CHAPTER 22

It was one thing to be alone in a woman’s apartment, a new experience for me, but it was another to be going through her drawers--in both senses of the word--in her bedroom dresser and night table. The two Powers on the rocks I worked through after Terri left helped fortify my courage.

However, if Jan was anyone to go by, I knew the bedroom was where a woman’s most private things would be found. After she’d died and I was cleaning out her things in our apartment before fleeing Boston, I found all sorts of items that Jan had tucked away--jewelry passed down from her mother that were not Jan’s style and that she would have never worn, but kept nonetheless; a champagne cork with the date written on it from the bottle we shared to celebrate our first anniversary of dating; and silly and rather terrible poems I’d written her. There were letters from previous boyfriends, bound together with ribbon, which I did not read, out of a sense of respect for her privacy. There was her diary, which I did open and read, because, private or not, I hoped that through her words I would, in a way, hear her voice again.

I’d already searched through the living room and kitchen, opening every book and magazine, in the hopes of finding some scrap of paper that might reveal something about what she had been up to and making the search of the bedroom unnecessary. I discovered nothing in those rooms. So now I was, rummaging through T-shirts and summer shorts and panty and bras. I couldn’t help feeling like a bit of a pervert rummaging through Tina’s most intimate apparel and would have been horrified if someone walked in on me.

Tina had left photos of her and Jimmy on her dresser top. Maybe she intended to for us to pick them up the next morning when we came for the cats. That gave me hope that perhaps she left something incriminating behind as well, but I was running out of places to look.

A closed laptop computer sat on a dark brown laminated wood corner desk with a single drawer. Perhaps that held some secrets. I walked over and pulled out the red upholstered task chair that rolled along the hardwood floor on its casters from beneath the desk. As I went to sit down and had lowered about halfway to the seat, it became readily apparent that Tina’s chair was adjusted too low for me. Gravity, and perhaps the Powers, took over before I reached the seat and I inelegantly plopped down awkwardly into the chair, sending it and me rolling back across the hardwood floor. I reached out instinctively to the desk for support, but managed only to grab the drawer pull of the center drawer. It effortlessly slid open and then out, off its runners, throwing my equilibrium completely off. I fell backward, still in the chair but with my feet shooting up into the air as I tossed contents of the drawer over my head. I landed on my back, my head smacking against the floor. Paper clips, a stapler, and assorted pens flew through the air and rained down on the floor beyond me. Then all was quiet, except for the sound of one of the chair’s caster spinning slower and slower until it stopped.

It’s funny how lying on one’s back, still in a seated position but with ass and thighs perpendicular to the floor, lower legs draped over the end of the seat cushion, arms outstretched and gripping an empty desk drawer, in a dead girl’s apartment can make a person take stock of things. What the hell was I doing? What the hell did I really hope to find? And what the hell would I do with anything I did happen to find? Most importantly, how did I let myself start believing that anything I did would make one iota of difference? Damn Stevie, damn Hoppy, and damn Tina. It was time for another Powers.

I let go of the desk drawer, rolled over to my left off the chair and onto my hands and knees. Nothing seemed too bruised, except my ego, although some aches and pains would probably show up in the morning. Surveying the wreckage of pens and paper clips on the floor, I decided to let everything lie where they had landed and stood up slowly, a little woozy at first, but that passed. Turning to leave the room, I remembered the computer and went back to pick it up, disconnecting the power cord, before leaving the room.

I was done in here. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’d struck out in a women’s bedroom.