Okay, folks - not thrilled with this chapter, but I had to finally just release it into the wild and hope it survives or gets taken down by one of its own.I decided to take the kids and go see Mom so I could look into planning that trip to Boston.
Besides, then Kate would be able to concentrate on work. Which she clearly wanted to do.
I was at the door holding Mikey and waiting for Amanda, who was struggling with a pink windbreaker, sleeve inside out, when Kate came over and grabbed my arm and kissed my cheek.
"I'm sorry about before." She said. I couldn't tell if she meant it, or if she just wanted things to be nice-nice. It was as though she was making certain I couldn't read her.
"You'll tell him 'no'?" I wanted confirmation. I was not about to let this drop.
"I'll tell him something." She said. "You obviously don't think this is a good idea."
"No. I don't. He can get someone else to do it."
She tried to wheedle me into it. "But it's something I really want to try anyway and he thinks I could do a good job with it and I know I can, and I really, really want to, so please, please, please?"
Our age gap was showing. Apparently it spanned thirty years.
"No." I wasn't about to argue over it. I needed to get out the door.
She slumped, defeated.
I hated doing this to her, but what was being requested of a mother of two who'd just suffered a miscarriage was absolutely ridiculous. I had no idea what he'd been thinking.
But he was young.
And apparently stupid.
Or maybe just thoughtless.
Turns out it was much more than that.
Thank God he took the kids and left.
I just wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend this wasn't my life.
Brian finally comes up with something interesting, something exciting, something that didn't include giving advice to girls half my age, and Maurice shoots it down.
So to speak.
What was the point of going back to work?
I knew I had to let Brian know Maurice wouldn't let me do this, but I held off. Maybe I could reason with him and get him to agree to at least a couple of things…or even just one.
In the meantime, Brian gave me 'busywork' – he had me editing other people's articles. Which was damned boring. And stupid. And worthless. And I was astounded by the number of homophonic errors.
You're vs. your.
Too vs. to vs. two.
"Spell-check doesn't get it all folks, you've got to do your own proofreading!" I muttered, but then again, here I was doing it for them.
Then all of a sudden I started getting a bunch of IM's with really indecent suggestions. I didn't recognize any of the screen names. I just kept clicking them gone until it became really prohibitive and time consuming.
Since the issue was related to my work account I IM'd Brian, complaining about it and asking how to keep it from happening.
His response: I was wondering when this would happen. Took a lot longer than I thought.
Well, that was damned helpful.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Your screen name."
"And?!" I had no patience for whatever game he was playing.
" 'Roger' is a euphemism for sex."
That infuriated me.
"So I'm advertising 'Have sex with Kate'! Is there a reason you didn't let me in on this sooner??"
"Well, when you first started using the screen name I didn't feel I knew you well enough to broach the subject…"
"That's not something you need to know someone well enough for! You just say "Oh, hey, you'd better not do that"!! As a courtesy!"
"And I thought it was kind of funny. Considering."
"Considering what exactly?"
"That you would never."
"If you knew me enough to know 'I would never', you knew me enough to say 'don't do this'. You're one hell of a BFF. And I thought I hated chicks. I'm really glad you got a laugh at my expense."
"It's your name, Kate Rogers."
"Shut up. I hate you."
I signed off so he couldn't respond.
Idiot.
And then I wished Maurice hadn't gone, because he'd have found a way to make me laugh about it.
I was disappointed he wasn't here for me to share it with because he'd get a kick out of it and just randomly laugh at it for days, and the very thought made me smile. That, and the thought of the comments he'd make… his wordplay with my name. We could have had all these little inside jokes.
Sharing it after the fact just wouldn't be as humorous. And he'd be really mad that Brian had known and hadn't warned me.
And God knows, conflict was something I needed more of in my life right now.
So, damn.
Mom set me up on her computer, introducing me to such wonders as 'Orbitz' and 'Travelocity', so I was able to book flights very easily.
Finding a hotel was another matter. New England would just be finishing up foliage season, although the Boston baseball season had ended the previous week.
Unbelievably, I did eventually find something right on the waterfront.
The Seaport Hotel. Overlooking part of the harbor.
The website made it look fantastic. All they had available was a suite, and it was expensive, but what the hell. How often did we get away alone for a couple of days?
"What's this up in the corner?" I asked, when this little window appeared with Kate's name on it.
Mom came and looked over my shoulder.
"That means Kate's online and you can IM her. I do it all the time."
"How can I do that?"
"Use my screen name and send her a message."
