Sharon started to back out of my doorway.
“Oh, one more thing,” I said. “By any chance, has anyone named Melissa called for me recently?”
She thought a moment and shook her head. “Not that I can recall.”
If Sharon couldn’t recall it, it hadn’t happened. “If anyone by that name does call, put her through immediately, please. Regardless of what I’m doing.”
Sharon seemed utterly perplexed now. “I’ll do just that.”
“Thanks.”
Sharon nodded and started to leave again.
“Hey, Sharon?”
“Mr. Timian?”
“Sorry if I made you nervous earlier. I had a weird weekend.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Timian. Let me go get that coffee.”
I smiled and she walked off. I picked up the Golden file and tried to focus on it, making sure that I was as up to date on it as possible to avoid any embarrassments during our ten o’clock call. My mind kept wandering back to my exchange with Sharon, though. She seemed truly confused by my friendliness. Had I really been that much of a jerk to her? Was that what I was like without Melissa? Had I gotten worse in the last couple of years because Melissa hadn’t been there to round me out?
For the hundredth time in the last few days I promised myself never to forget what Melissa meant to me and what she did for me. No matter what people thought of the Ken Timian who existed in this world, they were only going to get the new, improved version in the future.
Chapter 12
The Most Important Thing In the World
A bead of water dripped down my glass and I followed its journey all the way to the tablecloth. It made me think of the sweat of passion. It made me think of tears over loved ones lost. It made me think about nearly anything other than the ugly psychodrama that was taking place across the table from me. Paul and Angela Taylor were tearing each other apart.
“Isn’t your birthday coming up, Ken?” Angela said, pulling herself away from their joust momentarily. Her voice was as deep and brassy as her red hair.
“At the end of August. Thanks for reminding me. I would have forgotten it.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” she said. I’m sure she thought I was being sarcastic, though there was a very real chance I would have forgotten my birthday given how my world had turned upside down. “Did you know that Paul forgot our anniversary? It’s only the second time he’s done it.”
Paul snorted into his wineglass. “Five years of marital bliss. How could it slip my mind?”
You never should have gotten to your fifth anniversary, Paul. In another world you and Angela split up, you met another woman, and you were married – and insanely happy – within six months. Do you know why you’re still with Angela? I do, but if I tell you, you’ll think I’ve lost my mind. I kept silent and hunkered down in my chair, ducking the crossfire and smiling at the occasional ricochet.
Paul and I went back a half dozen years. We’d been thrown together in a foursome on a golf course in Fairfax, had a few beers together after the round, and stayed in regular contact ever since. Melissa loved him, and she really loved Jeannie, his second wife who was unfortunately as absent from this scenario as my fiancée. I was thankful that Paul and I were still friends in this world. I needed him more than ever and I contacted him right away. When I suggested we meet at the Neapolitan, an Italian restaurant that we both frequented, he replied that, “We would love to come.”
I expected to see Jeannie, though I shouldn’t have. When I saw Angela, I knew this dinner was going to be very different from the one I’d planned. Paul always held the door for Jeannie. He let it close on Angela. Paul pulled out Jeannie’s chair. He let Angela do it herself. I remembered Angela with a petite figure when she and Paul split. Now she had a figure like a fire hydrant. Paul had changed, too, from a tall, wiry man with gym-thickened arms. This Paul had an arid face and hair streaked with gray. Stress and emotional emptiness will do that to a person. I wondered how long it would take for it to affect me.
“We haven’t seen you in a while,” Angela said casually. The music wasn’t loud, but her voice was just a decibel below a shout. She swore that being a supervisor in a customer service center gave her lungs of iron. I think she just liked to make herself heard. “You should come by our house more often.”
I never got the sense that Angela liked me, and I was sure it was no different now. She had another agenda here, though I couldn’t be certain what it was. I didn’t really want to know. It was hard not to blame their marital problems on her. It’s natural to take your friend’s side in these kinds of situations. It went beyond that in this case. I knew what Paul really wanted out of a marriage. I knew how content and fulfilled he could be. It was physically painful to watch him being eaten alive by this toxic relationship.
And it hurt to realize that I had a lot to do with it. This Paul never met Melissa, so we never had the conversation one chilly night when he told me that seeing what I had with the woman I loved had convinced him to end the charade with Angela, to try to find the same thing for himself. He told me then that the two of us had completely changed his mind about what a relationship could be. I wished – for both of us – that I could show him again.
I realized both of them were watching me. I’d never responded to the last thing Angela had said. Truthfully, the silence was a relief. I shook my head. “Sorry, I got distracted there for a second.”
“Eye caught a young beauty at the bar?” Paul said with a bit of vicarious thrill in his voice. Angela threw him a sharp look.
“No,” I said, shaking my head again. “Something reminded me of an old case.”
“Count on Paul to have his mind in the gutter,” Angela said darkly. “Speaking of women, Ken, when are you going to settle down? You shouldn’t be single. It’s time.”
“Why do you always get on this topic, Angela?”
