Once Upon Another Time (38 page)

 Putting a cigarette
between my lips, I ran my thumb over the wheel of my lighter, igniting the
flame.  Mindlessly staring at a paid programming station, I drew in a deep
inhale on the cigarette.  A group of old people wearing baggy sweat suits were
stair stepping to a geriatric hip-hop version of “Shake Your Booty.”  As I
puffed out one perfectly eternal, endless ring of smoke, perpetual love came to
mind followed by an image of Gavin in my head. 

Screw Gavin
with his knight-in-shining-armor charisma and Dr. McDreamy wavy hair
.   

Reminiscing over
the way he’d always compliment me on my hairstyle, the way I dressed, my
intelligence, I felt quite the fool.  He had the gall to rave about my chicken
and dumplings being the best he’d ever tasted, when I practically had to chisel
the dumplings from the bottom of the pot.  He missed his calling--could have
been an actor in Hollywood, a lying, cheating, smooth talking, scumbag actor.

Buster circled my
feet, as I flicked my cigarette ash into an empty can of cat food.  He jumped
onto my lap and kneaded his paws into my bunched robe, while I continued to
channel surf.  It seemed like everything was about fitness that day.  I stopped
on the home shopping network.  A woman in a pale blue suit with matching high
heels and double strand of pearls walked over to a young woman in tights, tank
top, and Nikes, running on a treadmill.  The pitch woman ran her fingers over
the handle of the contraption, pointing out special features and caressed it
tenderly, as if she were practicing for her next date.

 
Who cares if
Gavin’s the only man in the past seven years who spun my heart out of control! 
But how could I have thought he was my soul mate?
 

I let out a
contrived laugh.  “Could you believe it,” I said to Buster as I scratched under
his neck, “that I actually thought there’d been a connection between Gavin and
Matt?”  Buster meowed, settled contently on my lap, and curled himself into a
ball.  I mashed my half-smoked cigarette into the bottom of the Purina can. 

Gavin could never
be like Matt.  Matt loved me unconditionally; he never would have been so callous. 
Still, I didn’t want to rack Gavin up alongside my other disastrous dating
experiences.  At least with Gavin, I finally knew I was capable of falling in
love.  Perhaps that was what the relationship with him was all about.  Maybe it
had served its purpose and that was all it was supposed to do.  Or maybe I
should have listened to the little voice inside my head that first evening we
slept together.  Unfortunately, the voice was whispering and I couldn’t tell if
it was saying, go ahead, trust your heart and fall in love, or go have your
head examined.

Staring blankly out
through the open French doors, I caught sight of a mangled yellow rose lying on
the porch deck.  Blowing out a breath of frustration, I wasn’t sure how’d I’d
get Buster to stop destroying my neighbor’s prized roses.

Pressing the
button on the remote, I flew through twenty more channels before stopping on
Judge Judy, a woman scarier than Dr. Hannibal Lecter.  However, admirable, as
she metaphorically sliced off the top of each litigant’s head exposing their
lame brains, only to serve them back on a platter.  As I’d studied her
seemingly psychotic expressions resembling the devil incarnate one minute and displaying
a Mary Poppins smile the next, I thought back to my own psychotic episodes. 
The mind reading, communication with the dead, and being so sure I’d found the
answer that linked Gavin to Matt. 

A loud, flat thud caught
my attention, sounding as if something had fallen.  Buster was no longer on my
lap.  Scratching my itchy scalp, I got up from the table and walked through the
living room to investigate where the noise had originated.  My body felt
languid due to the sleepless night I had lying in bed staring at the ceiling
and talking myself out of driving over to Gavin’s house to see if
Satan’s
Lure
was with him.

I tightened the
sash around my waist and tried scraping the caked on sticky dribbles of Ben
& Jerry’s off the front of my robe.  Glancing down at the floor, I noticed
a second eye was missing from my Miss Piggy slipper.  The same slipper that had
the squished pink fuzzy nose, charred from getting too close to the fire pit
the day Nicholas and I roasted marshmallows.

Buster scampered
out of the study and charged across my path like a kamikaze pilot.  The desk
lamp had toppled over, no doubt due to Buster’s big jungle body tiptoeing
across the top.  Cats are cunning.  You can always find evidence of their dirty
deeds, but it was almost impossible to catch them in the act. 

