by Linnea May
When we talked about it, he called it “an evil obsession” and that he cannot help himself.
“Especially with my ever-present muse around,” he added, winking at me. “Your mere presence inspires me. How am I ever supposed to stop working? And why should I?”
I suggested he should because it would be nice to go on vacation together.
I have always wanted to go to Scandinavia. Europe, in general, would be interesting, as I have never been there before. Unlike Cedric, who, of course, has already seen quite a lot of it. But he has never been to the North, and I always wanted to go there.
I like the cold, the beautiful nature, their way of life, and I would love to see the Northern Lights. It would be a good place to indulge in my weird licorice addiction that no one here, even Cedric with his rather specific taste, shares.
“You know we could just go to Canada for the Northern Lights,” Cedric proposed. “Anytime. We could go there next weekend if that’s something you want to do.”
But I rejected the offer. It’s not the same, and it’s not just about the Northern Lights. Besides, I would hate for him to pay for the vacation. He is already paying for almost everything we do together and giving me presents even though I have asked him not to. I know it’s nothing to him, and he likes spending his money on me, but I cannot bring myself to be completely comfortable with it.
If we are to go on vacation together, I would want it to be a real travel experience, and I want to pay my half by myself. That means I have to start saving up some money, and it also means that it won’t be happening next weekend because I don’t have enough in my savings to afford it right now.
Cedric is not happy about my stubbornness in that regard, but he knows that he cannot do anything about it right now, so he just leaves me be.
I just wish making money would be a little more fun to me than it is right now. I begin to loathe my job more and more and care less about my projects than I ever have. If it wasn’t for that pesky self-esteem, I probably would have quit my job a long time ago.
It is not even the task itself that is beginning to wear me down, but the job surroundings and the projects I work on. I like programming, the solitude and challenges that come with it, but our clients are mostly insurance companies, and the software they want us to write for them may be useful and practicable but is so utterly boring to me.
I find myself browsing through jobs more and more, even while I am at the office and should be doing work for my current job. How no one has noticed that yet is beyond me. It has almost turned into a routine after lunch when I am too tired to concentrate on work anyway. So far, I haven’t seen anything that caught my interest, but today is different.
I am alone in my office, as my coworkers are still out for lunch when I stumble upon an ad that has me glued to the screen.
“Gameplay programmer,” I read. The job asks for someone who could analyze and understand game design documents in order to define the require features and game systems that are developed in the engine. The idea is to work at the link between the player’s actions and the subsequent behaviors of his character and consequences on the evolution of the game. Work on decision levels of entities that are not controlled by the player and ensure plausibility of the behaviors and the fun capital generated by them.
Fun capital? That is certainly something I lack in my current job. I scroll down further to read more about the responsibilities and requirements. They ask for a Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent training and a minimum of one to three years’ experiences in software programming. I can provide both, despite my experience not being in the video gaming sector as they later specify would be of advantage.
The video gaming sector. How come I have never thought of that option before? This could be fun for me, especially since I tend to have a lot of complaints with the games I am playing when it comes to gameplay and appropriate behavior of non-player characters.
I am still pondering about the possibility by the time I end my day at the office and stroll out, absentmindedly saying goodbye to the few coworkers who are still around.
I am sleeping at my place tonight, which has become a rarity. Cedric is busy all day with writing and meeting his workout buddy at the gym later, so he won’t be around much anyway. Besides, I need to get a few things and remind my plants that I am still alive.
Just as I walk out of the building, preoccupied with thoughts about how I should phrase an application to the ad I’d seen earlier, I hear someone shouting my name. It’s a female voice coming from behind me, and by the sheer volume of it, I assume that it’s not the first time she’s called for me.
I turn around and see a woman roughly my age approaching me.
She is carrying a little boy in her arms, a toddler who is roughly two years of age, maybe a little younger. He has thick brown hair and dark eyes and looks at me with that same distant curiosity that most toddlers display towards a stranger.
The woman is almost as tall as me and sports the same brown hair as the kid, but green eyes, just like me. She is pale and looks a little frail and worn out in general, but not scabby, rather tired, like mothers usually are.
“Yes?” I ask her, wondering how we could know each other. I am not good with faces, but I am pretty sure that I have never seen hers before. She, on the other hand, seems to know my name.
“Renee, is it?” she now asks, but it seems to be a rhetorical question.
Memories of my weird encounter with Cedric’s mother emerge. This is the second time within just a few weeks that a random woman approaches me while I am out and about alone, and something tells me that this is no coincidence. However, this one seems a lot less frightening than the eccentric creature that started spitting evil fire once I started talking to her.
“Who’s asking?” I reply, kind of proud of my quick wit this time.
The woman adjusts the toddler on her hip and reaches her right hand out to me in an attempt to shake hands.
