Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [28]
As she sipped her coffee, Ruby gazed out at the subway platform. Its metal lines glowed against the still dark sky. As a kid she’d imagined the subway was limitless, that she could get on and stay on, traveling through various states and countries to the very end of the world, where she would get out and sit with her legs dangling over the edge.
Ruby poured a second cup of coffee then went to sit at the computer. She was hoping for e-mail from Jane. Or any piece of good news. There was one note from her friend Elizabeth, asking if Ruby wanted to have dinner sometime. There were half a dozen offers for painkillers and Asian escort services, but that was it. No Jane. Ruby trolled around online, read a little bit of that day’s New York Times, then went to craigslist and looked at bikes for sale. The last thing she needed was another bike, but she couldn’t help looking. Thankfully, there was nothing tempting. Ruby was about to quit her browser when she started feeling extremely sick to her stomach. She got up and went into the bathroom. She vomited bile into the toilet. There was a reddish hue to the vomit, but it was probably just dye from the ibuprofen. She hoped.
Ruby didn’t feel much better after the sun came up. Her stomach had settled and she’d eaten some Cheerios, but she felt paralyzed. She wanted to call Ed but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d started speculating about where he’d spent the night. She pictured him on the narrow cot in the tack room then pictured him in a big fluffy bed with some random buxom vixen. This thought made her nauseous all over again, and she was trying to make herself think something less harrowing when the phone rang. She picked it up, hoping it was Ed or at least her boss Bob, explaining himself.
“Yes?”
“Ruby?”
“Yeah?” It wasn’t Ed. Or Bob.
“This is Tobias.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Sorry, I had to go.”
“GO?”
“I’ll explain eventually.”
“What do you want?”
“Just wanted to let you know I’m all right.”
“Yeah, I was losing sleep over it.”
“Well you don’t have to be snotty.”
“Yes, I do. I have to go now,” Ruby said. She hung up.
She was angry from head to toe. She picked the phone back up and dialed her boss’s number.
It rang twice before Bob picked up, sounding irritated.
“Yeah?”
“Bob, it’s Ruby.”
“Yes,” Bob said in a dead voice.
“Should I come into work?”
“No, Ruby, you shouldn’t. You’re fired,” he said before hanging up in her ear.
“That went well,” Ruby said aloud, for the benefit of the cats and the dead people. She always figured her dead friends and family were watching on some level, though if she really thought about it, dead people probably had better things to do than tune into her frequency on a regular basis.
When things got particularly shitty on the inside, Ruby forced herself to look good on the outside. She opened the closet and started pulling things off hangers. A crazy flouncy red and white polka dot dress that made her look like a child hooker, a cotton pin-striped Agnes B. suit that made her look like William Burroughs. She selected a vaguely hippie-ish mauve button-down shirt and a pair of lightweight black cotton pants. She put these on but didn’t feel even remotely better, and now Cat and Aloisius, Ed’s cats, had decided to take up a vigil on the bed. Both were staring at her. Glaring at her. Accusatorily, she was sure.
Ruby felt insane.
She put keys, wallet, and Fireballs into her canvas messenger bag and left the apartment. Ramirez’s door was open, but neither he nor Elsie was in the kitchen. Which was just as well.
Ruby walked the three blocks to the lot where her robin’s egg blue Mustang lived. It usually took her a few days to build up the courage to drive, but she had to get her bike out of Tobias’s house, and she felt compelled to do it now. She didn’t want anything of herself left behind there, wanted to be free and clear of Tobias, Jody, all of it.
Emilio was on a chaise longue on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot. He was wearing sunglasses and on his chest was a sign reading PARK HERE.