When The Butterflies Come

by Rosemary Ness Bitner

  Dolly stood silently, chewing her grass.

  “Honestly, Dolly,” David pleaded, “she was disgusting, not beautiful like you. I never would have entered her female part, honest. Listening to her talk about whoring made me certain I needed to be rid of her. Anyway, she had an upside-down view of the world.” He chuckled. “I’m going into the house now. I know the wife isn’t here, but I had a hard day and I’m tired. I’m going to watch a good fight and go to bed. You sleep with the other sheep tonight. I’ll bring you into the house tomorrow.”

  He kissed the sheep’s forehead a second time and went into the house.

  PATS

  Bob was at his desk when he heard the door handle move, its slow downward motion almost imperceptible. That’s David. He never knocks first like everyone else, but I guess that’s his prerogative. He does own the place, after all. But it was annoying that he dispensed with common courtesies. Bob rationalized David’s behavior as that of a man looking in on his ‘son,’ but that didn’t fully explain it.

  Everyone noticed the creepy way David opened doors. They joked about it. He opened doors so softly he often went unnoticed by those on the other side. Bob’s door opened a barely noticeable half inch. David peered inside and listened for a moment before he entered. This was a routine entrance for him. It was his silent pantomime act, but it lacked the dramatic theatrical music that gave audiences the creeps.

  He missed his calling. He should have been a government spy. His eyes met one of David’s looking through the slightly cracked door. Yep, that’s David all right. Bob grinned. Always sneaking around, looking in on people, listening.

  David quickly slipped into Bob’s office in a movement resembling someone trying to escape a stakeout. Quickly and ever so quietly, David closed the door behind him. In his flair for the dramatic, he made every entrance appear to be a matter of extreme secrecy and urgency.

  It had been a week since anyone at the firm had heard from Marty. Bob wasn’t making as many sales calls as he normally would when he was in Plaintown, and he hadn’t been on the road. He was baffled and hurt by Marty’s behavior, but he still missed her terribly. He agonized over her and worried why he hadn’t heard from her. His mind spun on a rat wheel.

  Did I say something that offended her? No, he dismissed that. Marty was thick-skinned, a tough, fun-loving cookie. If something he said bothered her, she would have told him. Was there foul play? But who could want to hurt her? Could someone from her past, a former lover or estranged wife intent on settling an old score, have harmed her? That seemed too implausible. Yet the thought of foul play continued to dog him.

  She’d taken time off before but never this long without calling anyone. Barbara and Susan noticed Bob’s mood change. They were astute to changes in office morale. There were office whispers that Marty was in love with Bob. Staff members speculated that she got cold feet; she was too footloose to become a married woman and likely balked when things got serious. The other women couldn’t see Marty as a motherly, stay-at-home type. She was too much like a free-spirited butterfly. She lived alone and valued her privacy. Living alone was essential when a woman needed to manage several affairs simultaneously. Speculation ran rampant; anything from Marty meeting up with an old flame, to being spirited away for a romantic vacation.

  Just like that, Marty was gone. It made sense to the women who knew her the longest. No one filed a missing person report, which might’ve given Marty and the firm unwanted publicity, but no one really knew what to think. No one knew for certain any reason for her disappearance, and she hadn’t given anyone a hint she was leaving. It was mysterious, even for her. David did his best to minimize the staff’s concerns, chalking everything up to Marty’s penchant for carousing. He sought to allay Bob’s anxieties and replace them with jealousy.

  “It’s been a week since anyone has seen or heard from Marty. I just thought I’d ask if you could think of why she’s not calling into the office or why she’s staying away. Did you have a disagreement about something? Did she mention anything to you about running off for some reason?” David asked.

  “I haven’t heard. I have no idea why she hasn’t called. I thought we’d hear from her by now,” Bob replied. He was a bit despondent. Marty was always on his mind, and he couldn’t compartmentalize his worries about her absence, which left a hole in his heart. His mind constantly returned to thoughts of Marty and the life they would have together. If he could cut off his arm to have her back, he’d gladly make the trade.

