Agoraphobia and Ecstasy Ch. 11-20

Jaymee let out a closed mouth scream, her nostrils flaring into large dark circles as bad as the ones beneath her eyes, and then she bolted off my porch, stomping down the sidewalk in the direction of her house. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and retreated back into the now relative darkness of my home. It was then I noticed dirty footprints trailing from my front door past the sofa around the staircase toward the kitchen. It looked like I'd had a party, mud tracked everywhere, and dishes left on the counter. I didn't smash her garden as bad as she led on but if someone really did do it, I was glad she didn't walk through my kitchen to see the mess, or the flowers in the vase on my island.

My head was pounding like the bass drums in a marching band at the annual Fourth of July parade, and all I wanted was to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and sleep. I stumbled my way around the bar and grabbed a glass, filling it with water as I reached for the bottle of aspirin I kept in my purse, which was on the counter by the refrigerator as usual. The water was cool, refreshing my sore throat, but doing nothing for the aches in my shoulders. Rubbing my eyes, I leaned back against the counter and strained to remember what had happened the night before.

I remember dinner with Siphon and him bringing me home to Mira waiting in front of my house. I remember inviting her in and having a conversation about the flowers--Jaymee's prized possessions. The thought gave me a chuckle which jolted my head causing a surge of pain, and I instantly clamped my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, regretting the outburst. When I opened my eyes I saw exactly why my head hurt so badly.

On the table in the lounge room off the garage sat three empty bottles of wine and a few empty baggies. Two wine tumblers sat there, one still half full. An empty pizza box was open, napkins lying where the pizza should have been, one crust half eaten and still stuck in a small container of what looked to be ranch dressing, tipped on its side and spilled into the box. No wonder I remembered nothing.

I rifled through my purse in hopes of finding my phone but came up empty. I wanted to call the maid service and have them clean the mess because I did not have energy to deal with it. Frustrated, I sighed, finished my glass of water, and practically dived onto the lounge sofa, ignoring the mud on my pants and covering myself with a throw. A wave of fatigue pulled me into its depths, and I relaxed into the sleep that claimed me as its own.

***

A chirping sound startled me awake. I jerked so hard I nearly fell off the sofa and sent the empty wine bottles tumbling to the floor, the wine bottles I'd all but forgotten about. It was dark in the room, too dark. The chirping sound just kept screaming at me, but I tried to ignore it long enough to get my bearings. I was in the sitting room off the garage, the microwave clock was flashing which meant the power had gone out at some point, and I could hear rumbles of thunder outside.

Blinking hard against the darkness, I groped around for my phone which was making the horrible racket. I found it beneath the table under a dirty napkin face down. A weather alert was flashing on the lock screen, a flash flood warning for the city--must have been a lot of rain. I dismissed the alert and yawned, feeling my body begin to arch back as a stretch suddenly attacked me. My phone said it was five-twenty-seven a.m. which meant my alarm upstairs would be going off in less than a half hour to force me into the work week again, but my head was still throbbing.

I cajoled myself off the couch by promising my aching body that Starbucks was waiting for me and my typical barista would miss me if I didn't make an appearance. Then found my way to the stairs as I sent a text to the maid service I used once a month that I would require an additional cleaning this month by the end of the day today. Twice I tripped over a step as I made my way up to my bathroom, flipping light switches as I went. I tossed my phone on the vanity next to my perfectly ordered towel, soap dispenser, and toothbrush case.

The mirror never lied to me, but this morning I felt like it was. The sleep circles beneath my eyes aged me ten years easily, and the streaks from mascara on my cheeks indicated I had cried at some point. I didn't remember crying. In fact, I didn't remember much at all.

Of course it was typical for me to have blackouts and forget things. In fact it happened almost every weekend when I dipped, but I'd never had anything this bad. I also had not run into my sister's best friend in the seven years since I'd last seen her and moved to Utica to get away. I wasn't even sure how she'd found me, and I wasn't all too happy about it either. I'd moved there to get away from everything and everyone that reminded me of Nanette and what had happened. I didn't want to be reminded. I didn't want to relive it. The drugs and drinking were doing a fine job of tampering down the events of my past, and Mira had to show up and make them all resurface like a rubber duck in a bathtub you try to hold under the water but it just keeps popping up.

