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What I remember the most about Zane, other than her face, her beautiful face, was how we always laughed together, those blissful times when we would share a clever remark or see the absurdity of any situation. Zane brought me joy as well as grief but then that's the nature of the beast. In Zane, I had found a complementary soul. Sometimes, even after all these years, I find myself smiling when something reminds me of her and then the despondency over losing her hits me and the wound is fresh again. I suppose I'm like a child who picks at a scab and keeps it from healing over but some nights when I can't sleep, my wife Mary Edith, gently slumbering down the hall in her room, I think of Zane and her smooth white bosom and how we would lie wrapped around each other, tasting each other's mouths, consuming each other until we felt like one being. Nights like that, I become so restless I have to get up and go downstairs to find comfort in a shot of whiskey and my memories of Zane.
About five years ago, I was in St Louis and smelled her perfume but with a subtle difference. I spun around, my heart pounding, hoping to see Zane, but it was someone else—a mere woman, not a goddess like Zane. But the smell—a combination of honey and roses, brought Zane back to me for a few brief seconds and I was young and in love and the world was full of promise. I inhaled the fragrance and I know this might seem odd, but the subtle difference in the perfume was that Zane made it distinctly hers—she gave it a subtle note of sex. Zane always smelled that way and her scent alone would rouse me. Oh, Zane, how I ached to see you again but you weren't there. My disappointment was acute.
I suppose, reading this, you might be shaking your head in disapproval. Here I have a wife, Mary Edith, and a two year old son and I'm crying into my beer, so to speak, over a lost love. I suppose that makes me a son-of-a-bitch but don't be so quick to judge me. I am content in my marriage. Mary Edith is a wonderful woman who asks nothing of me except that I return her affection, love my child and treat them both with kindness and charity. I do that and more—I am a good husband and I know that after the last time when I saw Zane again, that I would remain with my family and live out my life knowing that I had experienced at least one great passion and in that I'm fortunate. Nevertheless, sometimes my loins still ache for Zane and when I kiss Mary Edith goodnight, I want instead to feel Zane's hot, demanding mouth on mine. But she's lost to me.
I take five newspapers as I needed to keep up with not only cattle prices but information on the Transcontinental Railroad; providing railroad timbers has become a great part of Ponderosa business. The Central Pacific whose rail lines started in San Francisco, stretch to join the Union Pacific which starts in Omaha Nebraska. They joined in 1869 but there were yet thousands of miles of rail tracks to be built and existing tracks to be repaired; we have multiple contracts to fill. Ponderosa timber is helping join the east with the west. In order to keep apprised, I read The Territorial Enterprise, The Sacramento Bee, The Philadelphia Public Ledger, The San Francisco Daily Evening Picayune and iThe New England Chronicle.
I read the Chronicle since it was published in Cambridge where I went to school and I like to keep up with matters. It's also where I met Zane and I hoped that someday, I might read something that dealt with her. The last thing I had read about her had been over 15 years ago—closer to 20 actually, and it was an announcement that Miss Zane Vandeweghe, the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Vandeweghe of Cambridge, Massachusetts was to be married to Mr. Mortimer Otis, Esq., the second son of Honorable Mr. and Mrs. James Otis, Esq. of Boston. I had been expecting it but after I read it, I balled up the paper and tossed it in the small stove in my apartment. It was then that I decided to leave my New York apprenticeship and return to Nevada and home but I still subscribed to the newspaper just in case her name would again grace the pages.
Don't misunderstand me; at the time I read of Zane's engagement, I was basically finished with my apprenticeship, had gained a great deal of experience from the well-respected architectural firm of Townes & Sullivan and I developed unique ideas on ways of building supports and of interior design. They claimed that I had shown them how to design buildings with new eyes. I should have stayed with them and built my own career but that's hindsight. My original plan had been to-over time-gain enough respectability in New York society that I could ask for Zane's hand in marriage and now it was too late and I laughed at my youthful hubris. Who had I thought I was? I would always be a parvenu to the Knickerbocker society of New York for whom Townes & Sullivan worked designing grand summer homes and stables. I also knew from my college days that I would never be accepted in Boston Society, become a "Boston Brahmin" and that Zane's parents wanted her to marry into the inner circle of Boston society of which they weren't part, being 'nouveau riche'. And rich they were. Vandeweghe had made a killing in railroad stock and with a beautiful daughter as a pawn in the social game of chess, he was determined to become a player in their world.
After the engagement announcement, I knew I had lost Zane. I wondered if she was sad knowing we would never be together again, never enjoy our passionate trysts and our times afterwards. The part of our relationship that I would miss the most was talking and laughing with her in the streaming moonlight, her white skin such a contrast to my swarthy coloring-Zane lying on her side while I did the same facing her. I would run my hand up and down the curves of her smooth body. But the social powers against us were too strong. I could have romanticized our final separation, played out a star-crossed lovers' scenario but I'm too rational. I guess I always knew that Zane could never truly be mine-but she had been mine for a time, albeit too short a time.