Edward Adrift

out, she intercepted me in the lobby as I headed for dinner and said, “Edward, come on in and have some grilled cheese sandwiches with me. I’d like to talk with you.”
    I’ll concede that I was wary of talking with Sheila Renfro, but I do love grilled cheese sandwiches. It seemed that the risk-reward gamble of getting bawled out versus having something good to eat was worth taking.
    Sheila Renfro had no intention of bawling me out. Her voice was really quiet—not at all excited like it was when we were kissing and touching on her couch. She asked me when I wanted to go to Denver to pick up my new car, and I told her tomorrow—now today—if she didn’t mind. She said that would be fine, that she needed to get some bulk supplies in Denver anyway.
    I decided that I should try to explain to her what I was feeling.
    “It isn’t that I don’t like you,” I began, and she cut me off.
    “I know, Edward. You don’t have to tell me. I thought you were the special man who would understand my specialness. But you’re not. It’s not your fault.”
    Those words hurt me more than I can describe, because I’m not good at describing anything. I think I do understand her specialness. It’s just that I don’t see where I fit here. I want to tell her these things, but I don’t. I hear Dr. Buckley’s voice in my head again, telling me that when two people see the same set of facts but disagree in their interpretation of them, one of the mostdestructive actions one can take is to attempt to convince someone of his or her errant view.
Some facts have no room for interpretation
, she once told me.
The freezing point of water. The sum of two numbers. But when it comes to the human heart, variables always exist.
I think Dr. Buckley was trying to tell me that a fact-loving brain can carry me only so far and that empathy would have to do the rest.
    I did not contradict Sheila Renfro. I ate my grilled cheese. Sheila Renfro ate hers.
    That’s when my mother called my bitchin’ iPhone. I asked Sheila Renfro if I could answer there in her kitchen, and she said I could.
    “Hello, Mother. I was going to call you in about an hour.”
    “I have a concert tonight, dear. I didn’t want to miss you. How are things in Cheyenne Wells?”
    “Great.”
    “Are they really?”
    My mother sounded skeptical, and she was not incorrect in her feeling. At that moment, things weren’t so great, but I thought it would only create more friction with my mother if I told her how difficult the situation with Sheila Renfro had become. I focused on something positive instead.
    “Yes, they really are. Today, Sheila Renfro and I practiced kissing—”
    “You practiced
what
?” my mother asked in a loud voice.
    Sheila Renfro stood up like she had a rocket in her badonkadonk, which is of course absurd, and she slapped my bitchin’ iPhone and knocked it from my ear.
    “Hey!” I yelled.
    “What are you doing?” Sheila Renfro said. “That’s between us. Nobody else.”
    “You hurt my bitchin’ iPhone and my ear! What the fucking fuck, Sheila Renfro?”
    Sheila Renfro began to cry. “Don’t cuss around me, Edward! Just get out of here. Go! I don’t want to see you until tomorrow morning.”
    Sheila Renfro ended up back in her bedroom. Again. And I ended up back here in room number four. Again. And my ear still kind of hurts.

    At 8:57 p.m., I heard a loud thump, and then there were all these voices—all men, all loud—coming from the hallway.
    I pushed myself off the bed, walked to the door and opened it.
    Next door, outside room number six, stood a uniformed man in a cowboy hat. He carried a rifle, and he heard me open my door.
    He headed toward me.
    “Sir, get back in your room, please.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Back in your room, sir.”
    I closed the door fast.
    The loud voices continued for some time, an imprecise measure, but I was so spooked that I forgot to look at my watch. After that, it was a continual clomp of boots walking past my door in both directions. I pulled back the curtains that covered the exterior window of my room and saw the sheriff’s squad car. At 9:46, two uniformed officers walked out with the young man and young woman I’d checked into the motel earlier that day. The officers put them into different cars and then drove away. Other people, not in uniform, emerged in the parking lot carrying banker’s boxes and guns. Three more cars left the parking lot.
    Someone knocked on my door.
    I closed