The Girl in the Glyphs

by David Edmonds

  “No, Jen, no divorce. Period.”

  Heat washed up my neck to my face. I felt a headache coming on.

  “Turn around. Take me back to the airport.”

  He found a turnabout, dropped me at the unloading zone, said “Merry Christmas,” and raced away. I went to the counter, booked passage on the next flight and waited.

  Two hours went by and still no boarding call. The p.a. system piped out Christmas tunes, Elvis singing about his blue Christmas. A Santa meandered through the lobby. More snow fell. It was getting dark. I struggled out of my seat and crossed the aisle to the counter.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Snow. LaGuardia’s blanked in.”

  “Why didn’t you announce it on the p.a. system?”

  “We did. Didn’t you hear it?”

  I tried to call Stan on his cell. No answer. I tried our home number. No answer there either. I tried once more and finally left a message that I was taking a taxi home.

  The driver charged me forty dollars and wished me a happy holiday.

  As I unlocked the door to my townhouse in McLean, I felt the cold air of emptiness. Loneliness each time I entered my own house. This was no way to live.

  I picked up the phone to check for messages.

  “You have two new messages. To review your messages, press One.”

  The first message was from me. “Stan, LaGuardia’s socked in. I’m coming home.”

  I deleted it and listened to the second message.

  Beethoven’s Fifth played in my ear, followed by a woman’s voice, a whispery tone like a Marilyn Monroe imitation. “Hey, tiger, I’m all alone with music, a fire, and nothing on but a towel. Better hurry or I’ll call my other boyfriend.”

  I listened a second time, and the realization hit me like an Arctic blast. Stan wasn’t at work. He was going off to see his little floozy.

  Who called him a tiger.

  Stan a tiger?

  I slammed down the receiver and fumbled with Caller ID.

  No name came up, only: NAME BLOCKED, NUMBER BLOCKED.

  I waited for my heart to stop pounding, then listened to the message again.

  This time the voice sounded familiar.

  Annie, the doctor’s wife.

  Chapter 65

  I shouldn’t have cared, but Stan had lied to me. Ruined my chances with Alan. He wouldn’t give me a divorce and he’d sweet-talked me back into his bed.

  Twice.

  Stupid, trusting, trying-to-do-right Jennifer.

  I flung the phone directory across the room. I flung the little Mars and Venus book, a book of self-healing, Isabel Allende’s book on erotic cooking, and all the TV remotes.

  For good measure, I upended the coffee table, yanked things out of his closet, and was heading to the balcony to fling his belongings over the side when I stopped at the mirror and saw the red splotches on my face—the splotches of rage and fury.

  “Easy,” I said to the wall. Stan wasn’t worth a stroke.

  I called Diane, who lived around the corner.

  She showed up in less than five minutes, wearing her headband and clutching a replica tomahawk. “Fucking men,” she said, and mixed a Margarita.

  She belted one down, poured another, and picked up the phone to hear Annie’s message.

  “That bitch. I say we call her husband and tell him what’s going on.”

  “I say we go to her house and see if Stan’s car is there.”

  “Yeah, catch’m in flagrante derelicto.”

  “Delicto.”

  “Delicto, derelicto. Who gives a damn?” She drained her glass. “Where’s the camera?”

  We bundled up and crawled into my old Volvo. The tires were low and the battery barely had enough spark to get it started, but I was so furious I’d have ridden horseback to Annie’s house.

  The Volvo sputtered and coughed like an old man, but we were soon cruising along the beltway, Diane saying, “Stan is just like Vinnie,” slurring her words.

  “Who’s Vinnie?”

  “Oh, come on, Jen, you remember Vinnie. Second floor, works with the lawyers. Well, he was humping me on the side, saying how rotten his marriage was. So I said to him, ‘Vinnie, if your life is so bad with her, why don’t you divorce her?’ And he says, ‘No, it’s safer this way. If I divorce her, you’d be harping on me for marriage.’“

  “He told you that?”

