A Pact For Life

by Elliot, Graham

  Diana took a deep breath to compose herself, and with a steady head, completely fell apart. It was sudden and devastating to watch as she went from confident to bawling in an instant.

  Unsure what was happening, Cale reached out to hold her and got pushed away.

  “No... no, no, no, I'm sorry.” There was a tremendous sniffle from Diana. “I can't do this, Cale.”

  Without a clue as to what the problem was, Cale asked , “Can't do what?”

  “This, us, the marriage, I just can't. I'm so sorry, but...” and what followed wasn't actual words but a cacophony of sounds that only happen with uncontrollable crying.

  Cale's first thought was that it was a joke. Another prank like the time Diana made him go outside in the snow because she was stuck. But then he remembered that in four plus years of dating, that was the only joke Diana ever pulled. This was serious.

  He leaned against the counter-top containing all the wine bottles, and said, “Come on, Diana, think about this. You're just stressed because of the move.”

  Diana wiped away the tears, and became angry at Cale's dismissal, “I'm serious. This has nothing to do with the move. Look at our lives, Cale. Our relationship has been dead for months. I'm not happy.”

  “What are you talking about? You wanted me to change and I did.”

  “That wasn't you, and we both know it. There is nothing between us.”

  “That's not how I feel.”

  “I don't buy it.” Diana said and recognized an opening for what Jenny proposed earlier. “If you had the chance to do all this over, to go back before we made the pact, but with the one exception that you still had your creativity or whatever you call it, would you still do it?”

  “Absolutely,” Cale answered without giving the question any thought. The true answer was something he DID NOT want to think about.

  “So the baby and our relationship aren't just substitutes for your art?”

  “No, of course not. Why would you think that?” Cale replied as a small sliver of the actual truth crept into his mind.

  “We've been together long enough that I know when something isn't right.”

  “Believe me, everything is fine.” Cale said while he moved in for a conciliatory hug.

  “No!” Diana shouted and pushed him away once again. “I meant it when I said I can't do this anymore.”

  “I already told you...”

  “There's someone else!” Diana bursted as new tears followed in the trails of their predecessors.

  Boom! It was a stomach punch that missed its mark and hit Cale square in the nuts. Unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to think, and unable to feel. All he could do was stand there speechless. A 9/1138 sized imprint left its mark on Cale.

  “We just don't work, Cale. We don't and somewhere deep down you know it too. I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, but it wasn't right to keep lying. You can be in the baby's life as much as you want, and hey, how about this, I'll even give you some money every month? Call it alimony or even child support if you want. It's the least I can do.”

  Cale was staring at the ground. His brown hair hung in front of his eyes providing only glimpses of Diana's wooden floor. He had nothing to say. His mind had shut off completely.

  He felt Diana's stomach touch his followed by her arms wrap around him tightly. His arms were still at his sides, and if Diana wasn't able to feel him breathing, then she might have wondered if he was still alive. “I'm sorry.” She whispered and clutched him tighter.

  Silent and sad, they stayed like that for a half-minute or so. Diana pulled away first, and but Cale never looked up. He nodded a few times in Diana's general direction, grabbed a wine bottle off the counter-top, maneuvered around all the boxes he packed, and left Diana's condo for the very last time.

  Cale stepped off Diana's stoop and into oblivion, which actually was convenient since he was completely barren inside as well. He only made it five steps before the urge to open the wine bottle took over. So before he reached the sidewalk, he took off his gray shirt, wrapped it around the wine bottle, and used a nearby tree to open it39.

  He lifted the bottle up to his lips in a ninety degree angle that just felt right. Each second it remained on his lips resulted in one more gulp of the red liquid down his throat. Five seconds passed. Then ten. Then twenty. By the time he finally stopped drinking, only a quarter of the bottle remained.

  The fight with addiction was over. Cale lost spectacularly thanks to the tag-team of Diana and the lack of art. Even if you ignored Cale getting blindsided by the breakup, it was still two against one. Hardly a fair fight.

  His headphones were in his ears, but no music was playing. The scroll wheel clicked away as he thumbed through his songs, but nothing looked appealing enough to play. He aimed for a song to make him feel better, or in the very least, a song to make him feel anything at all because the emptiness was becoming unbearable.

  It didn't take long for the wine to hit his head with a roaring surge. An explosion that magnified every emotion by a hundred thousand. He wanted to find a song, sprint through the streets singing at the top of his lungs, and all around lose himself in the music.

  His eyes remained fixated on the glowing screen of his iPod, but the only music was the steady rhythm of his footsteps. Sadly, those lacked the necessary vocals he desperately needed. The right vocals would at least tell him that someone else had been in his exact place in life. It would make him feel like he wasn't alone.

  He was nearing the end of Diana's street when something caught his eye. It was a sparkle on the ground, almost like a raindrop, but the sheen was much greater. Cale stopped walking and bent over to check it out.

  That fucking ring.

  He wanted to cry, but was too busy laughing. It was the type of laughter that comes when nothing goes right and God decides the cherry on top of the shit sundae should be cancer. There's sad, there's depressing, and then there is absurdly comical. To Cale, finding the ring was absurdly comical.

