by Mabie, M.
Fade In
Copyright © 2014 M. Mabie
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of the material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not indented by the author.
LICENSE NOTICE. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book man not be resold or given away to other people. If you wish to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
DISCLAIMER. This is a work of adult fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The author does not endorse or condone any behavior enclosed within. The subject matter is not appropriate for minors. Please note this novel contains profanity and explicit sexual situations.
Cover Design Copyright © 2014 by Arijana Karcic, Cover It! Designs
Book formatting by Stacey Blake, Self Publishing Editing Services and Formatting
Editing by Mickey Reed, Mickey Reed Editing
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For everyone throughout my life who told me I should be a writer and for the girl inside me who always thought it, too.
“Well, he's coming home. And that's all that matters. I have class tomorrow, but only until two, so I'll just see you there,” I say as I half-look where I'm going and half-look backwards to wave at Charlotte. “See you later.”
Then I'm flat on my ass on my way to the door of the waiting room. The cute girl who was here and left about fifteen minutes ago is back. Ass stinging a little from the fall, I sit on the hardwood floor where I landed and just watch as she's waving around like a maniac.
“Did you forget something?” I ask, but I can't stop watching her frantically look around. It's a rhetorical question.
“My bag. I think it's… Yep, there it is.” And she snatches the gray bag by the body and swings the loopy part over her head.
“Wow. How far did you have to run back here for that? You must have been halfway downtown.” I'm still in her wake and totally distracted by her.
She's looking through the orphaned sack is as if someone may have stole something out of it while it was tucked up against the stair in the patient sitting room. Then she abruptly stops like she's confirmed that everything she owns is still intact and accounted for inside that suitcase-sized bag she's lugging around.
“No. I was just waiting on a cab. I have to be at an interview in, like, twenty minutes and I didn't want to be all sweaty.” She laughs at the thought of it, probably because she said it out loud. Following which, the real-life cartoon girl standing above me changes her voice into a deep, faux baritone. “Uh, yeah.” She scratches her chest like she must think guys do. “I'm here for the inner-view. Har-har.” Then she laughs a little again—at herself—while pretending to fan her underarms for dramatic effect.
Just as suddenly, she's switching back to her normal speaking voice that is years younger than even her pretty face. She whispers almost to herself, looking at the ceiling. “Why am I still talking to you? I have to go. Get up. I have to get another cab.” She acts like her knocking me down is the somehow her biggest inconvenience.
It must have interrupted her act.
After she grabs one of my hands and almost yanks my arm clean off, she rushes past me, not saying another word. Before she gets all the way past me, I realize that, on the other side of her dress where her purse thing is holstered, it is bunched up on the side and back and her ass is showing from behind.
I reach out and miss her. She's fast.
She's out the door and weaving through the foot traffic on the sidewalk towards the street before I can make it to her to help.
Her underwear is funny. They say “The Days of the Week” across her butt. Not any one in particular. No. Not that kind. That's the funny part. These just say “The Days of the Week.” I'm staring at her ass the whole time that I'm chasing after her to tell her that they're on display.
I'm dodging pedestrians the same as she, wading through them to get to the road.
I know I'm supposed to be saying something before she goes any farther, communicating that she should stop, but now she's wagging her arms and the one-woman show still has me watching this bazaar creature in what must be her only and natural state—frenzied.
Her cute little blue dress is wrapped up and around her purse like a wind-whipped flag on a pole.
First, I sort of feel bad for her. Lots of bystanders have no doubt seen her ass cheek and her preference for comedic undergarments. Then, I think that she just might deserve it, like the Universe gets as big of a trip as I do from watching her spectacle. The Universe knows she can handle it. It's almost too awesome to stop it at all.
But I'm still getting closer, and she sees me rushing through the people. I probably look a bit deranged with the shit-eating grin I'm bringing with me at Frogger speed, arms out like I want brains for lunch.
“What now?” she spits, shaking her head back and forth, raising her arms in wild animation. There are people watching across the street who should be hailing their own cabs, but they’re just as caught up in her luminosity as me.
She unconsciously begs for attention.
“What the fuck?” she fumes.
I know I don't want to draw more attention to the scene, for her sake, because she's doing a good enough job of it on her own, but instead of just coming out with it and saying, “Your dress is up,” or something equally as direct, I grab at it and hastily try to fix it myself.
I am so damn stupid.
It's after I get my hands on it and start redirecting the errant fabric that she starts swinging.
“Who do you think you are?!” The untamed tornado slaps at me like she's riding a bike with her arms, blond hair swinging over her shoulders like a shampoo commercial.
