by Jamie Knight
“You could get a roommate, split the cost on a pet-friendly place,” Coop suggested, sitting back down on the desk.
“A good idea, generally. The only problem is I can’t really live with someone. It has more to do with me than anyone else.”
His eyebrows went up, and he laughed. “You could take a lover, someone with the right kind of place. Real estate and sex sounds like a good deal to me.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Still keeping up with the monastic existence.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I wasn’t exactly living in cloisters and was around lots of attractive women, but I was also annoyingly celibate. So, I suppose the description fit.
I sunk lower into my chair. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“How long has it been now?” Cooper asked. At this point, I knew he was picking on me.
“Too long,” I said, waving him out of my office and not wanting to overthink about it.
I was interested in sex, but I never seemed to find the right woman. No one was special enough. That was another thing that stayed with me from my past. When you meet your true love early and lose her, it makes the rest of your life kind of suck.
“I’ll figure something out before I start working,” I told Cooper.
Famous last words.
I really had meant to give it a good think before getting to work, but my first client came in too soon. Followed by the third and the fourth. All of them were somewhat thrown off by my battered appearance. I really didn’t feel like getting into it, so I just made something up. Each fictional scenario was more inventive than the last, each one leaving the listener with the impression that I was a big, goddamn hero — as opposed to a klutz. Let’s just say, I had a way with words.
I had fully intended to give the problem a good, hard think over lunch, but the sandwich Camilla brought me was so astoundingly good it was difficult to focus on much else. Which was a mercy in a strange sort of way because after lunch, the evil thoughts came.
As soon as I had time to think, I thought about her, Lila Dell, the absolute love of my life and the woman I was going to marry back when I was in any fit state to be thinking about such things. Before the badness. And the separation and the loneliness.
We were supposed to be living together in the penthouse suite at the Crown Jewel Casino. My dad owned the place along with a few others, and we could have had it for free. We could have been happy there. Then I had to go and fuck it all up with my gambling addiction, with my drinking, with myself. It is hard for things to turn out well when you’re born to lose. Something I’d wish I’d know before I’d played my first game of blackjack.
Soon enough, the difference between winning and losing became moot. I just needed to play — more than I needed Lila, and I lost her. A small twisting knife of pain and regret took over her place in my heart. The only consolation, twisted as it might be, was that in the last few months, I was so out of control she would have left me if I hadn’t left first. I only had myself to blame and made myself pay for it every day for the past two years. Which was why I couldn’t live with anyone else. Besides Lucky anyway. And why I couldn’t give him up. He gave me love without judgment. What a thing.
Chapter Two - Jinx
It took a lot of strength. Yet somehow, I managed to suppress the depressing memories, as well as the urges to drink and jump out a window — not always in that order — that tended to come along with such remembrances. I needed to stay positive and stay alive. Lucky needed me. And not only to find us a new place to live, so we wouldn’t end up sleeping in my car. Even though I would have if that was what it would take.
With a deep, cleansing breath, I went back to the breakroom for some much needed coffee. A large cup of joe and about ten, poorly played, games of Space Invaders later, I ventured out into the office space to try and at least make a show at doing work. Settling back at my desk, I booted up my computer and prepared to write some kick-ass copy.
I was really the only writer in a den of artists. The only one who seemed to be able to empathize with my distinction was Chris, the art director with the design fetish who really didn’t understand music the way people like I did, despite coming from a family of musicians. We had both embraced our difference and bonded over it. If I had any friends, it would have to be Chris. Though Camilla seemed to like me too in her way. I would be the first to admit I could be a bit hard to take, so the fact I had anything close to friends was a relief and more than I really expected.
Switching from tape deck to Walkman, I started up Dance With Me. By far the darkest of all the T.S.O.L. albums. A distinction akin to being the coldest part of Antarctica. The volume was up, as it so often was when I was working. One of my few concessions to modern tech was a pair of noise-canceling headphones, which made it, so all I could hear was all the low-fi goodness, coming from America’s last real rebels, who were punks in the ’80s and got to be even more so as they got into their fifties. The band was so dedicated to the absurdist rejection of absolute states, including conceptions of genres and even names, they never released an album in the same style twice. Punk was the only commonality, and frontman Jack Grisham was credited with a different name, usually an anagram of his given moniker, on the credits of every one of them. Real dedication to the idea of being able to start fresh. I was trying to take it as an inspiration.
With music screaming into my ears, it was a wonder I could even hear her. Not only because of the headphones but also because of the distance between my cubicle and the reception desk. Yet I did. Or at least I thought I had. I had just been remembering her and hadn’t thought to see if I had a head injury. There was more than a moderate chance that I was just hallucinating the whole thing. It wouldn’t have been the oddest thing that had happened to me — even that day.
I lowered the headphones, ears still ringing from the raging decibels of fury, but the sound was still there, the unmistakable tone of Lila’s voice. As though on autopilot, I rose from my chair, bumping it with the back of my legs, sending the thing rolling clear across the cubicle until it crashed across the opposite wall.