  “His exact words, like I’m an Indian squaw with no feelings.”

  The heater wasn’t working; the windshield kept fogging up; Diane wiped it with a towel, but the screeching was as abrasive as her chatter. “Yep, Stan’s just like Vinnie. Wants it both ways. Bop the doctor’s wife one night, bop you the next.”

  “He’s not bopping me.”

  “That’s not what you told me.”

  We crossed Chain Bridge, took a right, and skidded sideways in the snow. The car fishtailed and straightened out, barely missing the protective railing along the Potomac.

  Diane fell back into the seat, laughing like a mad woman.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Us. Thelma and Louise, except we haven’t killed anyone.”

  “It’s still early.”

  We came to Georgetown, passed the street where I’d left Alan in the rain and rumbled over cobbled streets into a quaint neighborhood of ancient houses with porches and railings. The pleasant aroma of wood-burning fireplaces seeped into the car. Many of the houses were lit with Santas, reindeer and other holiday trimmings.

  “What kind of doctor is Annie’s husband?” Diane asked.

  “Plastic surgeon.”

  “You’d think he’d fix her up. Make her pretty.”

  “No way to make that bitch pretty.”

  A quartet of carolers in scarves and knit caps stood in front of a house singing Joy to the World. Nearby, a group of teenagers was having a snowball fight. On the next block, next to Annie’s house, a Christmas party was in progress, with chauffeured limousines, police squad cars and men in overcoats talking into cell phones. “Must be somebody important,” Diane said.

  “The Argentine ambassador.”

  I passed the ambassador’s house and rolled to a stop near Annie’s driveway.

  The house was one of those large Federal types. No Christmas decorations, only a soft glow through an upstairs window. Candles, no doubt. I imagined Beethoven’s Fifth crashing around the house, Annie screaming with pleasure, Stan in his black socks, poking it to her.

  “That his Jag?” Diane asked.

  “A Porsche. Can’t tell if it’s his with all the snow on it.”

  I drove to the intersection, made a U-turn and came back, stopping at an angle to the driveway. Now I could see it in my headlights, a Porsche as red as the Christmas lights on the crèche next door. The Virginia plates read STAN-MAN.

  “Bastard,” I exploded, and opened the door.

  Diane grabbed my arm. “Hold on, let’s don’t get ourselves arrested.”

  I fell back into the seat. From the ambassador’s house came the buzz of conversation, music and laughter. Just like at the Spanish Embassy party.

  Diane powered down her window and leaned out with the camera.

  “No, Diane, we need to get Annie’s house in the background, not the ambassador’s.”

  She hopped out, adjusted her headband, and crunched through the snow, snapping photos. Across the street, a man in tuxedo and topcoat helped a young woman out of a BMW, took her arm, and led her up the walk to the ambassador’s house.

  That could be me in that gown, I thought, hanging onto Alan’s arm. Going through the door to the music of a tango. Ambassadors bowing from the waist. A cardinal holding out his ring for me to kiss. A gaucho conferring duende on me.

  On me, Cinderella of the ball. The Girl of the Glyphs.

  But thanks to Stan and all my bad choices, I was sitting in an old Volvo with a defective heater in front of a house that might as well be a brothel. And Stan inside in the warmth, bopping his m
istress to the tune of Beethoven. Well, by God, he wasn’t going to get away with it!

  Hell, no.

  I revved the engine, threw the car into reverse and backed up to get a better angle on his Porsche. “Get out of the way,” I yelled at Diane through the open window.

  “No, Jennifer. You’ll get hurt. Don’t do it!”

  “Don’t worry, it’s a Volvo!”

  Chapter 66

  The airbag inflated with a loud pop, almost knocking me senseless. Powder enveloped me. The jolt enraged me even more. The bag deflated almost as quickly as it had inflated.

  I pushed the bag out of my face, backed up, and slammed into his Porsche again.

  The momentum took both cars through a row of forsythia and into the crèche of the ambassador’s lawn, flattening Joseph, the three kings, and a cow.