I peeled off my dirty clothes as I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, hot water filling the bathtub and making bubbles stack up upon themselves. I wanted to sink into the depths and drown. To let the water fill my lungs and take me the way that horrible man took Nan. Images of her terrified face jackhammered into my thoughts relentlessly assaulting the façade I'd erected around my own heart that kept me safe. Tears stung my eyes as I tried once again to remember what had happened after Mira showed up, but no amount of interrogation would force my locked mind to cough up facts.

The water was hot as I lowered myself down into it. Hot enough that it hurt and left my skin bright red, but I wanted to feel something. I let my hair down and relaxed back, pulling bubbles up over my body like a thick blanket hiding me from the reality of the morning and the expected intrusion of life upon my hiding place. The alarm would go off. I would crawl out of the bath and dress in something professional and drive my BMW to my office where I would sit and listen to other people's problems knowing full well I had my own avalanche of emotions waiting to cascade down the mountain of lies I'd been living with.

Nan was not just on senior trip anymore. She was dead. She hadn't died a martyr to the disease that touches every human life; she had been taken--stolen from me, like a thief in the night creeps into your home and pockets your most prized possessions and slinks out unnoticed, except I noticed. A sob reached up my throat and escaped in a loud voice out of my mouth, a grotesque wail of a cry that startled me as it echoed around my bathroom, but it wouldn't stop. I cried for Nan. I cried for my lost innocence. I cried for the moments I'd never have with my parents, the days I was supposed to enjoy in my youth.

Pain clawed at my skin. It came in waves crashing over my heart. It stole the air from my lungs and replaced it with lead weights, pulling me lower into my own misery. The blackness of grief tightened its coil around my neck, digging its talons into my mind and breathing its fire in my face, suffocating me.

Wine wouldn't stop it. Drugs wouldn't stop it. Sex wouldn't stop it.

The pain leached out of the room inside my mind where I'd locked it and permeated every cell in my body, every breath in my lungs, every single thought in my head. The water swayed and swirled around me as my body shook, a blubbering mess of mud, bubbles and tears. To sink beneath the surface would end it all, all the pretending, all the pain, all the memories. And then my tears stopped. The idea that the pain could end brought change down to the very root of where the pain had come from and I began to lower myself in the water, letting it consume me.

Then my alarm went off...

17

A misty fog rolled out of the club doors every single time someone opened them. It wasn't smoke. The gaggle of scraggly men standing by the door with their scantily clad women, puffing on cigarettes and who knows what, made that obvious to me. A strange gangly woman with dark hair and a pointed nose sat in her car too, staring at the door the way I was. I'd sat there for several hours, though I had intended to enter the club long before it opened to speak with this Siphon character, but I'd not been able to even open my car door, the outdoors being far to terrifying to risk venturing the few steps from my car to the club's door.

As disgusting as it was, I even relieved my bladder in a bottle, which now had its lid on and was

sitting on the floor of the passenger side of the car, staring at me, laughing at my own disgusting filth which I was more willing to put up with than going outside. My phobia of the sky falling argued with my phobia of germs and gross things, and I stayed frozen with my hand on the door handle until late in the night.

I watched as people entered and left the building. Some of them looked like fairly normal people dressed for work or in casual clothes. Some of them were very theatrical types, dressed in wild, flashy colors, sporting crazy styles. One even wore a giant hat with feathers protruding out of it, and it made me wonder if there was a costume event going on that particular evening.

It reminded me of the time our class in high school decided to dress up for spirit week and with our school mascot being the eagle, one boy decided to collect feathers from the local woods and attached them all over his body with ghastly make up smeared on his face--as theatrical as one could even get. I wasn't surprised to find out that later in life he turned out to become a star on Broadway.

