by Lucy Morton
As I walk out to the street, I quickly get into the limo and I demand the driver to start the car. I do not care where we go, but we must leave now. Although I know that Martin has not moved a single finger to stop me.
I have not walked out the door of St. Patrick's Cathedral as Mrs. Logan I supposed I was going to be, rather than the ordinary Kate Spencer. She would end up living alone with seven cats in any dump in Soho. The reason? Whoever thought he was the man of her life, he has stood her up at the altar by the man of his life.
CHAPTER 2
STUART
72 hours before the trip
More and more people hate Mondays. They are looking forward for Friday so bad. According to studies by the University of Sydney, they reveal that Wednesday is the most depressive day. Most people spend their time on things they do not like because they need money. If money was not the purpose, what kind of activities would you be working on? Would you be doing what you do today? They gave us the right to live, but we do not know for how long. Time is the only thing you cannot make up for. Not even the richest man in the world can buy one more minute of life. Unless you know how to go back in time. The only way to change your future is to do something with your present.
The second most common regret people think before dying is: "I wish I had not worked so hard." 87% of the world's employees are unhappy. 30% are thinking of giving up and starting something of their own. What is the remaining 57% thinking about?
I leave the travel agency with an unbearable lump in my throat. A crazy girl in her wedding dress is crossing next to me like she was running for her life and she was crying out. Everyone turns to look at her. I am too self-involved in my own thoughts to pay attention someone else. It's been a difficult year. It is a difficult year to talk to people, by telling them what is really happening to me. I did not answer my friends’ calls and I have not stayed with them for months. “Come on, Stuart. At least join us for a game of pool." I hang up on them and I just do nothing or I go to the same place where I've been locked up most of the time throughout this last goddamn year. What a terrifying year! A creepy one. I am laughing alone through the streets of Soho and I forgot about the tearful woman running through the streets in her wedding dress and I enter a bar. I think maybe, there are more bastards than me and that somehow relieves me.
It's one o'clock and my stomach is crying out for some food. I ask for a sandwich and a coffee. I know I should take better care of myself, but for this very important guy into television commercials, he does not want to look after himself.
"Hey, you! The guy on the TV!” A teenager is screaming at her mother.
“Are you the guy from the vispring ad?" Are you the guy who put the drops on the train?” The mother asks. She is a chubby and a plain Jane woman in her forties, by approaching my table and invading my living space.
I nod, embarrassed, although this is not the first time it happened to me.
“What are the next commercial ads you really need to see?” She is getting interested about it.
“Any of them, just leave me alone.”
“What a prick!" The teenager shouts.
The waitress, a young woman in her twenties, looks at me with pity from the bar. She is approaching me. She wears his curly blond hair tucked into an unmade bun and she has large and shiny blue eyes. She smiles at me kindly.
“It must be hard to be famous" she says, with his little notebook and a pen ready to take notes.
“A sandwich and a coffee. Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
I look at her confused. What does she care? I stopped from being rude. Then I force a smile and I nod.
Three hours later, I'm fucking the blond waitress in my apartment. Of course on the sofa. My bed is sacred.
I dominate and I move her skinny body around my little finger. She is obedient and she is constantly moaning. Too much loud for my taste. My wanker neighbor must be having a great time.
When finishing, I go to the bathroom and while I am getting back, I see her naked lying on the sofa where we have fucked, watching a romantic comedy on television.
“Are you leaving now?” I asked her, by looking up.
“Oh...” she hesitates bummed. Yes, sure.
As she is leaving, she frowns and looks at me seriously.
“What is my name?” She asks me.
I shrug and shut the door in her face.
I scratch off my list another bar that I will not be able to return in a long time.
48 hours before the trip
I decide to go for a walk in Central Park as I used to do it every Sunday with my parents when I was a child. I miss them and I know that they will be complaining and rolling their eyes somewhere, as they used to do it every time I have my exam suspended. But it is getting so much worse now. This is not a "meaningless" test. His little boy is destroying his life.
It is very hot. At the very second I leave the house, I am sweating and the morning shower has not help at all.
Central Park is full with youngsters wearing sunglasses and hand-rolled cigarettes. They are talking in circle about exhibitions of artwork and indie authors. The current fashion. There are enraptured couples that I envy and women nervously push carts with their babies. They are quite different from those people who are going for a jogging while listening to pop music. Excited children in the pond feeding the ducks while others compete with their little plastic boats. "Mine runs more than yours! I'll beat you!” They shout, with their little and childish voices. Their messy hair and their knees in the air full of scratches.
Later, as I was walking, the bad accumulated karma decides to take revenge on me. I get shat on by a pigeon in my head. I stepped on a pair of chewing gum and the deodorant is not working. "Now I only need a madwoman in a wedding dress, coming towards me and falling into the lake," I think sulkily.
When I got back to my apartment I look at the open-ended ticket I bought yesterday. Greece. The place I always wanted to visit... It will not be how I imagined it, but it will finally be the chosen one. I will be there, keeping promises, trying to live. By turning on the television, I see myself in a couple of ads I made a year ago. A year ago... when everything was perfect. My look was impeccable and I did not sleep with the first waitress who smiled at me. "If I could go back in time," I regret, in my lonely apartment full of photos of me. What an egocentric guy, even for that.
