Jenn: She’s gotta like Wings. Everybody liked them.
She hit return and began to type a new line. She got as far as Or what about John Len—before her message was interrupted by his.
David: Nope. Not “Silly Love Songs.” Not Lennon’s solo stuff. She called “Imagine” BORING once.
Jennifer didn’t know what to say to this. How about: That’s what you get for leaving me after nearly three years together, running away from our future plans and marrying a little twit five years younger than you. Tempting as it would be to fling this back at him, she refrained.
David: Anyway, I’ve gotta get back to work. I wanted to run some places on campus by you, but I’ve got a better idea now.
She waited as he typed a new line, literally holding her breath and wondering what his “better idea” would be.
David: Mitch e-mailed me a list of possible bars, restaurants, dining halls and stuff. But it’s been a while since I visited C-IL-U. Have you been there recently?
Jenn: No.
David: Maybe we could check it out together. It’s been so long, I’m not sure what’d be good anymore. Plus, it’d be nice to catch up in person before the reunion, maybe even take a trip to Russia.
Translation from David-Code: Visit their restaurant. The Winter Palace. The one that served the best Chicken Kiev west of St. Petersburg.
Oh, God. Go back to campus? With HIM?
Jenn: Is it still there?
David: I think so. I HOPE so. I know it’s a lot of time to be gone in one day, but if you’re able to, I’d really appreciate your help. Your husband wouldn’t mind, would he? You hanging out with an old friend for a few hours?
Michael wouldn’t be aware of the degree of danger—that was what she thought. But that wasn’t what she typed.
Jenn: No. Would Marcia?
David: Nah.
The reply came back perhaps too quickly, and she was confused by the turn their messaging had taken. It was followed by a line far more confounding, however.
David: It’s just an innocent get-together to scout locations. And we could meet somewhere we both know well. At the front doors of the library, maybe. How far of a drive is it for you? 2 hours?
Jenn: A little less. You?
David: About 3. But it’d be interesting to see some of those campus hot spots again.
With her?
Jenn: Well, yes…
He didn’t wait for her to construct an excuse.
David: What are your Fridays like?
Jenn: Not good. I have yoga.
David: Yoga? WTF?!
Even in text form, he couldn’t disguise his shock. In his defense, she’d been pretty anti-floor-exercise in college. Unless he counted the number of times they’d had sex on his sleeping bag in his parents’ basement.
Jenn: It’s for health reasons.
She didn’t bother explaining she’d had to do something to counterbalance her techie side. She lived so much of her life in her head. And, besides, her doctor had ordered her to do it to “manage her anxiety,” which she always tried to keep hidden. But her blood pressure told the truth, so she’d had no choice but to sign up for classes.
Jenn: I’ve been going every Friday morning for the past couple of years. It’s a nonnegotiable part of my routine.
This, of course, wasn’t strictly true. She met her friends an hour before yoga was set to begin. She actually left the Indigo Moon Café in time to make it to the gym only about once every third week. But her ex-boyfriend didn’t need to know this, particularly since her husband didn’t.
David: Well, you always were flexible.
She swallowed and tried to push away the memories that pummeled her at these words, not to mention his insinuations. She didn’t answer.
David: So, okay—not Fridays. How about a Thursday then? Not next week. I’ve got a presentation scheduled, but maybe the next one?
Jenn: Bluetooth?
She was, of course, aware that even though he wasn’t living in California he was still working full time in the high-tech computer world. But she could only guess at what, specifically, he was doing.
David: You bet’cha.
She could almost hear his pride.
David: I’m with Syn-Sig Tech. We specialize in GPS receivers, but I’m also working on a project with our Swedish branch on internal notebook cards. You’d love this stuff, Jenn. You’re still in the field, aren’t you?
Oh, how best to answer him? Much as she would’ve loved to embellish, she opted for honesty.
Jenn: Yes, but I’m just designing basic Web pages at home. Mostly for local businesses.
She didn’t add that these easy jobs had allowed her the autonomy to be a stay-at-home mom, which had been a priority for her, particularly when the girls were little. Or that they needed her income to supplement Michael’s teaching salary. She especially didn’t mention how much she’d dreamed of being truly innovative in the field or how, maybe, she might have lived up to her programming potential if she and David had stayed together.
David: I’ll bet you do great work. E-mail me a few links to your projects. I’d like to see them.
Jenn: Sure. Thanks.
Like hell she would.
David: And, if you help me out with the reunion, maybe I’ll bring you a USB dongle as a gift. Ours are ice-cream-cone shaped, and they come in special neon colors….
Like condoms. Sure, David. Talk dirty to me. He had a way of making even talk of flash drives sound filthy. She squeezed her eyes shut and typed:
Jenn: That won’t be necessary.
Then she pulled her fingers away from the keyboard.
