The Property of Edward James

by Paul Preston

  “What do mean?” I asked.

  “You promised me we would remain friends. You have my cell phone number. You haven’t called me in months.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to call you, but I figured you were busy with your new husband and then I lost your number.”

  “I had a feeling you may have lost it. Here.”

  Elizabeth reached into her purse and gave me a slip of paper with her cell phone number written on it. I put it in my wallet.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I won’t lose it this time,” I said.

  “Just because I’m married now doesn’t mean I don’t need friends,” she said.

  “The truth is I guess I was embarrassed about my behavior at your wedding, and… I thought perhaps you didn’t want to hear from me again.”

  “Edward, that was months ago. I’ve totally forgotten about it.”

  “But, I shouldn’t have, you know…”

  “It’s OK, Edward. Don’t worry about it anymore. It was all my fault. I was in full Bridezilla mode. I was the one who was rude to kick you out of my wedding.”

  “No, I deserved to be kicked out. I acted like a jerk.”

  “It’s all water under the bridge now. Can we just forget about it? I’ve missed your company. Can’t we be friends now?”

  “I’d like that, if you’ll have me. I’ve missed you too, Elizabeth.”

  We looked into each other’s eyes for the first time and Elizabeth gave me a warm smile. I smiled back.

  “Listen, I’ve got an idea. Do you like Deborah?”

  “Deborah? Yeah, I guess so. She seems nice.”

  “Deborah told me she thinks you’re cute. She likes shy guys, and the only men she keeps meeting are these pompous overbearing lawyer types.”

  “Elizabeth, I’m not sure I’m ready to—”

  “She told me she likes you. If you two could go out together, you and I could still see each other socially and it wouldn’t be uncomfortable for Eric. He doesn’t know about our past relationship, of course, but still, he can be jealous sometimes. Deborah’s a professional woman and quite successful in her field. I know she’s a few years older than you, but she’s quite pretty, don’t you think? Why don’t you ask her out on a date, Edward?”

  It felt strange. I know her intentions were good, but it felt like Elizabeth was giving me away to one of her girlfriends. I saw Deborah grabbing her purse and looking in my direction while saying goodbye to Eric.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I set this whole luncheon up so you could get to know her better. I’ve been worried about you, Edward. You’ve lost too much weight; it looks like you’re not sleeping very well. It’s my entire fault. I know this whole situation has not been easy for you. I hurt you terribly, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, Edward.”

  “No. It’s OK. Eric’s a great guy. You’re much better off with him.”

  I breathed out and smiled at her again.

  “I better go. I caught a ride here with Ms. Steele.”

  “What happened to your car?”

  “I’m afraid it got towed away a few months ago.”

  “Oh gosh. Do you have to pay a fee to get it back?”

  “It was a piece of junk. I’m better off without it.”

  “Well, at least now you don’t have to worry about running out of gas, right?” Elizabeth said, reminding me of the day we met and the moment I told her I loved her.

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling.

  Through the balcony window I saw Deborah gesturing for me to come join her.

  “Thanks for forgiving me… about what happened. I promise you, Elizabeth, I’ll never let that happen again. I don’t want anything to ruin our friendship from now on. And congratulations about having a baby. I’m really happy for you.”

  “Thank you, Edward. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”

  Elizabeth embraced me like a sister and I gave her another awkward, asexual hug. When she looked into my eyes I felt emotionally unstable, like I was about to start crying. I knew our romantic relationship was now irrevocably over. The fantasies I had about getting back together with Elizabeth were over. Although it was good to be friends with her again, something died inside me at that moment. I quickly turned before losing control and went inside. I shook Eric’s meaty paw and thanked him for lunch. As I was leaving with Deborah, I looked back once more and saw the husband and wife in each other’s arms, waving goodbye to us and smiling, a tiny but noticeable bump appearing on Elizabeth’s belly.

  Deborah and I didn’t speak on the way home. She never asked me where I lived. She drove directly into the parking garage of a high rise condominium complex overlooking the San Diego Bay.

  “I hardly ever have visitors over. I was wondering would you like to come up to see my place?” she asked.

  “I thought you had to prepare for a case.”

  “I do, but I have all weekend to work. I’m not in the mood right now. Do you want to come up for a bit, Edward?”

  “Sure, Ms. Steele.”

  We took the elevator up to Deborah’s large condo on the 17th floor. She unlocked her door and opened it for me as I entered. Looking at the expansive foyer leading into a large living room, I commented how beautiful her home was. I heard the lock to the front door click behind me. I turned to the sound and saw Deborah Steele leaning against her front door. She slipped the front door key into the inside pocket of her suit jacket and glared at me with a long steady gaze.

  “Welcome to my world, Edward James.”

  Deborah Steele winked at me and walked directly across the condo, her heels clicking sharply on the marble flooring. She offered to make me a hot tea.

  “Wait for me in the living room. Please make yourself comfortable,” she said.

