by Nate Allen
It seemed that the things that made them different from other folks might have been what they had most in common, like water and ice, two states of the same substance. Unable to coexist for any length of time before evolving into one or the other, one of them having to concede and undoubtedly making a mess in the process. And it seemed he was dissolving. She may have been a prisoner of her circumstances, but she was the “shot caller” in the prison yard of this relationship. And while he had been successful in editing her visitors list, when all was said and done …she still had the final say in who she would entertain.
He was and is a great guy …honestly, but she had diluted him. It wasn’t anything time wouldn’t take care of, but right now he wasn’t himself, and neither Chunk nor Rhonda knew all that entailed. At forty-five he was on a spiritual/emotional/sexual scavenger hunt it seemed and she represented a lot of the things on his list. There were others out there that would’ve “fit the bill” of course …but he’d stumbled onto her pretty ass and taken a liking to what he’d found …and lost his mind in the process.
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CHAPTER 12
A STORM IN A TEACUP
It was now July, and that North Carolina asphalt was getting hot…
He hadn’t lain down with her since he’d sent the text. Like a friendly-fire incident, it was an undesirable but unavoidable casualty and consequence of the decision. His actions following the business with William Barry had cleared the bench to be sure, but also made her rightfully cautious and left him a bit in the dark as she had abandoned the email account upon the scare.
He had always been able to tell when she’d been busy …or planned to be, even when it wasn’t publicized in her email. She had an unmistakable hesitation in her voice and gaps between her words, probably because she had already discovered it difficult to lie to the man. He now recognized the visual that went with it as he watched her approach, her steps unsteady like those of someone who knows they’re being watched and scrutinized, as though she was having to think about each one, an impromptu model’s first strut down the runway or a baby’s first steps. Did he know about her activities, the lies she had told him beyond Tony? And if he did, was he fucking with her… After the now routine socially acceptable public display of affection, she sat down across from him. It had to be reminiscent of two spies sitting down together, each believing they knew something the other didn’t, and neither knowing as much as they thought, and yet a strange codependency and trust existed because each had something the other coveted.
If we were to retrace his steps, he had hacked her email, faked an STD, called the police because she had “company,” fucked her brains out, gone so far as to deliberately cause an accident with a felon on probation in an effort to thwart her plans to get together with the man, not to mention broken the bastard’s leg and gotten arrested, and then sent her an ambiguous untraceable text shaking her life up and not left any footprints to speak of. All while the images and imaginings of these other men she didn’t know he knew about were rattling around in his uneasy thoughts. These are generally not considered the actions of a balanced mind. The man was literally Missing In Action, the “lights were on” as they say, but “nobody was home,” probably off somewhere unraveling… And yet he could still sit across from her, a warm, loving quizzical smile of the boy-next-door variety on his face, indicative of the fact he knew her well enough to know something was on her mind, but leaving the responsibility of what it was for her to say …because he already knew. Leaving the poor woman with the uneasiness that she had done something she didn’t want him to know about. It was disturbing, deceptive and cold, in psychological terms they call it “fuckin’ nuts,”…or a Young & The Restless storyline.
She would tell him about the anonymous message she had gotten, concerned and suspicious of its origin, judging his reaction to the news, but unconcerned that he might’ve sent it …it had placed him front and center of the bull’s-eye, it was illogical that he would, but that was the intent. She would only inquire about anyone in his life who might have reason to be jealous… It could not have been more “ironic.”
His demeanor was enough for her to scratch him off any list of potential authors. She never asked him anything like you might expect, and he would never lie to her. On some level she must have simply decided she didn’t really want to know, the answer potentially more unsettling than the question and uncertainty. And once having decided not to go there, the meeting took its usual course, an informal therapy session where she would proceed to tell him all about her woes, and get her “ego-boost” prescription refilled before its conclusion. He would never meet anyone who had such a low self-esteem, yet high opinion of her self.
