Falling in love with the wrong person—even briefly—is always embarrassing. But falling in love with Leonard Lee was a humiliation that did not end no matter how many times I hung up on the boy. And I hung up on him at least 1,372 times.
It became a reflex: I saw Leonard Lee’s name and number on my cell, I answered, said, “Stop calling,” and hung up immediately.
And, of course, he’d call right back.
“The freak just wants to hear your voice,” my too-cute co-worker would remind me, making that jerking-off hand motion that guys love to make every chance they get.
And I understood my too-cute co-worker’s frustration.
From his much-too adjacent cubicle, he’d heard me hanging up on Leonard Lee dozens of times. And even though anything anyone at work does in your presence repeatedly tends to become unbearable, my co-worker was, generally, decent enough not to dissect the insanity my life had become. Still, he did occasionally illuminate the obvious: “You can block that guy’s number on your phone or change yours, or call the cops.” And those options made sense—if you actually believe that we are rational actors exercising free will. But I know better.
So I’d defend myself and say that if I didn’t pick up the phone every so often Leonard Lee would show up at my apartment or work, which he probably would’ve (had I ever been insane enough to reveal where I lived or worked). And that passed for the truth, since the actual truth was far too icky: I didn’t have the nerve, desire or self-worth necessary to eliminate Leonard Lee from my life completely.
So I resigned myself to taking Leonard’s indelible interest in me as flattery until he found another inordinately large-breasted white girl with incredibly low standards to fix his entire being upon. And as a silent compromise with the world around me, I began turning my phone off as soon as I got into work.
But even when it came to that, I slipped up. And, of course, Leonard Lee caught me at the worst possible moment.
I’d gone into the office at four AM to finish my Q1 report so I could get it to my too-cute co-worker in time for him to start his Q3 projections by nine. Of course, I was done by six thirty. At that point, I had two options: A fresh cup of French Vanilla instant coffee and plenty of time to review the Q1 report—or a quick nap at my desk.
After what felt like a full night of sleep, I woke to find my face fused to my computer’s keyboard—a surface that is both far cozier and stickier than I’d ever imagined.
In distant cubicles, I heard rustling. But I didn’t have the energy or courage to wake fully.
Then footsteps—getting louder.
“Hello,” I said, still not lifting my head.
“Does it have a pulse?” I heard my-too cute co-worker ask.
I jumped straight up, bringing the keyboard with me. I severed it from my face and set it back on my desk.
“Christ,” he said. “You been here all night?”
“Check your email. You’re good.”
I placed my hand on the top of my chest and felt my heart—pounding. I traced the grid of groves carved into my temple—oddly gratifying.
My co-worker sat down at his desk and cracked his knuckles, one-by-one. When he was done with that, he cracked his neck or his shoulder or his sternum. Some part of him that wasn’t meant to crack.
Men are not meant to work in indoors, sitting down. It makes them docile, broken, needy, compelled to spend whole weekends drowning filthy urges with beer while watching nearly nude real men ultimate fighting. And my too cute co-worker—with his constant knuckle cracking, foot tapping and tuneless humming—was the epitome of a modern caged male. Sometimes I wanted to hose him down—but I knew it would’ve pleased him too much.
“Did you think I was the stalker?” he asked. “The guy who calls? Your boyfriend?”
I did not acknowledge the question.
So the charmer repeated what he’d asked exactly: “Did you think I was the stalker? The guy who calls? Your boyfriend?”
“That’s done, seriously. He hasn’t called in, like, forever.”
And right then—of course—my phone began to ring.
The smart thing would’ve been to just turn the damn thing off. Instead, I saw Leonard’s name and I picked it up. I’m sorry; it was a reflex. “Stop calling.”
“Amazing,” my too-cute co-worker said. “I so called it. Point—Me.”
I was ready to hang up—but Leonard was sobbing. Usually it took three or four straight hang-ups before he got into sobbing and slurring incoherently. But this time he was straight at it. Mucous was definitely surfacing from the depths of his soul. His sobs were pitiable, childlike, trailing off into a noiseless oblivion. It was a sound that no decent human being could dismiss easily—unless she’d heard the same thing 1,372 times.