I, however, don’t take it and just look at her through narrow eyes. “Do I know you?”
“Oh, no,” she says, withdrawing her hand. “We’ve never met. My name is Adriana.”
“Okay,” I mumble, looking at her expectantly. “How do you know my name if we’ve never met before?”
She smiles.
“I’m sorry, this must be weird for you-”
“Yes, you could say that!” I interject.
I almost feel bad for acting so reserved towards her, until she continues to speak.
“Well, I know your… your boyfriend,” she says. “Cedric?”
I take a step back.
That doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people know Cedric. He’s a famous author who has been in plenty of magazines, newspapers, and even on TV lately. She could be a crazy fan of his.
“What do you mean, you know Cedric?” I clarify, alarmed. “Personally?”
She raises her eyebrows and casts me an evil look. “Oh, I would say so. I know him very well.”
I stare at her, tense and alarmed like someone who is expecting to be attacked. Of course, I probably don’t have to fear a physical attack from her, with the little boy on her arm and us standing on a crowded sidewalk instead of an empty driveway in a deserted neighborhood.
The evil grin she is casting in my direction right now does not sit well with me at all, though.
“Could you just come to the point,” I hiss at her. “What’s this about?”
“Do you want to know how I know Cedric?” she asks in an ugly high-pitched voice as if she was making fun of me.
I don’t deign her with an actual response but just raise my chin defiantly.
“I used to date him. And this…,” she says, looking at the little boy on her arm. “Is his son.”
Chapter Twenty
Not this again!
I stare at her with my jaw dropped shaking my head in disbelief.
She is lying. She must be lying.
But who on earth
would use her child as bait for a disgusting lie such as this?
“I’m sorry,” she says, faking empathy. “This must come quite as a shock for you. I understand-”
“No,” I deny. “That’s not it. I just don’t believe what you’re saying. I wonder why you would say such a thing?”
She gasps with indignation.
“Why would I come up with such a horrendous lie?” she asks.
“That’s what I am asking.”
“Look, I don’t want to harm you,” she assures. “I just want to-”
“Warn me?” I interrupt. “Did his mother send you?”
“His mother?” she exclaims. “Why would you think that? Don’t you know that she’s a crazy woman who got locked away a long time ago?”
“She’s out now,” I say. “But I’m sure you already know that.”
Her eyes widen in shock. A faked shock, I am sure.
“No, I did not know that,” she claims. “And no, she didn’t send me. I have never even met the woman, thank God. I am just here to keep you from making the same mistake as I did.”
“And that is?” I ask even though I am pretty sure what she will come up with.
“To trust him,” she says. “To believe his words when he says you’re the first woman he ever loved, that you’re the special one, the one who rescued him from his loneliness. The one he wants to be with for the rest of his life. Yadda yadda yadda…”
She waves around with her free hand as if she was trying to get rid of a swarm of flies around her.
I remain silent and just continue to fixate her through narrow eyes. Those words do sound eerily similar to what Cedric has said to me lately. That scares me.
“Look,” she says, adjusting the boy on her arm again. “I know this is a tough pill to swallow. I know I wouldn’t have gone for it if someone would have come up to me two years ago, while we were still dating, freshly fallen in love. When everything was still young and perfect, and I believed I was his princess. So, I totally understand where you are at right now. But you have to believe me!”
I shake my head.
“Why should I?” I ask. “Any woman could come up to me and claim what you just said. You have absolutely no proof whatsoever.”
“Oh, but I do,” she says.
She bows over and puts the little boy down on the pavement. He grumbles at her and instantly reaches his arms up in the air to be lifted up again, but she shakes her head and tells him to wait for a moment.
To my surprise, he just accepts that explanation and casts me a quick, skeptical look before he clings to his mother’s leg and patiently waits for her to finish whatever she needs to do right now.
I smile down at him helplessly, but he just returns my smile with a reproachful look, certain that I am to blame for him no longer being on his mother’s arm.
She rummages in her coat’s pocket and gets her wallet out.
“Look,” she says as she opens the wallet and presenting it to me.
I hesitantly lean forward to look at what she is showing me. It’s a picture, two of them actually. Pictures of her and Cedric. He has his arm around her in one of them. They are smiling at the camera, standing in an intimate embrace. In the second one, she is planting a kiss on his cheek as he absentmindedly looks away from the camera. Even without the second picture, it is quite obvious to see that they were lovers.
My pulse accelerates, and I suddenly find myself gasping for air. It feels as if someone is choking me, tightening his hands or an ice cold clamp around my throat. I stare at the picture with a distraught face, trying to maintain composure.
“I’m so sorry you had to find out this way,” the woman, Adriana pipes.
I feel sick. My vision blurs, and the sounds around me are muffled as if a glass dome was put over me.
This cannot be true.
