Jaq With a Q (Kismet) by Jettie Woodruff Read Free Book Online Page B

Jaq picked up her phone, closing the lid on her laptop. I groaned, not wanting her to do that. “Well, goodnight.”
    I had things I wanted to say, yet nothing came to mind. “Goodnight, Jaq.”
    The only camera I could see her from was the one in the living room, and then briefly from the kitchen. Jaq took all four bottles of pills, counting them at least a half dozen times before taking them, and then she disappeared to get ready for bed. Only she didn’t get ready for bed. She turned on every light in the apartment, double checked the locks on the door, shoved the couch with her knees and locked herself in her bathroom. I switched to full screen, focusing on her bedroom where she’d be crawling into bed, the man in me overruling the scientist in me; although, I’m not sure why. My assumption of what she wore to bed wasn’t even logical for the person she was. I was sure I wouldn’t be watching her slide out of baggy boy jeans and into a cute little night shirt. Jaq wouldn’t slide out of anything. I would have betted my life on it.
    She didn’t and I didn’t have to worry about seeing her bare legs, her breasts, or anything else for that matter. Jaq never left the bathroom. I waited, and waited, but she never emerged. Surely she didn’t stay in there all night. But she did. At one point around one in the morning, I heard her humming and then watched the light below the door being switched on and off, keeping tune with a song that sounded an awful lot like the nursery rhyme, “ It’s raining, it’s pouring, ” and then I heard her soft voice singing the words faintly through the door.
    With my ear turned toward the speaker in my laptop, I listened to the faint words on the other side of the door. “It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring. He went to bed with a lump on his head, and didn’t get up in the morning. Didn’t get up in the morning, didn’t get up in the morning, didn’t get up in the morning.”
    Over and over she sang, the last words keeping rhythm with the light below the door. It was at that very moment I realized the last verse was about death. All the years of knowing the catchy tune, and I never caught that part. Jaq did. She sang it for at least an hour, but only the part where he didn’t get up in the morning. Glancing at the time and then my notes, I yawned, wondering about my own sleep. I had work, and my alarm would be ringing in five hours. Did she sleep? Ever?
    A siren from afar startled me from a slumped sleep two hours later. It took me several minutes to realize it wasn’t coming from my street; it was from my computer, Jaq’s street. My heart plummeted to my feet and then beat hard in my chest. Jaq plus a siren. The thought hitting me like a pile of bricks being dropped from thin air, crushing every bone in my body, mostly my lungs.
    I sat up and looked to my screen, my beating heart settling in my chest. The bathroom light was still on, and the only noise was the fading siren, but I had no idea what went on behind that bathroom door. However, I did know that the camera from the unused bedroom needed to be moved. How? That was the question. Seeing the time in the lower right corner, I rubbed my face and walked toward the coffee pot and then the shower.
    Hot water rained over me while I thought about Albert Hofmann and my father’s formula. Albert was a Swiss scientist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide. My father studied him and spoke very highly of him. The photographic memory I had been born with couldn’t see it. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t recall the formula. Perhaps because I was twelve and not interested in crazy girls who slept in bathrooms.
    I sputtered water from my lips, laughing at my lack of interest in social environments. People often tried to diagnose me with silly phobias, but that’s not where I was. Not even a little. Mine was just