My mind was racing. Mostly, it was trying to figure out just what the hell my legs were playing at. I didn’t want to see her. Even though I did. I missed Lila so much, a small, insane part of my mind actually believed that if I could only see her again, everything would be okay. Even though I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say if such a reunion would ever come to pass.
It was her. It was really her, standing at the reception desk — being checked in by Camilla. I still couldn’t see Lila’s heart-shaped face, but I would know her anywhere. Her blonde hair had grown down to her hips, usually kept in a very intricate braid. Her petite frame had filled out a little more, all curves and full, perky breasts. The blue suit she wore was prim, immediately indicating that she no longer worked as a dealer at my father’s casino.
It had only been a few years, and yet, somehow my first love was so different from my memory. Still, my body felt called to hers. In those arms, I had felt more pleasure than anything else in my life. I wanted to taste her, touch every curve, smell the delicate scent that came from her hair.
“Lila?” I said, meaning it more as a question to the universe.
Slowly, she turned, her head following her hips, as her green eyes slowly fell on me. There were thousands of reactions my lost love could have had. I had known her most of our lives. Our dads had been best friends, and I could guess at what Lila was feeling better than most. Though even I couldn’t have predicted what happened next.
Lila grew pale, even more pale than her typical ivory, which I really didn’t think was possible — her complexion was already a couple of tones up from milk. She swayed in a very alarming manner and swooned dead away into the arms of the startled looking stranger standing beside her.
A switch flipped in my mind. I had the sudden urge to get her away from the savage brute who was manhandling her. Even
though my saner side could clearly see that he was as surprised as anyone and probably had no idea who my former lover was. The stranger must have seen me coming, all the fires of Hades burning in my eyes, because he gently put Lila down on the carpet and backed away, his hands raised in innocence.
I ignored him, focusing my attention on Lila, laying out like Snow White on the tasteful burgundy carpet of the office. Scooping her up like Superman, I carried her to the breakroom. An annoying, high-pitched sound seemed to be coming from behind me. I figured it must be the leftover ring from the most recent self-inflicted assault on my eardrums. I reminded myself, not for the first time, that I should be more careful, or the hum would become permanent.
It wasn’t until I got Lila onto the couch that I realized that the noise was the shrill objections being raised by a woman about Lila’s age who had somehow managed to keep pace with me all the way to the breakroom.
“You can’t be back here,” I told her sharply.
“I’m not leaving without my friend,” said the interloper, crossing her arms, looking the very picture of intractability.
“Really?” I asked, getting to my full six-foot height and looming over her.
“Yes,” she said unmoved.
“Shall we see what security has to see about that?”
“Jinx?”
We both looked at the couch as Lila came back around, glaring at me like I was coming at her with a goalie mask and a chainsaw. Out of nowhere, she basically launched herself to her feet, booted out of the room, and then the Sure Thing office. Her friend ran after.
I tried to follow, but they were surprisingly fast. Fear will do that, I guess. By the time I got down to the road, the two women were leaping into a silver sedan and speeding away like a couple of bank robbers with the friend behind the wheel. I did, however, make out a bumper sticker for an NGO.
I made a note in the Moleskine notebook I always carried, hoping it was a clue and not a campaign to save the world by getting a free bumper sticker.
Once I had seen Lila, I knew I had to see her again. There was just no choice.
Chapter Three - Lila
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. In retrospect, I probably could’ve handled seeing Jinx again better. Fainting and running is not my status quo behavior. But let’s see how you take it when the man of your dreams just pops up out of the blue after years of no contact.
To be fair to Jinx, I have gone to his office, though to be fair to me, I didn’t know it was his office at the time. Aria and I had only really been at Sure Thing Graphics for a meeting with Chris, the Art Director, to commission the firm to do some advertising for our NGO, Desert Protect. We heard they were the best in town and figured it was worth a shot.
My hands are still shaking as we speed away from the building. The car is silent. Aria and I didn’t really talk to each other for a while, which is probably good because I don’t know what I would’ve said anyway.
My best friend and coworker glances over from the driver’s seat. I can tell she is worried about me.
“So that was definitely Carl? Like definitely?” I ask quietly, using Jinx’s real name. My body curls into itself. I put my hands on my own shoulders, trying to find comfort.
“Sure looked like him. I’d know those shoulders anywhere. Though keep in mind, I have never actually seen him in person. Only the picture you keep by the crib, so Billy knows what his dad looks like.”
I couldn’t believe I had found Jinx after two years of nothing — and accidentally to boot. What the heck was he doing at an advertising company? He couldn’t draw as far as I knew. Was he there as a manager? My former flame was always good at smooth talking people. He had gotten me into his bed after all. Oh, and the fights he had talked himself out of in the years we had known each other. Did Jinx have hidden artistic talent? It wouldn’t be the first time he had hidden something from me. Even though I really felt like I was the person who knew him best outside of his immediate family, including his stepmother, who was even younger than him.