As I righted the
lamp, I noticed a book lying open on the hardwood floor, pages down with neat gold
letters shown on the gray linen spine. 
Love Spirit
.  My heart sped up,
full throttle.  “Matt?”  I said in a voice strung tighter than a sail in a
hurricane.  Automatically looking toward the bookshelf for Matt’s photo, it was
gone.  Frantically, I scanned the floor and searched under the desk, when the
doorbell rang.  Picking the book up off the floor and placing it on my desk, I
was confused.  I thought Matt was gone, that he was allowed to come back only
to help me move on with my life, which I’d done.  The doorbell chimed a second
time. 
Has he returned?

Slowly walking out
of the room, my thoughts were on Matt, when I suddenly caught a reflection of
myself in the mirror that hung in the foyer.  My hair stuck out from my head
like wavy bean sprouts.  As I grabbed hold of the pewter doorknob, the phone
shrilled from the kitchen.  I stopped and listened as the answering machine
picked up the call. 

“Aubrey?”  Gavin’s
voice reverberated through the house.  My body stiffened, as I released my hand
from the doorknob. 

“Are you there?”
he asked, while pausing. 

I skittered
through the living room and tiptoed into the kitchen, trying not to make a
sound, when the doorbell rang again.  “Dammit!”  I winced, as my eyes darted
toward the answering machine, as if he could actually hear my voice. 

“I phoned your
office and Ashley told me you called in sick today.  I’m worried about you. 
Give me a call to let me know you’re all right.  I also want to talk to you
before I leave town on business.  It’s important.  If you’re feeling better
later, can we get together tonight?”

Talk to me? 
Ha!
 I was sure he wanted to give me the big kiss-off.  That way he’d feel
less guilty about taking that humanoid blow-up doll Vanessa, with him on his
business trip.  

“So, give me a
call,” he said.  “If you can’t reach me at the office, try me on my cell
phone.”

Like hell, Mr.
Gigolo.   

As I sneered at
the machine wondering how his little tryst with his playmate doll went the
night before, I heard banging on my front door.

“Talk to you
soon,” he said and hung up. 

Unnerved by the
relentless banging, I stormed out of the kitchen and though the living room to
the foyer, and flung the door open.

“Hi, my name is
Dweezil,” said the handsome, middle thirtyish aged man who stood on the porch,
clipboard in hand. 

As in Zappa?
 

I was tempted to
ask if his mother and father had met at Woodstock.  I’d always been fascinated
with finding others who had parents that had once lived in a yurt.  The feeling
was much the same, I’d expect, as an adopted child wondering about her
biological mother or father.

“How are you doing
today ma’am?” he asked cheerfully.

I wanted to ask
him if reeking of stink from not showering, and wearing a bathrobe with caked
on dribbles of ice cream at 2:00 on a sunny warm afternoon, gave him any clue
as to how I was
doing
.  Before I could open my mouth, he started
yapping.

“Our cable company
will be doing installations in your neighborhood next week.  They're offering
great deals.” 

“Thank you, but
I’m not interested,” I said, as I began to close the door.

“But I haven’t
told you the best part,” he said, as he put his hand on the door pushing it
back open.  “The first two months are free!”

Great, he
memorized his tip sheet on possible answer scenarios.
 

Putting on my
get-the-hell-off-my-front-porch face, I told him I didn’t like cable, I didn’t
watch television, nor did I listen to radio.  A bold lie of course, but I knew
I’d have to take drastic measures to get rid of him, so I could get back to the
study--back to Matt.

“But we offer over
eight hundred channels, more than forty are movies and sports packages and--”

“Listen, cable TV
is a marketing tool for the devil,” I interjected, my voice sounding a little
loud.  “Perverts, drug lords, thieves, only sinners like that and those of
questionable character, like people who hide their unscrupulous lives behind
religion, or
men
who take advantage of women by telling them lies, and
making them fall in love with them only to
dump
them would watch cable
TV.  Therefore, I am
not
interested!” 

