Chapter 9 rewrite

Edmond woke up. His stomach was growling. He hadn't eaten much lunch (somehow the sushi just hadn’t appealed to him), and it was now well past dinnertime. He considered trying to go out somewhere (but where?), and he thought about calling room service. He checked the charge on his wheelchair, and it was still kind of low. If he went out, he might get stranded somewhere. Normally, he would have preferred to just sit at home and heat something up, but he found himself wanting to go out somewhere; maybe he would just accidentally run into somebody who knew something about where Lena was. He certainly wasn't going to find anything out here in the room. At the same time, he wasn't sure he could learn anything if he did go out anyway. Everywhere he had gone, he had just hit dead ends. He called room service. It was hard for him to order dinner, because at this point, he was simply hungry; he had no real appetite. He didn’t particularly want to eat, he just realized that he needed to. It didn’t matter too much to him what he ate, as long as it filled his belly. Eventually he settled on one of the daily specials.He stopped to consider. He had met this guy, Jay. That seemed to be as close to Lena as he was going to get. Of course, he only had Jay's word that his name was even Jay. He didn't know of any reason why the guy might have lied about it, unless he were the kidnapper, and thought that Lena might have told Edmond enough that he could figure out that this was the guy he should be looking for. That didn't really make sense, though. Ed didn't know anything about any of Lena's friends, and if he had a name of the kidnapper... No, Jay was almost certainly telling the truth. He really had no reason to lie, even if he was the guilty party. When the food came, Edmond ate slowly, and thought some more. No matter how hard he thought, though, he couldn't reach any real conclusions. Something had happened to Lena, it appeared that she had been kidnapped, but he couldn't really be sure about that. If she had been kidnapped, he thought it was the guy that he thought of as Lena's boyfriend, even though he knew Lena didn't think of him that way. If that were the case, he didn't have a clue who the guy was or where he might have taken her. He was beginning to think that he should have stayed in Chicago, for all the good he was doing here. He knew he couldn't have stayed at home, though, even though he had never actually met Lena, she had come to mean a great deal to him; something of a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary life. He had to do something to help find her, even if he didn't know what else he could do. He had felt very frustrated in Chicago, because he realized that something needed to be done; now he was in Portland, and he was just as frustrated, because he didn’t know what he could do.By the time he finished eating, there was enough of a charge on the wheelchair that he felt confident that he could go out for a little while. He could plug the chair back in when he got back, and it would be fully charged in the morning. But where would he go? He should find someplace where young people hung out, like a Starbuck's. That might be just the thing. He wasn't sure that it would help, but he had to try something. This whole adventure was an exercise in desperation, anyway. The worst thing that could happen is that he spend too much money on some frou-frou latte or something...
He called the hotel concierge to ask about nearby coffee shops. He tried to come up with the best possible wording to try to find out where someone like Lena might choose to hang out, without giving away why he wanted to know, and without sounding like a pervert. “This is Edmond Randolph in 304. I’m a writer, here from Chicago, and I’m doing some research. Can you tell me where there would be a coffee shop close by that would be popular with people in their twenties?”
The concierge had several suggestions, but one in particular that he felt was close by and popular with IT professionals. Edmond asked him to make the appropriate transportation arrangements.