  When it was ready, she walked back into the living room, handed me the cup of tea and joined me on the long leather couch. She sat so close that our thighs were touching. After watching me sip my tea, she took the cup from my hands, set it down on the coffee table and looked me deeply in the eyes. She took my hands in hers.

  “Isn’t it great about Elizabeth getting pregnant?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” I said, trying to keep a neutral expression about losing the woman I loved.

  “I never wanted to have children myself, but I’m happy for her.”

  “Me too…”

  “Can I ask you a personal question, Edward?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think Elizabeth is a beautiful woman?”

  I was a bit taken aback by the question, but I answered her truthfully.

  “Yes, she’s quite lovely.”

  “Quite lovely, indeed. Are you attracted to her?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Ms. Steele.”

  “You looked at her in such an amorous way at the wedding reception. You seem to be quite fond of her.”

  “Well, she is very pretty, but I don’t have feelings for her in that way,” I said, avoiding her eyes.

  “By the way you looked at her, it seemed as if you were… romantically involved… or wished you were.”

  I could tell Deborah was a formidable lawyer by her keen observations. I wondered what she was getting at with her pointed interrogation of me. I certainly didn’t want to say or do anything that would reveal the secret of my past relationship with Elizabeth. Deborah Steele’s questions and the proprietary way she glared at me began to make me uncomfortable.

  It occurred to me that Deborah had just locked me inside of her condo. Was she planning on keeping me captive here? She had placed the front door key inside the breast pocket of her suit jacket. I suppose if I wanted to leave, I could simply ask her for the key or forcefully take it from her. Though I had lost a considerable amount of weight, I could overpower her if necessary and physically take the key from her. I tried to sit up to answer her, but her couch seemed to swallow my slender hips in its leather grasp.

  “No. We’re just
friends,” I said.

  “It seems like every man that takes one look at Elizabeth falls immediately in love with her.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “That never happened to you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  Deborah placed one of her hands on my leg. I looked down at her hand and she squeezed my thigh in a surprisingly tight grip for a woman. She kept her fingers grasped around my upper thigh.

  “May I ask you then… and I really don’t mind if you are, but are you gay?” Deborah asked.

  I wondered why people kept assuming I was a homosexual. First Farnsworth and now Deborah Steele.

  “No, I’m not gay,” I answered.

  “You’ve never had fantasies about being with another man, not even once?”

  “No,” I said, quite resolutely. “Why are you asking me this, Ms. Steele?”

  She relaxed her grip on my thigh and patted it twice.

  “I just assumed that any man who doesn’t fall immediately in love with Elizabeth must be gay, she’s so pretty,” Deborah said, crossing her legs and smoothing out her skirt over her knees.

  Perhaps it was time to let Elizabeth go, to try to move on. It appeared that Deborah was attracted to me, so I decided to respond to her advances. Just like with Delores, it didn’t matter if I could never have feelings for Ms. Steele. Maybe a late summer fling with an older woman would dull the pain of losing Elizabeth forever. And I could still see Elizabeth socially if I became involved with Deborah, without making her new husband uncomfortable.

  “I think you’re very pretty too, Ms. Steele,” I said.

  “What a sweet thing to say, Edward. Thank you.”

  “You must have plenty of guys interested in going out with you,” I said.

  “I do, but no one I’m particularly attracted to right now, except one slightly younger man…”

  As her hand lingered on my thigh, she leaned in and kissed me. As soon as our lips touched, I felt nothing. At that moment I realized I would never again feel the overwhelming passion I had felt with Elizabeth. The chemistry I instantly felt with Elizabeth Rose comes along once in a lifetime and was irreplaceable. I knew now, no matter how hard I tried or however many women I slept with, I would never be able to let go of Elizabeth or forget what we experienced during our brief time together. It would never be as intense or as fulfilling again. I felt like the air had been sucked out of my lungs, like a balloon that had been punctured by a sharp needle. And once the air was let out, there would be no way to get it back in. The depression I had been trying to ignore and deny since my separation from Elizabeth overwhelmed me. I could no longer fight it off. Deborah intuitively sensed the change in my demeanor.

  “What’s wrong, Edward? Aren’t you attracted to me?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “What is it then? You seem so sad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. Did someone break my Edward’s little heart,” Deborah said, with an odd chilling little smile.

  “I am just coming out of a relationship.”

  “Was it with anyone I might know?

  “No.”

  “Who was it?”

  I stood up.

  “I’m afraid it’s time for me to go, Ms. Steele. Thanks for the tea,” I said.

  “But I had such interesting plans for you, Mr. James.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you. I believe the front door key is in your breast pocket. Open the door for me please.”

  “What if I said no?”

  “Then I would have to forcefully take it from you.”

  “Oh well…” Deborah Steele said, walking me to her front door. “Perhaps you aren’t the person I was hoping you would be.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  She opened the door and I left her condo without looking back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Death of my Father

  I got so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed and took the next three days in a row off from work. When I returned after being away, my last paycheck was pinned to a bulletin board by the time clock along with a small note attached to it. It said my brother had called last week and left a message for me to call home immediately, which was odd because we hardly ever spoke. I didn’t even know my brother knew where I worked. I called my mother on the work phone and she told me the news that my father had died last week in the middle of the night of a stroke. The funeral was on Sunday and I had missed it.