  “Do you know who saw her last?”

  “No. Barbara saw her about a week ago. Marty took some of her things home with her and told Barbara she’d be staying at home for a while. I don’t know about anything after that. Shouldn’t we call the police?” Bob’s voice betrayed his anxiety.

  “Well, I did think of that. I talked to Susan about it, and she thought we should give it a little more time, just in case Marty’s off somewhere and wants to have privacy. Therefore, I haven’t done anything. If her mother isn’t too worried, I guess we should just wait and see if we hear from her.”

  “Why do you and Susan believe Marty wants privacy?”

  “Well, you don’t know her as well as we do, or for as long as we have. She’s had some lovers in her past. She tends to attract men, and she has been known to go off with a man for a period of time. She has a history of being quite a romper, you know.” David imparted, looking chagrinned.

  Bob didn’t like hearing about Marty’s proclivity for love affairs, but he had to ask, “Just how long has she stayed away with a man in the past?”

  “Hard to know for sure, what with holidays and long weekends. I’d guess maybe ten days or so would be on the long side of her absences. A week away isn’t out of the norm.”

  “This is above my pay grade. I don’t know what to think. You and Susan decide about calling the police. I’d like to know she’s all right though. I hope you two don’t sit on it for too long.”

  “Okay. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Try not to worry about her. You know how it is with some women. Men just kind of come and go into them—into and out of their lives I meant to say, sorry. They get excited about a new man, but then he gets stale and they’re off after a newer one. Some of them never know what they want. I guess that’s why we call them cunts.” David gave a little chuckle. “By the way, I noticed you’ve slowed down some. Is that because you miss having Marty around?”

  “I think so. I’m very fond of her. She was a great help to me.”

  Both men were only telling half-truths. Bob wasn’t about to tell David he intended to marry Marty, especially now that she might be off with another man somewhere. No man likes admitting his girl was whisked away by another man. There was also that thorny executive memo about office love affairs. He’d clearly violated the policy. David was not about to tell Bob he knew about their plans to marry, and he certainly wasn’t going to mention he was a murderer.

  “How about coming over to my place in the morning and meeting me at my barn? There are some things I’d like to talk over with you. I like being in the barn, away from everything. It’s a quiet place to work.”

  Bob often met David at his home on the way into work when he was in Plaintown. They had a routine of meeting for an hour in the morning to discuss the markets and everything affecting securities’ prices, from politics, to economic policies of the Federal Reserve, to cyclical pressures in various industries, new technologies, women’s fashions, the weather, and anything else incidental to the markets.

  As Bob pulled into the driveway the next day, he saw David in his barn dressed in overalls, boots splattered with animal dung, and a big straw hat. Bob wore a two-piece suit and wingtips. He joined David in the barn, who was perspiring heavily.

  “Hello there. I’m moving some hay bales by the front door of the barn so I can just push them out with my feet and close the barn door on wet mornings. That way the animals can get to the hay and the inside of the barn doesn’t get wet. On warm nights,
I want to keep them outside. When it rains they can stay under the shed over there, but they’ll need hay. I want the bales where I can just push them outside where they’ll still stay dry under the roof overhang. Could you help me lift some bales and move them up near the big sliding door?”

  Bob happily obliged and soon they were grunting in unison, lifting bales and moving them to the front barn door. After two bales, David stopped to look up toward the house while Bob went to the back of the barn to move a third bale. As he slid the hay bale away from a stable wall, he noticed a small patch of red hair sticking out, about six inches long. Stooping down to pick it up, he saw it was attached to a small patch of dried skin, about the size of a half dime.

  Must have something to do with the animals, or possibly it’s from a fox that got in here. It’s curious. Maybe I’ll hang onto it and put it in a framed picture of a fox.