  The lights sparked a few times and went out.

  The noise in my ears turned out to be the horn on the Volvo. Stan’s alarm was also beeping, and the next thing I knew, Diane was pulling me from a steaming wreck.

  She was still fussing over me, wiping my face with her towel, when Stan burst through the front door of Annie’s house, pulling on a robe. He looked from us to his Porsche—at the right rear wheel that jutted out at an angle, at the Volvo that was emitting steam.

  “What the hell are you doing, Jennifer? Are you fucking crazy?”

  I flew into him, screaming and cursing.

  Annie came charging out in her robe and fluffies. She stopped when she saw me and tried to hurry back inside, but the door had locked behind her.

  She struggled with the knob. She beat on the door, and she was cursing and kicking when the air raid alarm kicked in.

  By then, lights were coming on all over the neighborhood, dogs barking, people pouring out of houses, pulling on overcoats. Cars were stopping in the street, squad cars arriving, lights flashing. The teenagers who’d been throwing snowballs opened the hood on my Volvo and disconnected the battery, silencing the noise.

  Stan managed to shut off the alarm on his Porsche. A distinguished looking man in a tuxedo and sash stepped up to a policeman and identified himself as the Argentine ambassador.

  “What is going on?” he yelled above the noise.

  Annie pointed at me. “That woman is crazy. We were in the middle of a business conference and…and she…she just crashed her car into my lawn.”

  “Business, hell. You were fucking my husband.”

  I said it again, louder.

  A mother scooped up her child and hurried away. Annie retreated into the shadows, trying to shield her face from all the flashing cameras. Then Diane, who for some reason was now in the Volvo, popped through the sunroof like a tank warrior after a battle, waving her faux tomahawk.

  “Come on, girls, let’s hear it from all the women who’ve been cheated on by a man.”

  Cheers and applause followed.

  A squad of firemen got into Annie’s house and shut off the alarm. Men in topcoats consulted their superiors on cell phones. I saw a couple of famous people from the ambassador’s party, but couldn’t put names to their faces. Finally, one of the female officers took my arm.

  “Better come with us, ma’am. You’ve got some answering to do.”

  She was leading me away when my vision blurred, followed by a nauseating pain in my head. The old Indian couple appeared, then everything went black.

  The place was George Washington University Hospital, only a few blocks from the White House. The room was spinning. Sunlight streamed through a window. Voices came from a television, something about snow falling as far south as Birmingham.

  As my eyes adjusted, I saw Diane.

  “A concussion,” she said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  The story appeared on television and in the Post. The ambassador declined to press charges, saying if this had happened in Argentina, there’d have been bloodshed. Annie appeared on TV, trying to shield her face from the cameras. They also showed one of the teenagers stomping his feet against the cold, saying, “Like, man, I wouldn’t want that woman mad at me.”

  They also interviewed Diane at the scene. “That poor thing,” she said, standing in the snow in sheep jacket and headband, “just had a miscarriage, and him philandering with a doctor’s wife.”

  The word “miscarriage” stuck, as if that was why I was hospitalized. Flowers poured in. So did letters, get-well cards and other messages, many from wives of cheating husbands. Carla flew up for a visit. So did my mom. Dr. Sutter sent roses, and Dr. Frieda Gruber sent a rambling note saying she’d nominated me for a position in a local chapter of NOW.

  Chapter 67

  Annie’s husband kicked her out. Stan agreed to a no-fault divorce. I became a campus celebrity, the woman who’d struck a blow for wronged women, which meant more applicants for my class, almost all female. The stories grew more exaggerated by the day, and on the first day of classes, at a reception for new faculty members, the dean’s assistant, Martha, cornered me.

  “Is it true what they’re saying?” she asked in her Georgia drawl.

  “What are they saying?”

  “That you shot your husband.”

  “I didn’t shoot him.”

  “Of course not, dahling. It was self defense. I’d have shot the bastard, too.”