I wasn't about to send things out over the internet under the name 'RosieRose51'.
"I want my own." I scowled. "I can talk to her then? How do I do that?"
Mom showed me how to set it up.
"What do you want your screen name to be?" She asked. "It doesn't have to be your actual name."
I didn't want it to be.
I thought about it for a minute.
A Ramones song. Not only would it catch her attention, it was appropriate: TooToughToDie.
Mom laughed at it as though she was no longer worried about my job.
Still, her laugh seemed a little hollow.
I was pretty sure some days it was all she thought about. The greys she kept coloring weren't from worrying about my kids. And as much as I wanted to attribute them to Sully, I couldn't. They were sickeningly good for each other.
Having kids puts things into perspective like nothing else. I kinda got why she'd been the way she'd been with me sometimes. I didn't like that she worried so much, but there was nothing I could do about it, short of retiring, which would probably kill me quicker.
Mom typed all the information in a lot faster than I could have.
"How do I do this?" I asked Mom.
"You just click on her name, type a message and send it. She can accept or reject."
"She should have 'rejected' a long time ago." Sully muttered from his prostrate position on the couch, half-watching the TV, half watching the kids play a mutant game of Candyland.
I ignored him. Mom hadn't heard him, which was good, because I didn't really need to handle a riot this early in the morning. The last time he'd made a comment like that about me and she'd heard, she'd gone after him like a pit bull.
And all this time I thought I'd gotten it from Dad.
'In vino veritas', they say: 'In wine, there is truth," but it's pretty amazing what sobriety will reveal. Mom and I were more alike than I'd ever thought. Sometimes I wondered if she'd used alcohol to avoid being like me. I got the impression that if she'd been sober back then, Dad would have been taken care of the very first time. Self-defense.
"Ok. I'll give it a shot." I said skeptically.
She left me to my own devices.
I clicked on Kate's screen name, typed "Hey," and clicked 'send'. Short words are faster.
"Who the hell are you, now? Do I know you?" she replied instantly. Damn, she was fast. And in a mood.
"Maybe." I was trying to be funny.
"Too coy." She responded and the little box disappeared.
"What happened?!" I demanded. Mom came over and looked over my shoulder.
"She signed off. That's why her name isn't up there anymore."
"She didn't want to talk to you." Sully graveled.
"I'm pretty sure it was you she didn't want to talk to." I muttered, low, so he couldn't hear. I wasn't about to start a war. Yet.
"I'm not deaf." He said.
Damn.
"And I will talk to her."
'Google' is a really stupid word, but that's what I did in order to find things to do in Boston. Like the Aquarium. Faniuel Hall. The Freedom Trail.
After a while Kate's name popped up in the little box again, so I typed in, "Hello."
"Do! I! know! you!"
"I know you." I responded. I don't know why I didn't tell her it was me. I was having fun messing with her mind.
"Is that supposed to be flattering? Do you think I'm stupid? I know why you're here." And instead of waiting for a response, she signed off again.
A little confusing, but at the very least I knew she wasn't in the habit of flirting with strangers online.
Mom called lunch, so I gave it a break for a while. I didn't know how Kate could spend hours in front of a glowing screen doing research and typing like she did. Just being there for an hour made every muscle in my body cramp up.
I'd fallen asleep, slumped over my computer. The little 'dink-dink' noise that indicates a new instant message was what woke me up, heart pounding, breathless. I'd left the volume on way too loud.
I'd had another nightmare. This one was almost as bad as the one where Maurice was Evan.
A giant Maurice, standing on top of the Twin Towers, one foot planted on each one, like the Colossus of Rhodes, or King Kong. He held me in the palm of his hand, and tipped it, so very slowly, face expressionless, to just drop me into open space, looking at me as though I were a bug he was experimenting with, and I was sliding slowly with nothing to grab onto, knowing that the eventual free-fall was inevitable.
It had been horrible. At least I'd awakened before the falling had begun.
And all it told me was that Maurice had more control over my life than I did at this point.
I looked at the IM. It was that same guy again. Well, this was something I actually had control over.
After lunch I went back, and she was on line, so I thought I'd give it one more shot. With the adventurous mood she'd been in the last couple of days I was surprised she wasn't more curious. Instead of shutting me down so fast, I thought she'd engage me in conversation and try to get information out of me.
"Hey, beautiful."
"You again." It had taken her a couple of minutes to respond. She must have been getting water or lunch or something.
"Yup."
"Brian, if this is you, knock it off. I'm working."
