Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [5]
“Is she …” Charlotte looked at me, narrowed one eye a little like she does. I could feel my pulse in my forehead. She was going to ask me if there was something going on with this girl, if somehow I was going to Prague to see her. It was all over her face. Behind her a woman was trying to get at the wire card rack. I just looked at her. Go ahead, ask me. I waited. “… mentally disabled or something?”
I thought of Agnessa and her living room sparkler dance.
“It’s possible,” I said.
Charlotte picked out a hand lotion that smelled like apple pie and a stuffed panda.
I sent them to Agnessa, who loved the gifts. I loved Agnessa, for being so easy to please. I spent entire paychecks sending her shampoo, socks, Levi’s and one of those mesh bags girls stick their underwear in before it goes in the washing machine. I sent her some Happy too. Fuck Charlotte.
I gave notice on the apartment I was living in off Northeast Sandy. I told the landlady I was moving to Prague. Elaine was a chick with cats who worked in a bookstore and had a stack of books on Wicca beside her bed. She believed in the power of crystals and Match.com. I struck up an association with Elaine. It was an association of convenience. She was lonely. She liked helping me define just how evil Charlotte was, how slutty and duplicitous. Elaine volunteered to put a spell on Charlotte. I told her to stop; I wasn’t looking for a commitment. When I told Elaine I was moving to Prague she smirked, “Prague, Minnesota?”
“Uh, no,” I said.
“Where are you really going?”
“I got a new place on Southeast Ankeny, across from that yuppie wine bar.”
“Noble Rot, where wine is a meal.”
When Charlotte kicked me out she said I could take anything I wanted, so I did. The heavy stainless steel pots and pans we got as a wedding present. All the DVDs we’d watched together, and what the hell, the DVD player. The books she told people were her favorites. The flannel duvet cover with the roses. A black sweater that smelled of Happy, and a few pairs of her underpants, fished out of the dirty clothes hamper. Our wedding album, and from the freezer, the top layer of our wedding cake. It looked like a hat wrapped in waxed paper.
Elaine showed up on a Saturday afternoon to help me pack my stuff. She’d brought some empty boxes from the bookstore and started on the kitchen. The only things in the freezer were a few blue plastic ice cube trays, a pair of chilled beer glasses—a trick Charlotte taught me—and that damn frozen wedding cake. Elaine said I should toss it, didn’t know why I was holding onto it. I said, “I’m a good guy, I got a sentimental streak a mile wide, so sue me.”
Charlotte took me out for American food the day before I left. Before meeting her I had a sighting of Extreme the Clown’s art car, parked near the Starbucks on Burnside. The art car looks like a Mayan temple on wheels with hundreds of heads sculpted into the sides and a pyramid-altar thing rising from the roof. It’s well known that an art car sighting means good luck. I’m luckier than most people, but as I passed by I touched one of the open-mouthed heads on the trunk. The leaves on the maples were red and gold. I found myself wondering what the weather would be like in Prague, even though I wasn’t going to Prague.
Charlotte took me to Esparza’s. I’m sure she enjoyed the irony, bringing her ex to the same restaurant where she betrayed him with another, but I was having my own private last laugh—my new place was just across the parking lot. I could see into my new kitchen on the second floor. I could see my box of pots and pans sitting on the kitchen table.
I could be in R&D too. I could have my own secret projects.
After we ordered margaritas she pulled out a red suede pouch. Her hands shook as she unsnapped it. She pulled out her engagement ring, the one we’d bought together, the one she’d paid for, technically, since at the time I was between jobs. I’d said anything less than a single karat was hardly worth the effort and she’d agreed, and there it was and she was giving it to me, saying she wanted