  In Cale's palm, the ring demanded action. Sell it, keep it, run back and give it to Diana, repeat the original act and toss it down the street, or give it to another girl all cycled through his mind, but the wine coupled with the shock of finding the damn thing wouldn't let him decide.

  At that moment, he tilted the wine bottle back and finished it off. He thought back to when he first bought the ring, which then zoomed forward to every date he had with Diana, and how all of his recent decisions in life were based off his love for her. Those memories funneled that drunk energy into anger, and that anger chose the course of action for the ring – squeezing it into nothingness.

  Even though he knew what he was doing was meaningless, he still had to try. He clenched his fist with everything he had. There was no pain thanks to the wine.

  After a minute of squeezing, he opened his fist to reveal a circular indention, blood from where the diamond cut into his skin, and unfortunately, the ring. He cried out loud and tried to squeeze it into nothingness once again. But like before, all that happened was blood being drawn.

  With a bloody palm and a head riding the current of the Cabernet Sauvignon river, Cale admitted defeat and stuck the ring in his pocket. He wouldn't throw it away this time. The money from it could be helpful.

  He turned the corner and aimed for his studio as dilemma after dilemma started to appear. How was he going to get his stuff from Diana's? How could he face her again? What would happen once the baby was born? What did he do to her that caused this? What was the reason for his life now?

  His art was gone, his family was gone, his friends lived in their own worlds, and his father lived across the country. Alone in the Denver streets, Cale was hopeless and angry and drunk and lost.

  With the ring tucked away, his anger didn't diminish, but instead festered and fermented until finally erupting in the form of a punch to a large oak tree. Even with the wine numbing his body, the punch hurt like all bloody hell. But Cale didn't care. The pain was welcoming. He punched th
e tree again. And again. And again. And again.

  His knuckles were dripping blood and swollen to twice their size, but this was exactly what he wanted. The pain was all he could think about. No Diana, no baby, no art, just pure, physical pain.

  At that point, the proper thing would've been to go to the hospital, but Cale aimed for a liquor store instead. Inside, he grabbed two bottles of Bombay Sapphire, and offered to pay for it with the ring.

  The Cale Dawkins' Death Watch

  Death Clock40: 11:55

  Injuries Sustained: Five broken bones in right hand. A cut palm.

  Current Substances: A bottle of wine

  Number Of Women In Past Seventy-Two Hours: Zero

  CALE DAWKINS SINGS THE BLUES

  When that particular person generations ago came up with the 'Tis better to have loved and lost... line, they clearly meant the good kind of loss. You know, like losing your virginity.

  In the week following the breakup, Cale's life was a hazy experience that consisted of a variety of herbs, pills, powders, and liquids. The purpose for the prolific drug and alcohol usage was twofold. The first was a way to forget about Diana, the second was a manic attempt to reclaim his wilder ways. Getting back to the way things used to be should've been simple, but it wasn't.

  In fact, nothing was simple anymore. From the moment Cale awoke till he passed or blacked out, everything was a struggle to try and find some motivation to continue on. Luckily for Cale, Brian had ideas.

  “You know what you need, Cale?” Brian said as he prepared the combined drug sale and coffee shop bank deposit. “Mushrooms. Yessir, a few boomers and you'll get everything figured out.

  Cale tried to scratch through the cast on his broken hand and slurred, “You're out of your mind. I tried those things once when I was like seventeen and ended up staring at a traffic light for like five hours. How's that gonna help me?”

  “Well Cale,” Brian said in a lecturing tone. “On mushrooms, you can really think about your life. It sort of gives you an outside perspective on what's really going on. Hell, why do you think I left MIT and moved here to sell drugs? Being an engineer was just too boring.”

  “How did your parents take that when you dropped out?” Nick asked from behind his laptop.

  “I told them I had an idea for a business and didn't need school. With all the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs comparisons I got growing up, they never questioned my decision. And yeah, it was all thanks to mushrooms.”

  “Alright, alright, you talked me into it. When do you want to do them?”

  “I wish it was that simple, Cale. No one deals them anymore. They're one of those drugs that are just too risky to have around. Pills are much safer to carry around and more profitable.”

  Nick looked up from his laptop and opened his mouth as if to speak, but quickly closed it and typed something into his computer.

  “Wait, so why did you even bring them up in the first place if you can't get them?” Cale said as he reached into his pocket with his good hand and felt around for a mini bottle filled with Baileys.

  He poured half of it into his coffee, took a large gulp, slapped his hand on the table, and proclaimed, “Let's bar crawl tonight!”

  Nick looked up again and studied Cale's face. The eagerness was contagious, and even though Nick was immune, it had infected Brian.

  “Oh hell yeah! Do you think it's too late to send out a notice to the rest of the Tall Saints?”

  Cale laughed off Brian's concern. “Who cares? We'll pick up people along the way.”

  Brian smiled and said, “That's good enough for me. Nick, you in?”

  Nick was still trying to read Cale's face when this question was asked, “Ummm... sure, I'm in.”