"Not Brian."
There was a very long pause. She was thinking. Running through all the co-workers and acquaintences it could be.
She came up with nothing.
"Well, you've got my attention. Who are you? And why that screen name?"
"Because I am."
"Comments like that make you sound like someone I'M MARRIED TO." Bold, italics and all capital letters. She was trying to make a point. I liked that she made that point.
"Imagine that."
Then she typed something incomprehensible.
"What does A slash S slash L mean?" I queried anyone within earshot.
"Age, Sex, Location." Sully growled.
Oh.
"Old enough/Yes, please/closer than you think." That was probably completely the wrong way to respond, but I was in a goofy mood.
"Ha. A wise guy," she replied. "You could be a ten year old for all I know."
"That's my emotional age."
"Well, at least you're honest about it. That means you can be worked with." Geez, she was fast. It must be killing her to have to wait for my hunt-and-peck replies.
"I'm legal. Let's get a drink later." Mom would watch the kids for a while if I asked her to.
"No."
Wow. Just 'no.'
No "I'm sorry, but...", no easy let-down. No excuses. No reasoning. Just 'no'.
It made me wonder what this Kate, my Kate would have handled herself in that nightclub setting where I'd met her. She was so different now.
She wouldn't have needed me.
She'd have permanently disabled that guy in the hallway and walked out the door without her 'friends'. Yellow dress, well-muscled legs accentuated by her high heels... It made me wish I'd paid a little more attention that night, when I'd had her right there in front of me. But, in retrospect, if I'd given her any kind of line, knowing her it would have ended up being one of my most disastrous and humiliating attempts on record. With Faith as a witness.
And that brief and awkward moment would have changed everything that followed.
It would have changed the way I'd treated her, the way she responded to me, the way she'd trusted me.
She wouldn't have had any respect for me.
She would have pegged me as a loser, completely ignored me, and we'd have gone our separate ways within twenty-four hours and never looked back.
And we'd both have gone on, two lonely broken people, too entrenched in habits of self-preservation to take a risk or make a commitment.
"Why not?" But I was fortunate enough to live in the present, not the past.
"I'm busy and I make it a rule not to drink with men I'm not married to." That was reassuring. She and Brian weren't knocking 'em back after hours at work.
"Come on. There's nothing wrong with offering to buy a beautiful woman a drink."
"You're absolutely right. Let me know how it goes." Classic Kate.
"Just a margarita."
"Too flirty."
"A glass of wine."
"Too intimate."
"Coffee?"
"Coffee's an acceptable beverage. But it's still no."
"Do you like pina coladas?" A subtle clue that it was me. My apologies to Rupert Holmes.
"Very funny. I'm not looking to escape." Apparently too subtle.
"You like 'getting caught in the rain'. Warm rain. On rooftops." If that didn't give it away I didn't know what would.
"How do you know that?" She was really being obtuse today.
"I know a lot of things." I was about to start a list, but she was too damn fast for me.
"Who are you? Dammit, Brian, if this is you, so help me...I have a husband who can help me cover up a really vicious and bloody murder." That made me grin.
"I'm not telling unless you agree to meet me for a drink."
"I will agree to meet you for a drink."
What?
There was a long pause and I suddenly felt cold and a little sick.
"But I will not actually show up. Now you must tell me who you are."
Her play with language made me sigh with immense relief. Not that I'd actually believed it for even a second, but still...
"Not unless you show up." I prodded.
"I can live with the mystery."
And she signed off again. That's my girl.
But I'd gotten her to talk to me. This could be a fun game. Especially since she had no expectation that I would be interested in exploring '90's technology.
She liked puzzles. She liked mysteries. I started thinking of little clues I could leave her, like breadcrumbs, so she could figure it out.
Later That Same Day:
Since Kate was playing what she called 'Industrial Complex' with the kids, Lego's and Matchbox cars, I offered to go pick up my dry cleaning, which was fine with her.
But I had something else in mind.
The dry cleaner was pretty close to the building where she worked, so I figured I'd drop in on Brian and find out exactly what he was thinking when he suggested all these insane ideas. And tell him to knock it off. Or else.
We ended up having a confrontation of a very different kind.
I went up to the office area and some chick told me he was 'upstairs', meaning something more important than me, but I could wait in his office.
So I did, wandering around, looking at the pictures on the wall – a painting or two, pictures of him with a couple of celebrities like Bobby Flay and more than a few politicians, and a bunch of awards.
Kate had a few of those, too, but she usually just threw them in a drawer.
