Thirty Hours: a semi memoir of psychosis and love Read online

  You tossed back your shot and gestured at me with the empty glass. “You’re kind of creepy.”

  “I swear to you all of this is just a coincidence,” I said, and I wanted to touch your shoulder to reassure you, but knew it would come off as kind of creepy so I didn’t. “I saw you in the fountain, then I saw you in a bar in Fort Worth about a month later, then I saw you at that pharmacy in Grand Prairie tonight, so—”

  “So you followed me here.” You raised your eyebrows. “Scratch that. You’re really creepy.”

  “I was just wondering why you would do something like that. I can’t imagine getting naked in a public place. I mean, what is that? And then I saw you twice after that, so I had to ask.”

  “That’s still creepy.”

  “I can see how it seems that way, but I’m not here to hit on you or kidnap you or murder you or anything like that.” I reached for the paper, flipped the pages to my article about George and Michael Traynor, and pointed at the byline. “That’s me.”

  You peered at it and then at me. “Yeah right.”

  I pulled out my wallet and tossed my ID on the bar as the roughneck and three of his buddies belted out, “Love is a burning thing! And it makes a fiery ring! Bound by wild desire! I fell in to a ring of fire!”

  There was cigarette smoke in the air and I could’ve sworn the City of Fort Worth had previously banned smoking in bars. You glanced at my ID and then at me again before thumping the ID back across the bar.

  “Okay, Seth McCollum, reporter for the Dallas Morning News,” you said, full of sass. “You want to interview me or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know, you can probably just get the police report.”

  “I don’t want the police report. I want to know why you did it.”

  You caught the bartender with your eyes and twirled your finger in a circle. “How ‘bout because I felt like it?”

  “Even though you knew you’d be arrested? Or did you not know you’d be arrested?”

  You shrugged. “Wasn’t the first time I’ve been arrested.”

  “Really? What else have you been arrested for?”

  “All kinds of stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  The bartender set down the drinks and you sipped the whiskey first, then the beer. Your drinking habits were excessive for someone your age. And—again, maybe it’s the reporter in me—it made me think there was a story attached to that also, but I also needed there to be a story attached to it because my job depended on it.

  “So you are interviewing me, Seth McCollum.”

  “Right now I’m mostly curious.”

  “Why?”

  I tapped the newspaper. “I write this monthly column. Humans of Dallas. It’s basically a portrait of average, yet interesting people who live here.”

  “I don’t live in Dallas.”

  I flipped my palm. “That doesn’t matter. I think you could be interesting.”

  “You think I could be interesting.”

  “Well I don’t know anything about you beyond the fact that you showed your goods to everyone on Young Street, but that’s pretty interesting.”

  You threw your head back, laughed, and your laugh was as infectious as your smile. “My goods!”

  I shrugged. “That’s what you did, right?”

  “So were you looking?”

  “I tried very hard not to, but it was all sort of right there.”

  You stopped laughing and squinted at me. “Ohhh… You’re that guy.”

  “Which guy?”

  “I saw you. You were looking at my face and not my boobies.”

  “I was trying to be polite.”

  “I noticed,” you said as your gaze shot to my feet and drew back up to my face. You one-hundred-percent just checked me out and I had to remind myself again that I wasn’t there trying to score, because I’m not the kind of guy who goes to a bar to try to score.

  “The taste of love is sweet!” the roughnecks hooted and bottlenecks clinked together. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted into my nostrils again and I coughed. “When hearts like ours meet! I fell for you like a child! Oh, but the fire went wild!”

  “I also noticed you’re kind of cute,” you added with firm eye contact. “How old are you, Seth McCollum?”

  “Twenty-nine. How old are you? And what’s your name?”

  You shook your head and dumped the shot into your throat. “Nope.”

  “Nope what?”

  “I don’t know you well enough to tell you that.”

  “Normally the first step in knowing someone is telling them your name. How are we supposed to get to know each other if you don’t even tell me your name?”

  “You’re the reporter. Figure it out.” You took a gulp of beer and then pointed at me. “If you’re a reporter you should be able to find out my name without me telling you. I’m not a reporter and even I know that.”

  “Or you could make things easy and just tell me.”

  You snorted before giving me another once-over. “Come back to my place and I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  I had to laugh because damn. Who does that? You do that. But only with me, or so I’d come to find out in short order. “I appreciate the offer, but that’s not the way this works.”

  “The way what works?”

  “You’re a potential source. Going home with you like… you know, like that would be a conflict of interest.”

  You turned your nose up. “How do you know that’s what I was suggesting?”

  “I can just tell.” I sipped some beer, eyeballing you over the bottle, and I couldn’t decide if you were just a shameless flirt or maybe something a little seedier. “So are you a prostitute?”

  You scoffed.

  “No judgement.” That wasn’t true—not completely. But I’d seen worse, so it didn’t bother me. “I’m just asking.”

