When Dev arrived, he found me sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room, sobbing my eyes out into the afghan I kept on the sofa. I don’t know how long I’d been there, but when Dev rang my bell and received no response, he’d tried the door and found it unlocked. He got me up and held me until I was cried out. Between hiccups and nose blowing, he managed to understand that Greg and I were no more.
Dev had done the decent thing and said we could talk another time. It had to be soon, but it didn’t have to be on the heels of my break up with Greg. I told him it didn’t matter; why not get all the pain over at once? But Dev knew I needed some time, even if I didn’t. He left, promising to be back around dinnertime.
In between Dev’s departure and return, I spent hours pacing, moving from room to room, clutching my favorite photo of Greg, crying, and calling myself a bleeding idiot—and sometimes calling Greg worse. When I was too tired to pace any longer, I crawled into bed and spent time staring at the ceiling. The pain was so acute that even the gunshot to my ass a few years ago couldn’t hold a candle to it. I literally thought I was going to die, that my heart was going to stop dead in its tracks just as Donny’s had the night before. For a minute, I even envied him: better dead than to feel this way. It was a pain I was sure would never end, not ever, not until the day I did finally die.
The phone beside the bed rang, bringing me out of my stupor of disbelief and agony. I only answered it in the hope it was Greg. Maybe I had pulled a Rip Van Winkle. Maybe a day or two, or maybe a week, had passed, and he was calling to tell me the break was over. Quickly, I snapped out of my wallowing and into a muddled rage. How dare he call the shots! If he wanted an us relationship, then us, meaning me, had better be part of the break up and/or make up decision. I snatched up the phone and barked hello into the receiver.
But the caller wasn’t Greg. It was Zee, and as soon as I heard her loving, velvety voice, I melted once again into a soppy, broken-hearted mess. She wanted to come right over and comfort me, but I told her no, that Dev was coming by soon to talk about Donny Oliver. I promised her I’d be fine. I promised her a call when Dev left, if it wasn’t too late. She told me to call back no matter what time it was. Then I called my father and assured him everything was fine. No sense worrying him over what was going on with Greg and me. All Dad knew was that there had been a murder at my high-school reunion. It was all he needed to know. And he certainly didn’t need to know about my past relationship with the murder victim.
So that’s what brought me to be huddled on my sofa, drinking soda, eating pizza, and spilling my guts to Dev Frye about Donny Oliver.
“So he seduced you that summer?”
“Huh?” I turned my attention back to Dev.
“Oliver,” he said. “Did he seduce you that summer with his attention?”
I laughed. “No. He was actually quite the gentleman, especially considering what happened later at the prom.” I took another drink of soda. “The seduction part was more on my side.”
Dev’s left eyebrow raised in question.
“Don’t be so surprised.”
I excused myself and disappeared into the downstairs bathroom. When I returned, I was armed with a fresh box of tissue, and Dev had repositioned himself from the floor to the armchair. Instead of pizza, he was now chewing his signature wad of gum and held his small detective’s notebook.
“Is that necessary?” I asked, indicating the notebook. “After all, you’re not officially on the case, are you?”
“No, but I want to be able to give the guys working on it as much info as I can, to see if they will leave you out of it.” He clicked the top of his pen and readied himself for details.
I settled back onto the sofa and started where I’d left off.
“Like I said, I was the one who did the actual seducing, such as it was. His folks had a nice house with a pool, and often we would go to his house to swim after we finished at the restaurant, which was mid-afternoon. Usually we swam with his younger sister, Amelia, but one week his sister was away at camp and every afternoon his mother played tennis, so we were alone a lot.”
I blew my nose and continued. “I never fantasized about Donny being my boyfriend. I was having fun, but I wasn’t all that attracted to him romantically. I was an odd creature, a teenage girl without romantic notions, but I was sexually curious, and Donny had a great body. I approached the whole thing rather methodically. I decided I wanted to lose my virginity and that Donny might be the best candidate. My only concern was that he might reject the idea of sleeping with a fat girl, and I didn’t want to face that rejection. So I tested the waters the week we were alone. First, I made sure he got many great views of my ample cleavage.” I laughed. “Let’s face it: at that age, I was one of the few girls at school with big boobs.”
Dev quickly looked down at his notebook, but I noted a smile on his face.
“Although I’ll admit, the first time I saw him with an erection through his trunks, I almost bolted. Knowledge is one thing, putting it into practice is quite another.”
Dev laughed and shook his head. “Odelia, you are something else. I wish I had known you then.”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t much different than I am today, just a bit lighter in the weight department and a lot more naïve. And I was just as thick-skulled and single-minded.”
Dev put down his pen and smiled again, this time directly at me. It was a knowing smile, a smile full of tenderness and patience. In that moment, I knew that Zee was right: I wasn’t being fair to Dev last night. Maybe after the pain of losing Greg passes, who knows? But that would be a long time, maybe forever, and Dev was far too decent and caring a man to be a consolation prize.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I baited the hook, and he bit. Now the question was: did I want to reel him in?”
