He Said, She Said

by John Decure

  And then, it happened: magic, baby, pure magic. Ophelia was a natural. I marveled at my managerial luck—or hey, maybe it was genius, I told myself once or twice—as our sales doubled in a month’s time.

  Here’s the thing about her instant success, which you might’ve already guessed. Now, I know I told you women couldn’t be trusted, but I’m not saying here that Ophelia is an untrustworthy individual or anything. In fact, she’s a straight shooter all the way. But when I put that girl on the sales floor, I also put her on commission; so all of a sudden, there she was without a set monthly paycheck, no safety net at all. She was freaked out that if she couldn’t make a sale she’d be broke. Ophelia was concerned, put herself through two or three days of pure torture, nervously pitter-pattering about the bikes’ features and pricing, and sweating like a pig in a new navy pantsuit she’d got off the rack at Macy’s. For their part, the cavemen that comprise our usual walk-in public administered some hard knocks to her pretty little head—telling her: hey, babe, cut the class specifications crap, what do I look like? You think I don’t know my bikes? Oh, so you’re some kinda expert ’cause you work here? What you know about bikes I could put in a thimble—that kind of stuff. By the third day, she hadn’t sold a thing and was talking about resuming her grease monkey job. I found her hiding behind the fuel additive rack, crying her eyes out. She asked me what was wrong with her. Why couldn’t she do this? She knew bikes, loved bikes. This should be easy and even fun, but it was neither.

  That’s the very moment I lucked into what has to be the best managerial moment a goof like me will probably ever muster.

  In all honesty, I was staring at her rack as she sniffled and sobbed, wishing I could see more of that fabulous set of lungs. Maybe she took note of my friendly gaze, or maybe it was what I said—which, in all honesty, I pulled right out of my ass, ’cause I was stumped. But here’s what I told her, my lone pearl of wisdom.

  Just be yourself, honey.

  That message, coupled with my prying gaze, must’ve sunk in on her. After that, Ophelia figured out what she really needed to do to get those tires over the curb. Next day, and all that week, she came in a changed woman: killer heels; low-cut tank tops; hip-hugging skirts. No panty lines that these curious eyes could decipher. Wow. Now, she did engage in the usual cycle-talk as needed, but more importantly, she’d laugh at every dumb joke the cavemen told, took all the gee-whiz-yer-quite-a-doll compliments in stride, and smiled till I was afraid her gums would start bleeding.

  All of it was an act, and all of it did the trick.

  It’s like a chain reaction. Men keep buying bikes from Ophelia ’cause they think they’re scoring points with a hot young lady. That makes them feel empowered, enough to picture themselves riding out of here on a bike they only cautiously imagined owning before. Enough to bust out the checkbook in front of the lovely young lady, because what kind of man are you if you can’t back your word?

  Of course, it’s a con. Not just the usual flim-flammy high-pressure-salesy kind of con. You see, Ophelia’s one of those gals who isn’t into men.

  Not that I see anything wrong with that kind of lifestyle. In fact, I’ve got five gals on my current sales force of seven, all of them capable of giving Ophelia a run for her money in the looks department, and only one of them is married. To a man, I mean. Hey—their private lives are their business, is how I choose to see it.

  But isn’t that just too perfect for words?

  So please forgive me for a touch of crudity, here, but yes, sir, I for one know the power of the pussy. It’s made my business the success that it is.

  Thing is, I just don’t like having that same power brought to bear upon me.

  Which is exactly what happened this afternoon, during that slow time between lunch and about the time my early crew knocks off for the day; well after two, but not quite three p.m. Siesta time.

  So, this young woman strides into the showroom and asks for me, which isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence. I was sitting around, doing nothing other than making sure all the people on my payroll were doing something, or at least making it look good, which is a big part of sales psychology as well, you know, looking like a busy shop, a convention of winners and all that bullshit. Here I am, managing Team Winner, wondering if I should make everyone clear their leftovers out of the lunchroom fridge so I could defrost it, ’cause something had been smelling damn funky in there, and oh boy, I didn’t need anybody filing a worker’s comp claim against me due to ingestion of mold spores or some other kind of legal bullcrap employees dream up these days to skip work and make some easy money in recompense.

