Robert gets up from the bed all confused and dazed and feeling fine. Typical after sex feeling after you do it five times within two hours on a abnormally hot day for March in Canada. Swaggering around the hotel room looking for that new pack of smokes he grabbed before heading back upstairs last night with his ladyfriend, he yells out to his girl.
"Missy, get up. We need to get out of here. Reservations are at 9 sharp".
He met Missy a while ago. They met a used bookstore. They were both reading the writings of Jim Caroll while both sipping on large coffees. They joked on how Caroll's writings got them addicted to unconventional coffee mixes. He with the four sugars and two milks while she enjoyed the unheard of quadruple quadruple caffeine disaster. They flirted that day and continued to do so the three times they saw each other after at the same mom and pop bookshop. Missy finally bit the bullet and asked out the shy but sharp English mate. That was a Wednesday. By Saturday they had been to the Art Gallary twice, the Museum once and spent every night having dinner at a small sushi buffet place down the street from his China Town apartment. They just had a spark. Through conversation, sexually and mentally. They felt like even thuogh it's been less than a month, they knew each other for a lifetime. Both had similar experiences.
Missy broke her nose at the age of nine. Robert was ten. Robert tried coke in grade 7. Missy also sniffed in seventh grade. However, they came from two different places in the world. She from a rich upscale family while he had been a city boy from a middle class family living in the Hell's Kitchen part of town where he stayed with his father while his mother worked as a maid on the other end of town and would stay with her parents during the week only to come home on Saturdays and parts of Sundays.
Missy and Robert made a deal not to talk about the past. They wanted to move forward and look to start a whole new life together. However, as much as they tried, something from their past would creep up and haunt them. That's why they try to get away and have a pretend vacation on the weekends acting like tourists in their own city.
Missy rolls over in the bed, messy hair and unruly clothes mangled up with her eyes barely open.
"What time is it?" She mumbles with a smokers cough not too far behind while she sips on left over Vodka from the previous night.
"It's just after 8", hinted Robert. "You just have enough time to get showered, throw something on and rush down to make it in time.".
Missy continues to lay in the bed looking bewildered.
"What's wrong?" quips Robert. "Get going! I'm famished.".
"I don't know." she stated questionably.
"Umm..Why not? It's your favorite restaurant", Robert remarks.
"No. Not dinner. I still want to go but I just don't know." Missy said slowly trying to piece the right words together while blankly staring at the hotel room's roof.
"Huh?" Robert confused, trying to concentrate on tying his tie properly and not loosing count of all the bills he's counting from his black leather wallet.
"I don't know if I want to go with you. Anywhere. Anymore". Tears slowly form from the bottom of Missy's eye. "I think we just have nothing really in common"
Robert tears off is done-up tie and sits down on the foot of the bed more confused than before.
Missy sits up on the bed and starts to hug a nearby pillow wile turning down Everything But The Girl playing on the soft rock station in the background. "Yeah, we do have things in common, but not really." Missy says slowly while looking for words to clarify herself. She pauses for a minute trying to get everything that is about to leave her mouth absolutely right. Robert realizes that it's been on her mind for a while, so he potentially waits for her explanation.
After a couple minutes she finally hints, "It's like you're my fantasy guy. Not my dream guy. You know?". Like the manly man Robert is, he doesn't know. He looks her in her eyes and maybe for the first he's sincere with her and quietly sighs, "No. No, Missy. I don't understand".
She shrugs, plays with her hair for a second and rubs her eyes in frustration. She looks around looking for some kind of way to sum up her hidden feelings in an easy way a deep thinking construction worker would comprehend. "It's like if I saw you at a bar, I would rather work to get your attention by you being sober rather than you being drunk and making it easy for me to get you into bed that night".
"Ok" exclaims Robert coming back to reality starting to know where his love is coming form.
"See, If I really loved you, I would wait till the next day for you to be sober so I can have a conversation with you and see who you really are."
"Yeah". Robert sits up on the bed, legs crossed listening closely.
"But I don't love you. Never have. I just wanted you drunk. I just wanted you right there and then. I just wanted you and me to be together that night. Didn't care if you called me or I called you or if we ever spoke again". Missy jumped up from her bed in excitement like she had been practicing these lines for months and it's her first night on the big stage.
Robert finally gets it. Fully. "But what about the talks we've had? The experiences we both shared as children? Our common interests?" He asks trying to fight the notion that they would break up right there and then.
"We were needing something that day in the book store. We were both looking for something. That day we both opened up ourselves because we wanted to be read. We were looking for comfort. Not for love..." Missy starts to cry reaching for her belongings while packing up her overnight bag. "I'm finished you. I finished reading you, Robert. I need to move on now".
Robert jumps off the king sized bed, runs over to Missy and hugs her. He thanks her for her honesty and pushes her out the door. He still hears her tears pouring down her young face while paddling through the drops down the hallway to the elevator.
Robert sits on the hotel bed throwing around the covers that they made love on just an hour before.
-----
An hour later after realizing he had fallen asleep, Robert gets back up and heads to the washroom to clean up. He thinks about going to the bar downstairs to drink his sorrows away. However, He picks up his bags and heads out. Walking to the elevator he finds a torn out page from a book. He stops to pick it up. He
notices it's a quote. He reads;
“We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others - even when we cause it.”
"Huh, Jim Caroll" he snickers, while putting the lost page in his pocket. Robert pushes the down button of the elevator wondering how else will Caroll effect his life and addictions.
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