The Heart Wins

The day outside was bright and sunny, with a gentle breeze blowing from the south. In his mind, though, it was dark and dreary, with a gale raging.

Shame rained upon him. He realized that the lawyer had talked him into going a step beyond what his heart would allow. If only he had realized that sooner.

He picked up the phone. His wife would be at work, but her lover would be home. The lover answered.

"It's Andy," he began.

Click.

He called back. The lover answered with a torrent of profanity. He waited.

"I'd like to meet you for lunch," Andy offered.

"WHAT!"

"I'd like to meet you for lunch."

A sigh.

The lover asked, "Why?"

"Because I think we can work things out before the court date."

"The kids?"

"Yeah," he answered.

He waited outside the restaurant. He watched his wife's lover enter. He told his hands to quit gripping the steering wheel so tightly.

He felt timid, embraced by fear. But that was okay. He felt that way because sometimes the right path was the difficult one.

He found the table, sat across the from the lover, and offered his hand. Warily, Julie took his.

"Andy, how could you of all people make an issue of our orientation?"

He thought about his change of heart on the gay marriage issue years before, and about those letters to the editor he'd written. He thought about his friends Greg and Walter, dead for several years now at the hands of two synagogue-burning, gay-hating brothers.

"You're right,"Andy said. "And that's why I'm not fighting you for the kids anymore."

Julie's jaw dropped. "You're serious?"

"Yes." Then, "Would you mind if we skipped lunch?"

"No," answered Julie.

He stood to leave. "I'll have my lawyer contact yours."

He was several steps from the door when she caught up with him.

"Andy, wait!"

He turned. She offered an embrace. He took it.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"No," he answered, "but I will be."

*

Prompted by yesterday's Three Word Wednesday. The words are dreary, embrace, and timid.

Three Word Wednesday: Fixing Things for the Greater Good

Prompted by today's Three Word Wednesday. The words are efficient, optimize, and treacherous.


He reflected on how the ignorant and uninformed would consider his actions treacherous, immoral, ruthless. They just didn't know how life worked.

He hadn't made efficient use of his time that day; he knew he could have wrapped things up in much shorter order. But the man had once been his friend. He'd taken the wrong road, though, and evolved into a busybody shit stirrer who'd shown contempt for the status quo. Those letters to the editor were bad enough, but he hadn't been satified with that. He was a regular problem at city council and county supervisor meetings, and next week, a local radio station would interview him.

It was time to get the shit-stirrer out of the way.

Still, he felt a pang of remorse when he saw his former friend walk into the women's shelter with another piece of his hand-made furniture. The guy was good in many ways, true, but he was getting in the way. He'd become another one of those troublesome citizens who insisted on promoting the truth over what was right.

The fixer got out of his car, with the tool under his jacket. He opened the trunk, and stuck the small bag of powder under the spare. He loved older cars; they made his life easier. He closed the trunk, and smoothed the previous year's tag over the present one. It was always wise to take steps to optimize results.

He watched his former friend drive away, and followed him down the busy boulevard. The guy inside the P.D. passed him, and gave a curt nod.

It was done. He thought for a moment about the man's wife and kids, but shoved those thoughts from his mind.

He felt at peace, after a time. It was good to be a man who made things work.

Love and Ground Rush

I'm late with last week's Three Word Wednesday post, but here it is. The words are bicker, nervous, and trajectory.



She awoke to the feeling of a pillow soaked with tears. Oh my God, what a dream. He was there, and he'd said such wonderful things. He'd told her how much he loved her, how he was blessed to be married to her, and about how she was the most passionate woman he'd ever known. He finished by saying, "Thank you, and please find happiness again."

She put her feet to the floor. The sun would soon rise. Bo the bear dog looked at her from his corner. She looked at his brown face, which really did look more like that of a bear than the Lab-and-something the folks at the pound had claimed.

"What? It was just a stupid dream."

Ben had only been gone a week, and Bo had hardly moved. But he moved now. He walked to her feet, and looked into her eyes.

"It was just a dream, Bo," she said again.

A Stellar Jay lit upon the bedroom windowsill. He looked at her too. They were doing a tag-team on her heart. She motioned at the jay with her hand. "Shoo." The jay would have none of it. He looked at her, insisting. Bo the bear dog looked at her, not backing down.

She smiled, and the tears flowed again.

"Okay," she said to Bo and the jay. "Okay."

