Afternoon's Disappearance

1. THE AFTERNOON TWO MONTHS BEFORE HE DISAPPEARS

Alice Peabody, née Bledsoe, has a complicated past, especially her personal and sexual life, so she prefers for people to know the abridged version.

Conservative.

Traditional.

Chaste.

"Eyes the color of fine, expensive chocolate," Rick praises her one day in the afterglow. Both naked, both in soft downtown hotel sheets. The sort of hotel wealthy people have affairs in during the middle of the afternoon. It is two-twenty-two on the bedside clock. They are on a low-floor, across from a Royal Bank office building filled with workers, so the blinds are closed, but the midday sun comes through the edges, golden warm.

Alice sees the digital 2:22, closes her eyes and makes a wish. Rick holds her with one arm wrapped around her and his other hand holding her left hand, their fingers entwined, Rick holding their hands to his face, kissing her fingertips and knuckles, admiring the wedding band and engagement ring that Alice wears.

"Hair the color of richest chestnut," Rick continues. "Blemish-less, porcelain skin of northern European aristocracy." He smiles and his voice is deep; deep and sincere and peaceful. He has no rings on his left hand, the one entwined with hers.

"Doubtlessly descended from some exquisite mistress," Alice, sober yet tipsy, confesses to her One True Lover, her lover close enough to have been her true brother, "for that explains my, you might say, extremely high sex drive," Alice finishes with a smile.

"I agree," Rick says. "Utterly rapacious."

"Insatiable," Alice says, glad that finally someone, and thank god This Man, this unconservative, untraditional, unchaste man, understands her and values her for whom she really is.

"You're adorable," Rick tells her.

Alice smiles. "I agree." Then, out of character for her but she knows she can't stop herself, as she looks into his chimerical golden-brown eyes, singing lightly to him, "If I could, I'd be your little spoon, and kiss your fingers for ever more," and Alice starts to kiss his fingers, and giggle, and Rick feels her kisses and her love and her giggles, and begins to giggle with her.

"But big spoon," Alice keeps singing, "you've got lots of things to do," but before she can continue, Rick is kissing her mouth deeply, and Alice kisses him back, and then they are fitting themselves into position and Alice is parting her thighs and emphasizing the feeling of her rings on his skin when she wraps her arms around him and holds onto his back, pulling him into her.

2. THE AFTERNOON TWO WEEKS BEFORE HE DISAPPEARS

They fuck for an hour to her mix of Madonna ballads. In the middle of the sunny summer day in a pitch dark room with blackout curtains. Suddenly, no lights, nothing to see at all. Pitch black means pitch black and blackout curtains in this case, Alice notices for an instant before giving her attention over to pleasure, means total blackout.

All there was that afternoon was touch and taste and sound, so much intense sound and passion from the music, so much intense sound and passion from them together.

Alice called him Rick then, knew him and believed him to be Rick.

She saw his friends and the people in his various neighborhoods--in that year, he was always moving, always staying with a different 'friend'--and they all called him Rick.

As Alice has the memory, she is not entirely sure of what his real name is now, the government and the reporters told her all the aliases he used, all the people he was and pretended to be, but in the memory, as she remembers the feel of his hands on her hips and her thighs holding herself atop him and her cunt holding her onto him so tight as she fucks him, Alice remembers and savors the feeling of how powerful and strong she felt that endless eternal impossible afternoon, especially that afternoon in the darkness and the music with him, whomever he was.

Holding onto him and controlling him and keeping him, solely through the strength of the most womanly part of her.

Rick would tell her, "women carry the center of the universe with them everywhere they go," then he would pause, for effect each time he said it, "but they think so little of it, they sit on it."

It made Alice laugh a lot the first time he said it, and the second, and at least a little every time after, not that there were many. Alice, who understood her own high value and worth but did not think much of other women, once riposted, "maybe they sit on it because they know how valuable it is and want to keep it hid," but "Rick" scoffed. "Everyone knows they got it and everyone knows exactly where they keep it. Ain't no mystery about the center of the universe and the meaning of life, just people pretending."

