Faithful Unto Death

by Stephanie Jaye Evans

  Big breath.

  “I want to clarify things for Alex,” I said. It was too late to wish I hadn’t followed her out of the church. Too late to wish I’d kept my jaws clamped shut. I kept one hand on her car door and fished a business card out of my jacket. She quit tugging at the door handle and took the card from me.

  She looked up at me. “Would you back off a little? Take two steps back, do you mind? You’re crowding me.”

  She spoke distinctly, but with a strong Asian accent.

  I took two steps backward.

  “Two giant steps.”

  I took two giant steps back.

  She opened her car door and slid behind the wheel. I thought she would be off, and if I tried to stop her, I’d end up like that cheating dentist in Clear Lake who got run over four or five times by a very unhappy woman. A fitting punishment for the promise breaker I was.

  The mystery woman started her car. Music blasted from the speakers so loudly I had trouble identifying it. She smacked the dashboard and silenced it. I waited while she sat there in the idling car.

  I said, “I know where you live.”

  She gave a yip of laughter and wiped her face with her sleeve. She left a tan smear on the black jacket.

  “You sound like a stalker, you know that, Mr., ah”—she held my card arm’s length from her eyes and peered at it—“Mr. Wells.”

  “Okay, that’s fair, I only—”

  “Do you know where the Vineyard is?” she said.

  “In Towne Center? Right next to City Hall? Yeah, I—”

  “I’m going to the Vineyard. We can talk there if you want to.” She shut her door and rolled the window down. She tilted her head inquiringly.

  “Oh, sure, or we could meet in my office at the church and—”

  “I’m going to the Vineyard. You go wherever you want.”

  She backed out and wheeled onto Sweetwater in a manner that indicated she wasn’t thinking “school zone.” Which it was.

  This wasn’t going to be any kind of car chase. On Sweetwater Boulevard, you pass through four school zones and five lights in the four miles between St. Laurence Catholic Church and Towne Center, and at two o’clock on a Friday, the SUVs are already lining the boulevard, all the patient mothers waiting to transport their gifted and talented progeny from the award-winning public schools to the after-school enhancement classes of piano, or gymnastics, or Mandarin, or yoga. Nobody was going anywhere fast.

  The mystery woman would have done better to have taken Austen Parkway, two and a half miles, one school zone, and two lights if you go that way, but whatever.

  I’m two cars behind her, keeping her in sight, so I see her doing the whole “woman in a car” thing. Her visor comes down and she’s driving with one eye in the mirror, one on the road. She does powder, lipstick, something over the lipstick that she applies with her pinky, mascara. She pulls pins from her hair and it tumbles down. She brushes it with a brush the size of two fingers. At the next light, she pulls that mass of hair up to the top of her head and twists it through a band into one of those messy knots the high school girls wear. By the time she gets out of her car, she’s lost the suit jacket; she’s wearing a low-cut tank top with her suit skirt and she’s taken the scarf off her neck and tied it around the knot of hair on the top of her head. Women don’t wear scarves that way anymore. They should—it was eye-catching. The stiletto pumps had been switched for high-heeled sandals. I would have been impressed, but I know for a fact that Annie Laurie has exchanged torn panty hose for new ones while she was driving—no mean trick.

  The mystery lady set off like a woman who knows the man is going to follow, and I did. She had that quick, purposeful stride I associate with lawyers and CEOs.

  The Vineyard is an indoor-outdoor wine bar with tables on the terrace that fronts the Sugar Land City Hall. I’ve heard the city hall’s architecture referred to as Neo-Brutalistic. Don’t ask. I kind of like the thing.

  One of the guys Merrie dated in high school had pointed out to me that there was a Freemasons’ Square and Compass carved into the façade.

  I said, “And that means?”

  He shook his head in disbelief at my base ignorance, and said, dropping his voice as if the KGB might be listening, “What it means, Mr. Wells, is that Sugar Land is run by the Illuminati.”

