BF4Ever

by George Matheos

  Her head had begun to ache, a built-up that was going to explode. She wished she had a pill, any kind of a pill, even an aspirin, as she sat there in agony between her friends. The best she could do was to give a little warm smile to her friend Kitty who always seemed to be politely understanding of her confusions.

  “Or maybe you could loan her your David, Robin,” said a recovered Kitty.

  Robin also was embarrassed by her words to Kitty.

  “So, you think that Sharon’s the weirdest? Well, if she’s the weirdest, what are you?”

  “Well, Kitty, what kind of a woman do you think I am?”

  Robin felt the unanticipated stupidity of that one, but sensed the need to continue the cover up of Claudio’s assault on Sharon.

  Kitty was good at juvenile banter so she took up Robin’s challenge, hoping to bring Sharon out of her new down-in-the-dumps dive.

  “You’re the kind of a woman who would derive great pleasure screwing your friend’s husband,” said Kitty with an indulgence that might have been viewed as contempt, because she knew that Robin knew, but wouldn’t tell her, because the three were the best of friends.

  “You know I would never fuck Claudio,” said Robin.

  “Is everything alright here, ladies,” asked Gianni.

  “Fuck off, Johnny,” said Robin.

  “He asked me, Robin,” said Kitty.

  They were just best friends kidding with each other with the help of a great Bordeaux and trying to keep a slippery afternoon moving along.

  “Who so ever believeth in me shall be saved.”

  And every-so-often, Sharon would proclaim the now tired words, in the calmest of voices, far removed from the puerile language of her friends.

  “What the hell does that mean, Sharon?” Kitty had beaten Robin to the punch. “For God’s sake say what you want to say, but stay away from this Biblical shit.”

  “It means that if you believe in Jesus, you will find eternal salvation. And right now, you should believe in my words, Kitty. And maybe you too will find salvation even in this life. Even without a farm. That goes for you too Robin.”

  “Sharon honey, you’re sailing into the wild blue yonder again. You know I wouldn’t ever want to live on a farm,” said Robin with a little side glance giggle. She wished she weren’t there; this is the last time, she thought.

  “Pour some more wine, Robin,” said a pissed off Kitty. “She’s getting on my nerves too with all this sermonizing shit.”

  “You mean pour some holy blood, don’t you?” said nasty Robin.

  Independently of the others, Sharon took three good swigs of her life sustaining red, whispered some holy words to herself and exhaled to her friends,

  “For I am the Light of the world sayeth the Lord, Jesus.”

  “And here, Jesus doesn’t mean the physical light of the sun,” continued disoriented Sharon, “but the inner light, the enlightenment of truth, that leads to cognition …” and here she hesitated for a moment because she wasn’t sure of that word, “… for we may have the light of the eyes and still be blind if we lack the light of the inner spirit, who is Jesus.”

  “Yes, the inner spirit, like this good red Bordeaux, which I must admit is delicious,” said Kitty in full resignation to Sharon’s smashed mind.

  It was no use. There were no fun anecdotes to be had this day. It was going to be one of those jagged afternoons difficult to lighten up. Kitty took one look at Sharon, felt her pain and decided she was going to be supportive of her friend in need from that moment on. Even if she has to go to confession, and communion, she would do it for her friend.

  She smiled, looked at Sharon, and said, “They say that Vince did not become a great painter of light until he gave up all his worldly possessions and retired to the countryside.”

  “Who the fuck is Vince?” said Robin in a very low, deliberate voice.

  “Vincent Van Gogh,” calmly replied Kitty. “That’s why he died poor.”

  Robin lowered her head at Kitty’s twisted mind.

  “I direct my prayer towards our salvation, oh Lord, my Destiny,”

  The intention was to overcome the confusion of the luncheon with a prayer.

  “Cut it out, both of you. You’re gonna drive me crazy,” Robin had had enough. What should have been an easy happy lunch was turning schizophrenic.

