A Zima Buzz

We’re sitting on her front porch again, drinking foul Zima she’d picked up somewhere. I didn’t think they even made it anymore. Maybe they don’t and these bottles were sitting in a forgotten storeroom for thirty years. It tastes like it. We have eight of the awful things on ice in the usual Styrofoam cooler between us.

Then she drops this on me: “I think the chick next door got kidnapped. Maybe even murdered.”

“Yeah?” I say in a bored tone. “What makes you think so?”

“I found a sketch of her in the trash. In the sketch, she looks kidnapped.”

“How do you look kidnapped? And what would a sketch of her be doing in your trash?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “It wasn’t in my trash, dummy. It was in her trash.”

“You were looking through her trash,” I say as a flat statement of fact.

“It was on the curb.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Look, forget about how I found it. That’s not the important thing. The fact that she looks kidnapped is what’s important here. Try to focus.”

I let out a long breath. “Again, how do you look kidnapped?”

She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of white copy paper. “Like this. Check it out.” She unfolds it and hands it to me. 

The sketch is done in black ink. It’s very detailed and well-drawn. I recognize the face as belonging to her next door neighbor, Miranda Bennett.

“See? She’s wearing a gag,” she points out.

I hand her back the paper. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“What are you blind?”

“No. Maybe she’s just into bondage. Maybe she’s got a kinky artist boyfriend who asked her to pose like that. You don’t know anything about it. You’re just jumping to the most extreme conclusion.”

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend. I know that for a fact.”

“Or whoever. A friend maybe. Maybe it’s a self-portrait. The point is you can’t tell anything by that sketch.”

“You’re such a cynic. Why do you always have to be so skeptical about everything?”

I want to say, Because you’re crazy. Because you’re always going off half-cocked on some wild goose chase or conspiracy theory. But I don’t. I can’t hurt her feelings. She really does have serious issues that I empathize with. So instead, I say, “Because jumping to that conclusion is a worst case scenario. You have to exhaust every other more reasonable explanation before you decide on kidnapping and murder. Remember Occam’s Razor?”

“I don’t know him.”

“….”

And then a familiar blue Dodge pulls up to the building and her neighbor Miranda climbs out, carrying a grocery bag. She clearly hasn’t been kidnapped. Or murdered.

We watch her walk into the house. 

When I turn back to her, I can’t help smiling. 

I just look at her.

She shrugs and says, “Shut up. You got lucky.”

“I’d say she’s the one who’s lucky.”

“Whatever. It’s still a weird sketch.”

“I don’t deny that.” 

We sit drinking in silence for a few minutes.

Then she says, “I’m not too religious sometimes…”

And we’re off.