  January brought a daily beating of snow, sleet, rain, and blasts of cold arctic air. Perfect for working at home. So I turned my attention back to the cave text, sketching by day and night. I pondered the meaning. I agonized, and by the end of the month, I’d sketched all nine plates and hung them on the bedroom wall in the same order as in the cave.

  Here was Glyph Girl, copulating with a lover against a backdrop of a smoking volcano. There was Rabbit Half-Moon, looking on. A bird flew left to right. A squiggly line that might be a river was followed by three bands and a dot that looked like the Mayan number sixteen.

  But no order. No sense of where it began or which direction the text flowed or what all those abstract symbols meant. Sometimes I talked to my sketches, jotting down my thoughts. The more I obsessed, the more the old couple appeared in my dreams.

  “Ask the child,” said the woman in her witch-like voice, sitting on a scaffold in the cave, torches all around.

  “Are you telling me a child can read this gibberish?”

  “The child knows the answer.”

  I flung up my arms in frustration. “You people are phonies. Nothing but a bad dream.”

  They looked at each other as if I’d hurt their feelings, then climbed down from the scaffold, padded down a winding path, and dove into the lagoon.

  The water calmed. I thought they’d left, but the water grew disturbed again.

  Out they came, splashing ashore, now as naked as Leocadia and Niro.

  But they’d morphed into Glyph Girl and one of her lovers.

  Glyph Girl was young and sensuous, with long wet hair and slim body, the man handsome and muscular. They built a fire, and from across the lake came the beat of drums. A smoking volcano appeared in the background. Birds flew around them, singing. Then the man swept Glyph Girl into his arms and danced her around the fire the way Alan and I danced on Ana Maria. He eased her down on a blanket and kissed her around the neck and breasts.

  Glyph Girl’s legs closed around him. I felt my own excitement growing. Then, without any awareness of how I had arrived there, I was Glyph Girl on the blanket.

  And the man above me was Dr. Lane Sutter.

  The dream was still on my mind when I bundled up the next morning, trudged through the snow to campus, took the elevator to the fifth floor, and found Dr. Sutter in the hallway.

  “There you are,” he said in his English accent. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  I felt a flush of embarrassment, as if he could read my thoughts, see us on that blanket, hear my cries of pleasure. “What?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  He pointed to my office, followed me inside, and closed the door. My heart raced. For a mo
ment, I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, he handed me a brochure. “Annual conference of the Meso-American Mayan Association. It’s next month in Mexico City.”

  I took off my jacket, galoshes and knit cap, then sat down to study the brochure.

  “Are you going?” I asked.

  “I’m the keynote speaker.”

  Carla listened to my story that evening and smiled like a vixen.

  “Go with him,” she said, “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  “Oh, come on, Carla, he’s the dean…my boss. What about ethics?”

  “Did he coerce you?”

  “No, but the two of us together in the same hotel. What if he like…you know?”

  “So what? It’s about time you got laid.”

  “The university would crucify us.”

  “Secrecy makes it all the more delicious.”

  Sutter appeared again in my dreams, pulling me into the bushes, coitus here and coitus there. Behind the boulders. In the water. Beneath the palms. Bang, bang, bang. Oral sex. Bent over a log. Just like in my sketches. Even in daylight, I fantasized about him. I had lunch with him again in our little French bistro, not once, but several times. He also began stopping by my office. Our conversations grew more intimate.

  Yes, I told him, I was still thinking about Mexico. And those dreams.

  All my intellect told me to go careful with this man I felt so attracted to. That I had no future with him. That he was, after all, a dean at a university that had turned political correctness into a religion. Yet the woman inside me needed what he was offering. So I called Diane.

  “Go for it,” she said over the phone. “Why deprive yourself?”

  “Would you do it?”

  “In a minute.”

  I called my mom, hoping to hear a voice of reason. Instead, she gave me a long lecture on how I needed to get back into circulation. “Remember Al Lopez?” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “Owns a Honda dealership on Tampa Road. I could invite him over for dinner.”