“Am I talking to you, Paul? He’s a good-looking man and a lawyer to boot. He makes more money in a day than you make in a week. I think any girl would be glad to grab him up.”
Angela looked scornfully at Paul. I never kept up with her after the two of them split. Maybe she’d needed the change as much as he did. Maybe she even found contentment with someone else.
“I’m still looking,” I said softly. “I guess I haven’t found the right person yet. Or maybe she just hasn’t found me.”
“Or maybe the whole idea of a ‘right person’ is as much of a myth as the Loch Ness Monster,” Paul said cynically. I actually thought I saw a little hurt in Angela’s eyes before she sneered at him. It was hard to think of something to say after that, though I didn’t want another awkward silence.
“This pasta is delicious,” I said, much too brightly. “Yours good?”
“Yum, just like home,” Paul said sarcastically.
Angela put her fork down. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to make a phone call.”
I started to feel a little sorry for her. This is what happens when wounds are allowed to fester.
When she left, Paul rubbed his temples. “Sorry about that,” he said with the gravity of an undertaker. “We usually save it for home. Lately we’ve brought the Paul-and-Angela Show on the road. You don’t need to see this.”
“No apologies necessary. All couples fight. Even me and Melissa...”
“Who?”
“Just somebody I once knew. Hard to believe I never mentioned her to you. Anyway, it’s good having dinner with you two.”
“Yeah, we can brighten anyone’s day.” He ate another forkful of pasta, but the food seemed to disagree with him. He drank some more wine and his mood brightened. “Hey, did you ever hear from Lori?”
I nodded. “She left a message a couple of days ago. What’s she like?”
“She seems great. Blonde, cute, friendly. A real Georgia peach. You know, just like Angela.” He said that
last sentence with a snarl, though he hardly needed to underscore his sarcasm.
“How did you meet her?”
“She’s a friend of my sister’s. I see her sometimes at Maureen’s parties, and she mentioned she wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment. I told her a few lies about how great you were. She was interested, so I gave her your number. You don’t mind when I do that, do you?”
I remembered that Paul had tried to fix me up with a number of women before I met Melissa. They were all perfectly pleasant, and most of them were beautiful, but I always got the impression that they fit his ideal rather than what he thought mine was.
“I appreciate the effort, but I’ve been kind of busy at the office lately. Ridiculous hours. I’m not sure I’ll have time to see someone right now.”
“Since when does one have anything to do with the other? You were always able to slide ’em in before.” He paused and studied me for a moment. He was a project manager for the Department of Transportation, and he claimed he could size up a person in less than two seconds. “You look different, Ken. Is everything okay?”
I really wanted to tell him. Right then before Angela got back. I wanted to throw everything that happened since Friday out on the table and have him tell me that he understood, that I wasn’t crazy for feeling what I was feeling, and that he would figure out some way to get me back to Melissa. But I had no idea how to have the conversation, let alone have it quickly.
“I’m fine. Just a lot of things going on. Nothing I can talk about right now.” I took a big gulp of ginger ale.
Paul shrugged. I didn’t think he’d accepted what I said at face value, but he didn’t push it. “So what’s with drinking soda?” he said.
“I had a checkup. The doctor told me to cut down on alcohol.”
“You? I’ll believe you can do that when fish stop breathing water.”
“At some point you have to realize when you’re hurting yourself. Speaking of which, how are you really doing?”
“The same. The job is still there. I make sure states get their pork-barrel road projects and politicians get reelected. Occasionally, we build a road that goes somewhere.”
Paul had never been that jaded about his job. He liked to say that he helped keep America moving. This was obviously another indication he’d been worn down. “I meant you and Angela.”
“You need to ask?”
“It seems to have kicked up to a new level.”
Paul snorted and gulped his wine. “It’s been the same for a while, really. It’s kind of amazing that you couldn’t see it. How does this shit happen? I mean I really thought we were right for each other when we got together. But now...” He drained his glass and quickly signaled the waiter for another. “You can see for yourself. We went to visit a marriage counselor – a hundred bucks an hour to have some touchy-feely fool tell us we had a communications problem. Hell, our dog could have told us the same thing. On second thought, don’t call Lori back. If you got saddled with one of these long-term, I’d never be able to forgive myself. You have no idea how lucky you are not to be burdened with this crap.”
“I don’t feel very lucky, to tell you the truth. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about settling down. I’d love to find a wife and have a family. Buy a house with a big backyard and a garden.”
“You?” Paul looked at me as though I’d just told him the Redskins’ quarterback was switching to professional badminton. “You’ll settle down about two days after the Ice Capades play Hell. Don’t get all romantic on me, Ken. Some of us need to live our lives through you.”
“Trust me; bachelor living isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And marriage doesn’t have to be a trap. To tell you the truth, I feel empty without a significant person in my life.”
Paul simply stared at me for what must have been thirty seconds. Then he said, “Ignore your doctor, Ken. Really, I mean it. If this is how you see the world when you aren’t drinking, I’d suggest taking several stiff ones right now.”
