There’s no denying I was intrigued and turned on by the thought of having sex with another woman, especially while Samantha was watching. But I hated myself at the same time for feeling that way. On the one hand it seemed morally reprehensible, and on the other hand it seemed like a wonderful opportunity. Live a little, I told myself. Try something new.
The crowd was thinning out a bit as it neared one a.m. Amidst the band’s somber rendition of “Bartender’s Blues” I could now begin to hear whispers about the after-party. The talk was confined to the select few. Angelica had walked past me a dozen or more times, flashing me the most seductive come-hither looks in the history of mankind. My morality was caving into the pressure exerted by my prurient desires. My moral resolve was fading and fading fast. I was going to do this.
But I had one last hope. I peeled my ass from the bar stool and headed for one of the bathrooms. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I didn’t want any crazies following me in, offering me a twist of cocaine or a blow job. Some asshole had flipped the toilet paper roll back to the same disappointing state I had corrected earlier. After I quickly remedied that, I got on my knees and prayed.
“Dear God: I’m such an asshole. I’m the weakest man on the planet. All I ask right now is that if You’re there, if You really exist, just please, please give me a sign. I’ve been down here walking around depressed and confused for nearly forty damned years without ever hearing a thing from You. I think I’m only asking for a small favor here. I’m not asking You for money, nor am I asking You to help me get laid, like that time I did when I was twenty and still a virgin. No, I just want a sign from You, just one sign. Let me know You’re there.”
Later, back at the bar, a contrite Sidebottom approached me, flashing the peace sign. “I’m sorry, bro. I was just a little jazzed there. You were right: I was out of line.”
I told Sidebottom to beat it and contemplated my whisky, wondering if the Big Man was going to come through for me. At about two, Samantha came to my side and gave me a hug.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said. Her smile was so tender and warm. She had never really smiled at me that way before.
“What?”
“The host’s teenage kids came home unexpectedly just a few minutes ago,” she said. “They were supposed to spend the night at a friend’s house, but the friend got sick and the boys came on home.” She patted me on the back. “Let’s go home, darling. The after-party has been canceled.”
15
“GOD HAD NOTHING TO do with it,” Samantha said as we lay in her bed. “It was just a coincidence, that’s all.”
I wasn’t in the mood to fight about it. It was almost noon and neither one of us had been to sleep. Samantha said that between three and five a.m. we’d had wild monkey sex, but I had no memory of it. I thought I had fallen to sleep. If she was being straight with me, the truth was I had blacked out from a serious overdose of alcohol.
“Don’t ever doubt the power of the Big Man,” I said. “I just learned of His power a few hours ago. Because of my request to Him, good prevailed over evil.”
Samantha rolled to her back and sighed in frustration. “God, Smith, after some of the things we’ve done in bed, I know you’re not that much of a prude. And what right do you have to be so judgmental?”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said. I looked out the window and the sun was shining brightly, which really did nothing to brighten my spirits. I wanted it to rain so that I might be able to sleep. But, with Mean Mister Sun out there, it wasn’t going to happen.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s change the subject.” She retrieved my manuscript and her reading glasses from her nightstand. She sat up with her back against the bed frame and put on the lenses. “I’ve read your book and I have made some notes, mostly pertaining to grammar and sentence structure. I also noted some things I thought were bullshit and needed to be changed.”
“It’s all shit,” I said flatly.
“No, it’s not shit.” She punched me in the arm. “Don’t be so negative. It’s a great book, Smith, as far as detective novels go. If I had to guess I’d say you were influenced by John Sandford and the guy who wrote those Spenser novels. Um . . .”
“Robert Parker,” I said. “And yeah, I’ve read every Lucas Davenport and Spenser novel. But I’m not Sandford or Parker, and nobody is going to buy my book. I wrote it for fun. Sidebottom, on the other hand, says he’s writing a book just so he can get laid more often. I’m still trying to convince him of the folly of that notion.”
“I’m going to find you an agent,” she said. “Whether you like it or not, I’m going to get this book published.”
I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I rolled over to my side, away from Samantha, and said, “Sleep is better than sex. If I don’t get any sleep I’m going to go completely insane. Insane, I tell you, completely insane.”
“Then take the goddamned pills,” she said. “Quit your bitching and just take your sedatives and hide away from the world.” She hopped out of bed and went to her closet. She continued to babble: “You know what’s bullshit? This whole elaborate charade of you being a manic-depressive. It’s just an excuse you have used your whole life to escape reality and responsibility.”
“The doctor is in,” I said. “How about shutting the bloody fuck up.”
“Psychiatry is one hundred percent bullshit,” she declared. “That’s why I’ve mostly gotten out of it, so I don’t have to deal with pathetic pantywaists like—”
Samantha stopped herself, took a deep breath, and stepped to the foot of the bed. She stood before me, completely nude. As beautiful a sight as I might have otherwise found it, I now felt completely alienated from her. She had now gone way too far.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said with puppy dog eyes. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I mean, I’m a Christian, and I will not judge you.”