**

Ben had been nervous while driving to Minden that day. He thought for a moment about turning around and going home. But the draw of joining the big boys at the soaring center beckoned him, and steeled his resolve. It would be his first try at mountain wave flying in a glider, and he'd dreamed of this day for years.

He thought about how Sylvia would react if he showed up at home earlier than expected. She'd see it as an opportunity to go to work on him again, to convince him to give up flying those airplanes without engines. She'd tell him to take up golf or tennis or skeet shooting like normal people.

He continued driving toward Minden. He wasn't about to give up his dream, and he wasn't in the mood to bicker with Sylvia.

Don, his instructor, sat down in the classroom with him. He told Ben about the time he'd entered a mountain wave so rough that he'd been turned upside down, nearly colliding with the tow plane. They met with the tow pilot, and briefed more on emergency procedures. Ben was reminded of the glider pilot's mantra: Keep the slack out of the tow line.

They launched in the Grob 103 sailplane for their hoped-for encounter with a mountain wave. They caught a gentle one; Minden was known for that. Then came the rotor, and it was not gentle.

But after he rode through the first wave of terror and shock that came with what happened, he knew that the mountain wave rotor hadn't done it.

"Something hit us," he thought. He felt surprised that he barely felt the cold of the rarefied air.

It had happened at 24,000 feet. They were climbing at an exhilarating rate when the bang happened, and he found himself falling, the oxygen mask still attached to his face. He looked for Don, or Don's body, but saw nothing of him. He saw no parts of the sailplane, either, and thought that strange, even as he plummeted to what would almost certainly be his death.

He wasn't just giving up, though. If he could alter his downward trajectory to something with a more horizontal component, he might land on the snowy, northern face of the ridgeline ahead. The mountain face was steep, and if he hit the slope just right, it was possible that he'd live. It had happened.

At the same time, he'd accepted that it was very, very likely that he would die.

The terror and shock had largely left him, but now, as he plummeted toward the ground, he felt overpowered with remorse. The last words he'd said to Sylvia had been cross ones; he hadn't even kissed her goodbye before leaving the house.

He thought about the time they'd met. It was at her cousin's wedding reception, and he was quickly smitten with the half-Irish, half-Mexican girl with the flaming red hair. The problem was that he was drunk as hell, and he'd made a first-class ass out of himself. He realized that when her father interceded and not-too-gently suggested that he go sit at his own table. Ben was drunk, but not so drunk that he couldn't remember that her father had been a Golden Gloves boxer.

He'd felt fed up with her temper leaving that morning, but now, with the clarity given by doom, he grasped that her temper was just one part of her passion. My God, that woman was so passionate that it scared him, and not just when she was mad. Even a kiss on the cheek from her was so utterly passionate, so utterly there.

He'd been one lucky man. He'd always known that, but he wished he could have believed it half as fully as he believed it now.

He saw the beginning of ground rush, and knew that he didn't have much time left, even in his present mental state. Time would only slow so much, even when a guy was about to die. He saw that his effort to change his trajectory was futile, and that he would land in a narrow valley between ridgelines.

His last thought was, "Please let me tell her how I feel."

**

Bo the bear dog woke in the middle of the night. He looked at the woman, and exhaled with relief. There was no moaning, no thrashing about. Her face looked peaceful, and he felt no turbulence about her. She'd exited the path to hating life, at least for now.

He felt so sorry for people. They could do so much with their big brains and their thumbs, but there was so much about life and the after that escaped them. What would they do without dogs?

Bo drifted back to a blissful sleep, the kind of sleep enjoyed by a dog with a mission.

Three Word Wednesday: Framed

The words from today's Three Word Wednesday are cryptic, flash, and malign.

Framed

“Your wife should back off,” my friend Bill said.

“Why?”

“Because my cousin with the P.D. says so.”

That’s all I got from Bill. His warning seemed cryptic then, but not now.

The flash of a camera assaults me. Walking toward the courthouse, I spot the reporter with a life mission to malign me.

My storm is coming.

Three Word Wednesday: Tutored Privates

At Thom G.'s invitation, I'm going to try my hand at his Three Word Wednesday. The idea is that the writer takes the three words Thom offers up for that day and uses them in a story. Today's words are opportunity, quarrel, and service. I also kind of ripped Thom off for the theme of the story, however loosely.

