Deja Vous

That it was after midnight didn’t matter to Cara. Nor did it matter that her body was exhausted after a day of hauling furniture and boxes out of two apartments and into a new house. At least it was new to her and Devon, her boyfriend of six years.

Devon had been trying for over two years to get Cara to commit. She knew this day was important to him. It was to her as well but at that moment she had other things on her mind; things like making the bathroom hers. . . and his. And that meant cleaning it.

She shivered at the thought. She could handle her dirt. It was when it belonged to someone else that it gave her the willies. Her friends said she was phobic. That was fine with her. She could live with that. But she also knew she needed to get over her “phobia.” After all, there was Devon.

Cara had planned for tonight to wash only what she needed to; the toilet, sink and tub, and the floor. She hadn’t planned on tearing down wallpaper. But no sooner was she finished the cleaning she’d planned on, and she was stripping the walls clean of the most ghastly paper she’d ever seen.

The colors resembled a rainbow, with black as an added touch. Raindrops. Raindrops, flowers and bumble bees. So much for good taste. Not that she didn’t like raindrops, flowers and bumble bees. She did, but just not these.

She had one wall almost cleared of paper when Devon tapped on the door. She called out for him to come in.

Devon stepped into the bathroom and peered at Cara under heavy lids. “What in the hell are you doing? It’s after two.”

Cara stood on the bathtub rim and took in the sight of him. He looked hot with his thick brown hair all mussed, and he was bare-chested.  His jeans hung low on his hips. Six years and he still took her breathe away.

Cara shook off her thoughts and resumed peeling back a piece of wallpaper.
“Look at this Dev, it’s like a code,” she murmured as she inched the paper along the wall until it tore away.

Devon stepped closer to where Cara was working. He squinted to take a closer look at letters printed on the plasterboard under where Cara had peeled away the paper. “What the hell.”

Cara kept peeling back more of the paper, her mind now sharp. Sleep was the last thing on her mind.

Random letters stretched across the width of one wall; each one printed in a different color. “The colors match the wallpaper. Look, all the A’s are yellow and the T’s are blue.” Cara traced her finger along the lines of a letter T. “I wonder what it means.”

Devon in the mean time had started working on the opposite wall. Apparently sleepiness had left him too. “It means someone had way too much time on their hands.” He eased a long strip of paper down the wall, looking pleased with himself for getting a large chunk in one swoop.

“Dev, those are like jigsaw puzzles. They drew a jigsaw puzzle.” Cara stood behind Devon, watching as the paper fell away. “This is wild.”

Tiny cubes filled the puzzle pieces that lay inches apart. Inside each cube were evenly spaced straight lines, swirling lines or circles inside of circles.  They all looked similar but not. It wasn’t until Devon had pulled the remainder of the sheet down that they saw the red arrow pointed to the puzzle. “What the hell.”

“What do you think is behind door number three?” Cara grinned at Devon. She was enjoying herself.

Cara always had a vivid imagination. She loved to read but as a child, her favorite time of day was bedtime when she and her father made up stories. Her father started every one with “once upon a time” and then they’d alternate, each adding to the story until her mother would threaten to box her father’s ears if he didn’t let Cara get to sleep. Every story ended with “and that’s just the way it was.”

Finding the puzzle behind the paper was almost as good as story-time with her dad, who they lost over a year ago. He died of cancer. She wondered if this was his way of having fun with her. She knew he’d miss her, just like she missed him.

Devon ripped away the remaining bit of paper on the third wall. Despite the splotches where the paint was torn away with the paper, a map filled the wall.

Cara stood riveted to the floor, her eyes glazed as though unable to blink. She knew the map. She’d seen it before. She knew where it lead and she didn’t want to go back there.

“I can’t live here.”