She has a tendency to wander off, which is why we didn’t miss her until she’d been gone for about two weeks—as best any of us could figure.
One time before she’d grown tired of this pseudo-hip 80’s dance club we’d all gone to and she’d said, to me “This place blows, Travis. I’m leaving.” And we didn’t see her for three days.
Turned out she’d met an old friend in the parking lot and the two of them decided to go to the beach. Atlantic City, which is like, hundreds of miles from here, where they—so she said—hit a little bit of a jackpot and spent the whole time ordering double Martini’s and entertaining at nude hot tub parties in their complementary suite at Trump Plaza.
She had the pictures to back it up too. The two of them, Maya and this mystery girl, bare breasts half submerged in hot water, holding up Martini glasses tilted sideways—the martinis spilling into the bubbling water, partygoers looking on and smiling. And another catty-wampus shot of Maya, wearing green striped underwear and no top, someone’s hands cupping her breasts from behind, her smiling—mouth wide open, head full of choppy brown hair all out of sorts and everyone’s eyes stuck to her like her tan skin was sweet honey.
She passed these pictures out like she didn’t give a damn that she was naked. Which she didn’t. A friend of mine works at Pisano’s Pizza and whenever Maya calls, he says that the drivers fight over her order because she’s always answering the door naked and they keep hoping that one day she’ll invite one of them in for some porno-quality sex and maybe a shot of whatever she’s drinking.
“See,” she had said about the Trump Plaza pictures, “this guy here,” the one with his hands on her tits, “he works in the casino, got us free drinks.”
She always had proof, although she never needed it. We all believed everything she said. Like the time we were all at Denny’s and she started going on about forward velocity and Henry Miller and then asked the waitress what time it was and after hearing the reply said that she was late for class and shoved the last of her sandwich in her mouth, grabbed her coat, threw too much money down on the table and left.
So seeing as how she worked double shifts at the Soap and Suds, which is this all-night laundromat the serves beer and cheese fries, we had no idea what she was talking about. We laughed about that being “typical Maya” and didn’t mention it again until she said she couldn’t go out one night because finals were the next day and that she was failing physics. So we muscled it out of her that she’d been going to the local university, sitting in on two lit classes and that physics class she was failing and said that she’d have to retake next semester because she needed the credits.
We asked her when she’d enrolled in school and she said that she hadn’t, she just started going. Then she bitched about how one of her lit teachers refused to grade her term paper because she wasn’t on his roll chart and that if he was going to be a bastard about it there was no way she was going to meet him at Cubbies for the one-on-one conference he’d requested. Then she’d said, “Which is a shame because I had all intentions of screwing him, if that’s what he was after.”
One of us asked her once how often she went to these classes and she said “I don’t really go that often, I just stole the books from the book store so that I can sell them back at the end of the semester for beer money.” We figured that was more like the truth.
But this time, she’s got us all worried. She’s never been gone this long without at least sending somebody a postcard. Like that time she said she was going to Taco Bell and went to Mexico instead. She had just broken up with Tim and had been craving tacos with extra guacamole—she said the color green made her happy. So when she said she was going to ride her bike through the late-night drive thru—she doesn’t have a car—and see if they would serve her, we didn’t think anything of it. Jack wanted to ride with her because it was after midnight but she wouldn’t let him.
So about 2:30am when she wasn’t back, me and couple of the other guys walked over to Taco Bell, which was closed by then, to look for her. So we just assumed that we missed her and Jack said, “She’s probably back at your place, Travis” and we walked back over to my apartment. Maya lives next door to me.
When we got there we heard this loud music coming from her place and we assumed that she’d gotten her tacos and was home eating away her sorrows. But then a few days later, Lori got a postcard from Mexico and it turned out that it must have been Tim playing the music—he still has a key to her place—because Taco Bell was closed when Maya got there so instead she bought a bus ticket to Mexico where she informed us that the guacamole was much better than at Taco Bell and that she was never going to eat at that hole again.
And that’s all the card said: “The guacamole is much better here than at that Taco Bell. I’m never eating at that hole again.”
The front of the card said Mexico real big at the top and had a picture of a big blue frog. Nobody understood that. Or where she’d gotten the money to go buy a bus ticket to Mexico from here. Or even that you could. She hadn’t said anything about when she was coming back. But after a few more days she called me from the Soap & Suds to ask if I’d come pick her up from work because she was too tired to walk home after the bus ride back. She said that she hadn’t gotten any sleep because the guy behind her had kept her awake all night talking about how he couldn’t get it up unless the woman gave him head. She said she didn’t find out if that was the truth.