Chapter 8 rewrite

Lena heard someone coming down the stairs. She wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or not. She had managed to hold her bladder, and keep down her last meal, but she felt certain that pretty soon, she would succumb to one or the other. Her head was almost clear, now, but she still ached. It wasn’t easy for her to move, tied the way she was, but she managed to crane her neck to see that it was Mark that she had heard.
“Well, you’re awake, finally,” he said. “I was beginning to think that I had overdosed you.” He didn’t seem particularly concerned that he might have killed her. How much longer would he have let her lie there? What if she had O.D.’d on whatever drug he had given her? Would he have called for an ambulance, and taken a chance of going to jail, or would he have just let her die, and then tried to hide the body? Lena contemplated asking him what he wanted with her, but she was a little afraid to find out. Besides, her bladder was about to burst.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Well, I guess we can’t have you making a mess in Mom’s basement.” He pulled a gun from behind him somewhere, and waved it in her general direction. She almost wet herself. “Don’t try anything stupid. You’ll regret it.” He untied her, and led her up the stairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, he turned right and led her down to the second door on the left. The hallway was long, but the door to the basement and the bathroom door were close together. There were pictures hanging on the wall. Many of the pictures showed either a mother with a young son, or a family of three. The little boy looked so sweet and innocent; if Lena hadn't been concentrating on holding her bladder, she would have wondered how that little boy had grown up to be a kidnapper.
He let her into the bathroom, and allowed her to close the door behind her. She pulled down her pants, and plopped herself down on the toilet and let go. She felt very relieved. She looked around for a window. There was one, but it was small. She might be able to fit through, but how far could she get before he started shooting at her? She finished her business, pulled up her pants, and went to the window. There was a view of beautiful coastline, and not much else. There wasn’t even any indication that there was another beach house nearby. She didn’t think that she would even get far enough for anyone to be able to hear her screaming for help. She washed her hands and opened the door.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, as Mark began tying her up again.
“Because I’m tired. I’ve done everything right. I’ve been a perfect gentleman, not just with you, but with the other girls I’ve dated. But, eventually, each of you decides that I’m just not good enough to stay with; not husband material, I guess. Just about the time that I feel comfortable in a relationship, I get dumped. You are not going to dump me, Lena. You are going to stay here until you learn to love me.” If Lena hadn’t been afraid of what might happen if she argued with him, she would have pointed out that it had been a while since he had been a gentleman with her. At first, yes, he was romantic and charming and, well, nice. He had been gentle. Somewhere along the line though, he had, in his words, gotten comfortable with the relationship. He stopped treating her like a lady, and treated her more like property. As if he owned her. As if she belonged to him. As if her feelings no longer mattered. If this was his usual pattern, no wonder he kept getting dumped. He said that she had been in mom’s basement, though. She hadn’t realized that he had parents in the local area, though (unless they weren't local anymore--she really didn't know where they were). In all the time that they had been dating, she had never met them. Obviously his mom wasn’t home, but she would come back eventually. He couldn’t keep her here forever. Nervously, she broached the subject, “When will your mom be back?”
Mark laughed. “She’s out of the country. She won’t be back for months. By the time she gets back, you and I will be married.”
He’d lost it. You don’t convince somebody to marry you by kidnapping them. She tried to come up with some explanation for how he might think that this experience might convince her to even continue to like him. She remembered learning about Stockholm Syndrome in her college psychology class. In 1973, in Stockholm, some bank robbers in Stockholm held some of the bank employees hostage for six days. During their captivity, the hostages develop feelings of sympathy, possibly even affection, for their captors. The hostages actually spoke out in defense of the criminals after their release. What if she developed such an ailment? She could wind up in a marriage with him… Her stomach began churning. The nausea intensified; for a minute, she thought she was going to hurl, but the thought of hurling took her mind off of the possible wedding and she was able to marshal the self-control to keep the contents of her stomach to herself. Almost immediately, she regretted it. She tried to imagine the look on his face if she had puked all over him, but, then, she couldn’t help but imagine the beating she would receive afterwards; maybe not a beating, that really didn’t seem to be the way Mark wanted to operate (although, in his current mental state, anything was possible), but he would undoubtedly find some way to punish her. She guessed she had done the smart thing, after all.

