Love Overdue

by Pamela Morsi

  “How about we watch a movie,” she suggested to Mr. Dewey. “Then afterward we can enjoy a midnight supper.”

  The dog did not reply, but he followed at her heels as she went to the family room.

  Viv flipped through the collection of DVDs until she found the aging epic that she wanted. She held up Titanic for Mr. Dewey’s inspection.

  “Kate Winslet. Leonardo DiCaprio. Everybody’s favorite.”

  He seemed agreeable enough.

  She put the disc in the player and settled in on the couch, the ball of black fur snuggled up beside her.

  Viv had seen the movie a half dozen times. There was a lot to recommend it. Fabulous setting. Incredible costumes. Thrilling drama. Viv liked the scene when Rose jumped out of the lifeboat, more desperate to be with Jack than to be saved. But the young people were still trying to live, trying to survive. They were fighting desperately for a future together.

  Viv felt too old for the fight and too tired to try to swim. Her favorite character was Mrs. Straus, the wife of a multimillionaire merchant who chose to stay onboard with her husband. Viv waited anxiously for the brief scene of the two of them, side by side in their stateroom bed, holding each other, facing death warm in each other’s arms as the freezing water engulfed them.

  Yes, love to the last, to the very last and together.

  Viv retrieved a tissue to wipe the tears from her eyes. Deliberately she tried to ignore the admonitions of Unsinkable Molly Brown. Some lives were not worth living. Sometimes there was no reason to try to carry on.

  She absently patted the companion beside her. He was not there. She looked down at the couch, the floor, she scanned the room. Mr. Dewey was not there. Surprising. He seemed to enjoy staying right by her side.

  She heard something clatter in the dining room. Getting up, she walked in there.

  “Mr. Dewey?”

  The dog was inexplicably standing on the dining room table. He never got up on the furniture like that. There was a mess of food in the fur of his muzzle as he stood over the plate of chicken potpie.

  For one long moment, Viv took in the scene in disbelief. The middle of her suicide meal was missing. With a little cry of horror, she grabbed the dog in her arms and tried to clean out his mouth.

  “Why did you do it? You don’t eat table scraps. You don’t like people food!”

  She glanced at the plate she’d set for him across from her own. The two doggie treats, his favorites, were left untouched.

  “Why? Why?”

  She carried him to kitchen and set him in the sink while she rifled like a crazy person through the cabinet. She finally found what she was looking for, a round box of ordinary table salt.

  She quickly poured a handful into her palm. Then holding Mr. Dewey tightly against her body, she forced the white crystals down his throat. He struggled against her, but he was small, and she was large.

  The poor little dog began hacking and gagging immediately.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked him, as tears began coursing down her cheeks. “You don’t like people food. Why would you do it?”

  It was hardly a moment before he began vomiting in earnest. His whole body heaved reflexively as the bitter meal was forced out of him.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked him again and again. “You don’t like table scraps. You already had your dog food and your treats were right there on the plate. You never eat table food. And you never get on the table. If I’d thought there was any chance of you getting to that pie, I would have put it back in the oven.”

  Mr. Dewey was too sick to answer. He vomited again and again.

  She was beginning to feel nauseated herself. Shocked and horrified at what might have happened to this small innocent creature who had only tried to be a friend to her.

  They both heaved miserably for several minutes. In the aftermath, Viv was too exhausted to stand anymore, she slid down the cabinet door to sit on the kitchen floor.

  Mr. Dewey was looking better. Moving around more like himself. He came up beside her, putting his front paws up on her knee and looking at her with love.

  Viv looked back.

  “You didn’t want to be left, did you? You didn’t want to have to be the one to carry on by yourself. But you see, it wouldn’t make me happy for you to give up your life, just because I gave up mine.”

  Tears blinded her, as she rubbed the thick black fur at the little dog’s neck.

  “You have to go on. I want you to go on. I wouldn’t want to leave if I thought you weren’t going to have your life.”

  After a long moment, she sighed and wiped away the tears.

  “I’m sure my John felt exactly the same way,” she said.

  Fifty

  904.65 Collected Accounts of Historical Events

  By the time the last book was shelved, the dinner was cleared, and the volunteers had agreed on a schedule to begin work in the children’s department, D.J. was exhausted.

  The people began filing out. And James returned from his hiding place.

  “Thank you for what you did,” D.J. said as he slipped in between the nearby shelves.

  “Okay.”

  “You really saved the day for me and for everyone who loves this library.”

  “Okay.”

  “Miss Grundler is not going to disappear. She’s going to be back and she’s going to be very mad at you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wish we could throw water on her and she would melt, but that’s not going to happen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  D.J. laughed. And from within the depths of the shelving, she heard James laugh, too.

  Across the room she spotted Scott saying his goodbyes as people filed out the door. Maybe no one else noticed that he shook Vern’s hand and kissed Stevie on the cheek as if she were an old friend. But it was enough that D.J. did.