  Cale banged his empty coffee mug onto the table like a gavel, and announced, “Well that settles it then. By the power vested to me by the state of...” Everyone was uncomfortably silent at the irony of using the wedding script for this announcement, but what the hell, this was a time to go holy. “By the state of Colorado. I pronounce the Tall Saints Bar Crawl officially started!”

  And then he pulled out the bottle of Baileys and poured the rest of it into his mug.

  The large wooden front door of Diana's house opened followed by Andrew's courteous voice, “After you.”

  Diana walked into her new house and felt around for a light switch. It was day #6 of living there, and she was still trying to overcome the most basic of obstacles such as the location of switches.

  She continued to feel along the wall for a light switch that just wasn't there. “Why didn't I leave a light on before we... ahhhh!”

  “Diana, are you okay?!” Andrew asked as he took out his phone to use as a flashlight.

  “I'm fine, just stumbled over some boxes. Do you see a light switch anywhere?”

  Andrew searched along the wall and finally came upon the controls. He flicked the first one and nothing happened, moved onto its neighbor with again no result. The third flip did the trick and foyer lit up, revealing an obstacle course of boxes. Diana, still on the ground, looked over at the box she tripped on. It had Cale written on the side.

  During the move, Andrew questioned why she would bring Cale's stuff to her new place, and she was unable to give him an answer. The answer was guilt, but that was something she couldn't admit. Besides, Cale's belongings only took up one box, and was nearly weightless since it was all gray shirts and jeans.

  Since the breakup, Diana had left plenty of messages of the voice and text variety for Cale, but they weren't returned. Then again, who could blame him for ignoring her messages?

  It was a guarantee Diana would feel guilty about what she did to Cale at least once a day. Over the past week, she had grown accustomed to the feeling, and dealt with it by reminding herself that she made the right decision. Every moment she spent with Andrew was exactly how she always imagined her adult life.

  She had attained the coveted Professional Relationship of Professionals. In that day alone, she came straight from the office to meet Andrew, who also came straight from the office, at Air, one of the high-end restaurants making up the ritzy Larimer Square in downtown Denver. From the restaurant, they came home, had sex, showered, got dressed up, and proceeded to head to the Mile High _______41 Charity Ball. In a black dress that provided an optical illusion as to the size of her stomach and a pinstripe suit with casually brushed yet perfectly parted hair, Diana and Andrew were the center of the event.

  Hands were shook, business cards were exchanged, talk of the Dow and the elections and the intellectual decay of society ensued, and Diana knew this was where and with whom she belonged. It was a wonderful thing.

  Later that night after the dinner, the charity ball, the box tripping, and one final round of sex, Diana was enwrapped by Andrew – her head on his chest, his arms covering her from waist to neck.

  As her heavy breathing slowed, Diana reached up, interlocked her hand in his, and asked, “How about tomorrow night we go to the Chophouse and that wine bar on Wynkoop?”

  “I can't, I'll be on call at the hospital until Saturday morning. What about that night?”

  “Hmmm, I think I can...”

  “Damn, I just forgot I'm covering a shift for Donald that night. Tell you what, I'll try and see if I can swap with someone when I go in tomorrow.”

  The power a name can have on the memory is an interesting thing. A casual mention of a familiar name, even from a TV show, movie, or song can unleash a flurry of memories if it belongs to someone important.42 In this case, Donald led to Donald Dawkins which led to Cale, and specifically, his current goings-ons. Diana was concerned, and rightly so. She knew Cale well enough to know that wherever he was at that moment, he was likely a wreck.

  “Diana? Are you okay?” Andrew asked and squeezed her tighter.

  “Oops, I'm sorry. What were you saying?”

  “I asked if you'd like to do something Sunday in case Saturday night falls through?”

  “No, Sunday's no good. One
of the senior partners needs me for support on a case he has on Monday.” Diana purposefully left out the partner's name on the off chance it would have the same trigger effect on Andrew. The last thing she wanted was for him to think about his ex-wife.

  Naked and full-bellied and beautiful in only a way a pregnant woman can be, Diana stood up and grabbed their phones off the dresser. Tossing Andrew his Blackberry, she said, “Here, let's compare schedules for next week.”

  And that's how they spent the rest of the night. Comparing calendars on cell phones to try and find a night they were both free. It was something typical of the Professional Relationship of Professionals.

  A Collection Of Cale Dawkins' Quotes From The First Three Stops Of The Tall Saints Bar Crawl

  1.) “Out of every girl I've ever met that I wished wasn't a lesbian, you're like the five-hundredth.”

  2.) “Why do they call it a clam when everyone knows it's closer to a mussel?”

  3.) “Sir, you're as intellectually sound as you're physically round.”

  4.) “I feel like I just got off the world's biggest roller coaster where every seat had a dildo facing up!”

  5.) Jess's friend: “Jess loves to fuck!”

  Cale: “I hear that's in now.”

  6.) “I like my coffee like I like my women, warm to the touch and willing to be drunk.”

  7.) Jess: “I need to get laid.”

  Cale: “Well if you're drafting, I'm over eighteen.”

  Bar #3 was over, and the Tall Saints – the three founders along with a gaggle of stragglers were headed to bar #4. The gray shirted emcee was back in charge and leading the group with a wild, reckless roar.