Missing

Nick and Ellie sat across from each other in a booth, their faces shaded red and blue by the fake neon signs that peppered the walls of the bar. Nick surveyed them with bored eyes.

‘No, I don’t like beer…I love it!’
‘It’s fine to get a little bit crazy!’
‘Red wine makes me cry’

               He’d seen two of those same signs in a different place a few weeks back when he’d gone out with work. It seemed to him that every bar was more or less the same now. Same drinks, same prices, same tired gimmicks. This bar had waitresses who could swear at you and call you names. It was called ‘Pissed Up/Off’. Fifteen years ago, when Nick and Ellie first started seeing each other, it had been a much different place. Dark wood interior, sticky floors, photos of past guests flashing their genitals on the walls. It had been called ‘Rat’s Nest’, and every night it was packed.
               Tonight was very quiet. Nick counted six other people in the bar, not counting four bar-staff who were openly drinking and playing cards on the main island, having more fun than anyone else in there. Ellie was on her phone, her expression blank. She was probably watching videos of people unblocking the leaves and debris from storm drains during heavy rain. She’d gotten really into those recently. Nick remembered how the first time he’d brought her here she’d talked to him for an hour straight about the little model planes and cars she would build and paint with her dad before he’d died. Nick told her that he would love to build a model Jaguar with her and she smiled like he’d never seen anyone smile before and he swore for a moment that she’d almost told him she loved him there and then. Nick made fun of her for that for years, but he knew in his own heart that if she had, he probably would have said it back. It was the best first date he’d ever been on.
               ‘Round two, come on.’
Ellie tapped against her empty glass with long, decorated nails, flashing Nick a wink. He smiled back at her and stood up, heading over to the bar. The two staff who were behind it rolled their eyes at his arrival, and Nick found himself shooting them a much more sincere smile than he’d just given his wife. A young girl approached him, her feet dragging in a way that was both obviously exaggerated and equally honest. Nick supposed it was easiest to perform the gimmick if you really meant it.
               ‘What do you want?’
               ‘Two long islands.’
               ‘…And you’re not gonna say please?’
               ‘Wouldn’t that defeat the point of this place?’
               ‘We’re allowed to be rude, you still need to ask nicely you cheeky prick.’
               Nick matched the girl’s gaze for half a moment then realised he didn’t actually care at all. He mouthed an exaggerated please at her, then removed his wallet from a tight denim pocket, wondering for a moment whether the staff were allowed to arbitrarily increase the cost of drinks as part of the bit. He imagined they probably could. That seems like the kind of thing someone would do. They probably spat in them too.
               The girl began making the drinks and Nick unlocked his phone, continuing the slow scroll of Twitter that he’d been doing every day for the past eight years of his life. Funny tweet, politics tweet, politics tweet, video of a car crash (bookmarked for later), funny tweet, funny tweet, politics tweet. Ellie warned him that this stuff was just melting his brain, conditioning him to be unable to switch gears between sad and angry and jovial, but it was too late to stop the process now. Just like with her and her videos, Nick’s face had taken the range of expressions that he used to be capable of making whilst reading various good news and bad news and funny news, and calculated the mean. And again, just like Ellie, the result was a blank expression. Mouth sometimes open, mouth sometimes closed. Eyes slowly glazing over, one day at a time.
              
               ‘Fucking hell, could you ask for a longer fucking drink mate.’
               Nick had completely missed the moment when a stranger had come up in front of him and leaned against the bar waiting his turn. The stranger appeared to have noticed this lack of acknowledgment, and taken some offence.
               ‘Ah sorry mate, I thought I had the bar to myself!’ Nick laughed in typical deferential style. He was backing down from the confrontation before it became a confrontation. This was smart, he told himself. It was also cowardly, he knew.
               ‘Christ I was only kidding mate. Longer drink. Long drink. Cos it’s a long island iced tea, you know? Jesus.’
               Relaxing into his own embarrassment, Nick took a moment to actually look the stranger in the eye. He found a hard kindness there. A man who could fuck him up if necessary, but really wouldn’t ever want to. He was about Nick’s age, and was dressed quite similar to him, wearing a dark blue shirt unbuttoned, and a white t-shirt underneath. The t-shirt had the face of a boy, a teenager. Nick didn’t immediately recognise the boy as a celebrity, but that was the assumption he decided to go with.
               ‘Ah, long drink. Got you. That’s good actually, I’m gonna tell my wife about that,’ Nick laughed again, this time sincerely, though maybe a little too sincerely, as he turned and gestured towards Ellie, who was watching the exchange with concern on her face.
               ‘Twenty-two quid baldy.’
               The girl was holding the card reader out to Nick with a bored look on her face. He swallowed his pride, and his fury at the price, and paid for the drinks. Giving the stranger a polite nod, he went to turn around, drinks in hand, and bumped into an onrushing Ellie.
               ‘Everything alright over here, boys?’ she asked, her voice sweet. Her voice hadn’t changed at all since that conversation about the models. It was one of Nick’s favourite things about her.
               ‘Nothing to worry about love. I just made a little joke, and unfortunately your boyfriend was a bit too dim to catch it,’ the stranger said, winking at Nick.
               Why was he winking now too? Had Nick missed something on the news about winking? Was today a special day? He couldn’t keep track of all these new special days.
               ‘What was the joke?’ Ellie leaned up against Nick’s arm, and he felt her warmth, and he realised he was actually fully relaxed now. Moments ago, all he could think about was exiting this conversation and getting back to his seat, but she’d changed his entire mindset just by standing next to him. Fuck. He really did love her.
               ‘Oh I’ll let your boyfriend tell you. I need to order. Three pints of Guinness please love.’
               ‘He’s my husband actually, but okay.’
               Ellie turned to smile up at Nick, reminding them both of their height difference.
               ‘Oh so he just- he made a joke about ordering the longest drink. Because it takes a while to make, and because it’s called a long island iced tea.’
               ‘Fucking hell.’
               Nick breathed in and raised his eyebrows in agreement, before gesturing back to their seats, taking a step towards the booth.
               ‘Wait who’s that on your shirt? Is that you?’
               Here we fucking go, thought Nick, gonna be stuck with this guy all night.
               The stranger swallowed the large sip of stout that he’d taken from the first pint presented to him, then turned to face Nick and Ellie, his expression serious.
               ‘Nah it’s not me. It’s my mate who went missing when we were eighteen. Have you seen him?’