He knew of Glen’s father’s passing, she had called him as soon as she got the news, driving the Suburban and the kids to Norfolk for the funeral, Glen already there. It now seemed his mother who had early onset Alzheimer’s might be coming to live with them. The woman, he learned, had an uncanny knack for stating the obvious, and saying the very thing that every one else was thinking but afraid to.
Rae confessed the woman had never liked her, nor the fact that Glen had married a woman with her baggage, and she was convinced the dementia had given her a license so to speak, and she was conveniently using her intermittent episodes as an excuse to say things she otherwise might not have …mean things, calling her a “gold digger” and a “tramp,” and Jake would just shake his head at the audacity of the woman …Rae, not the mother. And just like his body would tense at the sound of the dentist’s drill, he braced himself, clutching the arms of the chair when her conversation headed down this painful path… It was part of the deal, that necessary role he’d accepted to maintain his place in her life, but who in God’s name would have wanted it other than him.
The way he described it made it sound like emotional water-boarding, a torturous but necessary chore, and he performed it every time the opportunity presented itself, but it was less frequent that he’d get the cookie he desired and was promised, that nookie. Over time the cumulative inequity of that aspect of their arrangement began to cause him some irritability, he was noticeably getting a bit ornery. No two ways about it, he was fit to be tied …and perhaps he should have been. Two bulls will sometimes bump heads when there ain’t a female in the pasture …it’s rather playful actually, but you add one heifer to the mix and somebody’s feelings usually get hurt…
He didn’t need a designated driver, he just needed a driver, now having a restricted license because of the DWI. In reality it was equal parts about getting out of the house on a Friday night, and an excuse to get together with his buddy, he and Chunk hadn’t seen each other much of late. And while he hadn’t said as much, he hadn’t gotten any pussy lately, and the dawg, that beast, needed to be fed, and the asshole knew he looked good standing next to his round friend. He hadn’t seen Tony’s GTO parked off in the corner of the lot, under a streetlight and occupying two spaces in an arrogant but understandable attempt to avoid any dings, otherwise they may have likely gone elsewhere.
It was unclear as to what sparked the interaction between the two men, as if they started in the middle of something previously heated and unfinished of an impolite and disrespectful nature. Our man seemed an unwilling participant if that counts for anything. His attempts at barstool diplomacy failing though, and before he could finish his beer, he was telling Chunk he needed to step outside. He had thrown the vibe out there a few months back when he was “feeling” it, and now it was coming back to him at a time when he wasn’t …but like a fart in church, he’d have to own it. The boy who had never learned to run from trouble was now a middle-aged man incapable of it.
He was looking annoyed as if it was petty and avoidable business. To be honest he didn’t want any trouble with the young man at this point. He might not have cut him from the team, but he had cleverly made certain he wasn’t getting much playing time, and he feared any drama of a Jake/Tony sort would get back to Rae and before long she�
�d connect some unattractive dots. The instigator however, had said something derogatory to him, mixed with something unflattering about the aforementioned female, pissed him off, and wouldn’t ease up when given the chance.
Chunk tagged along because he had Jake’s back and all, but was noticeably a little worried …because he had Jake’s back and all… They say water don’t flow up hill, and shit rolls down hill, and a guy called “Chunk” probably can’t fight nor run too damn well, but they were best friends and to his credit he was prepared to take a beating for his pal if need be, or at least get in the way of one, ’cause he knew the man would do the same for him. Jake was starting to tremble, the “static” showing up like a bothersome in-law uninvited, the untimely pimple he would sometimes get, but his friend had never been a witness to it in all the time he’d known him. The sight of this roughneck bastard/soccerdad that would be bringing snacks and juice boxes to the game in the morning appearing nervous made Chunk nervous as well, like a yawn …it was contagious.