Chapter 7 rewrite

Jay made a few more calls, and then turned and eyed Ed suspiciously. “No one that I know has seen Lena, and she didn’t mention that you were coming to anyone. A lot of us read one or more of your blogs. Lena would have known that we would have liked to know that you were coming.” Edmond considered the statement for a moment, realizing that every second he didn’t answer just made him seem more suspicious, but also aware that it seemed like he had lied already, because he let Jay think that Lena had invited him to come visit.
“The truth is, Lena didn’t know I was coming. She had communicated with me very regularly for several months now, and yesterday she didn’t. Call me paranoid if you want to, but I am very much afraid that something bad has happened to her. I couldn’t get anyone here to pay any attention to me from Chicago. I didn’t know what else to do but fly out here.”
It was now Jay’s turn to consider. He, understandably, felt that he had been misled, but, at the same time, he thought it over, and came to the conclusion that the old guy in the wheelchair hadn’t actually lied to him, just knowingly allowed him to think something that Edmond had known wasn’t true. All the same, he didn't like it. “I’ve gotta go,” he muttered, and strode towards his car.
“Jay,” Ed called out, “thanks for your help. I’m sure Lena would appreciate it, too.”
Jay muttered something under his breath and waved a hand in what could have been an obscene gesture. The charge was getting low on Ed’s wheelchair. He needed to get back to the hotel. He headed towards the apartment building lobby to call for a ride.
Back at the hotel, he started to hook up the charger and tried to think. He’d done a lot of digging, but he hadn’t really turned up anything. Someone interrupted her lunch yesterday, and that seemed to be the last time anyone had seen her. He had only a vague description of that person, who might, or might not, have kidnapped her. That description could be Jay. He hoped it wasn’t Jay, but, then again, maybe if it was, now that he knew somebody was looking for her, maybe he would let her go. Then again, he might just kill her, and hide the body somewhere. Ed didn’t know what to think. He was afraid that he might have made things worse by talking to Jay. He wanted to lie down, but the only wall outlet close to the bed had an alarm clock plugged into it. One the one hand, he could move the alarm clock to the other side of the room, and then when it went off, he could get in the chair and wheel across the room to shut off the alarm, or, on the other hand, he could leave the alarm clock where it was, and either work out an extremely difficult method of getting from the chair to the bed, or just not charge the chair overnight. He called room service and asked them to bring up an extension cord. That should solve the problem. The guy from room service didn’t really get it at first, but Edmond showed him how he needed to plug the chair in to charge it, and explained that he needed to be able to climb into bed from the chair after plugging it in. Once that was done, Edmond got into bed, and realized that the toll of not sleeping well the night before had caught up to him. It was only 4:00 PM (6:00 PM Chicago time), and he was felt exhausted. It did not take long for him to fall asleep. He did not sleep well, though; he had too much on his mind. Still, he slept better than he had the night before.
He dreamed that Lena was calling to him, "Edmond! Edmond! You're my only hope, Edmond!" He woke up troubled, and dimly aware that he really didn't know what Lena's voice sounded like, because he had never spoken to her. It also occurred to him that he would rather dream about Lena than the accident, but then he felt guilty, because she was in serious trouble, and here he was thinking that her trouble at least that got his mind off of his own problems. Maybe God had good reason to hate Edmond.