But in the room in the darkness, they don't speak much, and let Madonna do the talking for them. Alice loves the memory because she loves the feeling of having been inside the music with him. Inside all those love songs, all those bittersweet lover songs, together with him.

The only requirement Rick placed on her that afternoon before they began--other than meeting him in this new apartment, that he claimed to be sub-letting from a friend who had to go out of town for film production work--was that this time, she had to slip off the small wedding band and gaudy engagement ring that Alice's husband had bought for her in their silly marital rush of adult loneliness caused by Canada's endless pandemic lockdowns.

Alice did, but it took a little wiggling. Most for fear of losing them, Alice had taken to never slipping her rings off for any occasion, not even adultery, which Alice was already realizing was the secret to her ability to affect a pleasant demeanor towards the man she now thought of as Mr. Roommate Bledsoe, Alice giving him her maiden name in her mind because in her heart she had never truly abandoned it.

But when she found a safe place atop a clean dresser, in this room where Rick was already drawing the curtains to illustrate the new concept, off came the rings her husband's money purchased, and there she rested them.

Then Rick pulled the curtains and in the complete darkness, he stripped the remaining indicators of her life and position off of her. The last thing Alice saw before the lights went out, her shimmery diamond rings, safe on the edge of the dresser-top, catching the last of the afternoon sunlight.

Then darkness.

For a moment, Alice marveled at how dark the room became so fast, then a vestigial fear emerged from her subconscious, but then she is aware of Rick's breathing and his closeness and his nakedness and she is still clothed and his hands are on her.

And then there is no fear, there is the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon tryst where you've taken your rings off and are not married again for the moment, are here for this Man in the darkness, and to him, Alice gives herself and never has a thought for anywhere or anyplace or anytime else.

In the darkness, in the rhythms and melodies, in the penetrative connection with him, she is finally, fully present in her own life.

3. THE AFTERNOON HE DISAPPEARS

That morning, Alice took the Metro Line to the Uni downtown. Her morning classes for her Master's Degree were unremarkable and simple as ever. Lunch with the fellow students at the Restaur-U, same simple salads as ever.

She was happy, content, the entire world was together and moving in her direction. Even the air downtown felt cool and crisp.

Alice had no classes or practicums that afternoon, so because it was such a perfect fall day, she decided to walk to the further Metro Line stop before heading home like a good student and wife. Maybe she would get some fresh fruits at a sidewalk grocer before heading onto the train.

And then she turned the corner of State and University, and naturally looked up to the News Billboard over the city's second-busiest intersection flashing an EMERGENCY ALERT!

Alice's first reaction was that the News Billboard must be super-broken, because they were showing pictures of Rick of all people! Rick! Rick and others, some of whom Alice recognized as men Rick had introduced to her to as friends, but she had maybe only met them for minutes or hours when she and Rick were clandestinely out in public together on one of their rare dates out of doors, so Alice was not entirely sure. Some faces the billboard showed Alice had never seen before, but they all looked mean.

But mostly the News Billboard must have been hacked by someone who had access to Rick's photos of his friends and to Rick's FaceApp'ed photos, because they all seemed to have a filter on them, like a ski-mask filter and a grainy-security-camera footage filter and a forged-Canadian-passport filter.

Alice thought that Rick was going to either be really tickled about this prank being pulled on him, or really angry and then really tickled, and that he would probably have a long, long laugh about it, and Alice felt herself smiling and laughing along with Rick, already imagining it happening and feeling so certain about him, it was like she could feel and hear his laughter already, and as always, it was contagious.

With a big smile on her face, Alice turned to the Metro Transit Station, and then she laughed out loud, because this prank was obviously bigger than one billboard--Rick's photos were everywhere, on every Metro Transit digital billboard.

"MAARTEN DACKO SOUGHT IN ROYAL BANK HEIST!"

Who?

Maarten?

Who?

But? That's--Rick's face--Rick's face but with some spectacular five-o'clock shadow that made him look--

Dastardly.