Jake had done his due diligence ahead of time, took measure of the young man so to speak. Which hand did he favor, was he calm and confident, too calm and overconfident for the man he was like he might have an accessory. By the time they got to the parking lot the static had him shaking like Kevin Bacon in the Hollow Man, as if caught transitioning between two realities, one visible and one unseen, …and in a sense he was, his invisible man struggling with the one the people in his daily life saw and it gave him the appearance of being nervous when he wasn’t, only a live-wire now instead.
“What’s the matter old man, you afraid?” asked Tony snidely. “Actually I am. I’m afraid I’m going to harm you.” Jake strained as though confessing to a crime he hadn’t yet committed and already remorseful. Not the answer Tony expected, and one he didn’t have a ready reply for. Then solemnly, as though he saw himself going some place he’d been before and not really wanting to go back there, Jake inquired, “If I hurt you will you promise not to press charges?” The response was an abbreviated chuckle and dismissive “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me? ” with a smart-assed smirk. “Nope …not ‘fuckin’ kidding.’ I hope you have some kinda insurance. ” Jake finished. Then before the boy could get the puzzled shit-eating grin off his face the forty-five year-old hit the twenty-eight year-old, not once but twice, and they were the sorta blows that made the handful of bystanders that had gathered collectively wince. The first knocking the man off balance, then stepping towards him as if tracking his descent, an abrupt second, much harder than the first, born out of “pure meanness” laying him flat out, poised momentarily for an unnecessary third before slowly pulling it back like a gunslinger holstering his weapon.
Felled like a tree, Tony lay there unable to get up, looking for a tooth, his shit, or some evidence of where he was. And then Jake straddled him in his incapacity, paused above him as though he’d finally become angry, and in a veni, vidi, vici moment, pulled out his cock and proceeded to piss on him …in front of God and everyone as if oblivious to the small crowd. And no one dared to remind him. He then knelt and whispered something to the boy, and as he stood, reached into his left pocket and turned it inside out, emptying a small measure of sand or salt on the ground in the process before tucking it back in like he’d been at the beach for the day.
It was humiliating, degrading, and “yeah,” gratifying in that fucked up way seeing someone get what they had coming is, a Roman holiday… The baddest sequence of events Chunk would ever witness, like a scene from a Tarantino or Scorsese movie only in real-life. He’d have applauded but he was simultaneously shocked and worried, and shocked… But he could testify with some certainty that it is definitely better to be “pissed off” than pissed on. He had thought his friend capable of it, he now knew him to be, and that’s an important distinction among men, between what you think and what you know, between what you know and what you can prove. Chunk knew one damn thing, if he ever saw the man start to rattle like that again he was gonna give him a lotta space, and a sufficient amount of time to throttle down. Goddamn motherfucker.
It happened impressively fast, like flashes from a gun barrel, and frighteningly vicious, unlike the man he knew, as if the static that had built up in the preceding months had discharged all over the boy’s face. Condensed yet violent, it was like a storm in a teacup. And in the resulting calm that follows such a force of nature, Jake had the appearance of simply being inconvenienced and a look of buyer’s remorse at the expenditure of one of those dwindling and valuable kick ass “rain-checks,” he’d been holding onto …like he had been forced to use a gift-card he was saving to buy something nice for his son to purchase a toilet instead.
He went and leaned against Chunk’s diesel and waited for the inevitable sirens and side-effects that would follow, threw his arm over his friend’s shoulder as if comforting him in his nervous state, and politely asked him to call Rhonda, the attorney’s dear friend disturbingly becoming a regular client. Chunk was still processing it all like he’d just been in a damn car wreck, “What’d you whisper to that guy Dawg?” he asked, “I told him how to get that stain out,” he replied with a wink.
They say you can make a nice dog mean, but not a mean dog nice, you can make it obey …but not nice. Jake Arnett is a nice guy, but Chunk had seen a side of his friend that he hadn’t in the half a lifetime he’d known him. Apparently you can remove the dog from the fight, but not the fight from the dawg, and the marriage of nature and nurture had bred him as such. And in a life-lesson learned, Tony now had a stenciled image in his mind of what a dangerous man might look like.