  Not to complain here, but owning your own business these days is no picnic. People think you got it made ’cause you can call the shots, and I admit, I do like that aspect. But having authority can be a damn tiring prospect; it never lets up. Sometimes, I wish someone else would whiff something rank in that fridge, grab a trash can liner, and just yank the plug out of the wall, start emptying out that sucker. Take some initiative, for God’s sake.

  But getting back to the young woman coming in asking for me—wait a minute, I should actually back up a little more, cause all of this is related to the woman’s visit.

  First, I have to tell you a few things about my ex-wife, Rue.

  What can I say without sounding like a critical jerk, a complete horse’s ass? I don’t know if it’s even possible. Let me just start by saying that when we met nearly twenty-five years ago, LaRue Harrigian was the girl of my dreams. Pretty, a skosh dainty and refined, but not too much the little dolly. Good general attitude about life, a good kid, never full of herself. Always well turned out, nice hair and fingernails, clean teeth. And oh boy, we’re talking great in the sack. Fabuloso. On the flipside, let’s just say that Rue is not the sharpest tack in the box, but she worked hard, cooked dinner every night, kept the place spic-n’-span, and made pretty decent money part-time as a loan processor at a savings and loan on Atlantic. Best of all, she was a Holy Advent of Christ member, which is why both our parents signed off instantly on our union. You see, in our church, you can’t marry outside the congregation, period. If I stopped describing me and Rue right now, it’d be what you’d call a good fit.

  But there’s more. Being that I was still living with my folks when Rue and I first met, and that my old man came from a freight-shipping family back east that, for a century or so, practically minted its own supply of money, I still hoped to have an inheritance when the folks passed on, and marrying right—that is, right in my folks’ eyes, at least—was a pretty big deal at the time. Rue definitely fit the profile, and a few years later, my old man passed and I came into my money, not even a quarter of what I expected by the way. But it was plenty enough to buy the mortgage on our house from the bank outright, take a ridiculously overpriced Great Wall of China motorcycling trip, and start this business up with a down payment on the shop and sales floor and forty grand toward a base of inventory. But I should’ve known that any god who demanded people from a crazy little religion had to get hitched to others from the same crazy little religion lest he damn them to hell for all eternity, well, I should’ve known that that kind of god would probably have a pretty good sense of humor.

  Which He did, ’cause sooner or later our marriage turned into a nightmare.

  That’s because LaRue Harrigian, the perfect wife to end all perfect wives, had what the folks in the head-shrinking business call “issues.” And I mean big ones. Turns out Daddy Harrigian, who was a Holy Advent pastor in the branch over in Norwalk—you can see the cross sticking up from that ugly glass job just off the Santa Ana freeway at Pioneer? Turns out he wasn’t the pillar of the community he’d been passing himself off to be for the better part of forever. Wasn’t really “Daddy” either, just a stepfather that married Rue’s mom when Rue was still a toddler. Now, when I come along and marry Daddy’s daughter like I did, I had to kowtow to the big-stuff minister in the usual ways you’d expect, and a few times I actually even attended s
ervices with Rue. Which means I heard some of the old man’s Sunday sermons, and if I recall correctly, he used to talk about true Christians, counting himself as one, of course, while separating them out from what he called the fad followers.

  Well, I may not be very spiritual, knowing what I do about God and His epic sense of fun and classic, comic timing; and no, I would not lay serious claim to being a true Christian, whatever such a claim may truly entail in terms of possessing actual faith as opposed to an affinity for spouting sanctimonious tripe. But lo and behold, I surely can say with certainty that no man who calls himself a Christian, or a father for that matter, should ever, ever lay a finger on a child for his private, personal gratification.

  And when it came to Rue and her stepdad, fingers were not even the half of it, if you know what I’m saying.