After laughing, Dev got up and went to the kitchen. He retrieved the bottle of soda from the fridge and refreshed our glasses. I thanked him, noting how comfortable he was in my home.
“I gather you did reel him in?”
“Sure did.”
Dev raised his eyebrow again. “Did you use protection?”
“Donny wasn’t a virgin and had some condoms hidden in his room. I had some in my bag, but I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t want it to seem planned.”
He chuckled. “Did that change your relationship any?”
“We had sex a lot the rest of that week and through the end of the summer. In a way we became a couple, but in my mind we were still just friends. I broke it off right before school started. Donny wasn’t happy about it. But I knew he had no intention of making me his public girlfriend, and I wasn’t about to be hidden away like a teenage mistress while he escorted cheerleaders to the dances. Besides, while our summer fling was fun, I had to pick up my regular routine of studying and getting ready for college.”
I took a drink and adjusted my legs. “He was mad at first, but soon he had a regular girlfriend and forgot about me. Then, a couple of months after school started, rumors circulated that I was a slut. For a while, a lot of boys, especially those from the football team, were asking me out, but I turned them all down. I knew that most rumors die if there’s no fuel to feed them, and soon the rumors about me did stop, especially after Mary Josephs got pregnant and accused one of the math teachers of being the father. Everyone forgot about me after that.”
“I can imagine.” Dev paused. “Was it the rumors about you that ruined the prom?”
I took a deep breath and counted to five. We were getting into the ugly territory of my past, the part I had tried to suppress for three decades.
“No, but they did have something to do with it.”
I paused again, wondering if I was ready to say what had to be said and knowing it had to come out. Others at the reunion might have already told the police.
“I went to the prom with Tommy Bledsoe, another nerd and loner. We were lab partners our senior year in biology. Johnette’s date was a shy boy named Curtis, Curtis John
son, who was killed a few years later in a car accident.”
“I remember Oliver mentioning Bledsoe’s name last night.” He wrote the name down in his book, then underlined it twice and stared at it. “Is that Thomas W. Bledsoe, the owner of Amazing Games Software?”
“Yes, that’s Tommy. He was one of the first of the video game pioneers—made a fortune.”
“Wasn’t his wife killed a few years back? A botched carjacking, I believe.”
I nodded. “Yes, very tragic. I didn’t know his wife and had lost touch with him. But after that happened, I sent a condolence card to his office and later received a lovely note from him with an e-mail address. We still correspond once or twice a year, just catch-up stuff.”
“He didn’t attend the reunion, did he?”
“No. About a month ago, he sent me an e-mail saying he was going to be in Japan on business and was sorry he was going to miss seeing me.”
Dev leaned forward in his chair, his notebook forgotten. “So, Odelia, tell me what happened at the prom.”
I got off the sofa and started pacing while I spoke. “A few months before the prom, Donny approached me, saying he really missed me and our special friendship.” I paused and rolled my eyes. “Said he wanted to get together before we graduated.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, stung by the sudden remembrance that Greg and I had graduated from the same college, just several years apart.
“What’s wrong, Odelia?” Dev asked with great concern.
I shook it off. “Nothing worth mentioning.” I started pacing again.
“Anyway, I stupidly figured, why not? I missed having sex with him and wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend at that time. All I thought about was going to college and working so I could move out of my dad’s house as soon as school ended in June. A little fling was in order.”
“You were definitely sophisticated for your age, Odelia.”
“Maybe I was just old for my age. Or maybe I was merely a teenage slut.” I stopped and looked at him. “Looking back, I probably should have found myself an older and experienced lover. It just never occurred to me then that anyone would really want me in that way, except for a horny high-school senior.”
Dev tossed me a frown. “So you started up with Donny again?”
“Yes, but just a couple of times, both times at his house when his family was gone. But frankly, I didn’t have much free time, and fun though it was, there didn’t seem to be much point since I knew the relationship had no future. So, once again, I told him it’d been swell, but let’s move on.”
I stopped pacing and dropped back down on the couch.
“This time, though, he didn’t get mad. He agreed that we needed to get ready for finals and graduation. We parted friends, and I thought everything was hunky-dory—stupid me.
“The prom was actually a lot of fun … until the last item on the program. The plan was to show slides on a big screen of the senior class in various activities—football games, debates, pep rallies, the usual. Near the end, the photos changed, and suddenly there I was on the screen, naked in all my fat glory on Donny’s bed.”
Dev gasped.
I fought back tears as I recalled the horror. “The next photo was of my face, another of my boobs, and so forth. Everyone was in such shock that it took several photos before anyone moved to turn the damn projector off. Needless to say, I was totally humiliated and ashamed. I started to run out the door, but Donny grabbed me and held me while the photos played. I still remember him, smelling of beer and whispering in my ear, ‘Nobody dumps me, especially a fat bitch like you.’”
Tears were streaming down my face. Dev plucked some tissues from the box and held them out to me. He sat next to me on the sofa and for the second time that day put a comforting arm around me.
“Most people were stunned into silence.” I stopped to blow my nose again. “Some were laughing. The few chaperones there were busy trying to get to the projector. Tommy ran up to where Donny held me and demanded that he let me go, but Donny just laughed. Then several of his buddies grabbed Tommy, pulled down his trousers, and dumped him headfirst into one of the fish tanks.”
