Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [92]
At the moment he felt like a skydiver without a parachute.
“It’s a day full of good luck,” Martin added.
“I agree,” Laura said with a smile. “So what’s the party going to be like?”
“To be honest, I’m really not sure. My sister is taking care of everything. Except the caterer, I mean. She’s always been the planner. I’m just along for the ride.”
“She’s older than you?”
“Yup. By half a dozen years.” Martin had always believed that it was easier to recall a concept like “half a dozen years” rather than the number 6, so his fabrications tended to be full of these types of expressions.
“What’s her name?” Laura asked.
Thankfully Martin had just placed a slice of bread into his mouth, so he had a moment to consider the question before answering. The first name to enter his mind was Jillian, but it didn’t seem right to give his fictional sister that name. He took an extra moment to chew before deciding.
“Wendy,” he answered, placing the image of the character from the Peter Pan stories into his mind. Associating the thought with a mental image would help to keep the idea fixed in his mind. “How about you?” he asked, looking to redirect the conversation away from himself. “Any siblings?”
“Nope. Just me. My father died when I was ten, and my mom lives in Coventry. Same house I grew up in.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“Thanks. But it was a long time ago.”
Once again Martin desperately wished that he could be more honest with this woman. Having lost his own mother, he knew how much it could still hurt from time to time, and he wanted to tell Laura that he understood how difficult it was to lose a parent. But his fictional parents were alive and well, still married, and preparing to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary together. The empathy that he felt for this woman, who had brushed off his condolence with a timeworn expression and a touch of sadness in her eyes, was useless to him.
It had never hurt Martin so much to lie.
This time Laura turned the conversation away from thoughts of her father and onto travel. Martin had never traveled outside New England, so he was able to turn the question back toward Laura rather quickly. Thankfully, she had seen much of the United States as a child and had recently been skiing in Cortina, Italy. Without much prompting, Laura was happy to spend more than fifteen minutes extolling the virtues of the Italian Alps.
As their entrees arrived, Martin excused himself to use the restroom. He had needed to urinate for some time and had hoped to avoid using the public restroom, but the discomfort finally became too much.
Martin despised public restrooms and avoided them whenever possible. Even in the finest establishments, he thought of them as germ-infested closets. As he approached the men’s room, just past the kitchen, he was pleased to see that the door opened out, necessitating a pull on the handle in order to gain entry. This meant that after washing his hands, he would be able to push the door with his foot or elbow in order to exit, allowing him to avoid the skin-to-handle contact that made him want to retch.
Not that the washing of his hands appealed to him, either. Though Martin wanted every other human being in the world to wash his or her hands after using the bathroom, this was because of a lack of trust in the personal hygiene of others. His own, he knew, was impeccable. As a result, Martin never understood the need to wash his hands after touching his penis. After all, his penis was clean, probably cleaner than his hands or any other part of his body that had been exposed to the world. He had washed it, dried it, and then covered it by underwear and pants. Two layers of protection that remained firmly in place throughout the day. This was the same penis that women would