There was a long silence.
“Gabe?”
“Huh?”
It had been easy to picture him—handsome eyes, heavy and hooded.
“Did you see it?” he’d asked.
“See what?”
“You know.” He’d sounded annoyed. “You know.”
“The play?” That had been the last time we’d seen each other.
“Noooooo.” The word had been long and drawn out. “Bond. I bet you didn’t. You don’t like Bond. I know. I read about it.”
“Gabe—”
“You were nice. Wrong, but nice. I shouldn’t have been Bond. You know it. The world knows it. They should have picked Ollie. I’m wrong. I’m all wrong. I deserve this. I deserve it all.”
At the time, I hadn’t known what he was talking about. It wasn’t until afterward, when I checked Twitter and discovered that “Gabe Parker” was trending, that I saw the Ryan Ulrich video.
“You need to drink some water,” I’d said. “Please? Just one glass?”
“We were a good team, though,” he’d said. “Running Pyramid. You were good. You got it. You got me. Dream team, right? We haven’t played in so long. It’s been soooooooo long. You know? You know.”
He paused and for a moment, I thought that he had hung up.
“Gabe?”
“Data was your favorite, right? Yeah. Yeah. He was. I like Data. But all these human feelings he wanted? Overrated. Over. Rated. Who needs them?”
I’d sat down on my stoop. It had been cold, but I didn’t go inside. The last thing I’d wanted was for Jeremy to ask who I was talking to.
After a while, it seemed as though Gabe had forgotten I was even on the line with him.
“I’ve read everything,” he’d slurred. “Evvvvvverything. All the words. I’m not as smart as he is. Not as smart, but I can read. Not just scripts. Books. I read books. Lots of books. You should see the books. I could send them to you. All of them. I could fill your whole house with books. I could buy you all the books. You’d be like that princess with the library and all the books.”
My fingers had gone numb from the cold and I’d kept switching my phone to the other ear so I could put my free hand in my pocket.
“Chani,” he had whispered. “Chani, Chani, Chani.”
“Gabe.”
“You’ll call me back, right? You have to call me back. I just…you have to, okay?”
“I will,” I’d said, even though I was sure he hadn’t heard me.
There had been a long silence and that’s when I’d realized he’d hung up.
“Wow,” Gabe says after I finish telling him.
The look on his face now—that surprise and shock—makes it clear that he doesn’t have the same recollection of that call that I do. He seems to have grown older at the memory. Sadder.
“You kept begging me to call you back,” I say.
“I thought I’d dreamt it,” he says. “I was drunk. So fucking drunk that night and I wanted to call you—I always wanted to call you when I was in a state like that, but I never did.”
“Except that one time.”
“Except that one time.” He glances over. “I was probably an embarrassing mess.”
I pinch my lips together. “A little,” I say.
He scrubs a hand over his beard.
“Jesus,” he says. “Did I make any sense?”
“Sometimes,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It was nice to hear your voice,” I say.
He smiles at that.
“What happened the next morning?” he asks. “Did you call me back?”
“Jacinda picked up,” I say.
“Oh,” Gabe says. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Shit.”
My hands had shaken a little when I called back the next day. I’d waited until Jeremy had left the apartment, watching him walk down to the end of the block, counting to ten after he was out of sight.
The phone rang three times and then it was a female voice that answered. A British female voice.
“Is Gabe there?” I’d managed to ask.
“No,” Jacinda Lockwood had said, her voice tart. “He’s in rehab. No phones allowed.”
“Oh,” I’d said.
Part of me was relieved because he had been so drunk the previous night that it had been worrying. The other part was selfishly disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to contact him.