“I’m seriousssssssssssss, Nat,” he sobbed. “I need you. Help?”
“Stop calling,” I repeated and hung up. But there was softness in my voice—weakness. He was winning.
I set my phone on my desk and attempted to shape my hair into some presentable shape.
My too-cute co-worker studied me, giggling in a very fey way.
I thought: I’ll answer one more call, just to make sure Leonard is OK. But if he calls me “Nat,” again, I will go over there and choke him with my heel. (Only my mom, my cousin Gail—who has a stutter—and my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Ellis—the most decent human being to ever bless this earth—are allowed to call me Nat. But that’s what you get for letting a lunatic check your voicemail for you, once.)
More vibrating from my phone. This time in short, spastic bursts. A text—from him, of course: “I did it. I don’t know what to do OPlease help!!#”
Oh shit, he did IT. He did what?
“It” had to be his sister. It had to.
She was the only “it,” the only person, in his life—besides me.
Maybe he’d lost it on her, gotten violent, tossed a vase or two into her skull. I imagined that the kind of seething anger and frustration he’d been accumulating over the last eight years could spark into violence in a flash–if his nearly hairless body produced any testosterone whatsoever.
For a moment, I forgot how uncomfortable I was, or should be. The muscles in my shoulders slackened into a pleasant slouch.
I wouldn’t blame him if he hurt her. Actually, in the murky crevasses of my brain where depravity reigns, I’d be proud of him. But maybe he’d just sent her packing to her parents, as I’d begged him to do dozens of times. The idea of his sister in an airport terminal high on liquid morphine—or Demerol or whatever Leonard said she was on—disturbed me. She’d have to be shackled. The image of her in a wheelchair bowling into a crowd of elderly strangers flashed in my mind .
No, sending her away was too complicated. He must’ve killed her.
I wanted to text back, “Just what did you do?” But the cops would get his phone, his bills, his everything. By the time the autopsy was done, they’d have warrants, APBs, wanted posters.
Then the trial: “Ms. Steiner, if your codefendant was ‘stalking’ you, can you explain then why you never blocked his number or went to the police? Can you explain why, instead, you answered his calls 1,372 times in the month of May?”
“Only to hang up on him immediately. I was worried he’d follow…”
“On the 15th and the 17th, these records indicate that you spent over an hour…”
That’s when I’d plead the Fifth. I was complicit—an accessory, an accomplice. I was guilty by reasons of association and occasional insanity.
I texted Leonard, “Stay there.” Then I pushed away from my desk and told my too-cute co-worker, “OK, I’m getting lunch.”
“It’s 9:04 AM. A little early for a lunch date, no?”
“I said brunch. Sorry. I meant to say brunch.”
#
Leonard Lee and his sister lived in a gated community—one of those bland, plain-brand, I’ve-given-up-on-any-hope-for-a-better-tomorrow gated communities that became suburbia in the 80s and 90s. The kind of gated community you hope will be overrun by barbarians one day soon.
At the entrance, there was always some half-a-transient in a cramped tollbooth playing security guard. When you pulled up to the gate, he’d wake from twilight sleep, look right and left until he located his clipboard in his lap. Then he’d swallow a mouth load of phlegm and ask, “Who you here for?” which is one of those poorly phrased questions that can throw you straight into a deep Theta state of meditation. But if you could remain conscious and say, “I’m here for the Lees,” or any Jewish or Asian sounding last name, he’d buzz you right in—no questions asked.
By the third time he let me through without even acknowledging my presence. He’d just mouth something like, “Oh, some bitch for the Lees,” and the gate’s arm flew straight up.
It was noon and the streets were empty. Even the driveways were empty. Every garage door closed. Each house had the same cookie-cutter landscaping—green and coiffed. Plastic. Any house on the block could’ve been a model home.
What if Leonard’s sister is dead? I couldn’t not consider the consequences. He might get the house. A real life. That would be nice. He deserved it. After eight years indentured by his parents to that sister so she could guzzle narcotics and imagine that colors were trying to suffocate her, he could live. Basically his whole adult life had been wasted coddling severe mental illness. No wonder his only pleasure in life was stalking me.
