Hope Makes Love, page 26
Zep: “I dunno, you might be in for a surprise.”
Lino: “What do you mean?”
Zep: “What’s 416 … Toronto?”
[Phone ringing]
Lino: “Yeah, I think so. What do you mean, though?”
Zep: “Hello?”
[Silence]
Zep: “Who’s this, Lesley? … Yeah? … No I haven’t. I tried to get a hold of her a couple of times yesterday, and this morning too, and there … Okay, so … What email? … Who’s Adnan? … So it … right … Okay, yeah … Yeah I’ll go. I’ll go right now … No, I’m like downstairs. It’ll take me two minutes. Yeah, I’ll go. I’m going right now. Bye … I gotta go.”
Lino: “What’s going on?”
Zep: “I gotta go.”
Lino: “Wait, what about your thing?”
Zep: “Oh yeah.”
[Unintelligible. Sounds of rustling fabric]
Lino: (muffled) “What’s happening?”
Zep: “I dunno.”
Lino: “Okay, we’ll talk later, I” [too faint]
[Sounds of rustling, movement]
Zep: “Excuse me … Excuse me … Look out, please. Look out. Please! … Fuck …”
[Sounds of rustling, footsteps]
Zep: “Hi, sorry hi, can I have a key card for room 609 please?”
Man: “Sir, I’m with a cust—”
Zep: “Please, it’s an emergency. I need a key to room 609 now.”
Man: “Your name?”
Zep: “Zep Baker. Just give me a key.”
Man: “That room is registered to Hope Riopelle.”
Zep: “I know. I’m paying for the room. Give me a key.”
Man: “I can’t do that —”
Zep: “Give me a fucking key!”
Man: “Sir, without permission from —”
Zep: “Fuck you! Never mind. Never mind.”
[Sounds of rustling]
Zep: “Excuse me! Hold that please hold that! … Thanks. Six please. … Jesus, push the …”
[Elevator sounds]
[Silence]
Zep: “Come on come on come on.”
Woman: “Some people are always in a hurry.”
[Silence]
[Elevator sounds]
Woman: “This is us, Margaret. Excuse us please …”
[Elevator sounds]
Zep: “Fuck!”
[Elevator sounds]
[Unintelligible]
[Rustling sounds]
[Sound of banging]
Zep: “Hope! Hope! Are you in there?”
[Banging]
Zep: “Hope! Answer the door! Lesley called me and she’s worried. Hope!”
[Banging]
Zep: “Hey! Hey, you! Let me into this room.”
[Unintelligible]
Zep: “You’ve got a key, you’ve got a master key. Let me into this room! Now! It’s a fucking emergency!”
[Unintelligible]
Zep: “Fine, I’ll break it down.”
[Rustling sounds]
[Sounds of impact, exertion]
Zep: “Fuck. I can’t —”
[Sounds of impact]
Zep: “Let me into the fucking room! Now!”
[Sounds of screaming]
Zep: “Where is it? Where’s your fucking key? Give it to me … Is this it? Is this it? … Fuck … Hope! Jesus Christ how do you, how do you … wrong … okay. Hope! Hope! Where — oh, fuck. Hope! Jesus fuck. Oh shit no fuck fuck fuck … Call 911! Call 911! Please now please!
“Oh God oh God Hope. Oh Jesus, what’d they do to you? What’d they do to you? Jesus Jesus Jesus come on Hope come on. I gotta …”
[Unidentified sounds]
[Rustling, thumping sounds]
“I’m sorry, I gotta … here so … here … I gotta do this … come on come on come on.”
[Unidentified sounds]
“Come on, Hope. Here … we gotta … we gotta move. Here … fuck … okay … Help! Help us! Help …”
[Sound of door closing]
[Voices but too faint to make out]
[Silence]
ZB Transcript 27
OKAY, SO …
Jeez I’m out of practice here. I don’t know how to get going.
Uh, so … it’s May … seventh? Yeah, May seventh. Thursday. Uh … I haven’t been able to do any recordings since last Friday ’cause the police had my thing. My recorder. I guess it was in Hope’s room, which … I dunno, it must’ve fallen out when I was trying to put my jacket on her.
