Ryan Wiley: Disappearance

Something is weird here. Although, again, that may be explained by the power outage. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? We are an online development company where we do the majority of our work ONLINE. Of course there would be little point in going into the office without electricity. Of the 60 employees, I’m the only moron who didn’t think to check in first. I would think that if we were supposed to take the day off until further notice my lazy-ass boss would give me a ring to let me know. I reach into my pocket and grab my cell phone only to be reminded that there’s still no service. How people survived without cell phones and the Internet, I’ll never know.

I decide to stand by my car, play around on my phone, and try to act like I’m not a total loser for being alone in this parking lot. It’s amazing how much humans care about not looking stupid around other people.

It’s 9:15 and there’s still nobody in sight. I try to recall if we weren’t supposed to come in today or if we were supposed to meet elsewhere. In my eight years of working here, though, neither of those things has ever happened. I might as well drive back home. My meeting with the bosses will have to wait another day.

The drive back is equally as lonely as the drive to work. I’m not sure how many cars I’ve seen this morning (maybe one, but it was far in the distance). As my car enters the driveway, I reach up and press the garage door opener. Reality strikes me again — there’s still no electricity.

I manually open the garage door again and pull in with my chick-magnet Chevy Cavalier. Abby hates my car, especially considering we easily have enough money in the bank to buy a new one. But I don’t care; I’ll drive this car until it topples over and dies.

It’s not until I open the door that I remember I still haven’t seen Abby today. I would laugh at myself for forgetting something like this, but I’m used to having a poor memory.

“Honey, are you there?” Still nothing. We don’t have any pets other than some unwelcome ants every now and then, so it looks like it’s just me in an empty house. Until now I’ve been fine, but I’m starting to get a little worried.

At this point, I’m probably only a six (on a scale of ten) for how concerned I am. That’s the eternal optimist in me. There has to be a plausible explanation for all of this, right?

I’m really unsure of what to do from here though. Being good at math, I’m typically a very good problem solver. Give me an Internet connection and an appropriate amount of time, and I can Google my way out of almost any problem. Unfortunately though, with the electricity out, I feel as if Kryptonite has taken away all of my Superman powers.

I suppose the most logical thing to do now would be to go and talk with the neighbors but I’m shy. Abby and I barely know anybody around the neighborhood. I find it fascinating how people who are my parents’ age are so outgoing and are always hanging out with friends and neighbors. In my generation (and by that I mean people in our later 20s), we all seem to prefer text message conversations for an hour if it means avoiding five minutes of talking face-to-face.

Knowing that I drove to the office and did everything I could for work gives me one less thing to worry about. I can tell my boss with 100% honesty that I had no idea where we were supposed to be today, if that is in fact the case. I sit down on my chair and stare at the wall for a few minutes until I get bored. It’s time to take action.

I open the front door and start my way over to the one neighbor, Dave, whom I’ve at least spoken to and hung out with a few times. Dave is a pretty cool guy overall. He and his family are a little older than Abby and I and they have two kids. So in that regard we don’t have much in common. Nevertheless, like all Americans, we like watching football. He’s been over a few times to watch some games. We both like the same team, the Cleveland Browns, although I wouldn’t quite say we like them as much as we like talking about how miserable it is to be a Browns fan. This seems to be the way all Browns fans are though, and that might be because their team hasn’t won, or even come close to, a championship in several decades. It’s easy to reminisce about the many bad games that have gotten us to this point. Other than football, we talk about how things are going, vacations we took, and all of that other polite neighborly stuff.

I ring the doorbell and, just as my continued luck would have it, I hear nothing. I ring the doorbell several more times but still hear nothing and nobody comes to the doorE. What a fabulously weird day this is turning out to be. There is a good chance they’re at work. I’m sure they have jobs and have taken their kids to school by now. Of course they aren’t home.

I still have no explanation for Abby though. Where the hell is she? With some wives this kind of occurrence might not be that big of a deal, but Abby is different. She’s a very structured, punctual woman who always follows the same morning routine — kind of like me. If she really went somewhere without taking her car, I would think she would leave some kind of note or kiss me goodbye. The only thing I can think of is if she carpooled today with a coworker. She has done that a few times before. I think she would remind me about that though, but nothing is coming to mind. I will admit I’ve become a little too good at tuning her out at times, saying “Uh huh,” “Yes,” and “OK” without having any clue what she’s talking about.

I reach down for my cell phone and there’s still no service. I could go knock on other neighbors’ doors, but I get a sneaking suspicion they aren’t going to be home either. I decide to walk back to the house. When I do, I grab my keys and head to the garage. My hand gets all the way up to actually touching the garage door opener before I remember the power being out. I walk over and manually open the garage door. It’s time to figure out what’s going on.

When I leave the house I have no idea where to go. To be honest, I’m terrible with directions and I couldn’t live without my GPS. I’m old enough to remember the days without them and having to print off MapQuest directions — those days seem so primitive now. I can’t even imagine what it was like to depend solely on regular foldout maps.

I decide not to drive to Abby’s workplace yet, which is a long forty-five-minute commute. At this point, seeing anyone going about his or her day would be a pleasant surprise. I’m generally a very introverted person. I enjoy being around people, but at some point every few hours I like to wander off and be by myself. Being alone with my thoughts does something for me, which I need a few times a day. With that said, I can’t remember the last time it was 11:00 a.m. and I hadn’t seen a single human being. I’m not sure that’s ever happened.

I usually eat lunch around this time. At work, I’m the only one who eats at 11:00 a.m., and I find that it has many strategic advantages. Mainly, from noon to one o-clock I have the entire office to myself. I get more work done during that one hour than most people get done during the entire day. It also gives me a chance to enjoy the peace and quiet, something that’s very rare with bosses number one, two, and three going from cubicle to cubicle striking up conversations.

Meetings are something else I’ve learned to despise about my job. We have meetings all of the time! I swear to you, we have had meetings in which the topic was to discuss how many meetings we should have! If you can’t tell already, there are a lot of things I wish I could change about my job.

I’m starting to get hungry, so I decide to make grabbing something to eat my top priority. It’s a long shot, but there’s a McDonald’s about a five-minute drive from my house. I wouldn’t be surprised if every McDonald’s has some backup generator they use to power each restaurant in the event of a temporary power outage. Also, the grocery store I usually go to is somewhat on the way, so maybe I can pick up something there too. My refrigerator is looking pretty empty.