Tutored Privates

"Let's not quarrel," she said in that condescending teacher-to-student way.

It figured, since she was an English teacher, that she'd use a word like "quarrel," instead of "fight" or "argue."

She was looking at me the same way she'd look at a student in class when pointing out he or she had committed the sin of fragment or run-on. Except we were in her bed, naked, covered in sweat.

She'd told me that she was getting married. My tutoring was coming to an end.

It started when Miss Valencia invited me to her house one evening. She said I needed individual attention so I might forever avoid committing the sin of fragment or run-on. I was a too-skinny fourteen year-old who'd kissed two girls and felt one breast. When I felt opportunity in the air, I told myself that it was my imagination, and that no thirty-one year-old divorced teacher was going to have sex with a nervous as hell fourteen year-old. But I started massaging her shoulders, and things started happening.

I once asked one of my uncles, the one I could talk to about anything, what it was like to be inside a woman.

He smiled, thought a moment. "I guess it's kind of like a warm, honey-soaked sponge," he said.

"You've had experience with honey-soaked sponges?."

He laughed and punched me lightly on the shoulder. "Smart ass."

When we started, I couldn't imagine that a honey-soaked sponge could feel that good. Being a Southern Baptist boy, I felt a powerful interplay going on between guilt and rapture. For perhaps forty seconds. I was embarrassed, but she told me that it was my first time, and that I shouldn't worry about performing. The second time wasn't so embarrassing.

The private tutoring lasted for two months. Twice a week, but never on weekends. Then I saw the engagement ring. It was Mr. Lund, another English teacher.

I was mad, I was hurt, and I felt used, like I'd been lured in just to service her.

One afternoon, she caught up with me as I exited the school.

"Can you come over tonight?"

"Why?"

She looked around before continuing. "Just to talk, okay?"

"Okay."

We talked for two hours. She cried. I cried. I walked to the door. She gave me a long hug, looked in my eyes, and said, "Thank you."

The next year, after her wedding, I'd see her and Mr. Lund walking to the teacher's lunch room together. I'd feel a tinge of the hurt, of the anger, of the feeling that I'd been used.

Then I'd smile.

The Last Break Day

Francis and I saw the Louisiana coastline at the same time, and I think we had much the same reaction: an overpowering sadness. It was likely that neither of us would ever fly a helicopter again. We'd just flown our last crew change from an offshore oil platform. We had three passengers in a twelve-passenger helicopter.

When the flu hit the U.S., it really didn't lead to a Stephen King-like collapse of government and society. No, things were winding down, but not collapsing. Francis and I still had our jobs because of seniority, and because the flu had hit hardest the age group from twenty-five to forty-five. Most of our pilots in that age group were dead.

We landed at the Morgan City base, and Ron, the day mechanic, came out to escort the passengers in to the operations building. Francis and I gathered our flight gear, and walked upstairs to the employee lounge. We had a cup of coffee with Terry, the Area Manager. We told stories and lies and laughed a lot.

There were no other pilots at the base. The room felt achingly empty. Terry asked us to check back in two months, in case the oil companies decided to remobilize in the Gulf of Mexico. "Assuming the phones are still working," he said. "If they aren't, send a letter. The government says that mail service will continue."

Francis and I walked to our cars, stowed our gear, and met in the middle of the nearly empty employee parking lot. We shook hands, then hugged. Francis and I had been best friends for a quarter of a century. I'd been there for his wedding, watched his two daughters grow up, and I'd been there for his divorce. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't.

Francis would make it home to Kansas, with a little luck. He had a Dodge diesel pickup with extra fuel tanks in the bed, and they were full. I'd managed to catch an airline flight to go to work, but in the ensuing two weeks, the airlines had virtually shut down. I had a Ford Focus with an almost-full gas tank and ten gallons in the trunk. I could make it a third of the way home to northern California without refueling, maybe as far as the New Mexico border. The word was that most gas stations were closed along Interstate 10. I'd need more than a little luck.

Roadside bandits hadn't proven to be much of a problem, but the government advised the few people still traveling to stick to the Interstates as much as possible. They were patrolled now and then, so the bandits tended to shy away from them.

I drove through the remaining light and into the night. There was not an open gas station to be found.

I saw a Texas state trooper's car parked at the main exit for Kerrville, door open. I stopped and approached the patrol car in the darkness. The inside of the car was illuminated. The trooper had all the signs of late-stage flu. He was dying. Deaths had tapered off, but rumors abounded that the flu virus had mutated, and those of us who had survived were not out of the woods.