There was something underlying it all though, some emotions shaking the pin loose, kicking him in the side, and making him mean. “That married girl” is all he’d say, and Chunk knew not to ask more. His friend would tell him when he was good and ready. Then Jake proceeded to ask him, “What’s up with this old man shit? That’s the second time someone has said that to me,” a reference to Olivia, which Chunk knew nothing of at the time. “I like the gray aesthetically, it looks good on me,” he continued, “but I don’t particularly like the reactions I’m getting to it. Whadda you think Chunk?”
“I’m not feeling particularly disagreeable pal,” Chunk confessed. “I think it was an asset tonight, that fella didn’t know what hit him.” Then Jake looked at him and grinned, revealing a glimpse of the kid he was when they’d met and become friends twenty-three years before, his eyes smiling yet damp. “You got that right” he said, but his thoughts were already migrating elsewhere, toward his son, his predicament, and ultimately towards her.
While it probably wound up an inconspicuous YouTube video, everything does these days, nothing more became of it. Jake told Rhonda how to prepare his defense just as he had with the recent fiasco with Barry. Most of the witnesses questioned would state Jake had been put in a defensive posture, prefaced his actions with a disclaimer of sorts and acted reluctantly, sorta, up until the potty business. In the end Tony wouldn’t press charges, after the literal and figurative swelling went down he rightfully concluded Jake had more facts than assumptions where he and Rae were concerned, and more than a casual interest in it. Pressing charges would only open him up to injuries of a different sort and cause him greater difficulties …and he liked his job and the ladies at the Club. He wouldn’t know what to tell the woman anyway, and pride would’ve prohibited him from describing to her how he’d gotten his ass kicked, or what he could remember of it. It’s doubtful he ever saw the woman naked again though …some things aren’t worth the price you have to pay for them.
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CHAPTER 13
A LIMA BEAN IN A DIXIE CUP
Please forgive the gaps in our story, we are not “losing time.” The affair was likened to a crack addiction, episodic and characterized by brief intense highs, and long periods of uneasiness and restlessness in between opportunities while waiting for the next “hit” or “dose,” and this was never a Jack and Jill story, or even a little ditty about “Jac
k and Diane” for those old enough to appreciate the reference. You might think there were no ordinary or mundane aspects of their lives, though make no mistake they were there, but irrelevant to what was foremost at the very beginning of this journey, …that this was a love story, atypical, but a love story nonetheless, and it is about to get a bit more complicated.
It’s now late summer, early September to be more precise, and North Carolina summers can be long and relentless, the enthusiasm they begin with fading in the monotonous and oppressive heat. August still only had 31 days, but it had dragged on like a long slow southern drawl leaving the inhabitants parched and ready for the change of seasons, and September brought that promise with it. Like the transition from summer to fall, this period in our story is similarly active.
There had been no drought this year. But the rain came infrequent like their encounters, in brief downpours and often accompanied by storms. It had been polite enough to fall in the evenings and Sundays so as not to impede his work, but it was only enough to keep things from drying up all together. Similarly, there had been an inadequate quantity of Raen for his needs. With children out of school their opportunity for sexual encounters had been reduced to sporadic, spontaneous and brief, often uncomfortable visits, neither really getting their fill.
They got together often enough, mostly for coffee or a beer in the late afternoons, it satisfied part of her appetite, but for Jake it was like continually visiting the beach and never getting in the water, he was desperate to get wet. And he knew just the spot. When a hunter finds a location where he has had a lot of success, he frequents it, sometimes even builds a blind, or puts up a deer stand so that he can revisit it without the trouble of having to do so again and again. Fishermen who have a similar success return to that cove, or hidden pond for the same purposes. The “Creek,” like Leon’s had been such a spot for Jake.