  “What the hell is going on here? Who are you people? You’re both turning psycho-schitzo … psychoshtso … crazy …” for the first time Robin was searching for words.

  “I’m doing this all for you, Robin,” calmly responded Sharon with all the serenity and assurance of a woman in complete inner peace. “It’s my way of showing my love for you.”

  “Bet you can’t say that again, Sharon,” said Kitty tipping her glass.

  “A little less love and a little more wine, please,” sneered Robin as she set full sail ahead riding on a barrel of red Bordeaux. “And pass the pissy Greek peasant’s bread this way.”

  Sharon grabbed the basket of bread away from the others and brought it in front of her. Disarmed, the other two looked at her in total bafflement.

  “That’s not funny Sharon,” said Kitty who tried to take the basket away from her.

  It was no use. There was a despotic stare in Sharon’s eyes that was now piercing right out of the Seven Seas and deep into distant Galilea. She took one bun, did the sign of the cross over it three times with her knife, and murmured something like, hhhhmmmhhhh, and enunciated,

  “Grant this o Lord,”

  She then carefully cut the bun into three pieces. She gave one piece to Kitty, and one to Robin, and absorbed in her very own magic began the mass:

  “Take, eat; this is my Body, which is broken for you for the remission of sins.”

  “Screw it Kitty. Let’s just watch the show,” quietly laughed Robin.

  “Don’t laugh, Robin; this is serious, she’s totally flipped out; we’ve got to help her.”

  “Drink of this always this is my blood…”

  “Don’t worry Kitty. It’s just the wine.”

  They waited for a second for the prayer to ascend to Heaven.

  “Never have I felt, so happy, as now, Kitty and Robin, my best of friends. I now know that life is a mystery, and you know, you never know that this too might be our last supper,” smiled Sharon, and she did politely take and kiss her best friends’ hands to their polite social horror. Too late, they withdrew their hands; everyone in the restaurant had witnessed the act.

  And a miraculous communion did then occur. The words that had come from Sharon’s holy lips did invade the friends’ souls and were immediately purifying; the words had been subliminally transmitted in the diffused wisdom emanating from Sharon’s lips directly into their souls. It filled them with love, and they felt the need to cross themselves, and to return to their childhood of pretty angels, and believe in Jesus again.

  Which was strange because Kitty was Lutheran and Robin was at best agnostic.

  “Amen,” said Robin, very subdued.

  Sharon continued under the gravity of her own mind’s liturgy:

  “Kyrie Eleyson, Kyrie Eleyson, Kyrie Eleyson,”

  “Here are your Roka leaf salads with boiled squid and champagne dressing, and your goat cheese, ladies, excuse me,” said Gianni, the angelic messenger.

  “That’s it! I’m out of here. Between the two of you and the Latino waiter, it’s Looney-toon times at the Seven Seas,” said Robin and she got up as if to leave.

  “Sit down, Robin,” said Sharon in the sternest of voices. For that one resolute moment, Robin sat meekly in her chair.

  “For the wisdom and gifts that we are about to enjoy, let us be thankful,” continued Sharon now very poised and self-assured.

  “And let there be peace and tranquillity all over this land; no, all over this world, always to a
ll, and to all times, forever and ever,” chimed in Kitty with a broad smile.

  “And in our souls let there be peace,” whispered Robin, her head against her will bowed in submission to the power of the words.

  Beyond doubt, there was communion now among the three friends.

  “What the fuck am I saying,” suddenly whispered Robin in disbelief as she stuck her fingers in her mouth to remove a piece of Roka leaf stranded between her molars. “Now you got me doing it.”

  Sharon took Robin’s left hand and softly said to her, “It’s ok Robin. You are shedding your sins. Don’t be afraid. Life without sin is not possible, for to be alive is also to sin.”

  “We were born into sin,” exclaimed Kitty happy to be part of it.

  “It wasn’t until Eve sinned that time and life began. Before that first sin, all eternity was perhaps one week old. Sin is what gives life the sweetness and the abandon to piss on the forbidden. And the price of sin is forgiveness,” spoke Sharon.