I stopped ten feet from the trooper. "Don't worry," he croaked, "I've been in a command center, isolated. This is my first go-round with the bug. Last too, I guess."

That lessened my fear of a mutated virus, but I slipped the surgical mask over my nose and mouth anyway.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"You can help me out of here," he answered. "I want to die looking at the stars."

I pulled him out of the car, and half-carried him to the grass on the shoulder. I could feel the heat radiating from him.

"This will do," he said. I helped him lie on the ground. I went back to his car and grabbed his jacket. I folded it and put it under his head.

"Is there anyone you'd like me to try to contact?"

"My wife and daughter are dead," he answered. "Doesn't much matter. You should go. I want to die here alone, thinking about my girls."

"Are you sure?"

He met my eyes. "Yeah. Where you going?"

"Northern California," I answered.

"Wow. You loaded with fuel?"

"No," I answered, "just an extra ten gallons."

"You'll find a gas can in the trunk," he said. "Don't think I'll be needing it."

I poured the gas into the tank, and walked back to him.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome. Thanks for talking with me. You'd better go." I started to walk away.

"Wait," he rasped. I turned. "Do you believe in life after death?"

"Yes," I answered.

"I hope you're right. I sure want to see my wife and daughter again."

"You will," I said.

"I believe you. Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

I put the car in gear, and again began driving west, hoping that my wife and son would still be safe at home, and hoping the cough that had started a couple of hours earlier was nothing to worry about.

The sky was beautiful.

Just Dinner

I picked up the book, a crime novel. I looked at the photo of the author on the back cover. Was it her? She'd only mentioned her last name once, during that conversation twenty-two years earlier. She was still attractive, with nearly white hair. The photo related that mixture of light and dark in her eyes. It had to be her. I thought of the night we met, back in the mid-eighties.

*

It was dark when I bounded up the steps at the old post office in Ventura. My two "regular" homeless guys weren't there; they'd no doubt packed it up for the night and were back at their camps on the river bottom. I was glad. I always gave those two money, and sometimes I'd buy burgers for them. I felt confident they weren't scamming anyone, and if they were, they deserved money for pulling it off so well. But that night, I had a vicious sinus headache, and I felt none too inclined toward generosity.

I grabbed my mail out of the box, then stood at a table dumping the junk. I saw a figure in a hooded trench coat walk into the lobby. He looked like a stage hand from Rust Never Sleeps. I almost prayed that he wouldn't approach me looking for money. I was a little surprised when I heard the person opening a box, figuring he was homeless. The post office would only give boxes to people who could provide evidence of a physical address. The river bottom didn't count.

I could hear the soft footfalls approach. I tensed. A soft, feminine voice glided to me. "Excuse me." I turned. A woman, indeed. Early thirties. No makeup. Beautiful. But not beautiful in a Hollywood-manufactured way, no. Beautiful in a way that haunts a man not on initial impact, but in the way it grows in his mind and heart. Beautiful in a way that somehow eclipsed the sadness pouring from her eyes. I was stunned.

"Do you have the time?" I looked at my wrist, and somehow managed to croak, "It's eight thirty-five." "Thank you," she said, and walked away. I watched her exit the lobby. I'd tagged her as homeless, but her clothes, while old-looking and drab, were clean.

I walked to my car, and as I opened the door, I saw her walking away, head down, in a fast shuffle. She looked as if she wanted to dodge the streetlights, dodge the world. I started to call out to her, but realized I had no words. I drove away, in the opposite direction, toward my apartment.

I turned around halfway home. I drove back down Santa Clara Street, past the post office, continuing east. I was about to give up when I spotted her. I slowed, rolled down my window. What to say?

"Excuse me," I called out. She lowered her head even more, and quickened her pace. "I'm sorry if I scared you," I continued. "If you're hungry, meet me at the coffee shop at the Best Western. It's only two blocks from here. If you're not there in a half hour, I'll leave."

She stopped. I stopped. "What do you want?" "I just want to talk." She raised her head a bit. "No one just wants to talk." I was trying to come up with something both witty and non-threatening when she asked, "Are you gay?" "Not as far as I'm aware," I answered. I'd hoped to get a laugh out of her, but no luck. "Too bad," she said at last. But, she raised her head to meet my eyes, and I thought I saw the slightest smile. "I'll think about it. Sit toward the front."