“Some prom.”
“Yep, a real humdinger. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to go to the reunion—and why I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the theme for the reunion.”
“I’m sure it’s also why several people pointed fingers at you when the police asked about suspects, even though you and I were on the dance floor at the time Oliver was shot.”
Stunned, I looked at Dev. “People accused me of killing Donny Oliver?”
“No, Odelia, no one accused you. It’s just that when the police questioned people about who might have a possible axe to grind, your name came up. And you did tell him to ‘eat shit and die’ in front of a lot of people last night.”
“But that’s just a silly, vulgar phrase. Lots of people say it.”
“Yes, true. But when most people say it, someone doesn’t wind up dead.”
Considering the events of the weekend, I was very glad Steele was out of the office for a few days. Between Donny’s murder and my split with Greg, the last thing I needed was Steele’s usual obnoxious comments. I wasn’t, however, so safe from Kelsey Cavendish. She was already waiting in my office when I arrived at work Monday morning.
“Please tell me,” she began, even before I had a chance to put my tote bag down, “that the high-school reunion with the murder this weekend wasn’t yours.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
I sat down, put my bag away, and switched on my computer—all the normal things I did on a workday morning, trying to pretend that everything in my life was normal. I had even gone walking this morning around the Back Bay with the Reality Check group. There weren’t many walkers this morning, for which I was glad. Since the murder took place in Los Angeles County and none of the walkers knew the high-school reunion in the news was my high-school reunion, I was spared questions. And no one there but Zee knew about the break up. Zee walked beside me, allowing me my silence as I put one foot in front of the other, pretending everything was normal.
Normal.
What is normal, anyway? Isn’t it just a standard, a routine, a conformity that people live by or with? It seems to me that what is normal for one person might seem perverse to another, or silly, or unimportant. One woman’s normal is another woman’s weird and unusual. If you don’t count a murder and a break up, everything in my life was normal, or at least normal for me.
Maybe in my little corner of the world, being a corpse magnet is normal. Who’s to say it’s not?
On that thought, my eyes traveled against their will to the photo of Greg and me taken one Christmas. It sat proudly on the upper right side of my desk in a lovely frame. The tears I had carefully squelched all morning rose to the surface like a storm-swollen river about to breach its banks.
Kelsey was watching me. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said in a comforting voice.
“My friend?” I choked out.
“The guy at the reunion, the one that was killed. Must’ve been quite a shock. I mean, an old friend getting shot right there, with all of you around.”
My mouth opened in a wail, but nothing came out. Tears followed as if pushed forward by a category 5 hurricane. Kelsey got up and shut my office door.
“Oh, honey,” she said to me, rushing to my side.
She bent over and encircled me with her arms. I clung to her and cried, much as Johnette had done to me the night of the reunion.
“Was the guy an old boyfriend?”
I shook my head, first sideways, then up and down, then gave up and just tried to get a grip. Eventually, the crying stopped. I grabbed a wad of tissues from the box I kept next to my computer screen. Just as I was mopping myself up, hiccups set in. Perfect.
“It’s … not that … hic … guy … hic … hated him … Greg … ,” I tried to get it out.
“Greg? Something’s happ
ened to Greg?”
I nodded, keeping my lips sealed tight as I held my breath.
“What? What’s happened to him?” Kelsey’s eyes were wide open in fear.
I let out the breath I was holding. “He … hic.” Crap. I took another deep breath, held it a moment, then released it. “Hic.” I picked up the water bottle on my desk and shook it—empty.
“Stay put,” Kelsey ordered. “I’m going to get you something to drink.”
She left, closing the door behind her. I hiccupped my way through the few minutes until she returned, but at least the flood gates were dry. When the door opened, Kelsey walked in, holding a mug of coffee and a fresh bottle of water. Behind her was Joan, the firm’s litigation paralegal. The three of us were known as the Three Musketeers of Woobie.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Kelsey said. “I brought reinforcements.”
I smiled weakly at Joan, and she tried to smile back. I had no idea what I looked like, but it couldn’t be great, judging from the sheer fright in her expressive dark eyes. Reaching into my tote, I pulled out my cosmetic bag and retrieved my compact. Yikes! No wonder Kelsey felt like she needed to rally the troops. I looked like a puffy raccoon who’d tangled with a nasty Mary Kay dropout. Quickly, I administered some damage control with spit and a tissue, then patted powder lightly over everything. I looked at my two office buddies for approval and got nods that I interpreted as it’ll do. By then, the hiccups were gone.
Picking up the coffee mug Kelsey had placed on my desk, I took a long, deep drink and felt the warm, comforting liquid ooze its way through me. After a second long drink, I finally looked at Kelsey and Joan. Joan was parked in the side chair across from me, and Kelsey was leaning against the tall file cabinet to my left. Both were waiting for me to explain my hysteria.
I put down the mug and grabbed another wad of tissues as a precaution. In a flat voice, I announced, “Greg broke up with me this weekend.”
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