But what good was getting rid of her if it meant he was going to jail? What if I was going to jail, too? Could I hack it? Would I become a lesbian? I’d have to find one badass dike with a crew cut and flabby biceps and fading anchor tattoos to protect me—I’d be her bitch…if I had to. Why couldn’t I think one thought at one time? Was I mentally diseased?
Had stress continually deprived my brain of oxygen for so long that the most essential lobes had wasted away to the size of an undernourished walnut? Knowing that would be a relief. Knowing that would explain everything—mostly.
Their driveway was empty, except for a dried, Mickey Mouse-shaped puddle of oil. Completely mini-vanless, just as it was when I met him.
Yes, during my brief “affair” with Leonard Lee, I drove. But if I complained or even hesitated slightly—he’d call us a cab.
And taking a cab in the suburbs was one of those questionable, overly indulgent luxuries that attracted me to Leonard. (He also only wore brand-new socks, tipped waiters excessively and voted Republican—even in 2004.) Focusing on the absurd excesses—and the sweet little cowlick he had right above his bangs that made him look as if he’d always just woken up—made it easy to ignore what or whom I was really getting into.
Yes, for six whole days and nights, Leonard was simply a bony, always slouching, independently wealthy guy with the odd sort of quirks I looked forward to developing should I ever end up independently wealthy. Sometimes he even seemed a little too normal. That’s what I told my friends and co-workers, if they asked.
And then I met his sister.
It was 12:30 AM, Tuesday night. The cab was dropping us off after a movie. As Leonard paid the driver, I was staring off into a distant driveway, trying to not see or hear how much the ride cost. From somewhere nearby, I heard a screech, a pre-historic screech.
Leonard’s head snapped toward it; something inside of him turned on instantly—like a motion-sensing light. He stiffened into perfect posture. His mouth slouched into a serious frown. Gone was the half-smile he’d adopted permanently the first time we had sex.
And there she was, standing in the middle of their lawn with one finger in the air, dressed only a pale orange bathrobe and big black boots.
The cabbie said, “Go on.” We were barely out of the car before he’d peeled out down the block.
She was ten feet from us, one foot forward—ready to charge.
I asked Leonard, “And who is that?” thinking some other skank he’d met on Match.com was having a Fatal Attraction moment.
Then her screams became words, ‘Where. The fuck. Is my minivan? Leonard?”
“It’s her—her sister, my sister,” Leonard whispered.
“Speak up, Leonard!” the sister screamed. Even from a distance it was clear that her eyes were not able to focus on the same thing at the same time.
“Don’t whisper,” he said, loudly. “It’s her condition.” Then he whispered, “Whispering gives her vertigo and foot cramps,” as if that explained anything.
Watching Leonard whisper at me again was too much for his sister. She wailed and hobbled at us—her fist in the air as if she intended to stab us with her knuckles.
He grabbed my hand and whispered, “Come with me.”
In the midst of the madness, the flailing of his sister’s knuckles, he was calm.
I’ll admit it: that turned me on. That’s how disturbed I am—at that point, I was still able to get physically aroused by Leonard Lee.
Swerving widely to our left, we cut across the lawn to the front door. “Don’t step on the azaleas, specially the blue ones,” Leonard whispered loudly, though I had no control over where were going. “They’re like her children. It’s her condition.”
Every time we headed up the walk, he’d told me not to step on the azaleas, as if he had detected my unconscious compulsion to do so. But he’d never explained why before.
We must’ve gotten too close to her children because his sister screeched, again, “Get out off my house!” Then a wild, violent scream followed by a harsh, hacking cough—the kind of cough that you have to look at for fear of being showered by shrapnel and mucous.
“Don’t stare,” Leonard said. “She doesn’t like that. It’s her condition.” He tugged on my hand. We got through the front door and Leonard slammed it behind us. “Up there,” he said. “She won’t…she can’t go up there if there’s a stranger in the house. It’s…”
“…her condition,” I said. I’m quick.
I took two steps at a time.
Leonard was right behind me, breathing hot buttered flavoring into the back of my ear.
