Benny Abbott Day Three
Benny Abbott
Day Three
My sides ache, and I’m dripping in sweat by the time I’m home.
“Can you please tell me now?” Sarah demands breathlessly, sliding in behind me through the front door. The dogs jump all over her as she presses hands to knees. Her hair is plastered to her head; round blotches of perspiration darken her tank top.
“Joy said something a few weeks ago. When I mentioned her computer password was too easy to guess.” I beeline toward Joy’s laptop, navigate back into the XYZ folder, and click on the PDF.
“She said she liked to imagine Potsie and Richie and Fonzie all squished together holding hands on the Happy Days set couch. That’s why she mashed their names together. ”
“Random.”
“Not random. She knew I would remember her saying that. Which was why she sent the holding hands emoji. It was part of the clue.”
All this time I’ve been trying to piece together meaning from the episodes, when in fact the answer’s been staring me straight in the face. Typing carefully, I mash the raw track titles into one long entry, with no spaces, no caps, just like Joy’s computer password.
atticdismembermentsappliances
The file opens. “Thank god,” I breathe.
Sarah joins me at my side. “What is it?”
“It’s…” I scroll, and then stop when I see the words “I can sleep anywhere.” My body goes slack. “It’s her memoir.”
“I thought you already found that.”
I don’t know what I was hoping for, but it certainly wasn’t this.
“Hold on,” Sarah says. “How many pages did you read before?”
“I don’t know.” I can’t even look at it I’m so disappointed. “Couple chapters.”
“Benny, this is more than a couple chapters.” She taps the screen at the top of the document. “It’s a hundred and ten pages.”
WE READ WITHOUT stopping, without moving, without even breathing, until we reach the end.
I am still afraid.
My heart jackhammers my chest.
“That can’t be the end.” I frantically search Joy’s computer for other files, other drafts, but find nothing.
It’s worse than I imagined. So much worse.
Arriving at 7:00 p.m. sharp that night, I’d assumed something was amiss, but even when she led me downstairs and sat beside me at the recording table, even when she took my hand and said, “We’re gonna need to take a break from the podcast for a while,” I still had no clue.
“Is this about your health?” I eyed her pajama shorts and oversized long-sleeved shirt. “Are you sick?”
“It’s not that.”
My thoughts careened in every possible direction. Was it the Shake Awake stuff? The stalker? Did it have anything to do with our negotiations? She said no, no, not exactly.
“Wouldn’t a break be bad for negotiations?”
She lowered her head until her bangs hid her eyes. “I hope not.”
“Joy.” I dipped my own head, forcing her to look at me. Her furtiveness felt like a ticking bomb. “What’s going on?”
“I…” Her eyes were moist; she kept blinking them, trying not to cry. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I thought I could, but…”
“Maybe I can help. How can I help?”
“You can’t. Not yet. I just thought I should warn you. Since it might mess things up for a while. I need to know if you’re okay with that.”
Was I okay with that? How could I possibly know? I realized then that the sound equipment was on and ready to go. I regarded it with growing concern. “What is this?”
“I wanted to put out a statement … to announce our break.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Joy, I’m gonna need more. Are you sure there isn’t another way?”
She visibly shrank. I felt her disappointment like a burning ulcer as I fumbled for words.
We were so close to signing the biggest deal of our lives.
Had I been given the full picture I wouldn’t have questioned it, but what did I have to go on?
Whatever this was, it felt rash and ill-advised.
I couldn’t imagine it being our best option.
And still. Still. Staring at her crumbling face, I knew there was only one thing to say. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I nodded, then sat there unmoving, watching as if out of body as she cleared her throat and pressed record.
“Today’s episode is a departure from the norm,” she said into the mic. “I’m not sure how to do this, so I’m just going to say it.” Here, the tears began. After a moment of charged silence, she wiped her face with her sleeve and said, “I can’t.”
I assumed she’d changed her mind, and for a moment I was relieved. Until she said, “I’m sorry, Benny. I have to do this alone.”
It was as if she’d poured a bucket of ice water over my head. “What? No. No no no. Let me help. I’m sorry, I’m—I’m here. What do you need?”
“You should leave.”
“But why? Please, Joy, just tell me why.”
She shook her head, lips pressed in a tight line.
I felt desperate. This was so unlike her. Joy had her bad days, but this wasn’t that. This was different, and I’d be damned if she kicked me out without giving me a chance to help. Not again. Not ever again. “Does this have something to do with Xander?”
I’ll admit—when she didn’t respond, my desperation gave way to hope. I hoped he’d messed up somehow. That I could be the shoulder to lean on. The one to pick up the pieces for once. “It’s our podcast,” I said. “Ours. Yours and mine. Whatever’s going on, I’m here for you.”
