Play it Again, My Darling

ACT I: The Girl Who Forgot to Leave

I light a cigarette before I even hang up my coat. The strike of the match echoes too loud in the kitchen—sharp against the hush that settles over this place at dusk. Outside, streetcars groan against their tracks, and someone’s radio down the hall is playing Perry Como. I crack the window. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m listening.

But I do. Every Thursday.

The voice comes in at 8:00 sharp.

“Tonight on The Caulfield Hour—‘The Girl Who Forgot to Leave.’ Starring and written by Vivienne Blake.”

She never used her married name. I stopped expecting that years ago.

I pour two fingers of rye into a jelly jar, lean on the counter, and wait for the first line. I don’t sit in the parlor anymore. I stopped that around Christmas. I used to bring my newspaper and pretend not to notice the way she said his name—Sam Caulfield, the detective. Her invention. Or maybe not. Sometimes I think I knew him. The way she writes him, he’s got my shoulders, my drink order, my lousy temper.

I told her once he felt familiar.

She said, “That’s what makes him dangerous.”

The music starts—a moody saxophone over footsteps on rain-slick concrete—and then the voice. Her voice. Polished like glass, but I can hear the fault lines if I really listen.

“He said the girl checked in on a Monday and never left. Just let the room get smaller around her until it matched the shape of her life.”

There’s a beat before the next line. It hangs there like smoke.

“Room 217. Third floor. Half-used lipstick in the drawer. Cigarette burns on the sill. No luggage. Just a woman and the silence she carried in her coat pocket.”

I set the glass down harder than I mean to. The jelly jar rings out against the tile.

Coral Rose. That was the name of the shade. She wore it in Miami, back in ’41, when I still knew how to touch her without thinking about everything that might go wrong. I remember it because I bought it. She said it made her feel loud. Braver than the waves. We spent two nights in a beach hotel with sticky floors and a broken fan, and she wore that lipstick like it could keep the place from falling down.

“He didn’t knock right away. Just watched her through the pebbled glass. When she finally opened the door, she looked like someone who knew better than to answer.”

I press my thumb to the countertop. The marble’s cool. I don’t remember what we fought about that last night in Miami. Just the slam of the screen door and the sound of her heels crossing the lot. I never followed her. I thought she’d come back.

I always thought she’d come back.