  “It’s a cheap price,” said Robin unsteady with Sharon’s bullshit.

  “Not when you consider an eternity in hell, Robin,” smiled Kitty.

  The Roka cellulose was still stuck between Robin’s teeth and she was desperately trying to dislodge it. At that moment, the only thing that she could think of was going home to floss and brush her teeth. The horribly smelly Roka leaves made her feel like her mouth was full of farts, gagging her throat and making it difficult for her to speak. She took another swig of her wine trying to wash her mouth of the foul fart smelling Roka leaves and like a blast from hell she had a vision of her grandmother who had died of Alzheimer’s and who had hardly ever spoken the several years before she died. Dead grandma’s breath smelled like the Roka salad. Guilt, abruptly fizzed from unknown depths foul flooding Robin’s Roka landscape both physically and mentally. Grandmother first, and then mother, both joined her in a parade of odors totally uninviting. Her mother had long been troubled after her mother had died and had long bouts of manic depression. It was incurable, the psychiatrist had said; probably genetic. There they were, both her mother and grandmother now sitting next to a youthful, blond bearded Jesus, and for forgiveness Robin gulped her full glass of bloody red Bordeaux.

  “God bless and forgive my Grandmother’s soul,” Robin surprised herself, and without warning ghastly fumes burped out of her mouth, making her eyes almost tear.

  “Robin, you’re crying,” said Kitty. “May your grandmother rest in peace.”

  “Can you imagine humanity without sin, Robin?”

  Oh my loving Lord, thought Kitty.

  “The only way that life could be without sin is if the sun burns out; when there is no light to feed the senses. In darkness not even imagination can cross into sin.”

  “You ought to know, Sharon; darkness does provide a nice cover,” said Robin.

  “You’re right, Sharon. God bless Sharon’s and our souls, as well,” said Kitty who thought this might do it.

  “Kitty, you’re always in the dark,” said a frustrated Robin.

  Kitty looked at Robin who was carefully wiping away something from her eye so as to not smudge her mascara. Though till now completely foreign to her way of thinking, she imagined that, conceivably, thoughts about dead people could, probably, bring tears to someone’s eyes. She herself had never deliberated about dead people, let alone dead relatives, so she never had to cry for them. She had long before accepted the finality of death and thought it lame to cry for dead people who undoubtedly were beyond any need to be remembered. To cry for the living has some meaning, but to cry for the dead smacks of perversity.

  She didn’t want to look at Robin fearing that Robin might be obsessing with the dead.

  She didn’t want to look at Sharon because in Kitty’s eyes it was pretty obvious that Sharon had transcended into a realm of convoluted existence possibly with the dead. For sure, she was full of dead memories. The trouble with Sharon was that in her dizzy spells she travelled backward to live in a children’s Samarian world, which, on second thought, is pretty much what old people do: as old age dementia sets in, their mind shops in the past. Trouble was, Sharon wasn’t that old, though lately, she definitely seemed to be preparing to meet her maker.

  She’s not getting any, the thought merrily jangled before Kitty. Maybe I should ask Claudio to volunteer for some extra duty. What the hell, he’s nice enough to happily do it. Anyway, she’s such a tight ass, she probably wouldn’t enjoy it. Maybe we could do a little husband swapping: if she wants Claudio, I want a little of Hank.

  “You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe Sharon, in some absurd fashion, might be making sense,” said Robin.

  “I’m happy to see that you now understand that only in darkness is sin, as is time, totally obliterated,” said Sharon. “There is no sin in darkness!”

  On the other hand, maybe we should have ordered some brains, thought Robin.

  Damn dysfunctional receptors, thought Kitty. It has to be.

  She remembered her first husband having talked about dysfunctional receptors with respect to their young son, one time.

  It has to be the wine; Kitty didn’t want to pursue the dysfunctional receptors. It has to be the wine feeding Sharon’s brain, and it has to be the wine tranquilizing Robin and me to listen to her pathetic theology.

