Day Seven （Benny Abbott）
Benny Abbott
Day Seven
Joy’s parents phone from the mid-Atlantic while we’re waiting, and there’s a lot of crying, and questions, so many questions, for which we only have incomplete answers.
I call my lawyer and fill him in. He asks if I want him to meet us here, and I tell him thank you but no, I’ll catch up with him later.
I hold Sarah’s hand as we wait, and wait, and eventually the doctor returns, once to inform us the surgery went well, and the next to let us know that Joy is awake. “Are you Benny?” she asks me.
I nod.
“She wants to see you.”
It takes everything in me to keep calm as I follow the doctor back. I will never be able to find my way out through these winding sterile hallways, but I don’t care. Joy is alive, and her surgery went well, and she’s asking to see me.
At the first door past the second nurse station the doctor stops and turns to me.
“I’ve been informed about her situation.
The police want to speak with her, but I told them she’s not ready yet.
Just—keep the energy low, okay? She’s fragile.
And more than a little disoriented. Don’t feel like you have to answer all of her questions. Grab me if you need help.”
I understand why I need to heed this warning, I respect the need to heed this warning, but it’s all I can do to not rush the bed and wrap my arms around Joy the second I enter the room.
She’s on her back, draped in a white blanket, with a nasal cannula and various other tubes and monitors, and her hair is matted, and her skin is pale, and she’s the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
My throat swells and my eyes fill, blurring the room. I can’t get any words out. All I can do is grin like an idiot as I approach my best friend.
“There you are,” she whispers.
I laugh a little. A tear falls on her hand. “There you are.”
SHE IS, AS the doctor said, fragile. She’s lost a lot of weight, and despite the cocktail of drugs being pushed through her IV, she’s in a lot of pain.
She doesn’t bring up the pregnancy, and so neither do I.
Nor do we mention Xander. I can’t begin to guess what she knows, and in this moment it doesn’t matter.
I hold her hand and tell her I missed her, and we skirt around the tricky stuff as if she’s just returned from war.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner,” I say eventually.
She scrunches her eyes. Even when she can’t smile, Joy’s smile reaches her eyes. “I was wearing my Wenda costume.”
I ache with everything I want to say, but now’s not the time. Instead, I kiss her forehead and tell her to rest.
KELLER FINDS ME an hour later in the hospital courtyard. Sarah straightens as the detective approaches the concrete table where we’ve been, until this moment, relaxing in the shade, waiting for Joy to wake up again.
“I’m not talking without my lawyer,” I say when she’s within earshot. I see no reason to volunteer any of the hows or whys or wheres or whos or whats involved with finding Joy. Not after what this woman has put me through.
“I know.” Keller stops just short of the table. “I just wanted to ask how Joy is doing. They said you’ve seen her.”
As with everything Keller says, this feels like a trap. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to enter her hospital room. Maybe I’ve inadvertently broken another law. I look to Sarah, and she seems to understand.
“Thanks to Benny,” Sarah says, pointedly, “it looks like she’s gonna be okay.”
Keller nods down at the table. “I’m glad to hear it. Very glad.” She turns, like she’s about to leave, but then stops. “One thing.”
I exchange a wary glance with Sarah.
“My team was able to geotag those social media posts. From your number-one fan.”
My head snaps back. “Could you have done this all along? When we first started complaining?”
“That’s the thing,” Keller says. “There were no complaints in the system. Not one.”
“What are you talking about? Xander filed multiple times. Online and in person.”
“Did he ever show you proof?”
The blood slows in my veins. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, most of those geotags match Joy and Xander’s house.”
Sarah connects the dots first. “It was Xander?”
“But—” I shake my head. “He was in some of the photos.”
“He was,” Keller says. “And he paid for those. We found transactions linking him to three separate paparazzi. Turns out he had the same very specific instructions for all of them: to not be seen, and to make sure he was occasionally photographed alongside her. He told them it was to drum up interest for a project you were working on.” Noting our slack jaws, Keller adds, “He took quite a few as well. We’ve traced those to his phone and browsing history.
He didn’t do much to conceal his actions beyond hitting the delete button. ”
“Oh my god.” I don’t want to believe it, even as I absolutely believe it. “Was Ted one of the paps he paid? Or Emil?”
Keller shakes her head. “Apart from the video Ted posted in August, we’ve got nothing tying either of them to any published images of Joy prior to her disappearance. Ted even claims he saw Xander sneaking a few photos in the supermarket once. Says they showed up online later that day.”
My eye twitches at the memory of my neighbor trying to tell me this. “But—but what about the hug?”
“The what?”
I remind her about the picture outside my Zen Den, the picture Joy wrote about in her memoir.
“Ah. Right. Not Ted,” Keller says. “Xander paid a pretty penny for that one too.”
“But—” I refuse to accept it. “Then what was Quinn talking about?”
Keller doesn’t follow, so Sarah quickly recounts our conversation with Quinn at the bakery. That shit with Ted and Emil. “We thought it meant…” She grabs my arm. “When did those Shake Awake illnesses make the news?”
It takes me a second. “August.”
“So around the same time Ted took the viral video?”
“Just before,” I confirm with a nod. And then, recalling Ted’s adamant claim that he’d never met Emil before, I see where Sarah’s going with this. “That shit with Ted and that shit with Emil. The viral video and the Shake Awake scandal. Two separate things that happened around the same time.”
“Huh.” Sarah rests her chin on her palm.
“I can see why you were confused,” Keller says with a sigh.
It feels like a peace offering, this comment, this information, but I’m still angry with her, and I know she’s not done with us yet. “Is that all?”
She studies me for a second. Nods. “I’m glad you found your girl,” she says. And then leaves before I can respond.
Sarah drives me home when visiting hours are over.
The cameramen have thinned in the fading twilight, but based on their questions it’s clear the news hasn’t reached them yet.
A part of me wants to shout at the top of my lungs to the purple sky, “She’s alive!
Joy’s alive!” But then I see Ted. Even knowing what I know now, my feelings are still complicated. I decide they don’t deserve the scoop.
“You’re eventually going to have to make things right with him, you know,” my sister says, dishing out Mexican takeout.
“Maybe I’ll move.”
“Or maybe you can just buy him a new camera.”
“Maybe.” I unwrap my burrito and take a bite. For the first time in days I can taste what I’m eating.