On our living room wall hangs a 60 inch mounted plasma HDTV. Truly a sight to behold. My giddiness could barely be contained on seeing this spectacle for the first time. As not to arouse attention, I excused myself to the restroom, there I could privately use my sleeve to dab the drool dripping from my awed opened mouth. A selfish and possessive lover of TV, I'm sure you can guess where I am each and every free minute of the day...Love in the Afternoon, Must See Thursday, Primetime, Daytime, Latenight? If you said crammed in my dark bedroom, sitting on the floor, squinting painfully at my embarrassingly small 5 inches of black and white portable TV, you would be correct. But why, Paul-David, for the love of God, why not watch the big miracle of a TV? Located on this now cold behemoth's upper left corner, a small quarter inch crack can be found. A tiny, unnoticeable, lilliputian screaming banshee of a crack, challenging me everyday to a till the death staring contest. While watching my stories, the crack is all I see. Comedy or drama, sci-fi or porn, all shows star but one cast member...Cracky McCrack. And like any other true Diva, it demands full attention.Like a smack on the head, Heather Mary's screams to answer the phone woke me from a most pleasant dream. In the past, I begrudgingly allowed sleep, knowing slumber brought terror and terrible sights, but these days, sleep is welcomed, for now it brings but one sight...one face...Kristina.
I answered the phone and I heard her voice and I pinched myself, "Am I still dreaming?" I wondered. Kristina laughed and I knew it was no dream, just my beautiful reality. She thanked me again for last night's dinner party and told me again she had a wonderful time. "Good," I said, "I couldn't be happier." And truer words have never been spoken...I couldn't be happier.
She said she left her camera behind last night and wondered if it would be OK to drop by and pick it up on her way to work. "Of course," I said. "Come a little early even so you don't have to rush out," I added. She laughed, "Won't you get tired of seeing me?" "Make me tired," I begged, not really knowing what that meant, but it sounded sexy at the time.
I hung up the phone and started looking for Kristina's camera. It wasn't in the living room, not in the kitchen, maybe she just said she left it behind, an excuse to see me again? Then, like another smack on the head, Heather Mary's voice disturbed yet another most pleasant day dream. "Paul-David! Get that skinny white ass of yours in here. Now mister!"
The room was dark. To Heather Mary's side, a bump, also known as Edgar DuHaven, wrapped in a Hello Kitty blanket, lay snoring loudly, blissfully passed out, deaf to Heather Mary's overly loud outside voice. As I entered, she clapped two times, signalling her bedside lamp to light, ending the mystery of Kristina's missing digital camera. Heather Mary had it and my first thought, "Oh good, Heather Mary found Kristian's camera.", quickly led to the second, "why is Heather Mary looking through all the pictures?"
"What are you doing?" I asked. "Those are private." Heather Mary looked up, eyes so serious and said, "If this was a movie, I would reply to that question in some witty fashion, like "something stinks here, and it ain't Edgar's feet" or "if a picture is worth a thousand words, one of those words would be, that girl is fucked up." But this isn't a movie and you're my best friend and..." "And you couldn't think of anything witty?" I interrupted. "No I couldn't, and I've been trying all morning, but you are my best friend, and I have to tell you this...there is something seriously wrong with Kristina." I sat down and listened.
"I found her camera this morning on the floor. I wanted to see the pictures of last night, to see how fabulous I looked, cause I did look good, and looking through them, I was right. Hotness! I think I'm gonna post some of them on my blog. But after I got through the ones of us, I wanted to see some pictures of that dog you guys are always talking about, so I started going through them. One after the other, picture after picture, Christmas, Easters, that girl has taken hundreds of pictures, hey chick, print a pic once and a while, geez, it's not that hard. But in the hundreds of pictures she has on this camera...hundreds of them, not one...not a single freakin one is of that damn dog of hers." "So what," I said. "So what?" She cried. "Look around this room, can your eyes go for more than in inch without seeing a picture of Mr. Jingle Maryweather. Jingle by himself, Jingle with a stuffed animal, Jingle with me. It's all Jingle, all the time. When you got no one else to love and you got an animal, trust me, you take pictures of that animal. You take pictures and you hang them up and you look at them and they prove you are loved...by something in this world. Not a single picture of that dog, Paul-David. Not a one. "
She handed my the camera, and against my better judgement, I started going through the pictures, and no surprise, Heather Mary was right...no Lil'Bit. Kristina loves that dog. We've spent the past month searching everywhere for that dog. Why no pictures? Not exactly a crime so what was Heather Mary accusing Kristina of, and why was I so all of a sudden uncomfortable? I sat for a moment in Heather Mary's room and a familiar feeling crept into my bones...sadness. I didn't quite know why. I didn't know what any of it meant, but it didn't matter. In a few minutes, Kristina would be here and I knew no matter how hard I tried, her long straight red hair, her freckles, her lovely thin lips, those too big glasses, would be invisible now. When she walks through that door, I will see nothing but a crack in her upper left corner. A small crack...an almost invisible shrieking monster of a crack.
The doorbell rings.
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