(Now, of course, I have to speculate about why I went along with this mad chase. Why didn’t I just leave? My car was twenty feet away. And frankly, I wasn’t too intimidated by his sister. I’ve seen worse; I’ve been to public school. It must’ve been her scream—the ululation of a feral beast. Your only choice is to flee with the natives.)
I stumbled straight into Leonard’s room and he slammed the door behind us.
More screaming from below. But it wasn’t getting any closer. She was stuck—her condition. Between her screams, I heard a disgusting mix of coughing and blubbering.
Leonard backed away from me, kicking his shoes off. He stumbled over to his futon and fell on his butt. His eyes were blank and unfocused. He definitely had PTSD—tons of it. He began twitching—all kinds of flashbacks must’ve been firing off from deep in his brain. For the first time, I wanted to flatten his cowlick. I wanted him to look grown up and aware, but I didn’t dare get too close for fear he’d forget himself and dropkick me.
At that point, I considered the prospect that Leonard Lee and I might be stuck in that room together for the rest of our lives. Eventually we’d have to eat each other. I clutched my arms across my breasts.
“She’ll quit after an hour or so,” he said, finally looking me in the eye.
Again, the house rattled with her shrieks.
“Are you OK?” I asked, probably because I wanted him to ask me the same question. (That’s all I do; I live the Golden Rule. But I assure you that treating people how they want to be treated has never done me any good whatsoever.)
“Well,” Leonard said. “I don’t even know where I left her minivan. I’m not sure.”
“She has a minivan?” I don’t know why that baffled me so. I think up until that moment minivans had epitomized normalcy, middle-Americana, sanity.
“Yeah, my mom got it for her when she said that she was going to start a garden design business because she couldn’t work in movies anymore because of her condition. That was two years ago. But we just use it for shopping, mostly. I think we were at the mall or the Home Depot when she had her last thing. I went with her in the ambulance and I forgot to go back and get the minivan—until now, I guess.”
“That’s understandable.”
He nodded.
No one ever gets it when I’m being ironic.
“Do you think it’s still there, the van, wherever I left it?” he asked.
“How long as it been?”
He counted his fingers. “Maybe nine days.”
“Not ten?”
“Yeah, actually. Probably ten.”
“Sure. It’s probably fine.” What else was I going to say? I was too busy realizing that his sister had been away for exactly the amount of time I’d known Leonard. And that’s how he’d tricked me into thinking he was normal, even something of a catch.
“This is a very shitty world,” Leonard said. “I hate this shit world.” Tears began dripping down his cheeks. Big fat tears, as if he’d missed his eyes with Visine.
“Tell me about it.” I hated myself for saying the most ordinary thing possible. I needed to make it up to him. I approached him at an angle and sat down, nearly in his lap. We both sighed then leaned into each other. I found his cowlick and traced it with my finger.
Then, for the last time, we had sex.
It wasn’t terrible sex. Maybe it was the best sex we ever had. Prison sex, I guess, because we had to be quiet and it was our only release and some maniac was screaming in the distance. Prison sex—but in the missionary position, and with a condom, of course. (Leonard was forgetful, so I always had condoms with me. Yes, at some point in my life, I hope to actually grow some shame.)
Eventually, after an hour or so, I fell asleep. Immediately I was woken by a scream. Every fifteen minutes the same process repeated all night through the morning. But Leonard was apparently used to this kind of insanity. At three minutes to eight AM, I shook him awake to say, “I have to go to work.”
“OK,” he said and dug his palms into his clenched up eyes. “Maybe she’s asleep.”
Before we could move, she screamed, as if she’d heard every word we said.
“She’ll give up soon,” Leonard said. “I promise. You can’t push her when she’s like this.”
“A half hour,” I said. “Then I got to go.”
He shrugged away from me and stood up to stare at the window. After a long, doleful gaze at nothingness on the street, he turned to me and stared, as if he were trying to figure a way to Rapunzel me out of there. His eyes settled on my breasts. He smiled. A reflex, I’m sure.
My back began to ache. Nerves, or the result of sleeping in an stiff, upright position. “I’m going down.”