  “Of course not. I just think you’re cute. And you’ve already seen me naked, so…”

  Either the alcohol had suddenly caused my internal body temperature to skyrocket or the bar’s shitty HVAC system gave out, because I was hot out of nowhere and tugged my collar. “Now who’s hitting on whom?”

  You laughed and shrugged. “Who followed who all the way from Grand Prairie? You’re still winning in the creepy contest.”

  “Okay, how about this? Why don’t you want to tell me your name?”

  “I’m trying to be mysterious.”

  “No, you’re playing hard-to-get.”

  “I invited you to come back to my place. That’s basically the opposite of hard-to-get.”

  “I mean hard-to-get in terms of what I’m really after.”

  “So if you weren’t trying to interview me,” you said, spinning toward me on the stool and tapping your foot against my shin, “would you come back to my place?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just bec—”

  “Are you gay?”

  “A guy not wanting to go home with you isn’t an automatic indicator of being gay, you know.”

  “Got a girlfriend?”

  “Nope.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “So why not?”

  I chuckled. “I’m just not going to sleep with someone I don’t even know.”

  “Why not?”

  “You realize this is basically sexual harassment, right?”

  You arched an eyebrow. “You realize you’re basically a stalker, right?”

  Fair enough and pretty much true. “Why do you want me to go home with you so badly?”

  You shrugged. “My house is too quiet sometimes.”

  “So you live alone?”

  You hesitated as you very subtly knitted your brows together and sadness briefly blanched your face. Something was there. That was immediately obvious. “Yeah.”

  “Have you always lived alone?”

  “Nope.”

  “So living alone is rece
nt?”

  You dropped your head backward and huffed at the ceiling. “You could say that.”

  Yes! Now we were getting somewhere. “Who were you living with before?”

  “Just nobody.”

  Damn it. Shut down. Of course. “Do you live around here?”

  “Jeez, Seth McCollum, you are freaking nosy. Are you sure you’re not some kind of P.I. or something?”

  “You just offered to take me to your house. If I decided to go home with you I’d know where you live. So why not just tell me?”

  After downing the last of your beer, you stood up and took a step to stand right between my knees. You leaned forward. You were close enough to kiss me, but didn’t—I was either relieved or disappointed, but couldn’t decide which—and I was able to really see your features for the first time.

  Your peculiar thinness accentuated your high cheekbones, and between that and your dark eyebrows, it gave your face a mature, almost elegant look in spite of your youth. I wondered if, perhaps, that mature appearance may have had more to do with life experiences—specifically too much alcohol while too young—that aged you prematurely.

  Regardless, you’re attractive. And you were standing between my legs.

  “So why not just come home with me?”

  And you were practically begging me to sleep with you. Oh, sweet temptation.

  I exhaled and my breath came out as an indisputably nervous laugh. “I’ll pass.”

  You stepped away. “Then I will too.” You set some money down on the bar and gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “Have a good night, Seth McCollum.”

  “Have a good night, Holly.”

  You glanced at me with your eyebrow lifted again. “Holly.”

  I shrugged. “Holly Golightly. You remind me of her. And it was worth a shot.”

  “Nice try, but you’re way off.”

  Your hair brushed my shoulder as you passed me and there was more cigarette smoke in the air and the roughnecks had moved on to Stevie Ray Vaughn.

  “Well you've heard about love givin' sight to the blind! My baby's lovin' cause the sun to shine! She's my sweet little thang! She's my pride and joy!”

  You didn’t stagger as you left, and I decided I wouldn’t follow you again. After all, you’d left the newspaper on the bar. That was another lead, but I had no idea if this was going to turn into a story worth writing. And if that was the case I was going to have to figure out how to make it a story worth writing.

  After you’d disappeared out the door, I picked up the paper and skimmed the lines, noting the circled letters, and the pattern didn’t take long at all to figure out.

  N, M, W, Y, N, M, W, Y, N, M, W, Y.

  Over and over and over again for three pages, front and back. Every headline, every byline, and every caption, the same pattern.

  N, M, W, Y, N, M, W, Y, N, M, W, Y.

  I pulled out my phone and added the information I’d gathered to my one note about you. This was truly the beginning.

  Horseless Lady Godiva:

  - Lives alone, not happy about it, hasn’t always lived alone.

  - House seems to be in White Settlement or West FW.

  - N, M, W, Y.

  I waved at the bartender for another round.

  “Thanks,” I said after he set the beer down. “Hey, has that woman ever been in here before?”

  “Sure has,” he said, picking up a rag and wiping the counter.

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  “How often does she come in?”

  He shrugged. “I’d say at least once a week. Usually Saturday night, but I’ve seen her here during the week sometimes.”

  “Does she ever come in with anyone?”

  “Sure doesn’t.”

  “Do you know if she’s ever been busted for drinking and driving or public intoxication or anything like that?”

  He twitched his Wilford Brimley mustache. “You a cop or something?”

  “No, I’m just curious.”

  “Ahh…” He scratched the side of his bald head. “I did have to call the police once because she climbed onto the roof and wouldn’t come down.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “She climbed onto the roof?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “No clue.”