It would make a better story if I were to build the tension a little, and write that I was just about to give up when she walked in the door. But, I'd only been seated for ten minutes when she made her entrance. She looked at me from the door. She looked like she might be changing her mind. But the hostess walked up to her, and she motioned toward me.

She sat. She looked at me for a moment, seeming to study me. She looked at me again. She seemed to have trouble meeting my eyes. "Why are we doing this?" I searched for the right path, then gave up and guessed. "I was hoping that if I bought you dinner, you'd agree to be my sex slave for a week." She didn't laugh, but she smiled a real smile, and the sadness flowing from her eyes slowed to a trickle, if only for a moment.

"You don't seem like the sex slave type," she said. "You're right," I answered. "I don't think I have that much stamina." Another little smile from her.

"So, you thought I was homeless, and you decided to give me a little comfort in a coffee shop?" Her question was matter-of-fact. No mirth, but no acrimony either. "Yeah, I thought you were homeless at first, until I realized that your attire wasn't so much the homeless look as Goth Lite."

Another little smile. I was on a roll.

She looked at me. I hadn't answered her question. "I thought you were homeless until I saw you up close. Then I got a better look at what you were wearing, and I noticed how . . . "
Don't say beautiful, I thought to myself.

"I noticed how attractive you were. It made me curious to know something about you. What can I say? I'm a nosy bastard."

"So, you're not just out trolling, looking to get laid?" I paused, caught in another what do I say moment. She was meeting my eyes now. "No." I left it at that. I waited.

The flow of sadness from her eyes seemed to slow more. But it didn't stop. No, it didn't stop. But, her posture grew less defensive, and her expression more relaxed.

We ordered. We talked. She had grown up on a dairy farm in New York. Her parents had died in a car crash during her senior year in college. She'd majored in English Lit. She never finished her degree.

She asked, "So, how do you like me so far?" "You're an interesting person," I answered, with nothing witty in my arsenal. "Here's something interesting for you: I've been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I'm on medication. I'm a free-lance writer; I sell short stories and articles to travel magazines. I only take my medication every other day, because it kills my creativity. I have sex with men for money, and that funds my travels. I'm part writer, and part whore."

I laughed, sure she was joking about the sex for money thing. She wasn't laughing. She wasn't smiling. "You're serious, aren't you?" "Yes. Still want to know me better?" A touch of bitterness. She told me that her clients were all older retired men, and that she wasn't a streetwalker. I paused on another what do I say crossroad.

"Well, I have to admit that I've changed my mind about proposing marriage." She looked at me for a moment, expressionless. Then she laughed, long and hard. She stopped. Her eyes traveled over my face. Then she began to cry.

"I have to go," she said through sobs. "Why? Our food is coming."

She put her wallet on the table. She pulled out a photo, and placed it in front of me.

I was stunned. The guy in the photo looked like my double, except he was sans moustache and had blond hair.

"That's my husband. We got married during our junior year. He died two years later. He tried to break up a fight in a bar, and one of the guys shot him."

I felt at a total loss for words. Finally, I uttered, "So he and your parents . . ."

"That's right," she said. "I lost my parents and my husband within a year of each other."

"You seem like a great guy," she began, "but I can't see you anymore. You look too much like him. Your voice is almost the same, and you have the same sense of humor. I can't do this."

She stood hurriedly, and began to stride away. I watched her stop at the hostesses' station. She turned and walked briskly back to me.

For a moment, I thought she was about to slap me, but she took my hand, stood on her toes, and kissed my cheek. "Goodbye," she whispered, and began walking away again. Once more she turned. She walked toward me, but slowly, with her eyes downcast. She took my face in her hands, and pulled me down to whisper in my ear. Then she walked away for good.

I sat there for an hour, picking at my food, looking at hers.

*

The more I looked at her face on the back of the novel, the more certain I felt. It was her. I stood in line to buy her book, but when it came time to pay for it, I turned heel and returned it to the display stand.

She'd made a request that night, just before she walked away: "If you see me around, please pretend you don't know me."

I walked out of the bookstore. Somehow buying that book would have felt like breaking a promise. I doubted that she would care. But somehow, holding onto the promise seemed important.

She's published three more novels since I spotted her first. I haven't read any of them. I'm still keeping my promise.