When the parking lot was empty, and my car was one of the only three left in the lot, I turned old Betty on and rolled up to the door, hoping I could scrape together the courage to dart from car to building if I parked a few steps away from the door. No one was coming or going, so I didn't think it would matter if I was parked illegally. I must have waited a tad too long because a very gruff-looking middle-aged man opened the club door and almost slammed into Betty before he noticed I was parked there. He shouted obscenities at me before smacking the hood and strolling across the parking lot to a large SUV. One car down, two left. I was certain the final car belonged to the bartender.

The clock glowed a green two-forty-seven in the morning and I yawned. I had to pee again, despite having forced myself to not drink anything all day after the pee bottle my phobias had squabbled about. And I felt another strange urge coming on, an anxiety-induced urge which had unfortunately been more common since I had started investigating this damn case. I had to use the toilet, and it had to be now.

I tried to Kegel my way out of it, the urge to defecate causing my entire stomach to rumble and groan, but I couldn't fight it. The idea that I would have to talk to the bartender had caused my bowels to erupt worse than that damn squirrel, and I knew if I didn't make a run for it, I'd have to fill Betty with gasoline and burn her to the ground because there was no way in hell I was ever going to clean that mess up.

Instinctively, I pocketed my phone and wallet, which had previously been removed for comfort reasons, and for ease of access. My camera and laptop had stayed at home for this trip so there was no real reason to lock Betty as I turned her off and darted from car to club. The club was brighter than I expected, and there were actually three patrons still seated at the bar, but I didn't pay them any attention. I darted for the back hallway where a lit sign indicating the restrooms beckoned me.

The hallway was a bit darker than the rest of the club, and I was thankful. Who knows what kind of awful, traumatic reaction I would have had to the filth if I'd been able to see it. As it was, I barely made it to a stall to relieve my bowels' anxiety tantrum. Sitting there gave me even more anxiety. I hadn't thought about what I was doing. I had only acted out of emergency--diarrhea waits for no one. But as I sat there, I slowly felt the plague crawling across my skin. Mildew on the floor tiles, toilet paper on the floor. Vulgar words scratched into the paint on the backside of the door and walls of the stall--all of it a bit too reminiscent of high school. Did people actually still do this stuff?

There was no soap, and no paper towels in the in the dispenser. I may as well have been a savage using a river to swish my hands through. At least the bathroom door opened outward, so I didn't have to touch it with my soggy hands. I carried them like surgeon who'd just scrubbed for surgery as I walked out to the bar where the few men who remained sat laughing. Whatever it was they found funny annoyed me, and I ignored them, choosing to stand a few feet away watching the bartender work. He looked up and rolled his eyes as he tossed me a towel, clearly understanding how he'd failed as the owner of this wretched establishment.

"Hey," one of the drunken men at the bar slurred. He raised his hand, glass of some sort of drink along with it, pointing a finger at me. "You got AIDS?" he asked, which drew a loud raucous laugh from both of his friends. They laughed like children do when there is some fun inside joke going on, smacking the bar and doubling over. The blond on his right spilled a drink and that caused more laughter.

"Enough guys!" the bartender growled, obviously irritated by them. "You'll have to excuse Tim. He's had a bit too much to drink tonight and he was just going."

"Hey, Siphon. He's got AIDS..." The blond snickered again, making his comrades laugh again.

"I don't have AIDS." Their taunting infuriated me. I threw the hand towel onto the bar and gritted my teeth, trying to will myself to sit down and act like a normal human but the idea of there being germs on the stool in front of me kept me upright, rooted like a goddamn tree in place.

"Chill out, buddy," Tim said, pushing himself back from the bar and downing the rest of his drink. "AIDS means alcohol-induced diarrhea syndrome...you know, 'cause you ran to the toilet?"

The other men laughed their way out of the club, following Tim. Who knows where they went. I didn't even care at that point. I turned my attention back to the bartender who was removing glasses from the bar and washing it. He looked a little less tense now that the trio of trouble was gone, but he still scowled.

"You know last call was over a half hour ago and we close in--" he glanced at the wall clock "--seven minutes."

"I-I know. I didn't come here to drink. My name is Kenji Yakamura. I am a reporter for the Tribune." I stepped forward but still didn't sit down. The germs could try to jump on me, but I would never allow them to stroll right on over.