  I didn’t ask. I had asked this fellow for clarification once before and I had gotten way more information than I had been looking for. Instead, I wikied “Illuminati” and, well, I know the kid is spooky smart, but the world he lives in is evidently much more interesting, and dangerous, than the one I live in. I still see him occasionally when Merrie is back from school, but she isn’t dating him anymore and that’s a relief.

  At a few minutes after two on a Friday afternoon, only two or three of the Vineyard’s outdoor tables were occupied. A couple of young mothers were sipping chardonnay while their assorted preschoolers lapped up Ben and Jerry’s and teetered on the edge of the cowboy fountain. Some business travelers from the Marriot were enjoying Sugar Land’s mild spring, drinking and texting and shedding layers of clothes.

  Graham’s mystery lady laid claim to an empty table by flinging her big black purse on it. I have packed for long weekends in bags smaller than that purse. She picked the menu up and held it out to me.

  “I’m having the BV Tapestry, what do you want?”

  “Do they have iced tea?”

  Her forehead puckered. “You’re going to drink iced tea at a wine bar?”

  “I’ll have a pinot grigio. And ice water.”

  “Pinot grigio? Any pinot grigio?”

  “You choose. I’ll pay.” I reached for my wallet.

  “Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

  I put my jacket across the back of the chair and looked around the square. I didn’t see anybody I knew. There’s nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with an attractive woman who isn’t your wife. But.

  I sat down at the heavy wrought-iron table and tried not to feel self-conscious. Mystery woman emerged from the bar, empty-handed, and sat down before I could stand up and pull her chair out for her.

  “I got you the Graffigna. From Argentina,” she said.

  She could have gotten me the Wobblies from Australia; I wouldn’t know the difference.

  I held my hand out to her.

  “Walker Wells.”

  She left my hand out there too long for comfort. Finally she took it. Her grip was firm and dry and warm.

  “Mai Dinh.”

  It sounded like “My Din.”

  “Spell it for me.” She did.

  The door to the Vineyard swung open and a young man with an abbreviated Kewpie’s curl brought a tray to our table. With a flourish he put two coasters on the table. In front of Mai he set down a crystal globe filled nearly to the top with a dark ruby wine. The stem of the glass looked impossibly long and thin. The glass of wheat-colored wine he set down in front of me. He put a basket of sliced French bread; a plate with six cracker-sized slices of blue, Brie, and Swiss cheese; a pronged cheese knife; and a cheese cleaver in the center of the table. He murmured, “Enjoy!” and left. No ice water.

  Mai dropped her sunglasses into the purse and held the wine up to see the color with the afternoon sun behind it.

  “So.” She drank from her glass. “Alex saw us.” Her eyes filled and she tilted her head back to keep the tears from spilling out. Mai rummaged inside her oversized handbag, pulled out her sunglasses again, and put them back on. She tipped the glasses up and pressed a tissue to the corners of her eyes and then to her nose. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. When did he see us? Where did he see us?”

  I asked, “How long have you known Graham?”

  She gave a grimace of a smile. “All of my life. For a thousand years. One year two months. It’s not what you think.”

  “What do I think?”

  “What anyone would think. He wasn’t trawling. We weren’t ‘looking for love in all the wrong places.’ That
song.”

  The man at the table next to us lit up a cigar. A small aromatic cloud of smoke drifted over.

  Mai looked over at him crossly.

  “Jesus!” she said. “Grab the wineglasses, would you?”

  I picked the glasses up. Mai stood, seized the wrought-iron table edge in both hands, and yanked. Teetering backward in the heeled sandals, she dragged the table five feet, out of the cigar’s draft zone. The plate of cheese traveled to the edge of the table during the trip.

  I was impressed. Mai’s biceps and thigh muscles were taut and defined with the effort. She got the table where she wanted it, grabbed the back of her chair, and dragged it to the new location, taking her glass of wine from my hand. She sat down, crossed her elegant legs, and shoved the cheese plate to the center of the table. As I pulled my own chair over to join her, I looked back at the smoker. He was hastily stubbing his cigar out.

  I was thinking that any woman who could haul a wrought-iron table several feet over cobblestones had to be strong enough to swing a golf club with enough force to kill a man.