Chapter 6 rewrite

Well, at least now Edmond knew that someone interrupted her lunch yesterday. He couldn’t be sure that this individual was responsible for her disappearance, but it made sense. Of course, he didn’t know who this someone was, but it fit with his theory of a possessive boyfriend. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t any closer to finding her, and he was running out of things that he could check. He decided to go by her apartment building.
He would have liked to check for her car, but she had never told him what model car she drove. He had a pretty good idea that she didn’t drive it very much, because she was fortunate enough to be able to walk most of the time. That knowledge didn’t seem to be particularly helpful. It occurred to him to talk with the manager of the apartment complex, but there were two problems with that: they would probably think he was a nut; and they might not be there until Monday morning, anyway.
He had the driver drop him off in the parking lot. He drove his wheel chair up and down the aisles. He looked for a small car, because he figured that’s what she would drive, that looked like it had been sitting for some time. The futility of that frustrated him. He’s looking for a car, based on guesses. It was entirely possible that she walked to work so that she could save gas to burn in her Humvee after work.
He was really worried. She had been gone over 24 hours now. It was entirely possible that she was dead. He tried not to think about that. Somewhere inside of him he felt that she was still alive, but he had no way of knowing for how long... Somehow he had to find her, but he didn’t even know where to look.
“Are you okay?” a male voice asked. Edmond looked up. There was a young man standing nearby with a set of car keys in his hand. “You look sick.”
“I’m okay,” Edmond replied, “I’m just worried about a friend.” After a pause, he asked, “Do you live here?”
“Yes, I do,” the young man responded, with a quizzical look on his face.
“Maybe you know her then.” He pulled out a picture. “Her name is Lena Sandoval.”
The young man started to nod, but caught himself. “And you are?”
“My name is Edmond Randolph.”
“Oh, yeah, she told me about you. I like your ‘Wounded Statesman’ blog. I thought you were in Chicago, though.”
“I live in Chicago, yes. I came out here because of her, and now I can’t find her. I’m afraid something has happened to her.”
“I think she’s here. I saw her SUV…”
“She sometimes walks different places, though.”
“Let’s check her apartment.”
They headed to the building, and got on the elevator. On the way up, Ed asked the young man his name. “Oh, I’m sorry, my name is Jay.”
They got off on the eighth floor. Jay walked him to apartment 806, and they knocked on the door. “Man, I can’t believe she would just leave you hanging like that, man.”
“I don’t think it was her fault.”
They waited a few minutes for her to come to the door, and then knocked again. After a few minutes, Jay decided she wasn’t home. “I’m sure that was her vehicle in the parking lot, though.”
“Do you know if she has any friends in the building she might be visiting?”
“I’m sure she does, but I don’t know who they are.”
“Can you show me her car?”
Jay nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
Her car was a black 2005 Range Rover with a noticeable layer of dust on it, confirming one of Ed’s theories, but blowing the other one completely out of the water.
Jay said, “You can see why she walks so much.”
Edmond shot a puzzled look at Jay. “I thought she had a good paying job.”
Jay laughed. “Not that good. If she drove this to work every day, she wouldn’t be able to afford to drive it on weekends. As it is, I think she only drives it one or two weekends a month.”
There was no way of telling when she had driven it last, and nothing to indicate who else might have been in it. It was possible that the dust had accumulated since last weekend. Even if it was two weeks worth of dust, that may not be out of the ordinary; Edmond had no way of knowing. Basically, seeing the car didn’t help; it was just another dead end.
“Let me try calling her.” Jay pulled out a cell phone, and punched a few buttons. After a couple of seconds, he frowned. “That’s strange; it went straight to voice mail. I’ve never known Lena to turn off her phone. As a matter of fact, the people she works for don’t like for her to turn off her phone, she's supposed to be on 24 hour call, in case something happens to one of the websites that she maintains.” It occurred to Ed that the battery might be dead, or whoever had Lena had turned off the phone, but he didn’t want to voice either of those ideas. Now what?