“Judge me for what?” I didn’t want to know the answer. I jumped out of bed and started getting dressed. “Put some fucking clothes on, Dr. Fleming.”
She backed up to her closet and retrieved her robe. As she put it on she said, “I am a deeply religious person. I keep my faith to myself. But I do believe in God.”
“Then why the weird sex things you are into?” I had my underwear on now.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she said. “It is only for God to judge me, and even then not until after I have died and I stand before Him.”
“You’re the one who lives in Fantasy Land,” I said. Now my suit pants were on. “You know that portrait of Jesus Christ you have downstairs?”
“What about it?”
“Do you really think Jesus looked like a longhaired version of Brad Pitt? Was Christ really movie star handsome, in the Anglo tradition?”
“You blaspheme!”
“What do you suppose God thinks about you trying to fish for a sugar daddy, to just go after a man for his money?” I was looking for my shirt. I found it under the bed.
“I’m fucking burned out!” she shouted in an almost primal scream. “I need the money. I need a break from life. I’ve had to raise this kid all by myself for the past three fucking years, and he’s an angry kid because his asshole father killed himself—he took the easy way out. I need help with the house. I need help with getting my kid through college, and the only way I’d be able to do that is if I were to sell this house, which I cannot fucking do.”
“What’s this bullshit of you being burned out?” I shouted back. “Who the hell gets burned out from raising a kid? Only football coaches get burned out. Dick Vermeil and John Madden can have burnout, but not a mother. Not a parent.” I had my shirt on and was buttoning it. “Where are my jacket and shoes?”
“Where are you going? You’re not leaving me now!” She was practically in tears and still screaming at me. I felt like my head was going to explode.
“I really liked you, Samantha,” I shouted back. “Hell, I was falling in
love with you, in fact. I was attracted to you not because you were beautiful, but because you’re a tough and ballsy broad. You’re an independent woman, and not one of those empty-headed bitches who only read the books and vote the way Oprah Winfrey says they should. But Jesus—”
She came at me and started punching me in the chest. “You son of a bitch. You’re not going anywhere!”
“To hell I’m not.” I pushed her away from me and down to the bed. “Where’d you put my manuscript? I want it back.”
“Fuck you!” she yelled. She crawled on the bed over to her nightstand, reached down to the floor, and then heaved my manuscript at me. Unfortunately the manuscript wasn’t bound—the pages flew in a hundred different directions.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Keep it. It’s just shit anyway.”
“If you leave me now, if you leave me this way, you can’t ever come back, you lousy bastard. You’ll be as dead to me as my husband.”
“I’m walking out of here because I don’t want you to have to spend your time with someone you apparently hate so much. After all, I’m just a pathetic manic-depressive looking for excuses in life.”
I turned and headed for the door, deciding to abandon my jacket and shoes—the keys in my pocket were all I needed. As I reached for the doorknob I heard something crash next to me on the wall. I ducked my head as glass shattered all about me. She must have thrown a vase. Before she could throw anything else I hauled ass and got out of that house as fast as I could. When I hit the doorway downstairs I heard her son shout, “What the mother fuck?”
I got in the car, and as I turned the ignition Samantha came running out of the house. But before she made it to the driveway I had pulled out.
And then I was gone from her crazy life.
Part Two
Don’t Drink The Water
16
“I’M SORRY TO HEAR this, old man.”
I was at the house of my closest friend on a late Tuesday afternoon. It had been over a week since my final spat with Samantha, and Vernon Hammond was offering a sympathetic ear.
Vernon was black as onyx and tall and thin as a weed. He had an unkempt afro and piercing big brown eyes that reminded everyone of Buckwheat, the character from Our Gang. In fact, everyone called him Buckwheat, including his girlfriend Wanda. But I never did. It somehow seemed disrespectful to me, though Vernon never seemed to mind. Vernon was in his late forties but with no touches of gray to show for it. His kind eyes always seemed heavy and tired, even if he really wasn’t tired at all. He always joked that his eyes were that way because of the life he’d lived as a young man in Georgia, toiling in the fields of his granddaddy’s grain farm, drinking whisky and tequila with the old man at the end of each day’s hard work. But it wasn’t really a joke—the explanation had always seemed plausible to me. How Vernon went from grain farmer to computer genius would take too long to recount—that would make for a great book in itself. Point is, he was the hardest working man I ever knew, and as my supervisor and mentor he’d always demanded of me everything I had. My friendship with him was the closest thing I had to a father-son type relationship. He was always there for me when I needed him, which is more than I could ever say about all the foster parents that had given me the boot.
“Your split with the doctor lady sounds sort of like the kind of breakup I had with my ex-wife,” Vernon said. “She went bonkers just like the dude in that Pink Floyd movie when he went insane, throwing shit against the wall and all over the place.” He laughed and handed me a beer from his fridge. “Drink up, old man, and forget your worries. Besides, I have an idea or two that might get you back to work again, if you’re still interested in sticking with computers. What do you say?”