  Bob liked foxes, seeing them often in the forest meadows around Milltown. Distracted by his thoughts, he put the tuft of hair into his pocket and forgot about it. David returned to the back of the barn and the two partners lifted and grunted in unison as they moved four more bales close to the front barn door before taking a seat on the bales and looking out at the barnyard. The goats were off on their own playing on a mound of dirt, the sheep grazing on grass stubbles—except for Dolly, the black sheep. That one stayed close to the front door of the barn. Occasionally she’d looked up at the two of them as if to check if they were still there. The other sheep paid them no mind.

  “There are a few things on my mind,” David began. “First, there’s Marty. I can tell from some of the expense reports that came in you two were spending a lot of time together when you were on the road, even on weekends—and you weren’t selling on weekends. Now I don’t judge people, but you are like a son to me and I just don’t think you should get too moonstruck over a gal like that. Fact of the matter is Marty is a slut, and sluts have a hard time staying loyal to one man.” David looked at Bob with widened eyes, as if giving a warning. “You weren’t thinking about marrying her, were you?” He tested Bob for a reaction.

  “Well, what if I were? Even if she had lovers in the past, people change. We developed pretty special feelings for each other. Besides, you encouraged it by sending her on the road with me. What did you expect? She’s a brilliant mind, a widely educated woman, and she’s so damn beautiful. It’s hard to take my eyes off her.” Bob was like a fish that swallowed a hook; Marty was still stuck in his gut and he couldn’t shake free of his thoughts of her. He needed to bite off the line that tied him to her and swim away, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He still imagined a married life with her and a home with happy children.

  David recognized his protégé was unable to free his mind of Marty. The younger man was vexed. Some intervention was needed to get sales back on track.

  “I understand. These things happen. People fall in love. But Marty’s problem, if you call it that, is that she falls in love with every man, married or not. She has a way about her that drives men crazy. Sometimes she has several men after her at the same time. I don’t know how she does it. I mean, I don’t know how she manages to keep them from knowing about each other, but she does it.

  “Every now and then we’ve gotten calls from upset wives claiming Marty was stealing their husband. We just listen then tell the wives we’ve got nothing to do with what consenting adults do. We tell the wives to go back to sleep and after a while the husband will get tired of her. That’s what we recommend to them. I’m telling you this because I’d like to see you forget about her. She’s probably off on the other side of the planet in some exotic hotel with one of her boyfriends, and you can’t afford to get mixed up over a whore.”

  “Stop it, okay? I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Maybe I’ve made a mistake. Let’s just leave it at that.” Bob still loved what once was beautiful, but what was now remains of a corpse fertilizing the flowers and the barnyard grasses.

  “I understand,” said David. “Anyone can get romantic notions about a slut. It’s natural. Don’t worry about it. It will pass. I’ve always wondered why Marty never made a run at me. I guess I’m just too ugly, too old. I’m not young and handsome like you. Maybe she just figured an old guy like me couldn’t keep it hard long enough to make it interesting for her.

  “Tell me, were you able to keep it up long enough for her? Did it help you keep it that way knowing she fucked half the salesmen on Main Street, or did that make you want to hurry everything and wash off afterward?” he sneered, as if he’d smelled his shoe after he’d stepped in something one of the dogs left in the grass.

  Bob recoiled at David’s hurtful vulgarities, but he admitted to himself that he was hearing a valid point. How often since her disappearance had he looked at his phone to make a sales call and frozen? How often had his thoughts drifted to Marty? For long minutes at a time, he would sit and stare at the phone, imagining he was holding Marty’s ass cheeks in his hands and licking her honey pot with his tongue. How many times did he picture her sitting on his lap and kissing him with her long soulful French kisses? He knew he needed to snap out of his paralysis of thought, but he was stuck. Marty held his mind in her hands and his heart in her arms.

  “That’s all I can take of this, David. Let’s leave the subject. I’m sure we have more important things to talk about. What else is on your mind?”