I'm laughing and trying to tell her to stop. Covering my face and vital organs, I attempt to shield off this pretty lunatic's assault.
She tel
ls me that she has mace.
My voice comes back. “No. Stop! Your dress. It was stuck. It was up!”
Her roll slows just a little, although she’s still swatting at me every second or so. “What?” she huffs. Her cute forehead wrinkles. She looks down. Then up at me. “What did you say?” The hitting never completely abates. Though now it's just her one arm running into my arm in methodical repetition.
“I fixed your dress. It was wrapped up in your bag thing.”
Her face shows her brain's recognition of what I've told her. “Shit.”
I wave around her and get the attention of a cab driver. She still needs to get downtown, and she's lost her train of thought, realizing she just half-mooned lower Manhattan.
The cab pulls up and she steps over to it. Turning back to me, she confirms, “Is this for me or are you...?”
I shake my spinning head and gesture for her to take the cab. She's so fucking pretty and my instinct says, “Don't let her go.” Instead I settle for, “I'll get the next one.”
“You'll get the next one. Okay.” She opens the door, a light going off in her head, reminding her of the time, I suppose. She speedily says, “Okay. Yeah. Sorry about beating you up. Thanks.” She keeps popping her head back towards me, punctuating her words. “Yeah. Sorry. You saw my butt. Oh my God.”
She's a calamity.
Then she's back in the game again, yelling the address and building she's headed to, and just waves at me out the window.
When they pull away, she gives we one last look out the dirty cab's back glass. I see her smile wide and shake her head. She waves one more time and then smacks herself in the forehead.
I can't really think straight. I raise my arm first as a gesture of goodbye before I turn to hail a yellow ride of my own.
I've thought about that girl a lot in the last few years.
I only met her briefly on one occasion, but she left a pockmark in my mind. She was dynamite and she had an indefinitely long fuse that never stopped burning. Those around her never knew when she would blow up, not looking away because she was a mess who was fun to watch.
I hope she's still like that when my mind drifts back to her through the years that pass by.
Maybe I should have shared the cab. Got in with her. Stayed with her.
I don't know.
Who ever really knows that it is the first time, the first time you meet? It's only the first time after there's a second time. Up until then, it's just an only. One moment to the next could alter everything.
Every decision pushes you or pulls you where you're going in life.
At times, after running into her, when I felt like I was pushing every day to do better, to get further, make a bigger difference, and like I was getting nowhere and I was just spinning my tires, I’d think of her.
She pulls life along. That girl was making life keep up with her.
And that's too special to forget.
“Date of birth?”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Charlotte? You know my date of birth. You just told me happy birthday when I walked in! I know you have to ask, but do you really have to ask? I've been coming here since I was fourteen. It's a little redundant. Don't you think?”
Charlotte is Dr. Meade's receptionist. She's about a hundred years old and wears “slacks,” and a lovely parka could be fashioned from all the cat hair hanging from her blouse. She's my favorite brand of old lady. Don't tell anyone I said that.
“I'm sorry. I'm just anxious. I didn't mean to cuss you out for doing your job.” That's me. I blow up and then apologize. I have no filter when I'm nervous. “Four, twenty, nineteen eighty-five.”
“Thank you, Tatum. Doctor is on schedule. It should only be a minute. Are you doing anything fun for your birthday? Is Kurt taking you anywhere?” She waves her hand in a big way to let me know I can sit.
“I think we are going to dinner with Winnie and Coop. They are picking me up here in a while. Any recommendations? I'm supposed to be deciding where to go. I hate that. Deciding where to eat. It's like—” And mid-sentence, on my way to the seat, that, mind you, I've sat in almost every time I've been here for years, I slam my shin into something. “Son of a bitch!”
I look down and see that I hit it hard enough to shove the coffee table back a foot or so.
“Charlotte, when did this piece of shit get moved here? Ouch.” Oh, yeah. I'm losing my sight. Seems cruel to move furniture on an almost blind klutz, doesn't it?
I sit, and she comes around her desk to check on me. Moving the offending table back to its rightful position, she picks up the magazines that fell off.
“I'm sorry, dear. I put that there the other day. It was by the window. Then the ficus was dying and—oh dear. I'm so sorry. I should have said to mind the coffee table.” Looking as guilty as the cat that ate the canary, she stands before me, all apologies. Like it's her fault I can't navigate around a four-foot-long inanimate object.
“It isn't your fault,” I say, rubbing my battered leg. It isn't like that is the only bruise I have earned myself. Today.