I shrugged my shoulders and took a swig from the beer. There’s nothing like that first sip at the end of the day. But it wasn’t as if I’d done anything particularly taxing today. I’d been at home playing guitar, just as I had done every day in the past week or so to keep from going insane. Sleep was only coming in two- or three-hour increments, and I’d gone another night without sleeping a single wink.
And then I thought of the day when my meds had run out and everything began to go crazy. That beatific vision of the peaceful meadow I’d conjured up in my mind while relaxing in the tub was nowhere to be found in my subconscious. I had tried dozens of times to repeat the dream, just lying in the tub like an idiot waiting for what I finally decided was never going to return. Maybe I’d have to learn to really play the guitar and go out and find that meadow on my own. Maybe God had given me a one-time look at what was possible if I worked for it. But where could such a meadow be found?
“You don’t look too good,” Vernon said, interrupting my thoughts of the meadow. “Take a chair at the table and let’s chat.” We sat and Vernon smiled. He had a very friendly demeanor and his smile always had a soothing effect on me. He emanated a natural warmth that attracted many to him, including a lot of the ladies. But Vernon was a one-woman man.
“Sorry for spacing out on you there,” I said. “I actually feel better than I look. I guess it’s just going to take a while for my body to get used to not being on the meds. This protracted insomnia episode is really testing my sanity.”
“Well, maybe what you need is another woman,” he said. “I could get Wanda to fix you up if you’d like. She has a lot of hot Latina women for friends. You could brush up on your Spanish.”
“How is Wanda?” I asked. “I knew she was working out and trying to lose weight. Does she still go to those pole dancing classes?”
Vernon laughed and slapped the top of the table. “Nope, that didn’t last long. Smith, she was killing herself doing those classes. It turned out to be a much more rigorous workout than she’d bargained for.” He tipped his bottle and took a few swallows. He set it down and looked outside.
It was a gorgeous March afternoon in Orlando, with none of the obnoxious thundering, pounding, and screaming from nearby attractions to remind us that we lived in a dreadful tourist trap of a city. The fireworks and concerts were just a few hours away, though. Vernon was wearing a wool sweater, despite the fact it was a warm 78 degrees outside. He actually had an impressive assortment of winter clothes, which made him an atypical Orlando resident.
“It’s been a few years for you two now, right?” I asked, referring to his relationship. “Maybe about time for marriage?”
His face contorted into a pained expression. “No way, old man. Marriage is good for nothing except killing really good sex. And right now, let me tell you, it’s great. Ain’t no way I’m going to mess with that.”
I updated Vernon on how Sidebottom was doing, and he was as disappointed as I was in Wally’s behavior of late. Vernon was very upset when I told him about Sidebottom being into cocaine. Vernon said the next time he ran into Wally he would beat the shit out of him to set him straight.
“Well, as an aspiring author yourself,” Vernon said, “you might be interested to know that Wanda is writing a book of her own.” Vernon knew I had written a book. Other than Samantha, Vernon was the only other person who knew about it.
“Really? What kind of a book?”
Vernon laughed hysterically for a bit, and still hadn’t totally composed himself when he said, “The title of the book is: The Power of The Hair. Care to guess what ‘the hair’ is?”
“I can’t wait to find out.”
Vernon calmed down and then explained: “Well, here’s the quick rundown on the book’s premise. It is Wanda’s theory that the ultimate downfall of humanity will be attributable to the vagina. She claims that nearly every tragedy, every war, every conflict, every plague, et cetera, is owed to man’s obsession with ‘the hair.’ For centuries, she says, civilization has paid the price for man’s irresistible attraction to pussy. Pussy itself has led to the toppling of governments and military regimes. It is because of pussy that monogamous relationships fail, because just one pussy is never enough for a man. I could go on, but you get the gist.”
“Anyway, Smith, you might remember I told you that Wanda once did a little time for a drunken assault on a police officer at a rock concert.”
“Yeah, but that was years ago.”
“Well, you know that was my original attraction to her. When I found out she had spent a month in the hole, it really, really turned me on. Her predicament catered to one of my oldest fantasies.”
“You’re a sick puppy.”
“I freely admit that. But the point is, Wanda won’t marry me anyway until she can obtain clemency from the governor. She wants her record expunged. She says that she won’t marry until she has her right to vote restored. She doesn’t want to raise kids while she has a criminal record. And, as I said earlier, I ain’t in no rush to get to the altar. I feel bad about it, but I secretly hope she never gains a pardon from the guv.”
We talked about old times for another hour. Once we’d caught up on personal stuff, Vernon got that serious look on his face that indicated it was time to talk business.
“Since we got dumped from the bank last year,” he said, “I’ve been canvassing the area looking for consulting work. As you know, technology spending took one of the worst hits after the economy tanked. For the longest time all I got was nothing. No one was spending any money on anything. But now, while they’re not budgeting like they did in the good old days for IT spending, they are looking for personnel again to help them better manage their limited resources. It’s all about efficiency now, Smith. That’s the biggest challenge that faces all businesses in this country.”
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