The way his
eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped he looked as if he was going to make a run
for it before I brought out the butcher knives.  Then all at once, his
expression changed to bewilderment.  “Well then, how about the Internet?  Do
you have high speed?”

Oh, for the
love of God. 

“Only if I was an
axe murderer,” I said and slammed the door shut. 

He poked his face
around to the sidelight window and talked through the door.  “Well, if you
change your mind,” he stammered, “just give us a call.”  He hurried down the
front walk and headed toward Sallie’s house.  He had a good chance of making a
sale there, and I wasn’t thinking cable or Internet.

I hurried back to
the study.  There was no sound of wind chimes or feeling of Matt’s spirit in
the room.  Thinking back to where I had last laid the book, it was on my desk,
which meant it was conceivable that Buster had knocked it to the floor.  But I
couldn’t be sure.  Weeks before, I wouldn’t have questioned the book lying on
the floor, figuring it was Matt letting me know he was there. 

While walking back
to the kitchen, I looked into the other rooms trying to find where the
photograph of Matt had gone, when there it was on the coffee table in the
living room.  In all my misery over Gavin, I had forgotten I’d set it there the
night before, while blubbering over Matt not being with me. 

Picking it up, I went
back to the kitchen holding the silver-framed picture of Matt to my heart.  As
I flopped down on the kitchen chair and set the photograph on the table, I
thought back to what Laura had said to me the evening she found out David was
married.  She’d made the comparison of her ex-husband and David purposefully
hurting her to the positive aspect of dying, and that Matt never intentionally
hurt me. 

I could definitely
appreciate her statement after what had happened with Gavin.  However, there
were positive aspects of our relationship that I couldn’t push aside, because
it was during all those weeks we dated that my life turned around.  Matt had
helped me heal and let go of my guilt and Gavin made me realize I was deserving
of happiness.  Although I had my heart broken when Matt died, my relationship
with Gavin confirmed that it was actually possible to love again. 

Running my index
finger lightly around the outside of the picture frame, I smiled as an old
movie played on TV. 
Ah, the romance of black and white movies.

Leaning my head
against the cool elevator wall riding up to the twelfth floor, I was angry at
myself for getting into the office late.  Twenty-four hours without sleep
showed in the whites of my eyes resembling roadmaps of red, affecting my vision
to the point of seeing edges of the red-lighted numbers overhead blurred with
the black background.  Exiting the elevator and passing through the lobby, I managed
to make it all the way down the hall to my office by putting one foot in front
of the other, nine times out of ten. 

Get it together
!

While placing my
briefcase on my desk, I glanced down at my skirt.  I twisted the waistband so the
side zipper was no longer at the front.  As I sat at my desk I reminded myself
that not sleeping for two days was one thing, but I wasn’t about to let my life
come to a complete halt just because my phony, soon to be ex boyfriend played
me for a fool.  However, I would have been doing a lot better had I broken it
off with Gavin before he left on his business trip. 

I needed
closure--double closure!

My head collapsed
into my hands, as I scolded myself for not breaking my relationship off with
Gavin the very day I saw him at the mall with the
skank
.  Then there was
the worry of how I was going to explain this all to Nicholas.  It was difficult
enough dealing with my own emotions, but more importantly, the last thing I
wanted to do was give my son news that was sure to break his heart.   

I lifted my head
out of my hands, reached for a tissue, and dabbed the corners of my eyes.

Stop blubbering
and focus!

 As usual, the
flashing red message light on my phone was panting like a puppy waiting for its
master.  I pushed the speaker button to play the messages.  “Aubrey, stop by
the house if you get the chance,” said Mother.  “I have a terrific new smoothie
recipe I want you to try.”  Since she and my father were close to finalizing
the business plans for their new business venture, which they named “Good
Vibrations,” Nicholas and I had become her guinea pigs. 

Punching three to
erase, I went to my next message, left at eight-thirty that morning.  “Hi, I’m
at the airport.”  My heart skipped a beat when I heard Gavin’s voice.  Quickly,
I picked up the receiver.  He’d called to let me know he was about to board his
plane, but thought he’d be able to catch me at the office, and hoped I was
feeling better.  I detected edginess in his voice when he ended with, “I
really
wished you’d been well enough to have seen me last night.”