Crafty.

Ruthless.

"HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS STOLEN!"

"OFFICERS SLAIN!"

"INSIDE MAN SOUGHT!"

"ROBBERS ESCAPED!"

"HEIST PULLED OFF WITH DARING PITCH-BLACK ASSAULT."

"Holy Christ," Alice thought to herself. She immediately understood she could not go back to her apartment. Because her husband would be there and police would be there and Federal Agents would be there and they would be talking to her husband and maybe showing him documents or photos that her husband would not want to be seeing and asking him questions Alice would not want him being asked and they certainly were not going to let Alice do what she needed to do immediately.

Because her pussy was soaking through her simple, everyday purple cotton-and-lace bikini cut panties.

But Alice knew if she kept on foot from the Uni into the expanse of Loyal Subjects Park, she could find a copse or cove or out-of-eyesight park bench to herself and to the amazing image burned forever in her memory of her Lover broadcast all over the Provincial Capital City, and to the remembrance of those ruthless eyes looking into hers, the nameless, aimless spirit inside her lover, no matter what the false authorities of the physical world would label him, his ruthless, tireless eyes of eons starring into hers, burning in his gaze the fires of his ruthless love for her, wherever he might be.

With that image in her mind, Alice slipped into the park, slipped into a private spot alone with the spirits of nature, a perfect spot as if made for the occasion, her back to a boulder shaped into a hill, down and away from the paved walking path.

In comfortable and safe part-recline, Alice found the feel of herself, under the skirt of her dress and under the regal purple of her panties.

She came three times and although it was late Fall, it felt like Springtime again for an hour, as she walked out of the park, through the small neighborhood of cafes leading to the Metro Line station that would take her home.

At every cafe she passed, she glanced at the tables inside, as if Rick would probably be sitting at any one of them, and of course he would know she would take this route, and of course he was probably waiting to surprise her, come up behind her and put his hands--gently, so as not to mess her chestnut hair or her makeup--over her delectable chocolate eyes, "guess who?"

But when he was not at any of the tables, Alice began looking at the waiters, too, as well as the patrons. To make the surprise even crazier, to make it an even better story for her to tell her jealous friends some day, of course Rick would be wearing some disguise, to sneak up on her and make her feel even more cared for, that he put even more time and effort into this Delight, this Lark, for her in the otherwise meaningless crush of existence and unstoppable march to an unwanted and undesired death.

But no matter how much she might crane her neck, might look, might slow her walk down the street, the Metro Line station got closer and Rick was nowhere to be seen.

At the Station, Alice let one Gold Line train go before taking the next one, fifteen minutes later.

When she got off at her stop at Elysian Heights, the Federal Police arrested her.

They were professional and Alice said nothing, letting them cuff her wrists behind her back without resistance. The Federal Agents were polite and gentlemanly, even though half were women.

Alice was slow in response to all of their questions. In the internal report the Federal Agents wrote later, "Subject-A4 seemed 'in another world.' Toxicology report following mandatory blood draw showed negative presence of any chemicals or abnormal substances. Subject's heart rate and breathing remained within normal, resting ranges at all times."

But Alice was clear, and polite, in her declination of any attempt to be interviewed. ("Do you want to answer some questions? I'm sure you've got a lot to say." A long pause. A shake of her head. Another long pause. "No." "Are you sure?" A long pause. A shrug. "Come on now, Mrs. Peabody..." but after her initial no, Alice simply remained silent no matter how politely they addressed her as Mrs. Peabody.) Her entire affect, for the sixteen hours the Federal Police detained her, was of a woman momentarily delayed by someone about to arrive to pick her up and take her someplace she wanted to go. She slept a little after midnight, but the time she was awake, she kept a slight smile on her lips almost the entire time she was in Federal custody.

After sixteen hours, an attorney arrived, and Alice was released into his custody. She said nothing to him either. Federal Police followed them to the attorney's downtown office in a tall building packed with professionals and white-collars.

Forty-eight hours later, both the attorney and Alice disappeared.