Watch Me Disappear

I ask, interrupting her.
    She shakes her head and then continues. She didn’t know what else to do, so she picked up the remote and handed it to him, but she didn’t want to sit down. She told him she was just going to go home.
    “Go then,” he said.
    Maura asked if they could just go get dinner. She told him they didn’t have to go out to Angelo’s. They could go anywhere. They could go to a diner. She just wanted to go out. I can believe that; all she and Jason ever do is sit around his house.
    “You gonna let me drive that sweet car of yours?” he asked. He had tried before to get her to let him drive, and, to her credit, she had always denied him. You only had to meet the guy for five minutes to know he’d be a hazard behind the wheel.
    “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
    “And I pick the place?” he asked.
    She agreed.
    He got up to change his clothes. “You want to come up with me, maybe help me work up an appetite?”
    “Wait,” I say, “after all that, he wanted you to go make out with him?”
    Maura nods. The waitress comes by and refills our coffees.
    “You girls going to order any food?” she asks.
    “We’ll have a hot fudge sundae to share,” Maura says.
    “So what did you do?” I ask, after the waitress leaves.
    Maura shrugs. “What could I do?”
    “You didn’t.”
    She shrugs again.
    “Did you have sex with him?” As soon as I ask I know it is a stupid question. It’s not like they’ve never had sex before. Sex is the entire basis of their relationship. I’m surprised that Maura turns red at the question. “What?” I ask.
    “He wanted me to,” she pauses, her eyes filling again. “He wanted me to, you know, go down…” Her voice trails off.
    I don’t say anything, and after a minute she looks up at me, a tear spilling from her eye onto her cheek.
    “Maura,” I say, reaching a hand across the table and stopping her fluttering fingers that have, by this point, torn the napkin to little shreds. “It’s okay.”
    She nods.
    “Really,” I say. “It’s okay.”
    “Yeah, I know. People do it all the time.”
    Of course that isn’t what I meant. “Maura, what are you doing with him?” I ask. “All your friends hate him. When’s the last time you even hung out with Jess or Katherine? He’s a total dick.”
    “He’s not,” Maura says. “He’s had a hard life, that’s all. He doesn’t always know the right way to act. He just needs someone to—”
    “To beat up?”
    “It’s not like that,” she says, wiping her eyes. “He had a bad day.”
    “Why are you defending him?”
    “I… I care about him.”
    I think she is trying to decide whether or not she should say she loves him. I’m glad she doesn’t.
    “Show me your arm,” I say.
    “It’s fine,” she says, tears returning to her eyes. At just that moment the waitress sets the sundae down between us. I thank her and ask for extra napkins. Maura looks down, not wanting this stranger to see that she is crying. Working the night shift at a place like this, I imagine our waitress has seen her share of weeping teenage girls, but I understand Maura’s impulse.
    We don’t really talk any more after that. We clean the bowl down to the last drop of fudge, pay our bill, and leave.
    Driving home, I wonder where they’d ended up for dinner. It must have been someplace nice. Maybe Maura’s bedside manner helped Jason lighten up, made him feel better about letting Maura pay for an expensive meal.
    I can’t sleep when I get home. I’m too wound up. What is Maura doing with a Neanderthal like Jason? She is beautiful and popular. She is the queen bee. She could have any guy she wants, except, I suppose, Paul. I’m sure Jason has had a hard life. And I’m sure sometimes he really doesn’t know better, but does Maura honestly think she can transform him into her prince?
    Maura probably compares every guy she meets to Paul, and believe me, I know what that’s like. I suspect she and I have come to the same conclusion: guys like Paul are few and far between. If you meet one in your life you’re lucky, and you’ll probably never meet another. If you do, your luck is so good you should play the lottery.
     
    *          *          *
     
    In the morning, I look out the window to the Morgans’ driveway and see that Maura’s car is gone. Probably Mr. Morgan took it to get a new tire. The part of me that is proud I knew how to change a tire hopes she told her parents the truth. The rest