Chapter 5 rewrite

Lena opened her eyes slowly. Her body felt like one big muscle ache, and she couldn’t move her arms or legs. She couldn’t see much, either; it was very dark. She could feel that she was lying on a rough, cold floor, probably concrete. There was a mélange of odors that she wasn’t familiar with, or maybe she was, just not together. Her brain felt fuzzy. She realized that she had been drugged. One more reason why she hated taking drugs. She didn’t take aspirin if she could possibly get around it. She tried to look around, but, between the double vision and the limited lighting, she couldn’t tell anything about where she was. There was stuff around her, some shapes that looked like boxes, and some other miscellaneous items, but nothing that she could identify with any real certainty. She tried to get a sense of how she was; as near as she could tell, through the lingering effects of the drug, she wasn’t really hurt. Nothing seemed to be broken. There might be few bruises here and there, but, mostly, there was just the one, big body ache. She tried to remember how she wound up here, but her memory was foggy. The last thing she remembered was getting into the car with him. It had surprised her when he showed up at the park; she had mentioned to him that she liked to eat lunch there, but he had never shown up there before. In fact, he had never even suggested that he would like to meet her for lunch. He had seemed rational at the park, although a little excited. He said that he needed to show her something, but when they got close to the car he just went quietly nuts. It had frightened her, and she tried to pull away, but he grabbed her and shoved her into the car. He had insisted that she try some new kind of energy drink, with no explanation, but she thought maybe it would calm him down if she drank it. The next thing she knew, she was here, wherever here was. As the drugs faded, her body ache abated, but was gradually replaced by a pounding headache. She wondered briefly what he had given her, but knew that she wouldn’t be able to figure it out, with her limited knowledge of the effects of specific drugs. Whatever it was, it left a bad taste in her mouth. She tried to focus on whatever clues there were that he would come to this. Two months ago, he had seemed so romantic, doting on her every want and need. He had taken her to a flower show, and it was clear from his reactions that he wasn’t interested in the flowers. He had gotten her some very nice and thoughtful gifts. Some of those gifts had been somewhat expensive. Lately, though, he had been becoming much more possessive, which caused her to pull away. It had turned into a vicious cycle: he kept trying to push closer, and the more he pushed, the more she pulled away; the more she pulled away, the harder he pushed. It had gotten to be too much; she had been planning to tell him over dinner that she didn’t want to see him any more. Apparently he had figured that out, and decided to take matters into his own hands. She tried to mentally make a list of people that would notice that she was missing. Her boss had offered to give her Friday afternoon off, but she had declined. Of course, when she didn’t come back after lunch, he would probably just assume that she had changed her mind. She hadn’t made dinner plans with anybody, because she had planned on having dinner with Mark, so that she could break it off; none of her friends would notice her missing right away. She didn’t have a roommate, so there was no help there. Her hands and feet were tied securely. Escape seemed unlikely, and a rescue was even less probable. Suddenly she was wracked with hunger pains. Her stomach had just realized that she was awake. She had eaten a small lunch at the park before, but she had no way of knowing how long ago that was, other than the feeling in her belly telling her that it had been yesterday. At the same time, the drugs were giving her a distinct queasy feeling. If she didn’t get something to settle her tummy soon, she was liable to make a big mess, right here on the floor, and she was just going to have to lie in it. She tried not to think about it, but it was like trying not to think about a pink elephant. The more she tried to keep her mind off of it, the more she thought about it. The more she thought about it, the queasier she felt. Finally it occurred to her to try not to think about escaping, and that ended the cycle.Then her bladder woke up, and all she could do was cry.