“She’ll attack. She’ll get incontinent. She may bite.”
I didn’t buy it…or I didn’t care…or I didn’t believe in any causal relationships anymore. Shit just happened or it didn’t. There was no reason for anything.
“I’ll risk it.”
“Nooooooooo!” he cried, a hint of his sister’s growl in his voice. And this is where I was introduced to the Leonard Lee I didn’t know. The real Leonard Lee.
He sank his head into his arms and sobbed completely.
I stood up. “I’m going now.”
He cried some more. When he realized that wasn’t going to work, he said, “OK, fine. Just stay to her right. She can’t move to her right—it’s an eardrum thing. Part of her…”
“I get it,” I said, realizing how we’d evaded her so easily on the driveway.
He opened the door and let me go, alone. And that’s when I knew we were over. Yes, it wasn’t to that point that I decided we were done—no matter how he tried to make it up to me. I’m obviously quite desperate. But even I have limits.
She was at the bottom of the stairs. Her robe was hanging open and flesh was dripping from her in body all kinds of anatomically incorrect ways. Her arms were up, guarding the bottom step like a goalie in some European sport.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, trying not to stare. “Maybe we can be friends, you know?”
She screamed, “Just leave us alone!” and clawed at me from ten steps away as if she were Kong and I was a biplane, circling. But her scream was hollow—she’d worn out her growl. I was afraid she was going to start peeing. I knew I couldn’t handle the sight of pee trailing down an adult woman’s legs.
I edged as far as I could to the left, her right. She didn’t move.
I slid three steps down and had about seven more waiting. She swiped at the air, but no peeing.
I decided to go all the way to the right, her left. She mirrored me with tiny steps until she was stuck at the far right edge of the bottom step.
I took nine or ten deep breaths. Then I did it.
I ran straight at her and just as we were about to collide, I leapt to the left, her right. She froze. Leonard knew her condition exactly. All she could do was swat at the air around me. I ducked, avoiding her arms, and got to the front door.
Before she could circle round for another swipe, I was avoiding her azaleas, especially the blue ones, and running across her lawn. I turned to watch her shriek madly as she winded to her left like a monster ballerina on a giant music box. I kept on till I got to my car door.
I watched her give up and scoot sideways to the garden hose. The engine turned over and I shifted into drive. Water splattered against my back window.
I heard her scream, “And never come back!”
As I drove away, I surveyed the area. Someone was jogging. A couple of neighbors were gasping, covering infants’ eyes. But they didn’t look as shocked as they should be. This kind of thing must’ve happened all the time.
I passed the security guard at the exit and promised myself, God, everyone and anything that ever had consciousness, awareness or scruples that I’d never ever even get close to that house again.
At first, I still answered Leonard Lee’s calls.
I tried to explain to him how I wasn’t ready for a relationship. How he was too kind for me, we’re just too similar. Work’s just crazy right now! All that bullshit guys say when they can’t man up and say, “We’re done.”
He got the point quickly and began begging me for a second chance. So I stopped answering, which resulted in him calling more often, at all hours. Occasionally, when I was lonely or drunk or bored or all three, I’d answer and ask him about his sister and listened for her shrieks in the background. I needed to know why his parents—decent, hardworking, first-generation-immigrant liquor store owners in Hartford, Connecticut—were wasting their life savings financing her insanity.
He told me that a decade ago she came out to California to become a star and became an extra instead. She’d never been able to support herself, but as her condition got worse and she started believing in her ability to see colors and tune into the electromagnetic radio waves that tune the universe, her parents got worried and started flying out every few weeks. They couldn’t handle her mood swings—the mania followed by coma followed by bursts of coherence. So when Leonard finished his AA degree, his parents decided he should move to California and watch his sister. It was his job.
Eight years of that, and now he’d done “it.”
Maybe she was dead, or gone, or at least unconscious. I had to be optimistic. It was the only way I could ever justify returning to their neighborhood.
I fished my phone out of my purse. 18 missed calls. All from him. More missed calls that I’d racked up in all 2007 in the fourteen-minute drive to meet him. Amazing how letting one psycho into your life can skew your perspective on everything.