That was …
Anyway, they searched the room and took everything that didn’t belong to the hotel. So I had to fill out some forms to get it back. Had to prove it was mine first, which was easy ’cause my voice was on it. They were interested in that last recording too, once they knew it was on there, so that took a couple of extra days.
That’s a lot on the fucking recorder though so I dunno, maybe just skip all that, Marcie. I’m just talking bullshit here; this is all useless. I dunno what the hell I’m doing.
I should really be talking about Hope … Um …
So she’s … you know, she’s not good. I mean, she’s alive, but she’s still in the ICU. The doctors are saying she’s lucky. The only reason she survived — I mean, she took enough drugs to do the job, and they probably would have eventually — but her temperature was way low, lying in that freezing bathtub, and her heart slowed down or something. That gave her a bit more time. I’m not family so I’m not getting all the details. Her mother is here. She’s kinda suspicious of me, though. I guess that makes sense. Lesley’s here too — they drove down together.
And the guy Hope wrote — uh, Adnan. He’s here. Big fucking guy, taller than I am. It was a good thing he figured out to call Lesley when he got that email or else, you know … fuck. They said she’d been in the water for over fourteen hours.
They weren’t going to let him see her when he first got here. Adnan. I guess Hope’s mom’d never met him so she wasn’t … but the thing, the thing is, it turns out Hope was pregnant, and she … she lost the baby. They told me that much pretty early. I guess maybe they thought I was the father. And so … yeah.
But I was talking to Lesley and she said it was Adnan’s. The baby. And then he got here and nobody was telling him. Lesley didn’t want to say anything because she said she’d promised Hope. She said Hope should tell him. I think she was kind of holding on to that, like the idea that Hope’d live, right?
But, so, nobody was telling Adnan. And he didn’t know who the fuck I was then so it couldn’t be me telling him. I mean … it was better coming from a doctor, right? So I tried to tell these people, like, this guy’s the father. Give him the news! Jesus Christ, he deserves to know, right? And let him into the fucking room!
Anyway. It took a while but I finally got somebody to listen to me. Adnan was pretty messed up when they told him everything. That was hard, seeing that. ’Cause he had no clue. He didn’t know she was pregnant. It all came at him at once. He didn’t know.
I got him out of the hospital for a couple of hours. This was Monday, I think. Yeah, Monday. He’d been here for two days, not sleeping. He looked like shit. So I said let’s go for a walk. Nothing was changing with Hope. He didn’t want to go but the nurse told him he wasn’t gonna miss anything. So I said come on, let’s take a fucking walk. I would’ve said a beer but I didn’t know if the guy was Muslim so I figured maybe I shouldn’t chance it.
Anyway, I got him outside at least. By then I’d already made him understand I wasn’t like a rival or anything. I wasn’t some guy who was after Hope. We’re friends and we were here working together, that’s all. He was clear on that. I hadn’t really gone into what we were working on because I figured that’s … you know, that’s a trickier conversation. And it didn’t really matter. He had enough to think about.
We didn’t say much for a while. There’s a park a couple of blocks from the hospital so we headed over there. It was kinda cloudy, but it was warm enough.
There were some tennis courts but nobody was playing so we walked past that … got into this treed area. The leaves are starting to come now. You know, that nice pale green. Something about being around trees here in the spring, I dunno … we don’t get much of it in Tampa. It’s nice.
I asked the guy what he did and he said he was a chef. A caterer. Said that’s how he met Hope. “I cooked for a party and she was there,” he said. He said she looked lonely. Kind of keeping to herself. “So I make her something special, and she smiled.” He sort of brightened up a little when he said that. “So I think, ‘Good job, Adnan. Do it again.’” He said his whole goal that night was to make her smile.
I asked if he’d known her a long time. He shook his head. He said they’d spent an afternoon and evening together, that was all. I was kind of surprised. But he shrugged. He was quiet. He said, “I think I have always known her.”