  “Was she drunk?”

  “Not that time.”

  “So she’s been drunk here before?”

  He chuckled. “It’s a bar, son.”

  “Has she ever left with anyone while she was drunk?”

  “She’s never left with anyone. She never talks to anyone. Just sits there writing on the newspaper and knockin’ back shots. Sometimes she plays songs on the juke box.”

  “You let her come back even though she climbed onto the roof?”

  He shrugged again. “She didn’t hurt anything and she never causes any real trouble. I was mostly worried she was going to jump or something.”

  “Does she seem like she’d do something like that?”

  He shrugged a third time. “Don’t know why else she’d be on the roof.”

  Just then a woman who could’ve been Angela Lansbury’s long-lost Texan twin appeared from out of a door behind the bar. “Are y’all talking about that skinny girl? She’s such an oddball, that skinny girl. Drinks like a fifty-year-old man even though she’s only twenty-three.”

  I perched forward on the stool. “Do you know her?”

  “Just that she comes in here all the time.”

  “How do you know how old she is?”

  “Well, I have to check her ID, sugar pie.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Hmmm…” The woman tapped her chin with delicate fingertips as she looked at the ceiling. “It’s some kind of old fashioned sounding name. I can’t recall though.”

  “What else has she done that’s odd?”

  The woman pursed her lips. “Well one time she rode here on a lawnmower.”

  “Seriously?”

  She stifled laughter with the back of her hand as she nodded. “Such an oddball.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “I’d guess she lives pretty close if she made it here on a lawnmower,” she said through loud laughter and wiped one of her eyes. “I know she works for AJ at the corner store sometimes if you want to go ask him. Or you could go ask her. She’s still sitting in her car.”

  “I asked her. She won’t tell me.”

  But I was a bit desperate—kind of like right now—and I was grateful for the information that I thought would make a difference, but it wouldn’t. Once again, kind of like right now.

  As I approached your car, I noticed you sitting with your head tilted forward again. That time your hair was swept over one shoulder and I could see you looking at one of the prescription bottles. The other bottles sat in the passenger seat.

  In a slightly alarming turn-of-events, you opened the bottle and poured all the pills into your palm. I was prepared to pound on the window, but instead of dumping them into your mouth, you merely appeared to be counting them. When you were finished you poured them back into the pill bottle, picked up another bottle, and repeated the process. You did the same with the third and were so focused that you didn’t notice me standing four feet from your window.

  After you put all the bottles back in the prescription bags, I closed the distance between me and the car and tapped on the window. You whipped your head around as if I’d startled you before giving me another once-over and a smile and rolled down the window.

  “You change your mind?” you asked, lifting that eyebrow again.

  “Tell me your name.”

  You rolled your eyes in coquettish amusement before flicking your fingers in a wave. “Bye, Seth McCollum.”

  “Bye, Holly.”

  If I’d been honest with myself I would’ve admitted it was just as much curiosity as it was desperation to keep my job. It was also intrigue. Attraction.
Nevertheless, there was a story, I knew there was, and I was going to figure it out.

  Ultimately, I would be half right. There was a story—the one I was initially after. But now there’s a second one too, isn’t there? I haven’t written that one yet. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to.

  Hour Two

  The fourth time I saw you was the very next day and that’s when this beautiful, chaotic shit-storm truly began. After a bit of asking around and searching, I found the corner store mentioned by the bar owner’s wife.

  Unlike the bar, the gas station’s HVAC system had given out, rendering the atmosphere inside a sweltering, musty swamp of air thick with mildew and something that smelled like sweat infused with cheap, citrus-flavored malt beverages. The added nuance of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell blaring from a beat-up, antique radio sitting in the open window was a nice touch. A guy about my age leaned against the counter, thumbing through a magazine featuring scantily clad women sitting on glittering cars, and I approached him.

  “I’m looking for AJ,” I said.

  “Yee-up,” he drawled. He didn’t look up.

  “You’re AJ?”

  “Yee-up.”

  “Can I ask you about one of your employees?”

  “Yee-up.” Still didn’t look up.

  “I heard from the owner of the bar on Las Vegas Trail that a young woman works for you sometimes. She’s twenty-three, about five-eight, slender, long, brown hair.”

  “Yee-up.”

  He still didn’t look up, and I shifted my eyes. “So... does that mean you know her?”

  “Yee-up. Strange girl.” He finally lifted his head and spat sideways into a red Solo cup. “She lock your keys in your car?”

  It took a beat for the left-field question to register. “Did she lock my… what?”

  He pushed away from the counter, grunting a low grumble in the back of his throat before spitting in the cup again. “Don’t worry. Gotta wire. I’ll fix it for ya.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m not locked out of my car, I just—”

  “She throw ‘em in the rain barrel?”

  I squinted. “No, I have my keys. I was just wondering if I could ask you about her.”

  He spit again as he eyeballed my dry-cleaned Armani Exchange dress shirt and chinos. “You from the welfare office or something?”