Chapter 4 rewrite

Getting off the plane and working his way through Portland International Airport turned out to be considerably less difficult than getting on the plane at O’Hare. Finding transportation suited to his needs was a little on the difficult side, but it had proved to be doable. Riding down I-405 towards a hotel near Lena’s apartment building, he tried once again to formulate a plan. He had come all this way, and he still didn’t know what he could do. He remembered that she had mentioned a sushi bar nearby, maybe someone there would remember her and be able to help. “Excuse me,” he called out to the driver, “do you know where there is a sushi bar near the hotel?” The driver nodded. “Yes sir, there’s one about a mile this side of the hotel. I’ll point it out as we get close.” “Thanks.” Shortly thereafter, went from I-405 to Sunset Highway, and headed down a surface street, Murray Boulevard, then onto Cornell Road. They past several people on bicycles along the way, but Edmond didn’t notice. Not too long thereafter, the driver pointed out a sushi bar on the right. About a mile and a half later, he turned right into the hotel. After a certain amount of flummoxing around, he was back in his wheelchair, with his baggage, in the lobby of the hotel. Once again, he had to endure the stares of those around him; one more reason why he would have preferred his isolationism. Still, there was something he had to do, and he going to do it, even if he still wasn’t clear how to go about it. His plan was to get settled into his room, and then get a ride to the Sushi bar. The desk clerk averted his eyes, but got him checked in, and then had a bellhop take Ed’s baggage to his suite. Ed glanced around the room; it was bigger than his apartment. That was a little depressing. It was also much brighter than his apartment. He didn’t like that either, but he reminded himself that he wouldn’t be staying here long. He hoped. He tipped the bellhop, and he got a sense of where things were in the room, stuffed the room key card in the wheelchair saddlebag, and left. At the sushi bar, he looked at the sushi. He had never eaten sushi before, but Lena had told him that she really liked it, and he felt that he had to eat some now, or no one would talk to him. The waitress noticed the look in his eye, after she walked past him three times to deal with other customers, and also noticed that he hadn’t touched the sushi that she had set in front of him. “What’s the matter, hon?” Ed wasn’t used to such familiarity, but he understood it. “Is this your first time eating sushi?” Ed nodded, and pulled out one of the pictures that he had printed out. “Lena wanted me to try it.” That wasn’t a lie, she did. Of course, she had intended for him to try it in Chicago, but here he was in Portland. “Lena? Oh, yes, I’ve seen her in here. I didn’t know that was her name, though.” Ed looked up. “About how often does she come in?”
“She comes in here on Fridays a lot, but she wasn’t in here last night.” “Alone?”
“Oh, no, almost never. She almost always comes in here with friends.” The waitress paused. “Say, what is this? Who are you, and why are you asking so many questions?” Ed wasn’t sure how to respond, and the long pause before he did certainly wasn’t helping his credibility. “My name is Ed Randolph. I’m a friend of Lena’s, and usually we at least chat briefly on Friday afternoons, but yesterday I didn’t hear from her, so I’m a little worried. I wish I could find her.” “I don’t know what to tell you, Ed, she comes in here pretty frequently, but not often enough that I would really know when to expect her. She was in here last week, so probably not for the next few days, but I don’t know for sure.” Ed nodded. “I understand. Thanks for your help.” He eyeballed a sushi roll, and finally put it in his mouth. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected. “When I see Lena, I’ll tell her that you were in here. And that you tried the sushi.” Ed nodded. He wanted to say thanks, but not until he swallowed, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to swallow. Next stop would be the park, except he wasn’t sure which park, and he wasn’t sure how well his wheelchair could handle park turf. There was a park right across the street from the sushi bar, but he didn’t think that was the one. It was hard for him to judge, but he really didn’t think that this was within walking distance of where she worked. He had located two parks that were much closer. Neither one of them seemed particularly enjoyable to him, but he’d been content to sit in a dark musty apartment for a very long time. From what he had been able to find out on-line, one had a moderate grassy expanse and a couple of tennis courts, while the other one was larger, had more trees, also had tennis courts in the western part of the park, but had high-tension wires running through the eastern part of the park, and somehow didn’t seem to have as much grass. The larger park was easier to get to from where she worked, so he decided to check that out. When he arrived at the park, he was relieved to see that it hadn’t rained recently, so he wasn’t likely to get his wheelchair stuck in the mud; he might still get stuck, but at least it wouldn’t be because of the mud. He managed to roll around on the ground fairly easily. He wasn’t sure what he should be looking for, but here he was. Maybe signs of a struggle? He noticed some guys tossing a Frisbee, and noticed that they were kicking up dirt and leaving footprints that might look to him like there had been a struggle there if he hadn’t seen for himself what had happened. “You look disappointed.” He looked up. A young, blonde woman with a big dog on a leash was standing, looking at him. She spoke again, “Is the park not what you had expected?” “No, actually, it’s pretty much exactly what I had expected. I had hoped to see a friend here, though.” He pulled out the picture of Lena. “She’s a little young for you, don’t you think?” Ed laughed, for the first time in a long time. “No, she’s a lot young for me, but when I say friend, I mean friend, I don’t mean girlfriend.” The woman smiled. “Yeah, I’ve seen her here before. In fact, she comes here a lot.” The dog came over and started sniffing at Ed. “Are you here a lot?” he asked, absent-mindedly stroking the dog’s fur. “Yes, I just live over there.” She pointed to a house nearby. “Even when I’m not here, I’m usually at home, with a view of the park.” “Could you tell me when was the last time you saw her?” “She was here yesterday. She likes to bring her lunch here, and eat in the park.” Ed nodded, “Yeah, she told me that. I was hoping she was having lunch here today.” The blonde woman shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her here on a Saturday. Just Monday through Friday.” “Did anything unusual happen yesterday?” “Yeah, now that you mention it. There was a guy that showed up here; I’ve never seen him before. He talked to her for a little while, and they left together. She didn’t seem happy about it.” “Can you describe the guy?”
”He had brown hair, medium build. Sorry, there’s not much else I can tell you.” “Thanks. I appreciate the help. I also appreciate the trust.”
She nodded towards the dog. “Bruno’s a good judge of character.”He nodded, then headed back to the car.