  Poor Rue. I say poor Rue because, you see, that isn’t even the worst of it. That unspeakable nasty stuff with the stepdad went on for a couple years, I think, from middle school till she was in the ninth grade. She couldn’t sleep and had stopped eating by the time she started trying to kill herself. Patches of hair were falling out of her scalp; either that, or she was pulling them out in her sleep without even knowing it. When she finally broke down and told her mama what was going on, Daddy Harrigian came unglued, the spit flying as he called her out before God himself, before the Lord God almighty, as a liar. A liar, he boomed, a heathen sinner. And so on and so forth, the shameless jerk. Beat the crap out of Rue that night, then talked his way out of it when the worthless police came around for a halfhearted round of interviews. Predictably, he blew smoke up everyone’s skirts while tearing his daughter apart, blamed her wild imagination on TV and rock-and-roll music and too many Hostess Twinkies—that’s right, an original spin on the Twinkie Defense, I kid you not.

  Apparently, the cops were only too eager to buy in. Back then, the Catholic Church had not yet imploded from the weight of all those scandals with the molesting priests. Back then, a scared kid’s word generally didn’t hold up against that of a holy man. And even though he’d won, stepdaddy God Boy wasn’t yet done with little Rue.

  What he did was wait to make sure things had cooled down, because evil people tend to be careful people. Meantime, according to Rue, another phony local pastor might’ve took a crack at her, too, but I never heard those details. Anyway, God Boy sent her to this Pastor Molek at their central church over in Bellflower for some intervention. Molek, he was cut from the same fouled oily cloth as Harrigian, though. He so-called “counseled” Rue, privately, gave her special guidance on how to master the temptations of the flesh. That’s right—in private, meaning the hands-on demonstrations came included.

  You can let your imagination fill in the rest on that scum Molek and his ministrations to a young girl fearing familial abandonment and institutional excommunication. A couple years I paid a private investigator to look up Molek, and he found him easily enough, comfortably retired in a planned community in Palm Desert. Has a place right on a golf course, backed up to the fairway on the fourteenth hole.

  Fourteen—about the same age Rue was when old Molek used her twice-misplaced trust to further degrade her.

  Not long ago I played the course, just to get a peek of Molek’s little retreat. A short hole, so I used a three-iron off the tee. Sliced it badly, which got me a nice view of the man himself, sitting in the morning sun as he read a book. I got so close to him I had to wave, and he waved back, the only thing between us a flimsy chain-link fence, maybe a head high. I seriously considered leaping over the thing and throttling him right then, feeling my fingers dig into his neck as he pleaded for mercy—any likes of which he’d long ago failed to impart in any way on my future bride. Then a nurse came out and gave him a handful of pills, staring me down through the chain link till I turned back to the links and my meaningless game. One day in the not too distant future I’ll be visiting Molek again, when that nurse gets an emergency phone call and has to leave work early to tend to some personal business. Just Molek and me, having a private chat. I promise you, I’ll have that three-iron in hand again, and my swing’ll be in fine form, I swear it.

  Poor Rue. I don’t even know how she survived into adulthood, but she’s a tough gal, I guess. Time went by and she held a lot of stuff in, kept the demons at bay, because it wasn’t till we’d been married seventeen years and had a son and a daughter of our own that a lot of these so-called issues started popping up like horror-movie zombies coming out of the grave. One minute, she’s too shy to show herself to me naked in our own bedroom; the next, she’s dressing like a hooker to go out to the supermarket. Sometimes in the bedroom, I was banned from even touching her; other times, she couldn’t keep her hands off me. Rivers of tears would flow one morning, out of the blue; but that night, she’d be as silent as a monk. Rue could be the world’s greatest mom to our little girl, Mindy, one day, helping with homework, baking cookies together, fixing their hair. Next day, she’d be throwing Mindy’s clothes all over the front lawn, screaming that Mindy was a slut, because… Mindy had gone and talked to a boy at Sunday school, or something like that.

  Still, I loved Rue. But Holy Jesus, she was a wreck.