So this time we get a hold of the landlord and tell her that we think Maya is missing and ask if he’ll unlock the door and let us check things out. At first he gives us a hard time about it but then he seems to realize that if Maya is gone he doesn’t get any rent, so he unlocks the door. Tim is asleep on the couch and for a second I forget that he’s not supposed to be here. It’s been months since they broke up. Months since the “Mexico incident” as we call it. We wake him up and ask what the hell he’s doing there and he says he’s waiting on Maya and do we know where she is because she’s got his physics book and he has a test in two days.
I ask when he started taking physics and he says that he’s in Maya’s class. No one really gives enough of a damn to go any further with it, we just ask when he saw her last and he says he saw her at work. We all give a sigh assuming he means today, but then he goes on to say, “a couple weeks ago.”
Jack asks Tim if he’s been here waiting for her all that time and Tim says, “No, jackass, what do I look like, an idiot?” No one comments because it’s too easy. Then Lori notices Maya’s bike is in the living room. We all start talking like detectives.
--So it stands to reason that she couldn’t have gone far or she would have taken the bike.
--From the food left on the stove it’s evident she meant to come right back.
--Assuming this food is from two weeks ago and not simply earlier today.
Tim asks what the hell is going on and Jack kicks him out. Speaking of all the cop talk, Jack suggests we call the county lock-up. Maybe this is like the time Maya said over the music at Giddy’s that she was going up to the bar and then we didn’t see her again.
But when I had gotten home that night the words “Give me head or give me death” were written in neon green paint on my front door and there was a message on my machine from Maya saying that she was drunk and in jail and, no hurry, but when we got around to it could someone come get her out, but that if we weren’t coming until in the morning not to come too early because she wanted to sleep in.
Or the time when she got locked up for being drunk at the mall and hitting on the store Santa and she used her one phone call to check her own messages because she was waiting to hear from this guy she met at Giddy’s that “looked just like Brad Pitt, or at least from behind.” Actually there were quite a few times that she was drunk and locked up come to think of it. It’s not that we don’t care enough to watch her, it’s that she does these things all the time and they usually end up in a funny story that we tell to people that don’t know her when she’s not in the room and tell to ourselves when she is.
But there have been some stories along the way that weren’t so funny. Like the time she was riding her bicycle back from the bar because “cops don’t usually stop drunks on bicycles” she had said. She tells the story like this, but the ending of it is actually much different—Giddy’s is at the top of a hill and she was coasting to the bottom, but she was too toasted to know she was at the bottom when she got there and never started to peddle again, so the bicycle started to slow down and she couldn’t figure out why and thought that it must be out of gas, so she tried to steer it to the gas station at the bottom of the hill and all the while the bicycle was getting slower and slower until it came to a stop and the whole damn thing just fell over with her on it and she was lying there in the street with this rusty Schwinn on top of her, wishing she had filled the tank before she left the bar.
And that’s the end of the way she tells it. But the end is actually this—a brown Chevy station wagon tagged her as she was standing the bike up and sent her flying over the hood and into the hospital for days. We didn’t know anything had happened until she showed back up with a cast on her arm and a stitched up gash on her head.
So I nod at Lori and she picks up the phone. That’s when she sees the message light blinking.
Lori hits play and there’s a message from the Soap & Suds about whether or not to put Maya on the schedule for this week seeing as how she didn’t come in all last week, and there’s one from the police department about some articles that were left in the cell, and then there’s one from Maya. She’s slurring her words pretty bad and laughing: “Damn, I meant to call Travis. Oh well, they locked me up again and now I’m getting sent to rehab, for Christ’s sakes. Sons of bitches. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. Can somebody give my physics book to Tim so he’ll get off my case about it?”
And then there’s another one. And she sounds distant and confused. “I can’t remember anybody’s number,” and then there’s the sound of her dropping the phone and a mumbled, “Shit, I can’t” and that’s it.
Jack sits down on the couch and puts a hand over his face. Lori stands frozen, fingers to her mouth in worry. And I’m staring at the message machine like it has all the answers. And it does.
Because then there’s another one and this time Maya’s crying, “Damn, I meant to call Travis. Anyway, can somebody please bring me something to drink?” and then in the background you can hear somebody yelling about how she’s not supposed to on the phone and she whispers “please, somebody, please.” And then she’s gone.
Jack stands back up and we all hover over the machine, waiting for more. Only that’s it. There is no more. But we stand there for a while looking at it anyway. We all know where she is. And if we were honest, we’d say that we had always known she’d end up there.
So they leave it to me to go see her at the Woodmere Rehab Center and report back. And on the way there I think about the time she was walking down the road lugging a suitcase and I stopped and asked her where she was going and if she needed a ride and she said, “I’m already coming back from where I was going, and anyway I’m almost there.”
I wish I had asked her what she was carrying in her suitcase.
I guess that makes all the difference.
Missing Maya
Sycamore Review