  “Lord save us and bless us all,” said Sharon who tenaciously held on to her freeze.

  “Kyrie eleyson,” said Kitty, smiling sarcastically.

  “Well,” thoughtfully echoed Robin, somewhat recovered from her brief melancholic moment of tears, in memory of her beloved grandmother, and now more sympathetic to the persistent Sharon, “it’s an intensely scrutinized and well researched phenomenon these days that moral issues, sin to be exact, often, but not always, precede disturbances and other anomalies in the healthy functioning of the human brain. But human beings simply are neither able to anticipate what particular sins will affect the body, nor the degree to which the body will be affected. You yourself, Sharon, had just said a moment ago that sin is so ever present around us that one is rarely able to monitor the guilt, which probably brings about the psychosomatic illnesses so prevalent in our society. The dissolution of the soul is an event of a thousand little sins. Don’t you agree, Sharon?”

  Oops, thought Kitty. It had nothing to do with Robin; her bladder was full.

  “That’s why we must hasten our souls to the will of Jesus,” smiled Sharon, humbly, and without raising her eyes, which like an evangelistic nun’s, were now focused on her and her friend’s salvation.

  More moments of involuntary silence filled with friendly smiles.

  “Hastening our will to Jesus is simply a socializing aspect to a healthy life,” joined in Kitty, feeling the need not to be left out. It was a way of controlling her bladder by being occupied by other thoughts. “It may appear that many events are chance happenings, but, let’s face it, we all have our little sins, our little secrets. It is in the sharing of our little sins and of our little secrets that we will all find comfort and ultimately, salvation.”

  “Yes,” agreed Robin, “it is a well-known, recorded phenomenon that hopelessly terminally ill people experience miraculous recoveries which are attributed to the healing powers of the belief in the atonement of little sins.”

  “Sorry girls; I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back. Don’t say anything more until I get back,” said Kitty.

  Sharon continued.

  “Undoubtedly the goodness of forgiveness is but one of the many gifts from God. We must all ask the Lord’s forgiveness, and love each other, and all our fellow human beings even those that have done us great harm. And if Jesus can forgive us of our great sins, who are we not to forgive the sins of others? We must forgive even our worst enemies and give ourselves to the Lord. In that, wellness lies. Don’t you agree Robin?”

  “When you wish
to be healthy, you can,” smiled Robin. “You have only to get out of your bed and get a job.”

  This religious shit really dries you out, she thought.

  “Where’s Kitty?” said Sharon.

  “She got tired of listening to your shit so she went to the bathroom.”

  “But the valley of darkness is not to be feared as long as the Lord is with you … oh shit, shit, shit,” said Sharon realizing she was preaching to an empty room. She felt exhausted, unable to continue. What more could she do for her friends? If they weren’t able to see what she was trying to show them, then it would not be her fault.

  She wanted to cry and scream but no sounds even meekly came to her dry throat because her passionate love for her friends seemed far-fetched to the greedy blind who had been suckled on scientific proofs. She took another drink of her red wine, but it was no use, she felt betrayed by her human limitations. Surges of melancholia poured forth and choked her and made her sad at her frailty. Only two soft perfectly rounded goblets of tears timidly dropped out of the tear glands of her bluest eyes which she carefully dabbed them away as not to smear her perfectly applied eye makeup. Strange how even on these occasions of great emotion and even greater flight, her thoughts travelled to her youth and particularly on that spring day field trip bus.

  “I wonder what’s taking Kitty so long,” said Robin.

  She felt sorry for Sharon because she now understood how lonely she must be. She reached and took Sharon’s hand and with tears rolling out of her eyes she said, “I’m so terribly sorry for you …”

  “Oh Robin, what has he done to you?” cried Sharon and she got up and went and hugged Robin who, in sudden fear, thought that Sharon surely knew her secrets.

  “Sharon, sit down,” said Kitty back from the bathroom. “You’re making fools out of all of us again. We’ll never be able to come here again.”