  “I can’t stand smokers. I’m a runner. I run marathons. That’s how I met Graham.”

  “I didn’t know he was a runner.” I tasted my wine. I liked it. It was cold and clean-tasting, faintly sweet.

  Mai shook her head and smiled. “He wasn’t. Graham liked to do his sweating in an air-conditioned gym.” She slid her glasses down to the tip of her small nose and looked at me over the frames. “You a friend of Graham’s?”

  “No. Not really. I knew him and we were friendly, but I didn’t know him well enough to call him a friend.”

  She nodded. “Umm. He never mentioned you. I would have remembered. He never mentioned any friends much. I’m not sure he had close friends. Acquaintances, colleagues, but not friends. Only me. Graham … he was close to me. I knew him well enough to call him ‘friend.’”

  “What about Honey?” I asked. “Didn’t Honey know Graham?” I hate it when the spouse is completely left out of the equation. It’s another betrayal.

  Mai didn’t miss the challenge. She set her glass down and leaned way over the table toward me, even rising a few inches from her chair. She looked me full in the eyes. I looked back into the lenses of those sunglasses.

  “No. Honey did not know Graham. She never knew him at all. She never wanted to.”

  She held my eyes an uncomfortable while longer, and then slowly settled back into her chair.

  “You want me to feel guilty, Mr. Wells? I’m the ‘other’ woman, right?” She gave a snort. “I feel guilty for a lot of things, so don’t you worry. The kids, yeah, about them, I feel guilty.”

  Mai rolled her glass of wine on its base, the red liquid rising nearly to the lip of the glass. She pressed her lips together and her smooth forehead furrowed. No Botox there.

  “Mostly, I feel guilty that Graham is dead, that we could have had our life together, and I put up these … I made him … we could have been happy.”

  A drop of wine escaped from the glass, fell through the wrought-iron lattice top, and made a star-shaped red splash on Mai’s exposed thigh. “If I had let us.” She took a big breath. The drop of wine on her leg looked like a small birthmark. My hand wanted to reach out and wipe the wine off her tanned leg. I didn’t. It was the sort of impulse you learn to quell if you want to be a happily married man.

  “Just so you know, Mr. Wells, life isn’t perfect. Not in the real world. Your stained-glass world, everything all rosy in there, all the happy families. Bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people. That’s what you believe, right? You get what you deserve?”

  See, I get that all the time. Why do people assume that preachers have the mental outlook of a twelve-year-old? A sheltered twelve-year-old? People tell us things they wouldn’t share with their dog. Grandmothers have shared secrets that gave me nightmares. I know of obsessions that I can’t find a name for in Wikipedia. I have seen, and shared, suffering.

  I said, “You think I believe the world is righteous and free of pain? That good people don’t suffer? Do you know the book of Job? Heard of Father Damien or read Dietrich Bonhoeffer?”

  Mai thrust her chin out. “Yeah, preacher, I have.” That surprised me. Assuming she was telling the truth—preachers hear more than their share of lies, too.

  I said, “Me, too.”

  The chin stayed out there a second longer, then Mai relaxed.

  “I got nothing against Honey Garcia. Graham married her when he was, what? Twenty-five, I think. Right after law school. What do you know at twenty-five?” Mai recrossed her lean legs, shook her head, rueful, and the sway of her hair, and the waft of that light, bright scent, those lean, lithe legs, made me do a spiritual girding. “Here’s the thing, preacher …”

  I said, “Could you call me Walker? Or Bear?”

  She looked up at me, her mouth pursed in amusement.

  “You want me to call you ‘Bear’?”

  “It’s … Walker would be fine.”

  Mai snatched her glasses off. “Honey didn’t love Graham. She couldn’t love Graham because she didn’t know Graham, you understand? Honey loved her vision of Graham, the Graham she thought he should be. You get that? She didn’t love the man. She loved a figment of her own imagination. What she had created in her mind. That’s what she loved. Me? I loved the man. I loved Graham.”

  I said, “How do you know?”

  “That I loved him?” Mai wiped a ruby-stained mouth with the back of her hand.

