Read Online Terminal Grill by Rosemary Aubert - Free Book Online

hours. I was totally preoccupied with who or what this man was or wasn’t.
    My original plan had been to take a bus back on Sunday that would arrive in Toronto at midnight. Matthew was planning to meet that bus.
    Instead, I took an earlier bus so that I could go back to my place and prepare myself for what I thought was the most likely scenario—that I had seen the last of my Black Irish, my strange songster, my demon. It is hundreds of miles from Utica, New York to Toronto, Ontario. For part of them I worried, for part, I prayed. For a few minutes—on the border—I wept. Mostly I sat immobile, stunned at my own desperate weakness.
    I had known Matthew for exactly one week. But it seemed as if I’d known him forever.
    By the time I got to Toronto, I was a wreck. Somehow I made it from the bus terminal home.
    As soon as I got in, I could see that he’d been there. The bed was made—but not in my usual way. There were matches and a few coins on the dresser that hadn’t been there when we’d left.
    But little else seemed disturbed. As I looked around, though, I noticed a couple of things—that someone had used the phone, that someone had apparently gone through a file of my income tax papers that I’d left lying on top of my desk. Whoever had gone through the papers had left out a T-form from my bank that had on it my name and address and also, of course, the number of the account and the amount of interest it had accrued during the previous year.
    Two drawers containing papers and odds and ends showed definite signs of having been rifled through.
    And in the sink was a single coffee mug with a lipstick stain on it.
    I panicked, sure Matthew had slept in my apartment with another woman and sure he had been looking for some paper that would allow him to steal from me in some clever, complicated way.
    Frantic, I pulled the sheets from the bed and stuck them in the washer. I called Ruth, my girlfriend, and also my brother—both of whom could hear the terror in my voice and each of whom tried to calm me down, assuring me that it was quite possible that there were other explanations for what I’d found. To them, the evidence that Matthew had done something wrong seemed slight.
    But still, Ruth offered to remove my valuables to her place and to let me stay there for the night, and she agreed to come with me to the bus terminal in case Matthew should, in fact, show up. All three of us seemed quite convinced that he would not.
    I finished the wash and put the sheets back on the bed. I threw away the roses Matthew had given me. Of course, they were dead now, anyway. I threw out the black paper and the spiky bow. I tossed the bottle from the rare wine.
    But when it came to the yellow sweatshirt and the black lace panties—I couldn’t. I took a better look at the panties, which I had thought were silk and saw that they were not. But still, they were very fine and the label said they’d been made in France.
    In the hours in which I sat there waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up, I felt first paralyzing fear, then self-disgust, then something I didn’t realize would be more long-lasting than fear or disgust. I felt that Matthew was gone and that I would miss him for a good long time.
    During the course of these hours, my landlady came down and told me she’d had a bad scare when she’d seen a man leave my apartment. I’d totally forgotten to tell her that there’d be somebody there while I was away—only that I’d be gone myself.
    As I apologized, she said that the man had appeared to be dazed because, he claimed, he’d just bumped his head. She said he’d been alone as far as she knew and that he’d been very quiet.
    The hours slowly crawled away and finally Ruth came and we took off, headed downtown to meet—or not to meet—Matthew.
    We got there before midnight, so we went into the terminal coffee shop. I was so nervous, I