               The details of the case came flooding back into Nick’s mind. A boy named Isaac, two years younger than him. No history of depression, no suicide note, no money to his name. Six months of fundraising and river-dredging and police appealing for any information at all. No body, no ideas, just four siblings and two parents, horrified and distraught. People went missing all the time of course, especially back before mobile phones became a ubiquitous necessity, but Nick remembered this particular boy because the night he'd gone missing, he was last seen in Rat’s Nest, with his usual group of mates. The bar was open until three in the morning, and at around two, Isaac’s friends noticed he wasn’t with them anymore. They’d searched the dancefloor and the toilets, but didn’t think much of it. People went home early all the time, they just assumed he’d either pulled, or thrown his guts up and been kicked out. It wasn’t until the following evening when his mum went around knocking on doors that they realised something was wrong. Everyone panicked, the police were called, and the hunt began, but nothing was ever found.
               Nick followed along as the stranger spoke, but throughout the whole thing, he was just toying with the same thing over and over again in his mind, unsure whether to bring it up or not. Luckily, Ellie had the polite conversation covered.
               ‘Christ that’s awful, yeah, I remember that. So, you’re wearing that shirt now to…raise awareness?’
               ‘In a sense I guess you could call it that, yeah. I wear it every time I go out. I already have a missus and a son back at home, so I’m not arsed about looking fashionable. I just wear this out every time and hope for the best. I figure at this point, no one is gonna remember the story off the TV from fifteen years ago. Better to remind people this way. See if it jogs any memories.’
               ‘That’s actually quite lovely. God. Can you imagine if he was still- if he was around here. And he saw you in it, with his face on the shirt. I wonder if he’d talk to you.’
               ‘Yeah, I’ve thought that. I- I don’t know, love. It’s just something I started doing a while back, and now I feel like if I stop doing it, that’s bad luck. Like, I’ll wear a fucking, Lacoste shirt out one night, and that’ll be the night when someone who knows happened happens to walk past me in the street. And they’d look at my shirt and all they’d think is “oh nice shirt”, and I’ve fucked it. Wouldn’t ever know.’
               Ellie was shaking her head sympathetically, then glanced over at Nick, who she could see was quite clearly not fully there with them.
               ‘Babe are you okay?’
               ‘Uhh, yeah. It’s just- how much do you remember from then? From that time I mean?’
               ‘Erm, a normal amount I’d imagine, why? What do you mean?’
               ‘Do you remember that the night he went missing, Isaac, that was the night of our first date? Like we were here, sat right there.’ Nick pointed with his drink towards the booth that held their jackets. The stranger put his pint down on the bar and held his hands up.
               ‘Woah woah woah, are you kidding? You were here that night too? That’s fucking mad. Fuck. What are the fucking odds of that? Fuck me.’
               ‘Yeah, and-’
               Ellie suddenly pulled a hand up to her mouth as she gasped. She turned to Nick with wide eyes, and he looked back at her, knowing what she was thinking, and communicating to her with his own eyes that he did. The stranger looked on confused.
               ‘What? What’s up with her?’
               ‘Uhhh. Well, I guess this won’t actually be news to you. Because you would have known at the time I’d imagine, but obviously you wouldn’t know that- anyway, so, yeah we were here that night, on our first date. And actually as far as I know, I’m officially the last person to ever speak to Isaac.’
               The stranger looked at Nick, wiping a hand slowly down his mouth, across his lips, and off his chin. His kind eyes were becoming shiny, and Nick could feel his own going the same way. Nick wanted to keep talking, to pre-empt the question, but found he couldn’t.
               ‘I do remember that. I remember the police took the statement of another young lad. But I don’t remember the details. What-what happened? What did you say?’
               Nick threw his head back, breathing, unable to hide from the two pairs of eyes burning into his neck.
               ‘I went into the bathroom, and I was pissing at the urinal. And he came and stood next to me to have a piss too. And I was smiling, and he looked at me and asked me what my grin was for. And I told him- I told him I’d met a girl, and it was our first date. And he asked me if she was nice. And I told him she was probably the nicest person I’d ever met. And he smiled at me, finished his piss, and patted me on the back on his way out as I washed my hands. It stuck with me because he didn’t wash his hands, and then touched me. So I was just thinking about his hand on my shoulder. And I felt like I could feel it there for the rest of the night.’
               The three of them stood there for a while in silence, Ellie holding onto Nick’s arm, the stranger and Nick both wiping tears out of their eyes. After a moment, the stranger downed his pint, then picked up the other two from the bar.
               ‘I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what to say mate. Fucking hell. I think, thank you. Fucking hell. Okay. Alright, you two have a good night, these lads will be screaming about how long I took to get their pints. Cheers.’
               And he turned, and walked away, leaving Nick and Ellie stood there together, shellshocked. Halfway across the room, the stranger turned and shouted back to them.
               ‘Dirty fucker never did wash his hands!’