Chapter 3 rewrite

He had lived on his own, sequestered in his cluttered little apartment, by his own choice, for years. There had been a few details to work out about the arrangements in the beginning, but it had worked to his satisfaction up until now. Suddenly he was in a situation that no one believed him about; he could not get one solitary person on the outside to treat this seriously. It may very well be up to him, but wasn’t sure what he could do, even if he left his apartment. He went back through her E-mails. She mentioned that she lived within walking distance of work, and that often saved her gas money, when the weather was nice. She had also mentioned a park near her work. She had said that it wasn’t very pretty, she would have liked it better if it had more trees and grass, and a few benches. Still, it was a good place to take a brown-bag lunch and sit in the sun, let the wind blow her hair. It almost made him wish that he had a spot like that. If someone had kidnapped her in the park, people leaving work would think she just took off at lunch because her car wasn’t in the parking lot. They might have no idea that she was even missing. In other E-mails, she mentioned how much respect that she had learned for him from reading his opinion, even if she didn’t always agree with him. She seemed to think that he felt much to sorry for himself. She talked about how loss is generally offset by a gain of some sort; in his case it would seem to be his ability for writing, something that he had never used in his old job as a forklift operator. She talked to him about her parents, back in the Philippines; they weren’t much older than he was. She seemed to be willing to share almost any detail of her life with him, she even E-mailed him sometimes to say that she was sick, or that her allergies were bothering her. Sometimes it seemed too much; he had sent her messages that said simply, “TMI” a couple of times, and she seemed surprised at what he considered too much information. He had grown very fond of her over the past ten or eleven months. She had become almost like family, even though he had never met her, just through the daily communication. One missing E-mail might not seem like that big of a deal to some people, but to him it was huge, and he felt confident that she knew that. He checked his PayPal tip jar. There was more money than he had expected. He had money in the bank, too. Was he really considering doing something? In some ways, the idea frightened him; he hadn’t seen the sun in years, but staying in the apartment suddenly seemed unbearable. What if the police were right? What if it were just a fluke that she hadn’t E-mailed him? If he flew out to Portland, and nothing had happened to her, she would think he was a stalker. That would definitely cost him a friend. But he couldn’t just sit at home and do nothing. He logged onto a travel agent website and booked a one-way flight to Portland, noting that he was in a wheelchair and had special needs. He checked the balance on the checkcard that he used to pay Peapod; it looked like it would be enough to pay for his needs in Portland for a few days and still buy a return flight ticket. Of course, that would mean finding the physical card; he only used it on-line up until now, and hadn’t needed the card since he entered the information into the computer. He loaded up his printer with the best quality paper he had, and printed out several copies of the picture he had of Lena. The enormity of what he was doing astounded him, yet he felt he had no choice. He needed to get packed, and to gather up what little cash he had, and get to the airport. It would really be a waste if he had made all these preparations and then missed the flight. Somewhere in the midst of all the preparations, he came up with the joke he needed for The Gag Reflex: Dr. Bob: I crossed a lightning bug with a cockroach. Reporter: What did you get? Dr. Bob: I don’t know, but every time it lights up, it runs and hides under the refrigerator. He had no idea why that popped into his head, but there it was, and he able to finish that blog. Soon the limousine service was at the door, and he gathered up his things, and took a long look at the small, dark apartment that he had not left in almost ten years. Suddenly it seemed outright claustrophobic. He opened the door, and the limo driver, after recoiling slightly, picked up his bags and they left. It was a long, quiet ride to O’Hare. There was so much he hadn’t seen in so long, but right now, none of it seemed important. It seemed like the road construction crews were working on the same parts of the same roads as the last time he was out. When they finally reached the airport, he tipped the driver, and also tipped a skycap to check his bags. Wheeling his chair to the check-in counter, he picked up his E-ticket and boarding pass. Airport security was ridiculous. Did they really think that he was hiding explosives in his shoes? Not that mattered. He couldn’t walk, anyway, what difference did it really make if he was wearing shoes? When he finally got through security, then he went to the gate, and they had to get a special wheelchair for him. Regular wheelchairs don’t fit down the aisle of a commercial airliner. He hadn’t realized when he left the house how much he would have to endure just to get on an airplane. Up until he arrived at the airport, he had thought his hardest time would be dealing with the outside. Now it looked like the airport might be the worst of it. It was a long flight. He was hungry. When did they stop serving meals on long flights? It seemed like with the fare increases over the last ten years, there should have been more amenities on the flight, instead of less. There was satellite radio, but that really didn’t impress Ed much. Maybe if he had been traveling for pleasure, it would have been different. He really didn’t feel like listening to music, and radio talk shows even less. Eventually the captain came on the public address system, announcing that they would be landing soon. Ed hoped that getting off the plane wouldn’t be as bad as getting on it had been.