"I don't have anything to say to the press."

The bartender dunked the glasses into his sink of hot water and scrubbed at them furiously. Water splashed around in the sink and sloshed out over the edge onto his shoes, but he didn't seem to notice. It soaked his apron and dripped to the rubber mat under his feet creating a puddle--of course there were several other puddles there which I hoped he was planning to mop up. I almost offered to do it myself, until he looked me in the eye and glowered down his nose as he reached for the towel I'd used to dry my hands and began polishing a glass with it.

"If that's all you can leave now."

"Uh, no. It's just that... I mean... I saw a video that--"

"Spit it out man. You act like this is your first story."

I took a deep breath in and forced it out my nose with frustration. "Do you know a woman named Daphne Fox?"

His eyes grew a bit wider as I said her name, but he had a good poker face. His shoulders remained calm, his jaw slack. He set the glass on a shelf and reached into the soapy water for another before answering.

"Yeah, what's it to you?" His eyes resolved, this time thinning out into almost indistinguishable slits.

"Well, she was last seen with one of the victims in the round of disappearances that have plagued Utica. I just need some information on the case, and with the photos I've seen of you and her here in the club, I felt like you might be able to help me."

Siphon put the glass on a shelf, slung his towel over his shoulder, glanced around the room, then leaned over the bar. "How do you know she was last seen with that guy?" His upper lip twitched--his tell. He knew something, but he didn't want to tell me.

I had never played a good-cop bad-cop routine out because I'd never even been one to speak to people. My MO was to hide and let the PI do it, but this time it was different. I'd run out of petty cash, and Gary had put me on a story I hadn't even been working on. Sure he knew I was still following leads for this story, but I'd ignored his calls and thus the flow of funds stopped. I'd deal with that later. For now, I had one of my prime suspects right in front of me, and I had questions.

"You're not the police. Why should I answer anything you ask?"

"Well, it appears to me that you have a certain fondness for Ms. Fox." I used an informal way of referring to her because I didn't want him to even begin to know how close I was with her. Not that I was close at all. I mean she was my Daphne, but she didn't even know it. Even though I knew one day she would come for "coffee," and I would be able to articulate my interest in her, right now it was just unspoken things that passed between us, like that touch of her hand in her office.

"How do you know that?" Siphon pushed off the bar and walked around the end, grabbing the towel as he went. His top lip was still quivering as he wiped down each barstool.

My cell phone had the proof, so I dipped into my pocket and pulled it out, opening the photos app and scrolling through until I found the several dozen photos I'd saved from my earlier search of his sketchy personal life.

"Here." I held my phone up, showing him a picture of the two of them talking. "And here." I scrolled through the pictures one at a time, slowly so he could see each one.

"You have no proof that is Daphne at all," he mumbled, looking away from the phone. His exterior remained calm like the crystal reflection of a body of water undisturbed, all but his upper lip, which now was stretched tight into a thin line, puckering only slightly in the center as it twitched.

"But I do." The last photo I sent was very incriminating. The PI had sent it to me only yesterday which is what prompted my mission to the club for this very interaction. Daphne wore a black mini dress, her hair swept up into a breathtaking curly look, a clasp holding it so it cascaded across her left shoulder, leaving her right shoulder exposed. She sat at a very classy restaurant, her eyes sparkling, probably with drink, as she smiled at the man standing in front of me.

"How did you get that!" he snapped, grabbing my phone and scowling at it. "Were you following me?"

I held my hand out for my phone as he angrily flicked through photo after photo, any semblance of a poker face now gone. I had enraged him, and my stomach began to flutter at that thought. He was quite large, much larger than I was, and fear played at my thoughts.

"My PI took it."

"You hired a PI to follow us? That was a date, and it was private."

"Yes, so you don't mind answering some questions for me then, to make sure my PI doesn't leak this to the police in conjunction with the photo last seen of Daphne leaving this establishment with the victim?" I gave him a second to think about it. Of course I was bluffing. I only hoped he would think me intimidating and not weak. "I mean I can only imagine what it would do for business to know the owner hid this information from the police." The way I did.