I was full of questions, but even more than that, I was full of anger. I didn’t know how I would feel when I saw the father of my child again, or if I saw him again after he left me confused and pregnant without a word.
Carl hadn’t known I was pregnant at the time, but the betrayal ran deep. It should have been pretty obvious to most people, but he had really gone off the rails by that point. If it wasn’t the gambling, it was the drinking, and I suspected he was also using drugs.
The only real consolation was I was pretty sure he wasn’t cheating on me. He wouldn’t have been in any fit state to fuck someone else even if the opportunity presented itself. Cold comfort, but I was more than willing to take what I could get.
I couldn’t believe it when he disappeared. No one knew where he was. Not even his dad or the cops, who had done a proper investigation. As far as anyone could tell, Jinx had fallen off the face of the earth. Our dads and I even paid for missing posters, but nothing came up.
It was like torture going through all the what-ifs. A lot of them revolving around what I might have done or not have done to keep Jinx around, though I was pretty sure it didn’t have too much to do with me. I probably wasn’t even an afterthought, or he would have left some kind of clue of where he was going or what was going on.
Somewhere along the line, I had convinced myself that my love had died somehow. This only unleashed a new sort of hell in my thoughts as I fixated on how this might have happened and where the body was buried. For a while, mainly after our son was born, I would have dreams, nightmares really, about digging up a skeleton in an unmarked grave. The pale light of the full moon shining like a dimmer sun, illuminating the white bones, making them appear as though they glowed. The dream always ended with a hand landing on my shoulder and me waking up screaming.
The scream made both me and Aria jump with fear. We had arrived back at her house, and she was just trying to wake me. I really didn’t know why she stuck by me when I was such a mess. Yet, stick she did. Aria even let my son and I stay with her and her grandmother. I really didn’t know how I would get by without her help.
Leaning on my friend, I made it up the front steps and through the front door.
“Hey, honey,” Irene called from the living room.
“Hey, grandma.”
Billy, my son, was on the floor, further honing his crawling skills, which he seemed to have down to a science, moving as fast as I could walk. I scooped him up, snuggling him tightly. He giggled, thinking it was a game.
“Is Lila even more pale than usual?” I heard Irene ask.
“She saw Billy’s daddy.”
“What? Where?”
“At the advertising firm. Apparently, he works there.”
“Oh, dear!” Irene gasped, putting a hand to her chest.
I hugged my baby, trying to quell the angry fire burning inside me, though if anything it made it worse. Holding Billy made me feel betrayed and bitter all over again. Not at Billy but at Jinx for abandoning us.
I was really torn as to whether I should forget I ever saw Jinx again or confront him and demand an explanation as to how he could have dumped me so cruelly, especially when he didn’t even have the good manners to be dead like I thought he was. At least I would have some time to think it over, and I knew where to find him if I decided that’s what I wanted to do.
I felt a strange and distant pang of guilt at the idea of not telling him about Billy, now that I knew he was actually alive. Though I knew, without really having to think about it that I wasn’t ready to have that conversation.
I carried Billy into our room, laying him down in his crib. The same one that had been in my family for about ten generations. It was nothing if not secure. The bars being high and wood. There was about a seventy percent chance that Billy would start chewing on the bars at some point, but at least I knew they wouldn’t have lead-based paint. Pre-dating it by several years.
It usually made me feel good when he did that. Thought the action tonight was like opening a fresh wound. I slipped out of the room so my baby boy could sleep, not sure what else to do.
I went into the living room for some wine and conversation. The wine was excellent and made me feel warm. I also decided that I was going to tell Jinx about Billy. It was the right thing to do, though I had no idea if he was going to care.
Chapter Four - Jinx
The night after I saw Lila, I couldn’t sleep. The air conditioner blew heavily, but it was like I could not escape the heat of the Vegas desert. My mind raced as I tossed and turned. The constant movement annoyed Lucky, and even he abandoned me for the comfort of the couch.
I certainly had a lot to regret, most of it self-inflicted. I didn’t regret going into rehab. It was the best thing I ever did. However, I did regret not telling anyone I was going. That was an epically dick move. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t have understood. My addiction was an open secret at my dad’s Casino, where I worked. Yet they kept me on, because I was good at what I did, and people will look the other way if they’re making money.
I felt worst about Lila. She had been so good to me for so many years. First as a friend then as a lover. She never demanded anything from me. I dreaded the idea that she might have thought my leaving had been somehow her fault. If something she had said or done had driven me away.
It was about my love, strangely. Not because Lila drove me away but because I realized that I was no longer the man I had been when we had fallen in love. I had to find him again if we were ever going to have any future together.
Of course, that entire idea fell apart when I actually got out of rehab and felt far too ashamed to face her again. I wanted to see Lila but couldn’t fathom what I would say.