Interlude D: Dave Sandlin

It’s been a few months since Markus has come by his bar. Dave wants to believe that the man’s cleaned up act, but he has trouble believing that that’s what’s happened. The poor guy's had twenty years to right himself, and he’s never managed it for more than a few weeks at a time.

So after a particularly quiet night on the seventh of May, he closes up the bar early and heads for an apartment a couple blocks out of the way home. He’s not really sure how he remembers the way there. All he really remembers is dragging a blackout drunk Markus Najbreit back to some mumbled address after one particularly bad night half a decade ago. But as he stands in front of the shitty grey apartment building, staring at the cracks in the second floor window with the blinds drawn all the way, he’s pretty sure he has the right place.

He thumbs the buzzer, not really expecting an answer, and almost starts to walk away when the front door unlocks. He cautiously pushes open the metal grate and the door behind it, stepping into a deserted lobby space. There’s a dead plant in the corner of the space, a mail collection box, and nothing else of note. The place is grey and soulless. His footsteps echo on the ground as he walks up to the elevator, jabbing the button a couple times in rapid succession. He paces around the limited space that he has until the elevator arrives.

He paces inside the elevator until it reaches the second floor.

The doors slowly grind open, revealing a hallway illuminated by a fritzy lightbulb that looks like it’s about to give out. He glances at the two doors in front of him. Which one would be Markus’ again?

The door to his left swings open, revealing a blonde woman, her hair unkempt, wearing an old Knicks jersey and sweatpants. Something about her tickles his memory, but Dave isn’t sure what he’s supposed to be remembering, just this moment.

“Who are you?” she asks, frowning.

She’s holding something small behind her thigh, he can tell. He instinctively takes a small step away.

“I was just looking for Markus,” he says hesitantly. “Do I have the wrong address?”

“Oh!” she says, sounding just a little too excited. “Markus… he’s the guy that used to live here. You know him well?”

“I…” Dave pauses to think. “He was a friend of sorts. I just wanted to check in with him, but I didn’t realise he’d moved.”

“Oh yeah, he moved about two months ago,” the woman says. She shifts a little, and he realises that the thing she was concealing was her phone. “But um… do you happen to know where he lives now? I’ve been getting some mail addressed to him that looks like it’s important. So it’s important that I know where he is.”

“I’m not sure where he lives,” Dave says, scratching his head. “I mean, I came here…”

“But how I can get in touch with him?” she says quickly, and then her phone lights up. She looks down at the text that’s come in, reading it, and then swipes it away. She laughs nervously. “I mean… it’s just, like, do you have his phone number or something? I don’t want him to miss out on something that he’s supposed to be getting…”

Dave frowns.

“No, he was just… a regular of mine,” he says, narrowing his eyes as he looks at this woman.

She nervously checks her phone again. Is that the voice recording app open on it? She hides her phone behind her back again, and he starts to feel uneasy about this.

“So he’s been missing this last two months?” the woman asks, sounding concerned.

He recognises that voice. There’s a reason why she’s familiar.

“I know who you are,” he says, raising a shaky finger towards her. “You were that girl… that girl that he picked up at the bar. You slapped him, and then you left him,” he says, remembering more as he speaks. “You’re Lucy… Lisa… Lizzie. That’s right, Lizzie. And you slapped the guy who brought you to the bar too.”

The woman giggles a little.

“So I moved into this place after he left,” she says with a cute smile. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s just… a little strange, that’s all,” Dave says. “So um… sorry for bothering you. I’ll get going.”

But something about this situation digs at him. Lizzie moved into Markus’ apartment after he left. What are the odds of that just being a coincidence? Far more likely that he let her move in, and that he cut contact with her, running away. But even that doesn’t make sense. This was Markus’ place. Wouldn’t Markus have kicked her out, if something had gone wrong between them?

“Did you two live together for some time?” he asks, trying to get a glance into the apartment.

There appears to be heaps of boxes in there, although even that makes it cleaner than it had been the one time he visited before.

“We spent some nights together, but he left before I could move in with him,” she says. “But maybe you could help me find him?”

Dave shakes his head. He doesn’t know what is going on here, but he knows that he is certainly not doing that.

“Please?” she asks, reaching for his arm, pulling on it.

He tugs his arm away and begins to back away to the elevator.

“Just tell him that I’ve got something important for him if you ever see him again,” she says, as he begins to jab the elevator button again, the doors grinding open much too slowly. “He needs to come back here, don’t you understand?”

As the door closes in front him, Dave wonders if he needs to file a police report.