  Bob was the sort of man that clung to people after they were long out of his life. David correctly identified this trait as the source of Bob’s determination. He was still seeing events as the long-ago little boy who desperately tried to hang on to his dead father. Now he wasn’t willing to let go of Marty. David resolved that turning Bob’s thoughts away from Marty was going to take time and effort.

  David put his hand on Bob’s back and patted him a few times. After all, what’s a father to do when his son is distraught with thoughts that the love of his life is off somewhere in Europe or Asia fucking her brains out with another man? David tried to show Bob there was kindness in his heart, that he could be of great help to his friend and would-be son.

  “Life is on my mind, Bob—your life. Life is about time. Time is the most precious thing God gives us while we’re here this short while on Earth. I think about you quite a lot, Bob, about your future. I see you as uniquely blessed with a great opportunity to build a huge company and make a vast personal fortune. I have this vision that you will be tremendously successful if you’ll keep some things in mind. What I’m about to tell you is extremely important. I want you to take my thoughts and words into your heart, bind them to your mind, and think of them when you go to sleep and when you wake up, for most men do not have the benefit of these thoughts. I give them to you because you are like a son to me, and because you are my best friend and because you are special.”

  “This is to help me forget Marty, right?”

  “No, I can’t make you forget her. She’s a woman and you’re a man. This is about the heart. No man can change another man’s heart about a woman. But you will come to forget Marty in time. That’s how the mind works. After what she’s done, you now know you can’t trust her. Besides, the Martys of this world are a dime a dozen. When you are on the road by yourself wholesaling the fund to brokers, you’ll meet dozens like her. The world is full of fuck-crazy sluts who want to take a successful man into their bed. Your biggest challenge will not be forgetting Marty but avoiding entanglements with the women you’ll meet on the road. Your best defense there is to keep moving from city to city, never staying in the same place too long. No, these thoughts are about you becoming a complete man, a man with a great purpose.

  “Most men go through life aimlessly and clueless because they have no purpose. Many take their guidance from their wives who simply want a monthly paycheck. Those men are worse than clueless. The Orientals call such men ‘salary men.’ I call them stupid. You are not like other men. You have talent beyond measure, and you will have the benefit of my wisdom and guidance. You wi
ll be a mensch among men, a leader. You will be the tip of the spear for the firm, our kidon. Your presence and your words will lead other, lesser men to follow you and do as you tell them.”

  “That’s cool, David. Say, tell me something. Why does that black sheep follow you around like she does? I notice the other ones kind of stay off by themselves, but the black sheep stays close to you.”

  “I don’t know why she does that. She’s been like that since I got her as a little lamb. I brought her home on a cold snowy night and kept her in the house for a couple weeks until she was strong enough to be outside. She’s kind of taken to me, I guess. I call her Dolly. I guess she thinks she’s special.

  “But getting back to the subject, Bob, what I think we need to do is have a period of time where I give you lessons on how to think like a man. You’ve never had the benefit of that, and you need that to become successful in this world. What I propose is that, when you’re in town and before you go into the office, you swing by the barnyard here in the mornings. I’m usually out here with the animals and it’s a good time for me. In the morning, my mind is clear. I feel relaxed and do my best thinking then, here in the barnyard. What do you say? Would you be up for some executive coaching?” David gave Bob a fatherly sort of look, which showed he had Bob’s best interest at heart.

  “Sure, I’m all for that. I look forward to it.”

  “That’s very good. I think it’s healthy for a person to take their mind off matters of romance for a little while and learn something about the world around them. Otherwise, you go through life running on emotions and not understanding how the world works. These executive lessons won’t take too much of your time. When we’re finished, you can get back to thinking about romance again. Maybe you’ll even send some smoke signals to Barbara, the Indian girl. I can see you two have eyes for each other. She’s quite a beauty. I can’t understand why Marty would go absent without leave and give that squaw an opportunity to get together with you” David said as he gave Bob a couple pats on the back.