24 hours before the trip
Feeling dizzy, I sit up and I look at a thick black hair and thin arms around my sheets at my side of the bed. I shake my head and the stranger's shoulder relentlessly.
“Is that the way to wake people up?” she asks in a hoarse voice, by opening her brown eyes that I cannot remember seeing in my life.
She is naked. She shows me her boobs worked on and a flat abdomen as a result of endless hours in the gym, in Pilate’s classes or whatever I know.
“We had fun, didn’t we?
She winks at me and she turns back to sleep a little more. That's not open for discussion.
“Who the hell are you?" I ask, by controlling myself the anger I feel about having that stranger in my bed.
There are a couple of used condoms on the nightstand. I hold my face in my two hands and I am clutching my head without being able to remember what happened last night. I left the house and I went out on a pub at seven o’clock. I drank a couple of whiskey glasses and then... Nothing, I do not remember anything.
“Get the hell out of here immediately," I say. “You should not be in this fucking bed.”
“Mmm... Mmm...”
Now she is turning towards me with her eyes still closed and also with his prominent and worked on lips by making strange gestures. Funny noises that make me nervous. She grabs the sheet down with her hand and she shows me her shaven pussy. I cannot help looking at her. Then when I notice her unreal face, she smiles at me and she winks at me.
“I told you to get out of here!" –I shouted at her.
Suddenly, she gets
up looking at me angrily. She bends down to pick up black leather pants and a transparent red shirt. She gets dresses quickly and she wears her stiletto heels.
“You're crazy, you know that? Crazy, indeed!”
“You, slut!
As she was running for her life, the stranger leaves my apartment. I must remember in what pub I met her, to scratch it off also of my long list of places where I am not allowed to go for a long time.
I pack my bags in the afternoon. Sad and crestfallen, I take all the clothes I have from my closet including several swimsuits. I have been told that the beaches in Greece are spectacular. I dare open the top of the closet I suppose not look at. I am shattered and I decide to enter the first opened bar, but not before making sure it does not appear on my list. Five hours later, I have another bar that I have to delete from my list and a hangover that forces me to go to sleep soon so I can get up early and get to the airport on time.
CHAPTER 3
KATE
24 hours after the wedding
I would like to stop breathing and just die. Lying in my bed, I have imagined this a lot and also three ways to kill myself. One of them is to crush the pillow in my face until suffocating me, but I'm afraid the survival instinct is too clever for me and it will not let me do it. God, God, God... What a shame! My phone, ironically, and it cannot stop ringing over and over... My parents, the girls, my uncles from Vermont, my cousins from San Francisco demanding me that I must pay them the ticket through countless messages on the answering machine... What a disaster! What a tragedy!
It's Sunday. It really bothers me the rays of the sun coming through the tiny bedroom window of my bachelor apartment where I have hidden out. I fortunately did not rent it. Fortunately... Otherwise, I should have been forced to get back to the apartment I shared with Martin and seeing his face again, since I cannot afford to pay a hotel room and I don’t like to stay at my house parents. It would be depressing to go back to sleep with the posters of the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys.
I really hate Martin's face in my memory. That dirty face with that dirty look that it cannot keep up with the lie on our wedding day. Why did he do this to me? How could he do it? I did not deserve this, OK. I did not deserve it! He should have told me before, I would have understood. But not on our wedding day. That day is sacred. That day, it is to say “I do”, not to confess that you are gay.
I drag my feet into the living room and I watch, feeling sorry for myself, the airline tickets that would have taken us to a wonderful honeymoon in Greece. Now I know why Martin chose Greece as a destination. It was because it is full of men seeking men. It was also because our relationship has been a lie and I do not want to think about the things he will have done while he was with me. All the guys he will have fucked. The secret relationship he has always had with Freddy, his bearded friend.
“That’s enough!” I say to myself by hopping around. I go to the kitchen and I pour myself a glass of wine, but when I look at the clock I realize that it's only eleven o'clock in the morning. I pick up the phone, I listen to the messages on the answering machine, and I feel sorry for myself one more time by not distinguishing Martin's voice from so many others. Is this the end of it? Really? Like this?
“Fuck him off!" My friend Lucy tells me in a message.
I laugh and repeat it again. “Fuck him off!"
I call the girls and we agree to meet us in a half an hour. I decide not to wear the tight red dress that I thought I had conquered Martin that night, because among other things, it does not fit me. Charlotte is making fun of my look. She seems not be a fan of my beige shorts and striped t-shirt, but I do not care.
“Kate... how are you? Betty asks, hugging me.
“No. No, no and no", suddenly I mention. All of them look at me, wanting to know how this conversation will continue. “I have spent 24 hours lying in my bed without seeing or listening anyone, embarrassed by everything that has happened. It is hard. Yes, indeed. It is very hard. But I do not want you to feel sorry for myself. I mean it, I'll be fine. I am very strong.