After about fifteen minutes I was too restless to wait around anymore, so I went to leave him a note, tearing the top page off the colored memo pad at the corner of his desk.
Not a pen in sight. On a writer's desk.
And it didn't have that shallow middle drawer you where you can stick rulers and pens and things.
I'm right-handed, so there's really no explanation for why I went and opened the left drawer; maybe I had the paper in my right hand.
If I hadn't, I probably would never have known.
Resting on top of the other contents of the drawer was a one-inch stack of photos.
The top one was a distant shot of Kate at her desk, lost in thought, gazing out the window. Black and white. I wanted to keep it.
The second was Kate, clearly unaware she was being observed, smiling, engaged in what looked to be a very animated conversation with someone whose shoulder was in the foreground.
The third: Kate.
And the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that…
"Oh, God." I rubbed my eyes and when I looked up Brian was in the doorway, hesitant, his eyes on the open drawer and pictures in my hand.
"What is this, St. Elmo's Fire?" I demanded, even though he was probably too young to get the reference.
He was a good three or four inches taller, but I could take him if I needed to.
Dammit. And I'd really liked him, too.
It was more than a second or two before he answered.
"They're, uh – just extras. From office parties and things like that." He looked embarrassed and defensive at the same time.
I just stared him down until I could see defeat.
"How long?" I asked, dropping the pictures back in the drawer, slamming it shut with a sharp snap. It was a good thing there was a big, solid oak desk between us.
The only reason he was still alive was because I couldn't remember ever seeing him so much as flick lint off of Kate's shoulder.
"About a year," he lied.
Right.
But he had the decency to look me in the face instead of letting his eyes roam everywhere else like a guilty perp. As though he thought we shared something – like we had some sort of bond because he was nuts about my wife, too.
"Get over it." I said, trying to squash the impulse to charge him, take him down, rip his limbs off and throw his pieces down the trash chute.
Then burn him and stomp on what was left. Make him into kind of a smoldering Flat Stanley.
I didn't only because of how Kate would react.
"I'm trying." He said.
That couldn't be true. While we hadn't seen much of him in the previous month or so, he'd sure been around quite a bit lately.
When I wasn't.
I'd never really felt threatened by him, and I still didn't. But there was one thing I had to be certain of.
"Does she know?" I asked.
This was crucial. If she'd known she would have told me, regardless of the consequences. Unless she had something to hide.
"No! God, no. No way."
Relief.
I exhaled.
"Don't tell her," he continued, desperately."It'll make our work relationship awkward."
"You think I care? I'll drag her out of here tomorrow and tell her exactly why!"
"Don't. I need her." Then he added very quickly, "I don't mean I need her. I need her here. Working. She's the best I've got."
"You care so much about her, why'd you ask her to do all these risky things?"
"It's what she wants."
"It's what she wants." I repeated skeptically.
He finally stepped into the room instead of slouching at the door.
"Her job - it's all I have. The one way I can make her happy." He said quietly. "You've got everything else." That was so pathetic it almost made me feel bad for the guy for a minute.
But I didn't.
"We're not partners in Kate's happiness." Until I realized we kind of were. In a weird way.
And suddenly I felt trapped.
She loved this job.
I couldn't keep his secret and still demand that she quit. She'd hate me forever for taking this away from her. I couldn't make her quit just because some guy might say the wrong thing to her or touch her the wrong way, which I knew she could handle very effectively.
And if I told her the truth, she'd probably feel so awkward about the whole thing that she'd quit, and she'd still be miserable. And blame me for it.
Or, even worse, she'd confront him, and, like Cher in that 80's movie, smack him and yell at him to 'snap out of it', and it would wound him and their relationship wouldn't be the same and her job wouldn't be the same and she'd slowly lose enthusiasm for it and everything would go to hell. At work and at home.
Or she'd realize she had options. Younger, taller, white-collar options with a lot more things in common with her...someone who would come home every night, someone who didn't have to be treated weekly for work-related injuries...
I couldn't think that way.
Tell her/not tell her. Either way, I didn't like what I was coming up with.
I was in a spot and dammit, I had to let it go. At least for the time being. Until I could think.
And I think he knew it, too.
I pointed at him. "You stay as far away from her as possible." How the hell was I going to keep Kate away from him?
He raised his hands. "Nothing. I promise. I swear. Nothing."
I came around the desk and roughly tucked the blank paper in his shirt pocket. "You wouldn't have the guts."
I shook my head and sighed.
"I was just looking for a pen."