  “That Honey didn’t love the real Graham? That she loved an illusion?” I asked.

  “Because he told me so, Walker, that’s how I know. Graham told me so.”

  “Maybe Graham didn’t know Honey. Maybe Honey knew exactly who Graham was, and she loved him, as best a human woman can love a human man.”

  She stopped on that, her hand against her mouth, her eyes on mine. I could see her mind whirling behind those large, dark eyes, sooty with mascara and grief. Just as clearly, I saw the moment of rejection.

  “No. A man knows when he is loved. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Graham loved me.”

  That’s what it comes down to so often. Dante’s second circle. When “love” is your god, you can justify whatever it is you want. You did it for “love.”

  “Do you think Graham loved Honey when he married her?”

  At that, Mai gave me the stink eye and took a long swallow of her wine. Mai Dinh hadn’t come to me for counseling, or moral direction, or even advice. I’d forced my company on her because I wanted information. “I apologize,” I said.

  “You should.”

  “Well, I just did.”

  “You’re married, right?”

  “I am.”

  “How long?”

  “More than twenty years.”

  “And you love her?” One delicate eyebrow rose, volumes spoken.

  “Oh, yes. I do. Absolutely and completely. Annie Laurie is, I mean, she’s my soul mate. If there is such a thing. I’m tied to her, body and soul. We fight sometimes, of course”—like within the past hour, and I didn’t have a clue what about unless it was a hormonal thing; Annie’s, not mine—“but yes. I love Annie.”

  Deliberately, Mai put her elbows on the table, one hand steadying her goblet, and leaned forward.

  “And what would you do, Walker, if you met your Annie today?”

  “What?”

  “Twenty years ago, you meet and marry a nice woman, everything pretty much okay, or maybe not-so-okay, then all these years later, you meet Annie Laurie, your ‘soul mate.’ What happens then?”

  I took a piece of bread and tore it into bite-sized pieces.

  It could have happened like that. Before I met Annie, there was a girl—well, there were lots of girls. When you play football for the University of Texas, girls are part of the perks package, or seemed like it anyway. There was this one girl, though, Serena, and man, she had me skinned and gutted. Turned me inside out, Serena did. I even took he
r home to meet my folks and I had never, ever done that before. My mother was taken with Serena. My brothers thought she was way too hot for me.

  My dad asked me to walk our dog Ladybird with him before Serena and I drove back to Austin through the cool, dark, fall evening.

  Ladybird had done her selective spot choosing and had finished her business before Dad had gotten around to what he wanted to say.

  He said, “Serena is a beautiful woman, Bear, and you aren’t going to be able to hear me, son, but try to keep this in the back of your mind. How many times did that girl put you down in front of your mom and me?”

  “What?”

  “You know, the digs about your car, no awards during the football banquet—that bit about Tucker getting all the family good looks.”

  “Well, he did. Even Mom says Tucker is the best looking.”

  “I don’t think I’d want the woman I love telling me my brother was better looking.”

  “Mom tells you all the time that Uncle Richard got all the looks and you got the brains.”

  There was a pause.

  “Yes, she does.”

  Which left me nothing to say at all.

  Serena and I said our good-byes, and when I pulled out of the driveway, I was every bit as much in love with Serena as I had been when I pulled in.

  But my ears were primed. All the ride home, and the days to come, I began to be aware of the teaspoons of diminishment Serena dosed out, all flavored with her sugar to take the bitterness away.

  We broke up before Christmas.

  Mai leaned closer in, allowing me a glimpse of cleavage.

  “Graham was my soul mate. I was his.”

  Getting a tad too close over this table. I leaned back in my chair and pushed away from the table, making a show of stretching out my legs.

  Mai watched my show and settled back in her chair. She smirked.

  “Don’t worry, preacher, you’re safe with me. I’m not going to eat you.” Another smirk.

  There wasn’t any point in denials. I was already feeling nibbled on by those small white teeth.

  “You were going to tell me how you met Graham.”

  “Yeah. I was. Now, I don’t think so.” She drank down half her glass at one go.