Then he asked the question I should’ve expected … I guess I did expect it. You know, what were she and I doing here together? And somewhere in the back of my mind I’d been trying to figure a way to say it so it wouldn’t … you know, so I wouldn’t sound like a nut job or something.
I told him about Emily, about how we’d been married and that I still love her and I’ve been trying to get back with her. And I said Hope was helping me. I left it at that and waited for a minute, to see if that would do it. I hoped it would. But you could see it rolling around in his head. And he looked at me.
“How?” he said. “What were you doing?”
And I didn’t … for a second I just stood there.
I mean, I’m looking at this guy, and there’s … I dunno, Marcie, there’s something about him. He’s a big, simple guy. He’s real, or something I can’t … I dunno how to say it. After one day with a girl, he’s there with her at a hospital. And she might die, and he’s lost a kid and … and he’s the guy she wrote her letter to, her last letter, right? Her last letter. Whatever she needed to say, he was the guy she wanted to say it to.
One day … and now it’s everything. For both of them.
Then I look at me and Emily, and all the years, right? All the years, and all the chances I had to, I dunno, to connect with her like that. To make something … I don’t even know what, but something more, right? Just something more than it was. Whatever it needed to be to last. To be worthwhile or just, you know … just good. Just, fucking, good.
I mean, it could’ve been that, I think. It could’ve.
But, so, what was I doing all that time? That’s what I keep thinking about. These guys had one day. We had years. And I know Em was trying, so what the fuck was I doing?
And then so … after I’ve used up all my chances. Now I’m here trying to just, like, make it happen. Snap my fingers. Trying to pull a fast one, basically, right? I’m playing a trick on her, is what I’m doing. Like that’s supposed to be good and and and, you know, real. Like that’s something to be proud of, like that’s true, right. It’s supposed to be true. That’s the thing they say, right? Fucking true love. I never knew what that meant. True love. What the hell is that? Just a goddamn greeting card. True love.
But now here I am, and … I’m proving it. I’m proving there’s a difference. I’m the fucking poster boy of love that isn’t true. I’m the opposite guy. I’m the lying love guy. I mean …
Fuck, I was looking at Adnan standing there, waiting for an answer — What were Hope and I doing here? — and all I wanted to do was throw up.
So … anyway … I had to tell him something. I said I had this problem I needed to solve — how to make my ex-wife love me again. And since Hope was the smartest person I knew, I figured she’d know how.
Adnan took that in for a minute. Man, his eyes were … I dunno. He looked beat up or something. He shook his head. “Hope is very wonderful, very smart,” he said. “But I do not think she understands love.”
We walked back to the hospital and checked on her. I gave Adnan my hotel key in case he wanted to go take a shower or something.
Lesley was in the ICU with Hope’s mom. She came out when she saw me. She seems to like me for some reason. Or maybe she’s that way with everybody, I shouldn’t take any credit. I mean, she’s the kind of person I probably would’ve never spent two seconds talking to before. She has a real hippie vibe going, if you know what I mean. Kinda this big, momma type of person, right? Like she’s made out of thick, warm blankets. Just being around her you feel calm in a way, which … I dunno, that might drive me crazy after a while, but …
Anyway, she was nice to me from the minute she got here, which helped balance out all the side-eye everybody else was giving me. When she came out of the room she asked how I was doing. Like that mattered, right? Like who the fuck cares how I’m doing, I’m not lying in a bed with tubes, right? Like I’m fine so, whatever.
She asked how things were with Emily. She already knew a bit about what Hope and I’d been doing. I mean, I hadn’t said much, but she knew enough.
I kinda shook my head.
“Have you seen her in the last few days?” she said.
I kind of laughed, ’cause, I dunno. I dunno why I laughed. She was looking at me. I was on edge or something. The whole thing with Adnan. Hope’s in the ICU, it was just like, fuck. And she’s looking at me. And waiting, right? Just waiting. Everybody’s fucking waiting for me to speak all of a sudden. And I’m just shaking my head like an idiot.
After a minute she says, “What’s going on, Zep? What are you feeling?” And she’s kinda, like, zeroed in on me or something. So, I dunno, I laughed again. I said, you know, “I feel like a fucking criminal, if you want to know the truth.”