               Back in the booth, Nick and Ellie sat holding hands across the table. They both looked exhausted, and their eyes wandered around the room, avoiding each other’s, not out of discomfort, but because they both inherently understood that everything happening in their minds and their hearts at that moment was absolutely fleeting, and that it wouldn’t be a moment they’d ever be able to recapture again. So they sat in it, and occasionally one of them would squeeze the other’s hand, and glance at them, and the other would smile a half smile to let them know they were okay. Nick thought about that first night they spent together at Rat’s Nest, and he thought about all the promises they made each other since that day. And he thought about how he still meant every single one. Eventually, he calmed down, and lowered his gaze from the neon signs across the bar, fixing his eyes on those of his wife, for whom he knew his love would outlast the building they were sitting in, and the foundations it was built on, and the earth that sat below it. He squeezed her hand tight, and she smiled back at him with a smile that he’d loved a thousand times before, and as he opened his mouth to say the words to her, he was interrupted by the girl from the bar.
               ‘Are you gonna drink those fucking drinks or what?’
               Ellie and Nick burst into laughter, cackling like drunk children, simultaneously reaching for each of their jackets. Ellie slid both the drinks towards the girl at the edge of the table.
               ‘Sorry, no, we don’t need these.’
               ‘We’re gonna go build some model planes,’ said Nick, punctuating his sentence with a wink, setting them both off laughing again. They stood up, donned their jackets, then left, tucked into each other’s sides like perfect puzzle pieces.
               The girl watched them leave then counted down from ten, out loud. When she hit zero, she reached down and grabbed one of the drinks, holding it up as a toast towards the exit, before sinking it in one go.
               On the other side of the room, the stranger sat alone at a table, slowing sipping away at one of two dark pints. He regarded the room warmly, unbothered by the changes that had been made since he was young, focusing on the similarities. The frosted glass lampshades on orange ceiling lights. The seating on the far side of the bar, designed with so little preparation that the end booth only had room for a bench on one side of it. The wooden steps out of the bar towards the bathroom, worn soft and smooth in the middle from so many trainers and boots and high heels.
               The stranger stood up and crossed the bar, climbing the steps with an ease of familiarity. In the men’s bathroom, not much had changed at all. The walls had closed in by a few centimetres after so many years of repainting, and the one available toilet looked like it would actually flush if you tried it now, but beyond that, he felt like it could be any point in history inside that room. As he relieved himself at the urinal, he tried to put himself into the mindset of being here fifteen years prior. He imagined himself with longer hair, baggier jeans, a whiter smile. He pretended he was only in here alone for the moment. That all of his friends were right outside the door, dancing and drinking and falling in love – the future an idea they would only talk about with regard to upcoming film releases, or football seasons, with no concept of the drastic changes that were slowly but surely heading towards them.
               He finished, zipped up, and moved to the sink. He looked himself in the eye there. Saw the tiredness that hung on his face, but also the life that lingered there below it. His gaze dropped down, to the face on the front of his shirt. Long hair that all but covered the brightest eyes. The wide grin of a boy with no worries. Or all his worries hidden well. There was a love in the photo, in the way the boy was captured in that moment, frozen at his absolute best. The kind of photo that could only be taken by someone who truly adored him.
               The stranger began to reach for the tap, then stopped, and let out half a laugh. He turned, smiling to himself, and left the bathroom forever.