Missing Person

You join the crowd gathering near the front of the visitor center. The tour guide is talking, waving his hands wildly, but you can’t make out what he’s saying because of the loud wind roaring on all sides of the group. You turn to the person standing next to you. It is the young couple on their honeymoon. You ask what is going on. They say someone from the tour group is missing. You nod your head in understanding. You think it’s probably the older couple from Taiwan. They are always late, shuffling slowly to the bus minutes after the agreed-upon time everyone was supposed to be back on the bus. You find yourself always annoyed with them, not that you’re in any particular rush. But you believe in rules, and adhering to those rules, and a mutual respect for everyone else on the tour bus. You find yourself constantly looking to the other tourists for similar reactions, eye rolls, loud sighs, any signs of annoyance really, only to realize you are the only one who is outwardly agitated, which only makes you more aggravated.

“This half will comb the cliffs to the right, the other half will look to the left,” the guide says. 

His name is Mike. He is British. He strikes you as a very sad person. You’re not sure how you arrived at this assumption. Perhaps it’s the way he eats his muffins in the morning, crumbs nestling in the wrinkles of his button-down shirts over his potbelly. Or the way he waves to everyone once they’re already off the bus and walking toward the bed and breakfast or the hotel for the night; it’s as though he is terribly woeful to see everyone go. You think it’s really because you have developed a new skill, a super power if you will, to detect sadnesses within other people ever since Evan, ever since what happened to Evan.

You are in the group that goes to the left. The Atlantic Ocean screams below you, its waves like the tops of whipped meringues. There aren’t many people at the Cliffs of Moher today. The weather was supposed to be nicer, but the weather is always supposed to be nicer in Ireland. Just like in the UK, it is more often gray and grainy than bright and cheerful. Did you come here to match your gray and grainy insides to the outside weather? No, you couldn’t have. You and Evan had planned this trip a long time ago, before everything happened.

You are in the same group as the honeymooning couple. This whole time you have tried not to look at them, to think about them, but now they are beside you and you have found yourself falling in step with them. No one knows what has happened to you, and yet you find that everyone looks at you in a pitying way. It’s always the same look: watery, widened eyes, curled lips, a sort of softness, a gentleness to the way they speak to or touch you. The woman in the couple reaches an arm out and catches hold of yours. 

“Careful,” she says. “That part is muddy.”

You look down and see that she is correct, there is a large patch of concave, wet, brown grass with a footprint to the side of it. You half-smile at her and say thanks. She nods. You continue walking. The Australian woman who tried to befriend you is also in your group. She was not successful in her attempts to befriend you. She does not acknowledge your presence. She was in the bathroom when the tour guide was talking. She runs after your group and walks ahead of everyone. Two middle-aged Scottish men walk in the middle of the group along with a family of four from Idaho. You notice the little boy from the family has stepped in the patch of mud. No one else from his family has noticed yet.

A large gush of wind sweeps in and everyone stumbles. You cling to the side of the cliff so hard the dirt and mud wedge themselves underneath your fingernails. You wonder if Evan would have liked it here. You think he probably would have. You imagine him with his camera standing dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, taking a shot of the water down below. You think of tugging gently on his arm, leaning your head on his shoulder, pleading with him to stand further back from the edge. Thunder claps. You jump. You watch the family abandon the quest for the missing person and hike their way back to the tour bus.

The sharp sound of the thunder reminds you of a car backfiring, or gunfire. You think of Evan lying in the parking lot of the bar with three gunshot wounds in his torso. You think of him bleeding to death, alone, on the night of his bachelor party. Another stroke of thunder pierces the sky and this time you’re not sure if it’s your wails, the rush of the ocean, or the sky screaming. You thumb the edge of your yellow rain slicker, zipping it all the way up, and remember when you bought it. 

“I look like a banana,” you said in the store in front of a mirror.

“A very cute banana,” Evan said, pulling you into him and kissing you on the cheek.

You imagine looking down on yourself from the sky. A bright yellow banana on the muddy Cliffs of Moher. What a sight to behold. You follow the search party until it’s clear no missing person would have wandered off so far from the visitor center, from the parking lot. Everyone turns around and heads back. Your group waits in the bus for the other group to return. The bus is hot and sticky; the windows are all fogged. The bus has a distinct smell of sulphur, of rotten eggs. You look across the aisle to see the elderly Taiwanese couple peeling hard boiled eggs and eating them. You wish you could roll down the window.

You can’t stand the smell, so you leave the bus again. You wait by the chain link fence near the visitor center. You see the other group approaching. You walk onto the bus at the same time as them. The tour guide stands at the front of the bus. 

He says, “I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to do. Did anyone see her?”

Everyone is silent on the bus. You tuck your knees into your chest and rest your chin on top them. You wish the search was for Evan. That’s what you pretended while you stalked the cliffs one last time. You wish he would come from around a corner, or from one of the taller parts of the cliff, and shout your name with his arms outstretched to the sides.

“There you are,” he’d say.

“But we’ve been looking for you,” you’d say.

“Ah, well, here I am,” he’d say smiling, his red hair damp and dripping into his eyes. “You found me.”

You wonder how you’re ever going to go on without him, yet every minute that goes by is another minute without him that you have somehow survived. When you looked over the cliffs into the angry water for the first time that day, you hobbled very close to the edge. You thought about joining him wherever he is now. You didn’t mind if death was just blackness, like slipping into a deep, permanent slumber. Anything was better than here, than being this far away from Evan. And falling into the salted, white-capped waves didn’t seem so bad a way to go. But self-preservation gripped you, wholly, and you backed away from the edge, falling onto the dirt, scaring a passing family.

“She was in a red sweater someone said before,” the tour guide says. “Dirty blond hair. American. By herself? No one saw her?”

The bus is silent again. The tour guide confers with the driver. It is unbearably hot on the bus. You take off your yellow rain slicker and bunch it up on top in the overhead compartment. You notice a small line of white flowers sprouting from one of the cracks in the asphalt of the parking lot. You watch the flowers bend crazily in the ensuing storm. Amidst the chaos in the aftermath of Evan’s death, everyone forgot about the honeymoon. You don’t know if anyone knows you’re here, on the trip you were supposed to take together. You don’t know if anyone has realized you’re even gone.

“Wait,” says the Australian. “Is it her we’re looking for?” 

She’s standing up turned backward with one knee on the seat in front of her pointing to you. You can feel everyone staring at you before you realize she’s speaking about you. Finally you look up.

“Is it you?” the tour guide asks you, walking down the aisle toward you.

“I don’t know,” you say, shrugging. You look down at your brown sweater. Your hair, too, is more brunette than blond.

“Someone said you were wearing a red sweater.”

“I’m wearing a brown sweater,” you say. “Maybe I wore a red one yesterday?” you say out of your need to always be helpful, to be pleasing.

“I think it’s her,” someone else says.

“Ah, well then. I’m relieved. Let’s do a count.”

There are twenty-three of you, which is actually one extra than before. The tour guide shrugs and returns to his seat. The driver starts the bus. You look out the window. The rain has finally started to pour. You press your face against the glass in search of coolness, but it’s just as clammy and humid as the air. You sink back in your seat. The older couple has stopped eating their hard boiled eggs. The woman from the honeymooning couple leans over to you.

She asks, “Are you okay?”

You nod your head and say, “Oh yeah, yes I am. Sure, I’m fine. Thanks,” with a smile plastered onto your face.

She pulls her head back into her row and leans it on her husband’s shoulder. You rest the back of your head against the seat and wish you hadn’t been found.