  “I had missed my own father’s funeral,” I confessed to Mr. Bergman.

  Mr. Bergman, still listening attentively, patted my arm in sympathy.

  I was so numb and wiped out emotionally from what had happened to me with Elizabeth, I didn’t really react at first to my father’s passing or the fact that I had missed his funeral. He was a sheet metal worker, a quiet, strong man, a hard worker and I loved him. He paid off the enormous bill for my college education and I always appreciated and respected him for that. We had difficulty talking with each other and I never knew what to say to him. Growing up, we watched football games on TV after church every Sunday and once in a while we would go out into the yard and he would throw me some passes. But it was like we were stranded on two separate islands, without a bridge between them to connect us. There was so much I wanted to talk to him about, so many questions to ask my Father. But life passed us by and those questions never got asked. We were always too busy to talk. Now it was too late to have the father/son conversation I had always daydreamed about. He was gone.

  I told my manager at Denny’s my father had passed away and caught a bus out to my childhood home in Vista, California.

  Except for Christmas, I hadn’t been back to my family home since I had graduated college and wasn’t particularly close to anyone, except for my mother. When the bus arrived, my whole family was there, waiting. I apologized to Mom for missing the funeral and she gave me a hug and told me to not feel bad about it.

  “You were there in spirit,” Mom said.

  “Were you busy acting in one of your plays?” my brother asked, rather derisively.

  “No,” I said. “You left the message at work and I didn’t get the news in time,” I said, just as coldly back to him.

  My brother nodded.

  We drove out to visit my Dad’s gravesite to pay our respects. I didn’t know what to do other than stare down at the ground. No one said a word. After a few minutes I put my arm around Mom’s shoulder and we walked back to the car.

  “Your father loved you very much, Edward,” Mom said.

  My eyes became moist and Mom gave me a tissue. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

  Back home we prepared lunch. My brother and sisters were unusually cold and quiet to me as we ate. I know we never kept in touch, but it seemed strange that they would give me the cold shoulder. I thought perhaps it was because they were in mourning and upset with me for not being there. I sincerely apologized to everyone about missing the funeral again.

  At lunch, my mom asked me how my acting career was going.

  “Fine, Mom,” I lied.

  No one else spoke a single word to me. My mother retired to her bedroom for a nap. I felt exhausted and wanted to go to my room to rest, but my older brother asked to speak to me in the dining room. They needed to have a “family meeting” with me, he said.

  My brother escorted me to a long table where he sat down with my two sisters. He told me to sit by myself on the opposite side of the table. A harsh light shined overhead, as if I was the subject of a police interrogation. I saw a closed laptop computer in the middle of the table. My siblings stared at me for a long awkward moment. No one spoke to me. I began to feel uncomfortable.

  “So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I asked.

  “One of my associates at work downloaded and emailed me an interesting video last week. It’s a real freak show. All my friends at work certainly had a huge laugh over it, so I thought you might find it amusing as well.”

  My brother turned and smiled at my younger
sister.

  “Listen, honey,” my brother said. “Can you go to your room for a few minutes? I’ll get you after our meeting is finished. Can you do that for me?”

  “OK,” my little sister said, skipping away.

  “Why don’t you go ahead, open the laptop and fire it up, Edward. I’d like to show you the video,” my brother said, with an odd, crooked smile.

  I nervously opened up the laptop and powered it on. My brother angled the screen so the three of us could see it. He clicked on an email in his inbox and opened the attachment. After a few seconds of the watching the whirling circle, the video downloaded onto the screen and my brother clicked play. The minute the video began I knew exactly what it was. My heart started racing inside and I swallowed my shame before speaking.

  “I’d rather not watch this,” I said.

  “Actually, we want you to watch this with us, Edward, as a family. So sit back and relax,” my older sister said. “Daddy watched this, the night before he died.”

  “What?” I said, feeling a sickness in my stomach.

  “That’s right, Edward. Our father passed away in the middle of the night last week, after watching “In the Dungeon of Master V”,” my brother said.

  I stared at my brother’s impassive face in shock. He averted his eyes from me to look at the computer screen.

  “Let’s skip ahead to the part you’re in, Edward. It’s your first movie role, I assume. Oh no. Wait. I found another one on a Google search, where you desecrate the sanctity of the church.”

  I sat frozen at the table as he forwarded the video to my first scene alone with Elizabeth. We watched the dreadful video in silence, from one sex scene with Lady Alabaster and me to the next. I particularly felt them drill holes of judgment into me during the flagellation scene. My family was very religious, so the movie obviously offended them. When the sex scene began between Lady Alabaster and Lady Magrette, my sister powered off the computer with disgust.

  “I think we’ve seen about enough,” she said.

  I closed my eyes, deeply ashamed of what my family members had seen.

  “Open your eyes, Edward,” my brother said.

  I opened them and stared down at the table.