I parked my car about a block from his house and sat there. Then I did one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life. I called Leonard Lee, again.
The phone didn’t even ring once before he picked up. “Are you here?” he asked.
“I’m not going in there.”
“I don’t see your car… I’ll come out to you.”
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“No. I love you. I’m in trouble.”
I hated when he did that—slipped an “I love you,” as if that’s what I was waiting to hear. Still I said, “Hold on,” and shifted into drive to roll along the curb at two miles per hour.
What makes being alive interesting is that there isn’t just one voice inside our brain. In moments like this, it’s clear that our brain is more like the big scene in 12 Angry Men, with one lone voice calmly, assertively arguing for rationality (“Just leave, Natalie, there’s no good to be done here.”) while the rest are screaming out nonsense like “Dude, maybe he stabbed her ear?” “Will there be blood on his hands?” “I bet he strangled her,” and so on.
It took a full minute, but there I was, outside their house. Again, the minivan was gone. On the driveway there was a thick green goop, a goop that could have only have been the result of a very close encounter with a poltergeist.
Leonard came running out from the side of the house, ducking as if he were avoiding gunfire or the blades of a helicopter. I unlocked the passenger door for him, expecting him to jump in screaming, “GO! Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
But he was calm—he’d been crying, or sweating, or both. Even his cowlick was flat and wet.
He’d done it; he must’ve.
“What did you do, Leonard?” I asked, sounding a bit screechy, a bit like his sister. What if they were contagious?
“So many fucking people in this world,” Leonard said. “A thousand babies born every minute, millions more of us all the time. And why? What fucking good do any of us do?”
He was making some sense, for once. “What did you do, Leonard?”
Why was I interrogating him? Why wasn’t I going straight to the cops? Why was I always thinking in questions?
He reached across himself to put his seatbelt on. “Please just drive,” he said.
I put my hand on the strap, refusing to let him buckle. “No, Leonard. Stop. Tell me what you did.”
“I killed them. Please go.”
It must’ve fallen into a slight shock because I let him buckle. Then I shifted into drive and the car started to roll. Them? He killed THEM. Had his parents shown up? Had all his anger woken up at once? He was clean, but sweaty. Did he already wipe the blood from his hands?
My phone began to ring. I pulled it out of my pocket. My too-cute co-worker. I answered it and immediately hung up.
“How did you do it, Leonard?” I asked and accelerated a bit. Maybe I was taking him to the police station. Maybe we were fleeing to Mexico. I didn’t know.
“I stomped. Stomped and stomped and stomped until they were in pieces. I didn’t want to but she was fucking with me. She’s always fucking with me. Then I buried them.”
“All of them?”
“There are some more in the backyard. But she doesn’t care about those, not much. Just drive they’re looking for me.”
“You buried them there?” He was even more insane than I imagined.
My phone erupted into spastic bursts. A text from my co-worker: “You only did Workshet 1? Need all to start”
Shit. I’d only done half. No wonder I’d gotten done so quickly. I turned the corner toward the gate. I needed to drop this maniac off and get back to work.
“Go faster, Nat, please.”
I slammed on the brakes and karate chopped my steering wheel. “Could you do me one simple, fucking favor? Could you never call me ‘Nat’ again? Please.”
His entire body stiffened. For a second, I thought I’d actually scared the shit out of him.
But he began to raise his arm to point directly in front of us. “Oh, fuck. There she is.” He covered his face with his arms.
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, and she knows.”
Parked facing us in the out lane of the exit to the gated community was the mini-van. It was just as I imagined it—brown and wide and covered with goop.
“She knows what?”
“That I did it.”
“Did what, Leonard? Seriously. What the fuck did you do?”
He crumbled over and that turned into tears and sobbing, his usual sobbing. “I killed her azaleas, all of them. Even the blue ones.”
I was going to call him a fucking idiot and kick him out of my car but the sight of his sister struggling to get out of the passenger-side of the minivan distracted me.
She was wearing a sundress and Ugg boots—like an almost normal human being.
As she limped toward my car, she seemed able to even focus on one thing with both eyes. And that one thing was Leonard.