  The library now cleaned and locked up, there were no questions asked about who was taking D.J. home. She hobbled her way to the back parking lot, but he swooped her up into his van and they drove through the mostly deserted streets of Verdant after dark.

  “Thanks for letting me take you home,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Well, we are going to the same place.”

  “Not true,” he answered. “I’ve got my house back.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, the guys from the septic tank service finally got out there this week. They had to dig up a big chunk of the backyard, but they found the blockage and cleared it out.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You won’t believe what the guy told me,” Scott said. “It’s going to ruin your reputation.”

  “My reputation?”

  “He told me the inlet was plugged up and to tell my girlfriend to stop flushing her tampons.” Scott shook his head. “I swore to him up and down that no woman has been in there to flush anything since I’ve owned the house. He didn’t believe me.”

  Had he really not had women in his house? Suzy didn’t think so. She didn’t think he was a player at all. After the revelation about Stevie, D.J. was no longer sure of anything. Something about tampons niggled at her brain, but she was so tired and so pleased with the sound of the girlfriend being herself she didn’t bother to delve into it.

  Scott parked the van next to her car.

  D.J. opened her own door, but found herself slightly hesitant to put her feet on to the ground where she’d last encountered a nasty bite. Ultimately, she didn’t have to. Scott lifted her into his arms and carried her across the lawn.

  “I can walk,” she assured him.

  “You don’t have to,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to hold you next to me for days. This seems like the perfect excuse.”

  He carried her up the stairs to her apartment, no small feat, she imagined, although he did it with an ease that belied the weight of a full-grown woman.

  “I saw you talking to Stephanie today,” he said.

  His tone was really casual, but D.J. sen
sed that he was fishing. “Yeah, some girl talk,” D.J. teased him. “Sharing secrets. Kissing and telling.”

  Scott reached the deck and set her down gently on her feet. He unlocked the door and turned on the light.

  “Not every guy gets a good recommendation from the ex-wife,” she added.

  He nodded. “I’m sure she took the blame for everything,” Scott says. “She always does. But I’m at fault, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “Guilty of being an idiot,” he answered.

  She hobbled inside and down the hallway to the living room. He stopped her in the hallway and directed her to the bedroom instead.

  “You need to get off your feet,” he said.

  “Is that your usual line for getting a woman into bed?”

  “No, but if it works...” he answered, teasing. “Have you got pain meds?”

  He glanced around the room, which was still in chaotic disarray.

  “In my purse.”

  She handed him the bag and he rifled through it until he found the bottle.

  “Sorry about the room,” she said. “I still haven’t really unpacked.”

  “Well, don’t start now,” he said. “Rest doesn’t mean sorting out your apartment.”

  He put two pills in her hand and got a glass of water from the bathroom.

  “You’re going to feel a lot better in a few minutes,” he promised.

  Scott propped the pillows behind her back as she stretched her leg out. “Let’s get this boot off,” he said, as he began unstrapping the Velcro closures.

  She sighed heavily once released from the stiffly boned air cast.

  “Better?”

  “Much.”

  “This thing is just to stabilize your leg and help with walking until you can wear shoes again. You probably shouldn’t wear it all day.”

  She nodded. The hospital nurse had told her much the same thing. But she didn’t want the conversation to turn to her snakebite recovery.

  “So why were you an idiot with your ex? Because you didn’t know she was gay?”

  He hesitated thoughtfully. “I was an idiot all on my own. I didn’t know she was gay. I knew there was something, even if I didn’t know what it was.”

  “This is none of my business,” D.J. stated. “But I’d like to know, if you feel comfortable in telling me.”

  Scott stretched out along the end of the bed, propping himself up with an elbow. “We started dating when we were just kids,” he explained. “There is no way that I blame myself for being attracted to her or thinking that she’d be perfect for me. She was smart and fun and pretty. We were great friends. Everybody thought we were so lucky to have each other. At first everything seemed fine. She liked holding hands and a quick kiss good-night, but when I began to want more than that, she didn’t respond well.”

  D.J. tried to picture the mismatch of this hot guy and the gorgeous woman who could never be attracted to him.

  “All the other guys were beginning to score with their regular girlfriends,” he said. “Even giving a big discount for lying, I was not making much progress at all.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  He shook his head. “I thought Stephanie was perfect. The problem couldn’t be hers. It had to be mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “I was a fairly confident teenager, but it’s an age of awkwardness. I thought my technique was bad. That I must be doing it wrong. I needed to know how.”

  “How?”

  “So I tried to learn how to be better at it the same way I’d learned everything else. I studied. I read every book and magazine I could get my hands on.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  He raised a hand. “Scout’s honor. I read Playboy and GQ and Cosmo."

  “You read Cosmo?" she asked incredulously.

  “Lots of good advice in Cosmo," he assured her. “All that necking stuff you liked, straight out of the Lust Advisor."

  She laughed. “You really are a good kisser,” she told him.

  “I know. I’ve worked at it.”

  “But it didn’t work with Stevie.”

  “Not so much. But I wouldn’t give up. By the time we were in college, I pretty much pressured her into having sex with me.”