As if on cue, Dr. Meade walks through the door that leads back to the patient rooms. “Tatum. Happy birthday. Did Charlotte finally get sick of your potty mouth and kick you?”
Ha. Ha. They look between each other and have a nice chuckle at my expense. No pity from him.
“No, Dr. Evil. I whacked my leg on that wretched table,” I replied in an innocent singsong voice. “Real classy to shift around the furnishings before your favorite handicapable patient arrives. Bravo.”
He comes to me and offers me a hand up. I accept and limp my lame ass towards the door with him. His hand is warm and big. He lets go so I can follow him down the hall to the examination room towards which he is steering us.
He stops just short of exam room four and waves me past him. He smells like rubbing alcohol and cologne. Strangely, it smells good to me. It's familiar.
I have tried to figure out how old Dr. Meade is many times. When I first met him, he seemed way too young to be my doctor. If I had to guess, I would say late thirties or early forties.
I've always thought he was handsome. His dark hair is beginning to lighten around the edges, and his kind and easy smile has left charming laugh lines around his eyes and mouth.
Of course, I get to look at him closely during my visits, and I have been his patient for a long time. I can see pretty well up close if I'm looking directly at something. That is the strange thing about my condition.
I have RP, or Retinitis Pigmentosa if you're fancy. Let me break it down for you. It started when I was a teenager. I had poor peripheral vision—not awful, but poor. I was diagnosed then with RP. It didn't seem like that big of a deal. Who needs peripheral vision?
It sort of stayed the same for a long time, and other than that, my vision was pretty good. I made it fine through college, sight in tow. I landed a great job. Bought and renovated a fabulous apartment on the Upper East Side, and everything was smooth sailing.
Then around the time I turned twenty-six, it started getting worse. I always came to see Dr. Meade on a regular basis to monitor the condition. He could tell, too. I suppose he'd be a pretty crappy eye doctor if he hadn't noticed.
Our plan was to just monitor it, and then he would let me know if treatment became available. So far, it's just a good dose of vitamin A. Seriously. That is all the remedy they have.
I can still see pretty well. Although, it is not as good as it was six months ago. Simply, it's like tunnel vision. For a long time, it has just been a fuzzy gray edge around my field of sight.
Then it got darker and the rim got wider. Now it is about thirty percent gone. So it's still better than it could be, but it's a lot like looking through a porthole on a ship, and my night vision is really starting to suck a big one.
“I like your haircut, Tatum. It looks nice for summer. I don't think I have ever seen you wear it this short.”
“Thank you. You can't help but flirt, can you?” I wink, and h
e lets my flirting slide. He always does. “It is just easier to fix in the morning. We've been busy at the show, and it was just a pile on my head by the end of the day anyway. I had no use for it.”
“Well, I'm glad you are cutting out the unnecessary. Simplifying.” Dr. Meade smiles as if it were his idea to have Luis, our staff stylist, cut nearly a foot off my blond hair. He motions for me to sit in the chair and I do.
“You look pleased. Should I have my stylist send you the bill?” We laugh—him in earnest and me sarcastically.
“No. I'm just glad that you're making things easier for yourself.”
I know he's just being honest, but I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable being real about what's going on.
Sitting in his chair, he wheels towards me with his clipboard. “How have you been feeling? Any headaches?”
“Only when I smack it off something. Same goes for my toe aches and leg aches.” That earns me a look. “No. I still haven't had many headaches.”
“Good. Have you noticed your peripheral vision getting worse? Is your tunnel vision narrowing more? Are you more tired than normal?” He's writing and lifts his head up. “Just answer, Tatum. I can't say anything to anyone. You can tell me.”
“It is getting narrower, but not by a lot. I've been measuring it sort of. Like at work. I use to be able to see both of the cameras from offstage. Now it's like I'm looking right in between them. My night vision is almost nonexistent. If I wake up in the middle of the night and there isn't a light on, I can barely see to get to the bathroom without waking up Kurt by bumping around. It isn't like he wants to sleep with the light on. Who would?” I sigh, aware that I didn’t really need to tell him all of that, but again, I'm nervous and can't help it.
“Well, we were expecting that. If the light is on, can you see better when you wake up?” he asks as though he is talking to a child.
“Yes, but it takes a minute for everything to focus. It comes back in a few seconds and everything is back to shitty-ass normal. Tell me the truth. Is this because of my adolescent masturbating? I was told that leads to blindness.”
“This again!? Would you quit with the masturbating!” he almost shouts.