Jackie

Why did I get up and unlock the connecting door between our rooms?

Because I wanted to, that's why.

Contemplating your debts and spending what was supposed to be your wedding day in the Bahamas alone in a cheap motel stinks.

I was an idiot to have allowed myself to let Paolo take me for a ride!

A fat, pimply virgin right out of grad school, I fell for Paolo the second he gave me the time of day at the Bally's I joined only because my doctore told me to.

Paolo was the chief dancercise instructor. This alone should have told me something was wrong even then; but I was too naive at the time to recognize the warning signs.

Let's be honest: I 'd been blinded by the fact that someone as perfect as Paolo was being nice to me; and not just because I could do his homework so he could get a passing grade and stay on the team.

That's the way Paolo could make you feel: special, that you were the one.

Paoloe helped me dislodge the fat and keep it off. He convinced me to spring for cosmetic surgery and facial peels to erase the acne scars. For that I'm forever grateful, so I can't hate him too much.

He told me how to dress so that I didn't look like a slug at business meetings, what car to drive, how to act in public so that people would respect me.

Eventually he told me where to live and how to entertain.

After a year, he moved in - it was great.

I wanted sex, but Paolo kept putting me off, saying that I needed to concentrate on my career. Anyway, he was Italian, and his mother wanted him to marry a virgin. How could he marry me if I wasn't a virgin? It would kill his mother if she even knew about me not being a virgin before the wedding. "Save yourself for me, please?" And then to keep the secret, Paolo encouraged me never to attend any of his family gatherings, of which there were a lot.

This really hurt, but I didn't want to ruin things for him, for us.

Paolo told me to concentrate on getting ahead, and that my headhunter was cheating me blind.

So, I stood up to my headhunter. It felt good and it worked.

Thanks to Paolo, I could now afford the clothes and shoes that I'd coveted ever since I was a kid - and I looked damned good in them, too.

The parties Paolo and I threw were great, but I couldn't help but sometimes feel that the only people we invited were all Paolo's friends.

Where were mine?

I guess mine weren't good enough.

They wouldn't advance my career.

Never mind that I liked Jewellee, the rainbow dreadlocked cashier at the company cafeteria. She was funny and smart and liked her job because it gave her lots of time to practice the bass she played every Friday at various jazz clubs with her brother who played tenor sax. She was always inviting me to come listen, she said her brother was "Real fine!" and that I'd like him.

How about Moshe, the blind Jewish guy who sold me newspapers every morning on the way to work? He wrote free verse poetry and let me read bits of it, all typed up on pieces of scrap paper on his Braille typewriter that could do both standard and Braille symbols.

Then there was Estelle, the bag lady that lived behind my condo building, who'd once been a mobster's wife. She said living in a cardboard box was better than being married to the Mob. She had the razor scars on her throat to prove it.

Paolo told me that knowing people like that wouldn't get me anywhere, so I never invited them, or my co-workers, into my life.

God, what fool I was to listen to him!

Nobody bothered to say goodbye when I packed up my office stuff in a cardboard box and walked out the door for the last time. The rest of the people in my office were all going to the nearest bar to get smashed on their severance checks - I wasn't invited.

Letting Cass in was a way of spitting on Paolo.

Feeling Cass's body moving between my legs with each stride as he piggybacked me down the shoulder of I-70 after the U-Haul overturned and blew up had been...intriguing.

Cass, lean, hungry, scrawny, nasty Cass, beneath the baggy layers of his winter clothing, was hard. Harder than the beautifully sculpted Paolo would ever be, no matter how many hours he spent at the gym.

The part of me of me that Paolo had unsuccessfully tried to burn out wondered what it would be like to have a body like that moving against me, moving within me...what would those big knuckled hands feel like moving all over me? What did he taste like? Was he...

Snap out of it Jackie! Cass is a loser, a useful loser that my brother inflicted on me because he and the rest of the family had been too caught up in their lives to personally come out and help me move on such short notice.

Come to think of it, I'd shut them out, too. Paolo told me they were losers, and the less contact with them the better because they'd only drag me down. I'd gladly allowed him to help me shut them out, because I agreed with his evaluation.

They were losers too. Otherwise they'd be living in bigger houses and driving better cars.

Define loser: Come to think of it , it was anybody that held me back from being a bottomless ATM machine for Paolo. Once that supply was cut off...I became a loser. At least Cass seemed honest in his demands and gave me something back in return...I mean, loser or not, he'd looked out for me in his own agressively inept way. Seeing Paolo's nose go flat underneath one of Cass's uncannily fast blows had been satisfying in a way that a lawsuit never would have been. Then, today when my feet went numb with the cold, he'd just put me on his back and tucked them in his coat pockets and that was the end of it.

No complaints, no scolding like Paolo would have, he just carried me.

I'd felt like a real bitch for closing the door on Cass's face when he tried to join me in the hotel room. There'd been the usual badly concealed look of hurt from him, seasoned with genuine anger just like the first time back in my former condo after the brawl.

I took a long shower and put on the shirt that he'd leant me from his kit.

Even though it was surprisingly clean, it still smelled like Cass.

It kept me awake when I wanted to sleep. It said, "Take a chance lass, I could be a lot a' fun! What have yeh got to lose but yeh pride? Come play wi' owd Cass. Why not spit at Paolo and enjoy life for once with a little rough stuff like me?"

Another voice broke in, from somewhere below my navel. I liked how it sounded: tough and greedy. Like Bette Midler with an MBA. The last time I heard this one it was came out of my mouth when I was renegotiating my contract for more money three years ago.

"Sleep with a stranger right off the streets you hardly know? Shit honey, it's about time you came around! That red-headed piece of meat's gave off the right signals the moment you set eyes on him. You don't need to see a man's eyes to know he's interested, sweetie! Hell, if Cass wants to hang around afterwards, let him. Just don't allow him take advantage of you like Paolo did!"

Which is why I undid the lock on my side of the door that turned our rooms into a suite.

Cass seemed harmless enough whenever he wasn't picking fights with people larger than himself.

In fact, he was kind of amusing in his own way. Like a nervous little kid peeking out at you from behind the mask of an adult.

So I didn't argue with Cass when he took me in his arms and began running his fingers through what was left of my hair and nuzzling at the side of my neck after he lay down beside me on the hard, lumpy hotel bed.

Which, come to think of it, was more than Paolo had ever given me.