Monday, July 30, 2018

contact

april 16 2008
April 16 2008
I’ve been in a major slump since March. The few chances I’ve gotten where both Mom and John were out, I’ve gone up into the attic and tried to fish the key’s teeth out from within the wood. The first time I had the chance to return up, two weeks had passed and the fucking thing had actually moved deeper down. It somehow lodged itself so it’s nigh impossible to budge and I’m losing my mind trying to retrieve it. I’ve tried paperclips, coat hangers, an actual fishing hook. No avail. It’s now positioned in such a way where I can’t maneuver any implement underneath it, which makes yanking it out effectively an unwinnable battle. Now that my rage has subsided a bit though, I think I’m starting to get an idea about what is going on. Since it first fell between the boards last month, the temperature outside has fluctuated around 20° F. Because all wood contains a certain amount of water, the boards became pliable, contracting when it got cooler and expanding in the heat. It must have dropped deeper and then gotten wedged down there due to the temperature changes. I still haven’t found my camera. John has no idea where it went. Mom definitely took it. I asked her once if she had seen it and she plainly said no. I had to grin and bear it and just say alright even though absolutely nothing has been alright and every damn day I am closer to just losing it. The more I act like zombie Milo on the outside, the more I feel like an actual hollow shell of a being on the inside. But, something extraordinary happened today. At work we have this corkboard by the front desk where local businesses can pin up their business cards.
april 16 2008
The wind coming in from outside had knocked some down off the board and as I went to pin them back up, a name caught my eye. Recolo Events. That’s right. It was RECOLO not RICOLA, that’s the fucking cough drop. After popping so many of those fuckers to quell my coughing, my scrambled brain must have made me log it in my memory banks incorrectly. On my lunch break I searched the name and, lo and behold, there’s their damn website. They’re wedding planners. No staff info listed other than a generic contact us email and phone number, but it has a list of past events that they’ve planned. Looks like last week was the Villegas wedding, Justin and Izabella. I formulated a plan on the spot. I found the newlywed couple’s number in the phonebook and called them. A woman, Izabella presumably, picked up. I said that I was an intern from Recolo events and asked if they wanted to include the embarrassing footage of “the brother” drinking in the final cut of the wedding video. “Anthony was drinking during the reception?” “Yes, looks like he had quite a lot ma’am.” She called out, “Justin, guess what? Planners called, your brother is full of shit! I told you!” I told Mrs. Villegas that I was going to put her on a brief hold, hung up, and had a good laugh. I immediately then called Recolo Events and got through to the receptionist, Samantha. I posed as the groom’s brother Anthony and asked for the contact info of the photographer from the wedding, saying that Justin has a serious issue about the price point of the commemorative photo album. She gave me the number to someone named Jack who’s apparently the wedding coordinator.
april 16 2008 - april 20 2008
I called him and pretended to be Anthony again. I said that Samantha from the office gave me his number and I asked, “Can I get the contact info of the photographer from the wedding? We talked at the wedding and he said that he did freelance work? He gave me his number but I lost it.” He asks me which photographer, as there are apparently 5 that work for him. “I think his name was… Kevin?” I heard some paper shuffling and he read off a number. I thanked him, hung up, took a deep breath, and gave myself a moment to process the elegance of what I had just accomplished. This must be Kevin’s new number. It’s not at all similar to his old one, the area code is New York. I didn’t plan at all to suddenly finesse Kevin’s new number out of thin air like this. I need some time to think about how to approach contacting him, but I’m gonna try to call him come the weekend.

April 20 2008
Well, that just happened. I waited until Saturday to call Kevin so I could have adequate time to ruminate on what could go down. I deliberated over every possible scenario of what to say first, how he could possibly reply, and tried to formulate ways to respond. In the end, I decided to go with the tried and true method of playing dumb. I was going to call him and act like nothing bad had ever happened and say that I’m just trying to touch base with an old friend from grade school after a long time apart. So, at noon I dialed. It rang
april 20 2008
a good five or six times before someone picked up. “Hello?” It sure sounded like him. “Hey, Kev! How’s life?” I said to him like I used to back in the day. There was an uncomfortably long pause. “How’d you get this number?” “Samantha gave it to me,” I said. He asked who I was and I said, “your old buddy Milo Asher.” “Who?” Of the hundreds upon hundreds of different conversation paths, I had not prepared for this one. He didn’t fucking remember me. I started to talk about how we met in elementary school, how we grew up together. He insisted that he never even met me before. I was in complete shock. Nothing I said rang a bell to him, it was like this was the first time we had ever spoken. “Say you did used to know me from elementary school,” he said, “why are you calling now?” I didn’t know how else to be but blunt at that point. “I want to know why you’ve been spying on me at night, Kevin.” He scoffed at me, “Okay listen up dude, stop pranking my number or I’m going to call the cops. Peace.” and hung up. I was utterly flabbergasted. I kept calling again and again until he picked up for a final time just to say, “I’m blocking this number.” I did some research and found out from calling the market where his dad worked that his parents had since divorced and moved to separate sides of the country. I’m guessing he lives alone now, most likely still somewhere in the local area. Needless to say, I’m incredibly confused and
april 20 2008
disheartened. Not only is one of my only friends gone from my life, he doesn’t even know that I ever existed. The next day I called Jack the coordinator again to see if Kevin has an alternate number, but to my surprise, Jack said that he had terminated his contract just yesterday. Literally right after I called him. Either something’s incredibly fishy, or I’m writing this entry from a seafood market. And I’m not. There are three possibilities that come to mind: 1. Kevin has suffered some kind of amnesic episode and legitimately doesn’t remember our friendship, 2. He’s knowingly working for a third party and is just putting on an act to confuse me, or 3. His mind has been purposefully wiped clean somehow and he is being unconsciously controlled by that third party. Considering that any one of those theories holds any truth at all makes my head spin into orbit, but that’s the absurd state in which I find myself right now. I feel so very broken and raw inside from this development, like a huge chunk of who I was suddenly just disappeared. This is the absolute worst headspace I could be in going to visit Noah. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I caved and I’m seeing Noah in 2 weeks after all. I’m not even sure what I’m going to do once I’m there yet. I’m so deathly afraid that the same fate will befall Noah, either him becoming just as haunted as I am or completely forgetting who I am to him. On one hand I know I need to brief him on the potential storm that may descend upon him, but on the other hand I don’t want him to view me as the harbinger that came and ruined his life. Either way, I have no choice but to bite the bullet and face the hard truth. No matter how this visit ends up going, I’m about to lose the only friend I have left.