right now.”
“Jesus, man, let me finish.” Ted flaps his white undershirt a few times to cool off. “I’m trying to tell you something. I was only there to buy a cake for my daughter’s birthday, but—well, you may have seen the picture of Joy that showed up online later that day.”
I regret giving him a single second of my time. After everything he’s done. Joy is actively missing, and he’s trying to absolve himself for some paparazzi photo he sold two months ago.
“Go to hell.” I call the dogs, and this time they follow.
I’m shutting us inside when Ted shouts, “You have reporters in your front yard!”
HE’S RIGHT. THERE are three, one of whom, a young woman, is actively addressing a camera. Watching them through the blinds sends prickly goose bumps up my arms.
While the woman speaks, a compact blue Kia slows in front of my house. The driver idles for a moment and then turns into my driveway.
“Oh no you didn’t,” I growl. I’m about to run out there to give them a piece of my mind when the driver steps out.
It’s not a reporter. When I see who it is, I burst into tears.