“Do you think you could be just a little more cynical? Your rosy-eyed optimism is a little naïve.”
The waiter brought Paul’s new drink, and he took a long sip before raising the glass in my direction. “Exactly my point, buddy. Look, I’m sure there are people in the world whose marriages turned out a whole lot better than mine. That doesn’t mean the institution still doesn’t suck.”
I was getting frustrated. Not only wasn’t this the conversation I’d intended to have with Paul, but I didn’t like this version of Paul very much. “So why don’t you do something about it?” I said. “Why don’t you make some effort to get out of the rut you’re in?”
“I couldn’t climb out of my rut with a grappling hook,” he said miserably.
“You’re going to die a bitter old man if you keep up this attitude.”
He regarded me angrily. “Are you telling me to dump my wife?”
“I’m not telling you anything. Other than if your life is as awful as it seems, you kinda have to do something about it.”
He laughed humorlessly, and when he made eye contact with me again, there was something more conciliatory in his eyes as well as something a little more hopeful. “I never told you this for reasons that will become obvious, but a while ago I thought about leaving Angela. We were fighting. As you said, everybody fights, but ours started turning really ugly. The kind of brawl where each of you scrounges under the carpet for every bit you can pick up and hurl at the other person.”
“So what happened?” The other Paul told me a story of a fight so nasty that he went to a lawyer and filed divorce papers the next day.
“I talked to a lawyer. I took off work and went to a divorce attorney who someone recommended. I really had to pull strings to see him so quickly; there are an awful lot of people divorcing out there, you know.”
“I could have gotten someone at the firm to help you.”
“You’re out of my league. Besides, I didn’t want to get into this with any of my friends until I had a few details. I went to see this guy and he told me what my options were and how to begin the process. A few nights later Angela and I were going at it tooth and nail again – I think I forgot to take out the garbage or something – and I started dividing up the furniture in my head. I got the television. She got the couch. As long as I got the TV, I would have given her just about anything else she wanted.” Paul drained his glass and signaled to the waiter.
“Are you driving?” I said. “You might want to slow down a little.”
“What’s the point? Anyway, I was all set to walk out and even had the scenario set up in my head. At breakfast I would march into the kitchen with suitcase in hand and say, ‘I’m out of here.’ In my fantasies, I even had visions of Angela begging me to stay, holding on to my leg and everything. But the next morning I wimped out. I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not? From what I can see here, it sounds like it would have been a good move.”
Paul’s head sagged. He looked utterly defeated. “The truth, my good friend, is that there just didn’t seem to be any real reason to do it. The divorce process would have been a nightmare, and in the end, I’d just be alone for a while until I hooked up with some other woman to have a little bit of fun before that all turned to shit. It just didn’t seem worth the energy.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I know so.”
Paul laughed indignantly. “Really? Are you gonna tell me you have a crystal ball in the car.”
“I’m just telling you that I can imagine you – imagine you very vividly – with an attractive, intelligent woman who adores you. She thinks you’re smart and funny and handsome. This woman – let’s call her Joanie – and you will be so in love that within a few months you will be married and planning babies and picket fences and all of that stuff.”
For a moment, I could
see that the image fascinated Paul, as though he got a glimpse of Jeannie/Joanie and saw his future in her eyes. Then he shivered and shook his head.
“I think you’ve been working too hard, Ken. Your brain is going soft, and you’re starting to sound like a bad greeting card.”
“You need to listen to me. You can meet the woman of your dreams and fall in love. This is not the best life has to offer.”
Paul threw up his hands. “Thanks for the pep talk, buddy, but you live your life and I’ll live mine, okay?”
I wasn’t going to give up. For some reason, getting this message across to Paul was hugely important to me. As I leaned in to give it another try, though, I saw Angela approach the table. Her expression was stony, as though she’d spent the last several minutes draining herself of any emotion. She sat down without saying anything, offering me a look that I interpreted as recrimination, though I know she couldn’t have heard our conversation.
I glanced over at Paul. His latest drink had arrived, and right now it seemed like the most important thing in the world to him.
Chapter 13
A Different Magic Trick
I felt very alone in this world. Paul was different. The people in my office saw me as someone I hadn’t been for a long time. Even the cat’s attitude wasn’t the same. Meanwhile, Melissa was impossibly far away, seated behind her grand piano practicing in some rehearsal hall or perhaps the glass-enclosed great room of a magnificent villa out west (her online bio was no more specific than that). I needed to connect with someone who knew me, someone who knew who I really was.
I went to see Stephon.
“I was wrong,” he said with a patient smile when I stepped into the store. “I guessed you’d be here yesterday.”
“I was too stupefied to come in here yesterday.”
He dipped his head and nodded. Stephon seemed a little different too – different beyond his businesslike clothing. Had I somehow changed him as well? Did it have something to do with the jewelry I didn’t buy for Melissa, that bauble he went out of his way to get for me and then I ignored altogether? Or was it something else entirely, something about the trip he’d sent me on?
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