  “Not good,” D.J. said.

  “Bad, seriously bad,” he corrected. “No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, she never truly enjoyed it, she only tolerated it.”

  “But again you didn’t give up.”

  “I was sure that I was simply lousy in bed. I needed to learn how to satisfy her sexually.” He shook his head. “My parents flipped when I got a B in Organic Chemistry. I couldn’t tell them it was because I was too busy studying Female Orgasm.”

  D.J. laughed, she couldn’t help herself.

  “That’s not the worst,” he said. “I decided to get some hands-on training. I deliberately went out to find a hot, experienced woman that could teach me how it’s really done.”

  “A prostitute?”

  “No, I’m way too fastidious for that,” he answered. “I went out during spring break, you know, where all the girls go wild. I picked up the hottest, sexiest beach babe in all of South Padre Island.”

  D.J. felt her body stiffen all over.

  “Nobody needs the details, but suffice to say, the woman blew out every brain cell in my head and left my body wrung out like a dishrag.”

  D.J. was staring at him, wondering. How many times had he been to Padre? How many women had he picked up?

  “I’m telling you this, mostly to explain what happened afterward.”

  “What happened afterward?”

  “I came home and had a talk with my dad. I told him about all the problems that I had with Stephanie and how... how great it was with this girl I met. How I felt as if, somehow, I was a different person with her. A happier, more fulfilled person. I felt like... like I was in love with her. It was crazy. I didn’t even know her. And yet, I had all these feelings for her.”

  D.J.’s brain had gone numb. She could hear every word he was saying, but couldn’t quite take it in.

  “Dad told me not to ignore those feelings. That what happened with her should prove to me that Stephanie and I were wrong for each other. He told me that the best thing for both of us was to break up. That I should wait for a woman who could make me feel the way I felt with the girl from South Padre.”

  Scott sat up.

  “That’s the only time that I can remember when I completely disregarded my father’s advice,” he said. “I was so consumed with my belief that Stephanie and I were perfect for each other, that I refused to hear all evidence to the contrary.”

  D.J. felt almost light-headed. She couldn’t quite make the connection between what she was hearing and what she’d always known was true. It was as if the world had strangely tilted and she wasn’t sure which way to right herself.

  “I don’t want to disregard my dad’s advice anymore,” he said. “D.J., I think you may be the woman that I’ve been waiting for. I realize that we don’t really know each other that well. That we’ve hardly even dated. But I feel this connection to you. I feel like I’ve known you forever and that I’ve just found you again. Do you think we could... perhaps pursue this... this friendship further?”

  She sat staring at him. He noted her expression.

  “I’ve said it already in public and we know the gossips picked right up on it, but I would like to start seeing you, dating you, sleeping with you. I’d like to really be your boyfriend.”

  D.J. had to tell him. She couldn’t let their relationship go one step further without revealing the truth. A long moment of silence passed between them as she tried to gather up her words.

  “What am I doing?” he asked aloud. “I didn’t mean for it all to come out that way. You got out of the hospital this afternoon and you’re on pain medication. I shouldn’t be pushing you. I need to let you get some sleep. We can discuss this tomorrow or the next day. When you�
�re rested. Now what do you need? Pajamas?”

  “Yeah, yeah, pajamas would be nice,” she said.

  She needed to be alone. She needed to be able to think.

  Scott stood up and looked around the room at the mess of boxes.

  “Maybe that box over there,” she suggested, pointing to one next to the dresser.

  Scott was sorting through her clothes as D.J. tried to organize her thoughts. Could that really be how it was? That Scott, who seemed to know everything about how to fine-tune a woman’s body, had learned that in books? That he’d actually bought her fake veneer of sexual sophistication and he’d never recognized her for the silly, reckless virgin that she’d been. How would she confess to being his sexual siren? How could the past be revealed without messing up the present?

  “Here we go,” she heard him say.

  As he turned, something caught on the jewelry box that she’d left on the edge of the dresser. With a crash it spilt out on the floor.

  “Whoops,” he said, tossing the PJs in her direction. He bent down and began refilling the box.

  D.J.’s brow furrowed as she tried to think things through. How could she have gotten it all so wrong? She’d thought he was a player, but he wasn’t. She’d thought he’d taken advantage of her naivety, but he hadn’t even seen it. Their night together had been a terrible, youthful mistake. But it had kept her from ever settling for less. Now she could have everything. The brass ring was being offered, but in order to grasp it, she had to allow the prudish persona in which she’d clothed herself to fall away, revealing the vulnerable naked truth of herself.

  Suddenly intruding upon her thoughts was a silence. It was a strange, ominous silence seeming to come out of nowhere that demanded her attention and filled the small bedroom.

  D.J. looked across the room as, slowly, Scott rose to his feet. He turned to her, his eyes full of questions. It was then that she noticed what was in his hands. It was a broken piece of cheap, gold-colored jewelry. A belly band with a tiny, dangling pink heart.

  Fifty-One

  South Padre Island (Eight years later)