She picked at the hem of her pajama shorts.
I scooted forward so we were knee to knee and pressed my forehead against hers. “Hey,” I whispered. “You can talk to me.”
“I can’t. Not like this.”
Her breath was sweet, a late summer strawberry. Taking it in, I felt suddenly calm. I exhaled. “I can do this all night.”
I felt her relax, melt into my forehead. “I can too,” she whispered.
“Do you remember the time we dressed as Waldo and Wenda for Halloween, and we spent the whole night hiding from each other?”
She let out a little huff. “You were so easy to find.”
“There weren’t enough people at the party.”
“No, you’re just bad at hiding.”
I chuckled softly and stared into her deep brown eyes. “Where are you now?”
She shifted in her seat, but kept her forehead pressed to mine. I hoped she was changing her mind, gearing up to tell me the truth. Instead, she said, “What happened between you and Luna? Why didn’t you make it?”
I inched backward, not out of her orbit but far enough to be able to see her more clearly. Scanning her face, I asked, “Luna?”
“You said when it all came down you couldn’t find enough reasons to stay married. But why did you start talking about divorce in the first place? Was it the baby stuff? Because you wanted kids and she didn’t?”
My heart beat faster. “There was no one thing.”
She looked disappointed, but what was I supposed to say? This shift in conversation had thrown me, and my first instinct was to change the subject. I’d been doing it with or without success for the better part of a year.
“Let’s say you’re trying to tell your best friend something sensitive,” she said, “but you don’t know how, and you’re so worried about how he’ll respond you can barely breathe.”
“Sensitive,” I repeated. It took courage to ask the next question. “Is this about … us?”
She nodded. My heart galloped. I thought—hoped—I knew what she was saying, and I understood why she was afraid.
Why she had to do this when Xander wasn’t home.
Why she couldn’t invite me over in front of Mallory.
I thought of our moment together in the Fox Theatre.
And in my hotel room. And all the moments before, when I almost said something.
All the times I held my tongue. I thought all the way back to when it was just us, just me and Joy.
This felt like that. There was never a right time before, but this was different.
Joy wanted the truth. If ever there was a time to tell her, it was now.
Head lightening with fear and possibility, I said, “Luna divorced me because she knew I could never love her enough.”
“But why?”
“Because she knows I’m in love with you.”
The ensuing silence throbbed in my ears.
“Oh, Benny,” Joy eventually said.
I died a thousand deaths. I wanted to take it back.
I wanted to infuse the room with amnesia-inducing gas.
It was the painful truth, the truth that hammered the final nail in my marriage’s coffin, and still it wasn’t enough.
It was not enough. Because this wasn’t about me, and I’d made it about me, and no matter what happened from this day forward, these words, this moment, would be a wall between us—the moment I finally told her I loved her and she made it clear she didn’t love me back.
“What did Xander do?” When she didn’t answer, I asked again. “What did he do?”
I hated him then. More than I’d ever hated him before.
My blood was rising magma, thick and sticky.
He didn’t deserve her. I’d shown so much restraint over the years, put up with so many of his snide comments, his condescending looks, and now I felt as if I could violently explode.
I trembled as I took her hand and said, “What did he do to you? What did he do? If he hurt you, I swear to god I’ll kill him. ”
She yanked her hand away.
“Joy—”
“Just go, Benny.”
The microphone was still on.
I don’t remember what happened next. Only that I was no longer welcome. I must have stood. Must have walked away. Must have let myself out and stumbled home and poured the first of too many drinks before begging her via text to forget what I said.
That was the last time I saw her. She never returned my texts, and the episode is gone.
I’M LOST IN this memory when my cell rings.
It’s Keller. My head is swarming. It takes me a second to recalibrate. I put her on speakerphone so Sarah can hear. “Is there any news?”
Keller doesn’t waste a beat. “There’s no easy way to say this, Benny, but we found a body.”
I’m buzzing all over. Why is she saying it like that? “Please tell me it isn’t Joy.”
“It’s not Joy.”
Sarah drops her head onto my shoulder. I exhale so hard it nearly flattens me.
“Oh, thank god. Thank god.” It’s as if I’ve been carrying this tension around for months.
Years. My entire person is trembling with relief.
“Listen, I found something Joy was working on. Her memoir. There’s a lot of messed-up stuff in there about Xander.
He was abusive, and I think it’s pretty clear he must have kidnapped her, or—I don’t know.
It’s really bad. Can I forward it to you? ”
“I don’t think you understand.”
A second, hour, lifetime passes before she speaks again. I know what’s coming next.
“We found Xander.”