Nadia Found

Like I said, I had no intention of looking for the kid, and if that jeopardized, or forfeited, my chances at the thousand bucks, then so be it.  Sure, I highly doubted that I’d ever see either Omar or Meelod again, that we’d even had the slimmest of chances at finding Nadia, or that the batty cousins would’ve paid me the money even if we had. 

I did a 360 and took in surroundings, tried to get my bearings, but I realized I had no idea where I was.  I’d say I was in the back of the ice cream truck for only fifteen, twenty minutes, but watching the outside pass by through the rear window, together with the disorientating jingles, had done a number on my sense of direction.  I felt a bit like a hostage who’d been nabbed and held for ransom, but then quickly and unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road once my captors discovered I was worthless and wouldn’t fetch a penny.  I took out my phone and checked my location, how far I was from home.  The map indicated a little over six miles.  I wasn’t quite ready to spend the money on an Uber or a Lyft, and I sure as hell wasn’t desperate enough to hoof it home just yet.

So, I tried calling Kelley first, but I remembered she was still on one her dreaded twelve-hour shifts, so I hung up before the robot lady could abruptly sever the ringing tone, telling me that the number I was trying to call had a voice mailbox that hadn’t been set up yet.  I thought about calling Reverend Al next, but I think he was still annoyed with me.  In that mysterious and omniscient way of the clergy, he’d divined my wicked ways, had somehow caught wind of my escapades with Kelley and her friends over the Fourth of July holiday.  Of course, realistically, he'd simply partaken in the church gossip around the water cooler—or the baptismal font, rather.  Anyway, he called the other day and hinted at this knowledge of his, all annoying and nonchalant—and doing a poor job at disguising his ulterior motive, which, obviously, was to get me to come to Confession—like, Oh, Sterling, you have to come try this lemon meringue pie Agnes made, it’s simply divine, we can catch up and, you know, no big deal or anything but you can also have your sins forgiven, I can have you in and out real quick?  I told him I didn’t really have anything to confess, nothing that needed forgiving, except, oh wait, now that you mention it, Father, I did see a pair of tits while I was out on the lake!  I could tell that caught him off guard, as his muffled coughs burst over the line, so I clarified, Well, wait, maybe it wasn’t a pair of tits, it may have been just the same tit twice, but does that still count as a pair?  He quickly hung up, and I haven’t heard from him since.  Not that I really wanted to deal with Al at the moment anyway. 

I checked my phone again and realized, funny enough, I was pretty close to Des’s house, only a half mile, in fact.  But if I didn’t want to deal with Al, I really didn’t want to deal with Des.  I remembered what she’d said to me the last time she gave me a ride, back home from the rectory, how I only called her when I needed something.  I also thought that if Al had been made aware of my Fourth of July, then Des probably had been, too, and she’d be livid I hadn’t extended her an invitation.  But I figured enough time had passed, and, with Kelley and Al out of the question, I decided to give my old pal Des a ring.

A couple of rings, and then she answered: “What.”

Ah, yes, lovely to hear from you, too, Des.  But I didn’t say that.  I adopted a placatory tone because, truthfully, I did need Des’s help, and she would be doing me a solid if she came and snagged me and took me home (again), so I prefaced my request by notifying her that I’d owe her one, big time, like major big time.  Briefly, I feared what Des would ask of me in order to relieve this indebtedness, but such concerns were quashed by Des’s sudden change in tone.

“Sure,” she said.  “Where are you?”

Remaining placatory, I told her that I could walk to her place first, but she insisted she’d come and get me. 

In the car, she asked me what the hell I was doing in her neck of the woods, on foot and needing a pickup.  I tensed up, tried to laugh it off, when she joked that it was like I’d been kidnapped and dropped off there, but she’d sensed my nervousness and pressed me on it, and, eventually, I caved and told her what’d happened—Omar and Meelod showing up at my doorstep, enlisting my help in finding Nadia (I left out the promise of one thousand dollars), the truck with the very select and limited assortment of refrozen ice cream treats.  Now, it was Des who tensed up and quickly fell silent.  I was surprised she didn’t have any wisecracks to offer.  I would’ve understood—sure, I knew how utterly ridiculous the situation was. 

The reason for her silence, though, quickly became evident after we pulled into her driveway and went inside.  In the living room, a small, Middle Eastern woman in thick, black sunglasses was sitting on the couch watching the TV, a blanket draped over her shoulders, a long and colorful skirt bunched at her legs.  She was petting a cat that was curled up in her lap like a giant croissant, dozing, dreaming its feline dreams.  The woman immediately registered our presence, extending her neck and turning her head towards us, but even from behind those black lenses, I had the distinct feeling that the woman was not looking directly at us, at me.

“Sterling,” Des said, “meet Nadia.”

I looked at the woman on the couch.  Nadia.  The cat had my tongue—figuratively speaking, of course; the literal cat had woken up and had unfurled itself so that it no longer looked like a croissant, but had remained in the baking spirit nonetheless as it began to knead biscuits with its two front paws—so I, in my infinite retardedness, offered Nadia a nod in greeting, having forgotten momentarily that the poor woman was blind.  Not that it mattered, though, as she’d turned her head back to the TV, seemingly uninterested, unaware that, only an hour ago, I’d been recruited by her brother Omar and her cousin Meelod to search for her, and that, presumably, they were still out there in the ice cream truck doing just that—that is, if they weren’t hunting down that poor kid instead. 

I turned back to Des, who shrugged, as if to say, What, why are you looking at me like that, oh, wait, yeah, is this the Nadia you were looking for?

Des steered me into the kitchen, where she explained that Nadia had called after dining and dashing from the Olive Garden, desperate for a place to escape from her brother Omar—at least temporarily, until things died down.  You see, Nadia had told Des, she just couldn’t do it anymore, playing along in Omar’s schemes, allowing him to believe that she didn’t know what he was up to.  She loved her brother, she said, but she feared she was doing irreparable damage to his psyche, so deep he’d dived into his cauldron of lies.  Nadia wasn’t sure who Omar was doing it for anymore, himself or her; regardless, the “trip to Italy” was the last straw. 

“She’s just crashing with me for a little bit,” Des said.  “Let me finish this episode and then I’ll take you home.”

Before I could ask any follow-ups—and I had plenty—Des had moved and sat herself on the couch next to Nadia.  There was room for me if I wanted to force it, if I made the two of them squeeze, but I was still processing it all, the dips and turns and corkscrews that the day had taken, so I just sat on the floor.  The cat hopped out of Nadia’s lap and joined me there, and I wondered whether I still had Omar’s number in my phone.