She didn’t say anything. Just stood there for a bit and then gave my arm a rub and went back into the room. So …
SORRY, MARCIE, I SAW THE doc coming and I thought he had some news but it was nothing. This one doc, he walks around here like he’s got cameras following him around or something. Guy pisses me off. Anyway. After that little thing with Lesley I got in my car and drove over to Emily’s work. It was after lunch, so I figured she’d be there.
They told me to wait outside for her, so I stood in the parking lot for a few minutes. And then she came out with a bit of steam. You know, wondering where the hell I’d been since Friday, why I’d totally disappeared, hadn’t been picking up Pebbles. I said there’d been an emergency and I’d been spending a lot of time at the hospital.
She said, “I know that’s a lie, Zep. You aren’t doing any charity work at the hospitals.”
I asked her how she knew that, and she said somebody’d looked into it and told her. Lino, I said, and she admitted it. So I asked her. I asked her straight out if she was seeing him.
“I was,” she said. “Then you landed on my doorstep.”
That made me grin. I said, “Like yesterday’s news.”
And then she wanted to know what was going on. This whole two weeks. Why was I really here?
I took this big breath and I said, “For you.”
And then I told her basically the whole thing. Not everything, I mean … I couldn’t tell her about what happened in the car, and I don’t even know for sure what happened with Pebbles at the school. But I said I’d been trying to get into her brain again. Trying to get her to think about me, and start having feelings for me, maybe even love me, like she used to.
“Why, Zep?” she said. “Why haven’t you just moved on?”
And the thing is, Marcie, I didn’t even know the answer to that until I opened my mouth. I had no idea why, except that I’d missed her. So much, you know?
But what I said was that I’d realized something. I said I’d failed at everything I’d ever done — baseball, business, whatever it was, I’d never done anything close to what I wanted to do. But it was okay, none of that bothered me, because I knew I’d tried.
I said the only thing that really got to me, the only thing that pressed on me and wouldn’t let me sleep, was losing her. Because I knew, when it came to her, I hadn’t tried hard enough.
But I knew I’d gone about this whole thing all wrong.
So …
That was it, basically. She said, “What happens now?”
I said as soon as I could I’d be going back to Tampa. I told her I was gonna sell the house. Some of the value’s come back on it finally, so whatever money I get, I’ll put it into an education fund for Pebbles. And I’ll keep adding to it until I’ve replaced what I took.
She said, “What about us? Now that you’re in my brain again.”
I told her if she thought Lino was the right guy for her, even though he’s an asshole, then she should be with him. She should be with whoever was gonna do what it took to make things work. And I said, you know, the guy was willing to trash a good friendship for her, so that’s probably a point in his favour.
I said the main thing was, she deserved somebody who wasn’t going to screw her around and play games with her feelings, and probably that ruled me out. And if it did, then I could accept that. I told her I had more love for her now, and I felt closer to her than I ever did before, ’cause for a while at least, I’d thought about what she was feeling. Not just me. So even if nothing else happened for us, I was glad about that.
Then I kissed her and said goodbye. And I’ve been at the hospital pretty much ever since.
So I guess that’s it for now, Marcie. See you soon.
Think positive thoughts about Hope if you can.
Uh, say hi to Ramone for me.
Okay.
I’ll just shut up now.
Tuesday, May 19
LESLEY HAS LEFT ME ALONE for the afternoon. She brought me tea and said she was going out, without saying where. It’s a trial run, of sorts. I earn the time I’m allowed to myself. Time with my thoughts, my intrusions and my intentions. If I can last an hour, I’m given two. In that, it’s very much like life itself. Surviving one day means having to live another.
I try not to think about it too much. For now, not thinking too much about anything is as high as my goals reach. But at least I can put a checkmark beside “having goals.” It’s a beginning.
Tonight, Adnan will come over, and he will cook dinner for the three of us. It will involve saffron; that’s all he’s saying. But I like saffron, so that’s something to look forward to. Having things to look forward to: checkmark.