  And to think now, looking back, that I was the genius who got her a referral to that quack Donald Fallon out in Beverly Hills. He diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder, sounded very official when me and Mindy would come in for conjoint sessions with Rue. His office impressed me, too, what with the dark green carpet and duck-hunting oil paintings on the walls, the brass knickknacks, live ferns, the jailbait receptionist. I didn’t object to paying for the conjoint sessions, or paying for Dr. Don’s individual sessions with Mindy, which he insisted on conducting, even though I couldn’t see any appreciable results. My girls still seemed pretty unhappy about any number of things in their lives. So when Rue got creeped out by Dr. Don on account of the private sessions he had with her, I didn’t really much listen. Life was hard, and talking about it never seemed like such a hot way to fix it, to me. Plus with Rue’s history, how could I blame her for getting the willies from another male authority figure? It seemed apropos, the kind of thing her damaged mind would conjure up even if it weren’t there, and I thought it was enough that she stopped going to see him at her regular time. Maybe she was learning to stand on her own two feet better, I thought. Good for her.

  So yes, I was surprised when a year or so later she started going out every Saturday afternoon, late, for a hair appointment, or to shop. She never paid that kind of attention to her hair, never liked shopping much. I was still paying for Mindy’s sessions with Dr. Fallon, but Rue had sworn him off a long time ago. And Rue was taking better care of herself suddenly. I thought maybe she was having an affair, or joined a cult. I really didn’t know what to think, to be honest.

  So I hired a private eye, a good one, black guy who’d helped me years before when my parts manager was stealing inventory and altering our bookkeeping to cover it up. That investigator did a hell of a job for me, so I engaged his services again, told him to tail Rue on her Saturday afternoon outings. Could not believe it when he told me where Rue was going.

  To Dr. Don’s office.

  Imagine: I was still writing the pompous jerk a big check every month for Mindy’s sessions, some of them which were conjoint with Rue. Which means that he was fucking my wife behind my back and billing me for it. (I know, I know: now who’s the jerk?).

  The first thing I did was tell Mindy she was never going back there. If Dr. Don would do that to Rue, who could know whether he’d try something with Mindy? She immediately got disgusted and told me I was nuts; the guy was repulsive to her and had too high an opinion of himself, and besides, he seemed more interested in Mom when she came in for conjoint. So I was relieved—at least it hadn’t come to that with my little girl, who was now a legal adult and living with her boyfriend, by the way. Mindy could take care of herself, thank God.

  When I confronted Rue, she completely fell apart. It was like she was a
china doll and I was the ball peen hammer that smashed her to bits. Now, Fallon, he’s the one who primed her downfall, hurt her, even—creepy stuff where he’d try to physically dominate her, stuff he’d worked in over a period of time, like he was conditioning Rue to be his slave. And I swore I’d make him pay, but that was no consolation for Rue and the condition he left her in. Night after night, she’d curl herself into a ball on the closet floor and just sit there in the dark, rocking back and forth against the back wall, thump, thump, thump. I was mad as hell at her for what she’d done, but I knew most of her history and Mother of Jesus, she was in such obvious pain it was hard not to feel for her.

  Within a few days of the big reveal, Rue started drinking. First it was a couple glasses of wine at night, then the whole bottle. Then two a night. I had to stop stocking our wine cellar, but by that time she was spending heavy time in the poolside gazebo out back, running through the bottles I kept in my little bar by the barbecue. For a week or so she made herself margaritas, and when the tequila was all gone, she switched to martinis. I came out there late one night ’cause I heard a splash and didn’t want her to drown, found her lying sideways on the step in the shallow end, staring up at the stars, rocking an empty quart bottle of Chivas like a newborn in her forearm. I’m not a person, she said to me. I am less than a person.

  By then I knew the damage was done and we were finished. So I hired a lawyer. Actually, two lawyers. One for the divorce. The other to sue the shit out of Donald Fallon, MD.

  Which brings me back to what I was saying about women, how you can’t really trust them.

  Take my daughter Mindy. Like a good dad, I warned her off Dr. Don, enough said—am I right? But now, since the divorce, the girl she barely speaks to me.