I look back down at the little boy. The boy with that same brown hair and dark eyes I know from Cedric. Judging by his appearance, he could easily be his son; there is no denying that. There is also no denying that Cedric has dated this woman.
There is a possibility that this could be true.
But it cannot. It just cannot be true.
“What… how,” I utter.
She nods compassionately.
“I know,” she says. “Trust me, I just want your best. While I love little Anton here, I hate for him having to grow up without a father. And I wish someone had warned me back then.”
“About…”
“About this man’s cruel tricks,” she continues. “You hear stories of those idiots who leave their girlfriends once they find out they’re pregnant. But Cedric is even worse than that. He left me shortly after Anton was born, denying his paternity and leaving us to ourselves without even making sure that his son was properly taken care of. Financially.”
I frown at her. Something about her story just doesn’t add up.
“But, these things can be tested,” I argue. “How can he deny paternity when a simple test can prove him wrong?”
She looks at me for a few moments, unable to come up with a swift response.
“Well, you know how rich he is,” she says eventually. “He can pay all the best lawyers in the world, everyone he needs to pay to get himself on the safe side, even doctors and hospitals.”
“But… why would he do that?” I wonder.
It is a serious question. I don’t understand the gain that this cruel behavior could give him, which makes it all the more implausible.
She sighs, obviously annoyed at the fact that she has to explain her accusations in so many details to me.
“Because, as you might know, he gets pleasure from control,” she says. “He wants to own his women, manipulate them to trust him, control them and get a hold of their lives. What more ultimate way is there than to make them carry and raise your child?”
I crease my face into a disgusted frown.
“Isn’t that so?” she asks. “I’m assuming you have… played with him?”
I gasp. “That is none of your business-”
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” she admits, raising her hands in defense. “But still, if you think about it. Doesn’t it make sense?”
I look at her and don’t know what to do or say. It almost sounds as if she is asking herself that question.
Is she making sense?
Either way, I will not give her the satisfaction of letting her think that I even believe for a second what she is telling me right now.
I still don’t like her, but I know I must talk to her if I want to know more about this. God knows Cedric wouldn’t answer my questions to my satisfaction.
But I am too shaken to think straight right now. This is all happening too suddenly, and just after I’d recovered from his mother’s impertinent performance.
“Can I have your… phone number?” I ask. “Or e-mail or something.”
She looks at me confused for a second, but soon tilts her head to the side nodding sympathetically.
“Yes, sure,” she says. “I can give you my e-mail address.”
“Good,” I say.
My voice is in danger of breaking if I say any more, so I just quietly wait for her to get out a pen and a tiny little notebook. She scribbles something down and tears the page out to hand it to me.
“I know you must be troubled right now,” she says, still in that awkwardly sympathetic tone. “But you can always write to me, and we can… talk.”
I take the little piece of paper out of her hand. “I… I gotta go.”
With that, I hastily turn around and rush away from her without looking back even once.
~~~
I head for the subway and try to gather my thoughts on the way home, but soon have to realize that I cannot do this on my own.
It’s good that I didn’t plan to go to Cedric’s place tonight anyway.
I look down on the piece of paper that Adriana gave to me. The e-mail address doesn’t tell me anything about her full name, which would ma
ke it a lot easier to stalk her. She may have just created it for this one purpose.
But even if she was lying? What could be her intentions for doing so?
And what if she wasn’t lying?
The pictures didn’t lie. Cedric used to date her and judging from the way he looks in them it wasn’t that long ago.
I rummage through my purse to get my phone out to text the only person who could help me with this.
Chapter Twenty-One
Just a few minutes later, I am standing in front of that person’s door waiting for her to let me in.
“Heyyy,” Lesley says in that long-drawn-out way that’s supposed to show sympathy. But I know that hers is real.
She hugs me.
“Come in.”
Lesley is still living in the same neighborhood we have lived in for years now. Hers and Tom’s new apartment is just two block away from where she used to live before.
“You’re in luck; we’re alone,” she informs me while I take off my coat. “Tom is out with his buddies.”
“I hope you didn’t send him away because of me?” I ask.
She laughs. “Of course not! But I would have locked him in his TV room if he happened to be home tonight.”
I smile at her. Just being here with Lesley and her bubbly personality helped me to feel better about everything already. I don’t know what I would do without her.
We retreat to her living room, and Lesley brings us two glasses and a bottle of white wine, the cheap kind we have always drunk together.
I almost feel nostalgic. I have spent so much time with Cedric and his luxurious world of fine whiskies, expensive champagne, and overpriced foods that the numerous evenings I have spent with Lesley and other friends during college and the years after feel like a million years ago, a different life even. Counting every penny, only going for the most reasonable and often cheapest choices when we were drinking or eating, hanging out in our grungy, tiny apartments. I kind of miss these times, even though I certainly don’t miss the worries that come with this kind of life.