I pick up my cell, pushing myself to listen to the next instalment, her final terrified message. It’s nearly 5 days old; time and fate are working together to push us further apart. I press play but then immediately stop it again, wondering why Carlos didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t seem that flustered – no more or less than when the police played him the original. He shook his head that time, wincing with the rest of us when she screamed and shaking his head when she shouted where she thought she was. I remember he looked at the detective when he paused the fuzzy recording, his eyes blank, maintaining that he had seen and heard nothing. When they played it to the end, to that last part that will haunt me forever, he finally looked my way and a tear fell down his cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ is all he said.
I think of his face; it seemed genuine enough. The look he gave me earlier, when he had to kick me out once and for all, also seemed honest. He was angry, frustrated, and probably felt harassed by my constant calls. Maybe he wasn’t involved, maybe he doesn’t know anything. He said he was in the basement most of that evening, which is totally believable. That basement was searched twice – I watched them do it and then I searched it again. I looked and looked, turning over every corner of his home until the detective came down and told me I had been there for over an hour. All the other officers were gone and Carlos was patiently waiting in his living room, waiting for me to finally leave him alone. He didn’t say much as I left, he just apologised for my loss and gave me a pat on the back, wishing me luck for my future, whatever that looked like.
The detective, Marius was his name, calmly led me out of the house. He told me they had gone door to door knocking but hadn’t had any success: they didn’t find many people home and none of the houses had been disturbed. He offered to escort me home but I declined in favour of searching the neighbourhood myself. I grabbed a torch from my car and shone it through every window as I checked every lock on any door I could find. I’m sure Carlos was watching me as I prowled around his neighbourhood until the early hours. I’m sure he woke up to see my car still there, my curled-up body asleep in the back, just in case she came running past in the night.
He knocked on my window early the next morning and quickly told me that I should go home just in case she was there. We swapped cell phone numbers and he assured me that if he remembered any new details, or if he saw anything suspicious, he would call me straight away. He never offered anything else, didn’t ask me to relive my story. I never expected him to be my counsellor but he didn’t seem at all bothered by what had happened directly outside his home, as if it was just a normal occurrence in these strangest of times.
That morning I thought he might have brought me some coffee, at least offered to witness my torment. I would have told him what I knew, about a trip to the store that couldn’t be avoided, even that late at night. How I had seen a few dodgy guys in there, which meant it made more sense for me to go in while Lucy waited outside. I didn’t leave her in the car – I’m not that irresponsible. But I did leave her – the love of my life – alone in the dark of the night in a place that clearly wasn’t safe at a time when bad things could happen, and were happening.
I thought that if he listened to all that then I would get to the point where I confessed what I had done – my worst decision: leaving her alone – but he never did ask, so I didn’t tell. I didn’t even tell the detective. I was too ashamed; realising now that we should have stuck together, even if it meant the car was stolen.
I wondered what Carlos would say in return, if he would tell me that anyone would have done the same thing in my position. He would take the empty mug from me and offer me the chance to freshen up at his place, making sure I knew that he was comfortable for me to be there. I would use his bathroom and he would shout up that in these times you have to work together to survive.
He didn’t do any of that; instead, he left me to drive away, never really knowing what he thought. I think of him, I think of Lucy, and then I think of my guilt.
I jolt forward, throwing the bed covers off me as I search for my notebook. I’m shaking as I rip through the pages, desperately trying to find everything I wrote down last night. I quickly find the page and scan to the end, to just before I describe him slamming the door, to the last words he speaks before making the threat, the only real opinion he expresses throughout: ‘you fucking left her!’
I read the words again and again, my mind beyond any doubt as to what he said. He told me something I haven’t told anyone else, a confession that had never left my lips, that I did leave her, and that only someone who was there would know how I failed to look after her as I should have. As I put last night’s clothes back on I wonder how he could have known that without me telling him, and how he now cannot be guilty.
‘Carlos! Let me in! I know she’s in there!’
He doesn’t answer; none of the curtains move and the door holds firm. I think about how far I am prepared to go to get into his place. Breaking and entering no longer bothers me, and the thought of him taking the law into his own hands doesn’t scare me. What worries me is if she isn’t in there. What if I get into his place and she is nowhere to be seen? What if she’s already suffered some horrible fate, all because I couldn’t rescue her quick enough?
A bedroom window suddenly opens and Carlos looks down at me. ‘I told you what I would do if you turned up here again!’ He leans out of the window, holding a bowl with both hands. He tries to pour its contents over me.
I move out of the way as the liquid splashes all around me, catching my shoes and trousers, the scent of gasoline charging up my nose. I look back up to see him holding a flaming torch in a bottle.
‘Leave now or you’ll burn right here on my porch. I swear to God I’ll do it.’
I don’t move at first, somehow figuring that I’ll be able to outrun a flaming rag, or maybe I’ll be able to rip off the burning clothes before the flames get to my skin. Whatever the answer, I know that I cannot leave her. ‘She’s in there, you bastard! I’m going to get in and I’m going to find her.’
‘You’ve really lost your fucking mind!’ he shouts back.
I ignore him, looking around for something to smash his windows with. He’s willing to burn me until I become a cindering corpse on his lawn, so I figure it’s fair game to break my way in to his place. No one will stop me; no sense of moral order will hold me back. I grab a metal bin and tip the trash onto the ground. The smell immediately hits me and makes me want to vomit. Waste has been piled up over weeks and the baking heat has long since turned it to mush and liquid. The remains trickle their way down the path until they reach the road. I cover my mouth as I drag the bin up the path until I find the strength to pick it up by both handles. I hold it over my head as I take aim at the living room window, flaming torches landing all around me as though we’re in some sort of siege battle.
‘You think that’s going to get you in?’ he shouts, as he lights another rag.
I ignore him and throw it with everything I have. The metal container hits the glass, causing it to shatter but not break, and then it hits the ground. I run forward, hoping to see something inside, but I soon realise how hopeless my attack has been. ‘Bars,’ I say out loud.