My phone began to ring. My too-cute co-worker, again. I answered and said, “Stop calling.” Then I turned it off.
Leonard pulled his arms from his eyes. “Who was that?” he asked.
His sister kept coming. She hobbled but kept up a good pace. There was something wrong with her left leg. It was too dark, plastic almost. It hit me: it wasn’t real. She had a prosthetic.
That was her condition.
Leonard reached for the shifter and put us into reverse. “Gas, gas. Go!” he said. I pulled the keys out—the engine went dead. I needed to hear what his sister was going to say.
There was movement inside the mini-van. The side door appeared to open and a little, old Asian woman got out. A little, old Asian man followed her. The stopped at the hood of the car and grasped onto to each other for support. Seeing them, Leonard crumbled over to sob.
His sister got to my car and turned toward my side. I rolled down my window.
Using my car as leverage she made her way around to me.
“Hey, I’m really sorry about that night,” she said. “I thought you were one of his drug buddies and I was trying to scare you away, you know. So I wouldn’t have to call the cops again. I wasn’t well because of the fall and the pneumonia. I’m sure he told you.”
“Drug buddies?”
I looked at Leonard. His hands were wrapped over his neck and he was trying to hide under his arms. Was it bad that I was just happy he had anyone who he could call a buddy?
“Yeah, he’s got a few. Real gems. One of them stole my extra leg.” She laughed in a very sane way. “But I didn’t realize how bad off Lenny was till he took all the Demerol I got for my fall and replaced them chewable vitamins. But don’t worry. He told us all about you, that you’re not like that. You’re trying to help.”
“Oh, Jesus. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, he’s a good actor. He’s had us fooled for a while.” She leaned toward my window. “Are you OK, Lenny?”
His sobs became loud. I looked up at his parents who’d been joined by the security guard who was eating an extra long stick of beef jerky. His parents were so shaky and worried—like they weren’t sure they could even breathe the air in this atmosphere. Poor people. Why do people have kids when they can turn out to be Leonard Lee? I just wanted to hug them both—together.
“They aren’t mad, Lenny, seriously. They just want you to get help.”
“NO! I can’t” he screamed and sat up. His face was drenched. “Who’s going to take care of you?”
“I’m moving home, Lenny,” she said, as I tried to disappear completely so they could talk. “Mom and dad need help at the shop.” Then she said something in another language. Chinese, I assume.
“What about the house?” He swiped at his face sending mucus and tears and sweat everywhere.
“Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about the flowers anymore,” she said.
At that, Leonard doubled over and started sobbing again. “I’m really sorry. I really am. I was crazy,” he said over and over. “I just don’t want to leave her.”
He meant me. He didn’t want to leave me.
“It’s only 90 days, Lenny,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”
“You—“ I tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come easily. “You should go, Leonard. Get well. You really should.”
He sat up and looked at me. “Will you visit me, really?”
I turned my head slightly so I could see his sister. She looked so concerned and so normal. I couldn’t fuck this up. “You can call me anytime, whenever.”
“And you’ll answer?”
I didn’t even think about it. “Yes, definitely.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and hugged me. I felt drool and snot and goop pressing into my face. He pressed closer to get a good feel. Then I felt his sister’s hand on my back, rubbing in circles.
“Thanks, Nat,” she said. And when she said “Nat” it didn’t even sound too terrible. “You’re saving his life, Nat, really. You are.”
His parents wouldn’t let me leave without hugging me, which was nice. They both felt slight and smelled like some bland soup. Even the security guard wanted to shake my hand, which I did reluctantly. By the time I got out of there it was almost noon.
I was about a mile away from their gated community when I turned on my phone. Five messages from my too-cute co-worker.
I hit a red light and decided that it was time to make a change. I went into my phone’s contact list, clicked on Leonard Lee’s name and selected “Remove.” My phone said, “You will no longer receive calls from this number. Are you sure you want to remove?” I pressed yes and turned the thing off.
The light turned green and I accelerated. For a minute or two, my brain went totally silent. Not one thought. Not one question. For once, everything was easy.
***********
This is a new story–any feedback is appreciated.
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