They do not know what to say. They just nodded, but when I saw their looks again, there is an unpleasant knot in my throat taking over my entire being. After that I burst into tears heartbrokenly, under the watchful eye of all people, who are sitting on the terrace of the bar, having a soda. Just like the day of my non-wedding in which I ran through the streets of New York in my wedding dress, my unmade bun and a lot of tears in all directions of my sad look. They should think it was a joke.
“What are you looking at?" Lucy shouts.
The customers of the bar keep on talking and after taking a deep breath for a moment, I take my tickets to Greece out of my bag.
“Who wants them?" I asked, by shaking them on the air.
“How? What are those?” Charlotte grabs the tickets and she shakes her head. “Just go, Kate. Go to Greece, enjoy it.”
“Yeah, but... No, no, really. I do not know how to travel alone. I cannot even eat alone in a restaurant.”
“It’s about time, honey. You are about thirty-two years old." Pam says, leaning her head.
I am meditating for a few moments. Maybe it's not such a bad idea and in Greece there are very hot guys who do like women. "No. No more men for now, Kate. You're going to spend a very good time there without thinking about men” I think head down, looking at the tickets in Betty’s hands.
“Betty, do not you want to go with the guy of the subway?" I suggest.
“With my husband, Kate. My husband. And his name is Karl.”
“Karl. Of course, Karl," I repeat, knowing I'd forget it again in two days.
“We cannot go. We have vacations at the end of August this year," the sweet Betty complains.
I question the rest of them with a look and they all shake their heads.
“Really? Nobody can come with me?”
I am upset. Very upset. I am struggling between if I should go or not. Taking advantage of a dream trip or selling it online.
By being bored at home, I pour the twelfth glass of wine of the day and I turn on the TV. There is a hippie with small eyes and he looks like John Lennon with a golden-framed glasses and he starts saying calmly:
“More and more people hate Mondays. They are looking forward for Friday so bad. According to studies by the University of Sydney, they reveal that Wednesday is the most depressive day. Most people spend their time on things they do not like because they need money. If money was not the purpose, what kind of activities would you be working on? Would you be doing what you do today? They gave us the right to live, but we do not know for how long. Time is the only thing you cannot make up for. Not even the richest man in the world can buy one more minute of life. Unless you know how to go back in time. The only way to change your future is to do something with your present.
The second most common regret people think before dying is: "I wish I had not worked so hard." 87% of the world's employees are unhappy. 30% are thinking of giving up and starting something of their own. What is the remaining 57% thinking about?”
His words send me a peaceful message. Calm. After listening to them, I feel my problems fade and I begin to think seriously about the possibility of taking the flight on Tuesday at seven o’clock and leaving for Greece. That's... I have to do something with my life and I'll start there. For being able to travel alone to an unknown place. What an adventure!
24 hours before the trip
I cannot start with the most complicated thing so I decide to go alone to a restaurant on Monday. I walk in the door, I say hello to the receptionist and he shows me the table where I have to sit. Well, I'm fine. I'm alone and I'm fine. The problem comes when a short waitress with a dark complexion and a velvet voice, asks me if I am waiting for someone.
"No, I am not waiting for anyone," I answer, with my head held high.
“Oh... then I'll remove this plate.”
She picks up quickly the glass. The plate and the cutlery that I have in front o
f me awaiting of a diner who never would have arrived and she leaves but then she return seconds later to ask for my order. I tell her what I want. Well, let's do it. It is easy. I look at the cell phone, I entertain myself watching out the window and the next problem comes, when the rest of the tables begin to fill with people with a company. COM-PA-NY. The only person who is eating alone in the restaurant is me and I feel like such a fool. But it is even worse to think that in Greece, there will be a lot of couples and groups of friends and probably no one is crazy enough to go alone to a place like this. It's crazy, I will not make it. I will not.
I gobble up the food without any distractions. I pretend looking my Facebook. I ask for the bill and I leave. It has been a terrible experience. I will not eat alone in a restaurant ever again.
10 hours before the trip
“I cannot do it. I swear I cannot do it.” I tell the girls in our Skype night meeting.
“Leave that fucking glass of wine, Kate," Lucy says, petting her cat. I leave the glass. All right. Just listen carefully what I'm going to say. If you do not go to Greece someday, you'll regret not having done so when you're a crazy old woman with seven cats in a shack in Soho. I will regret myself not having asked for two weeks off at work to go with you, but that is another issue. Damn it, Kate. Do not waste your life. Do not allow some guy makes your life so miserable. Not even someone that has not left you for a woman, but for a man. Okay girls, would you rather find your guy with another woman or be gay?
They all shrug and they stare at the ceiling of their respective apartments.
“Of course, I would prefer him to be gay, because he's looking for something I cannot give him.
Lucy stops, bends over and shows us a fluorescent pink dildo. We all started laughing out loud and I sip my glass of wine quietly, to keep Lucy from seeing me from the screen of her computer.
“That's right," Pam replies. “You have to think that within a year, nobody will remember the non-marriage thing.