David: C’mon, it’ll be fun. Would two weeks from now work for you? Thursday the 23rd?
She knew she had nothing special on her calendar for that day. But should she drive all the way back to C-IL-U? To their college? Just to see David again? She needed to buy time before answering.
Jenn: I’ll have to get back to you. Let me check our family calendar and verify a few appointments. I’ll e-mail you next week.
David: Thanks. And, Jenn?
Jenn: Yeah?
David: I’ve missed talking to you.
Jenn: Same here.
She clicked off their connection and took several of those deep-cleansing yoga breaths, which supposedly removed toxins and prevented hyperventilation. But would it release all her pent-up feelings about David Saxon from her body?
Not likely.
As much as she didn’t want to have to confess what’d been going on to Bridget and Tamara, she needed to. She had to talk to somebody about this. Thank God tomorrow was Friday.
She wasn’t sweating quite so profusely anymore, but her skin was clammy and her hands still shook. It was a strange sensation, right down to her fingertips—like clipped wings regenerating but still not long enough or strong enough for flight. And, wow, was the process ever painful.
David’s leaving had swept the wind from beneath her in college. She’d felt so unbelievably deflated, all the progress she’d made toward confidence and self-assurance having blown away in his absence. Being no longer sure of her footing on the ground, she was unable to lift off and fly after graduation. Not like she’d hoped.
Michael was David’s opposite and, perhaps, too far a swing in the pendulum of relationships. She’d desperately wanted someone who didn’t remind her of David at all, and Michael fit that bill like no other:
He was flowery in his speech and mannerisms, whereas David was direct to the point of bluntness.
Poetic-linguistic whereas David was mathematical-logical.
Sappily romantic vs. sexual, bordering on kinky.
Technicolor vs. black and white.
Openly loving vs. secretive, skeptical and shielded.
Michael was so much easier to love than most men, and he clearly cared about her, too. So, Jennifer didn’t know why she was still drawn to a challenging man she hadn’t seen or even spoken to over a phone line in eighteen years.
&nb
sp; No. That was a lie. She knew exactly why.
She had loved David first. He’d flipped on her switch and never turned it off. On a certain level, she was as binary in her thinking as the processing chips inside her HP tower—a characteristic that David fully understood in a way her husband didn’t and couldn’t.
And she wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if David, intentionally or not, used this knowledge against her. He was capable of a great many trespasses.
David, unlike Michael, didn’t exaggerate, didn’t embroider. Not ever. David had once called her a “talented mute who could type fast,” and he meant this literally. Yet, she could believe his declaration, even though it bordered on unkind. A part of her almost reveled in the sting of it, craved the tangibility of the insult.
She Googled her alma mater’s home page. So many acronyms. C-IL-U (the school—Central Illinois University). TJH (the dorm—Thomas Jefferson Hall). CPU (the club—Carnal Pundits Unlimited).
Seeing snapshots of the places she’d loved in this isolated, two-dimensional forum was painful, too. A part of her still existed in that world. If she squinted, she could almost see her body walking around in the pictures. In many of them, holding hands with David. But that Jenn had been neglected…betrayed not just by an old lover, but by herself.
Realizations like these kept her up at night. They lived in memory’s infamy and tended to pop into her consciousness at the oddest possible moments. While paying bills. Or driving to yoga. Or cleaning up Michael’s latest morning disaster. Of course, IM’ing with David again had made it worse. They’d been so right for each other. But still he’d walked away. Lame excuses and all.
She’d cry about it if she could, but she’d shed her tears decades ago. So, instead, she just listened to the crickets inside her computer tower with their twitters and beeps. She could’ve sworn they were chirping an old song she’d heard again at the café not long ago. Carole King. “It’s Too Late.”
Was it? And for which relationship?
5
The Trio
Friday, September 10
The café was hopping at nine A.M., but the ladies, sequestered at their favorite corner table, were oblivious to the concerns of their fellow Indigo Moon patrons.
Not only were none of them late on this sunny and rather temperate morning, all of them were at least ten minutes early. (Even Bridget, who tended to cut things close.)
Each woman had found the week an exercise in fluctuating emotions, discovering the dividing line between titillating and terrifying to be precariously narrow. All had an incident to share—and advice to seek—but each worried about how her friends would perceive her.
Tamara spoke up before the other two. “Okay. We’ve gotta talk.”
Jennifer gave an owlish blink, cleared her throat and said, “I know.”
Bridget bobbed her head. Catching Tamara’s eye and twisting her lips upward on one side, she added, “I think we could use some brain wave energy first.”
Their waitress brought them a tray of their usual mocha lattes—crafted to individual specifications—and a platter of grilled double-chocolate-chip muffins. Bridget, in desperate need of comfort food, did not concern herself with calorie counting or portion control on this day, nor did Jennifer claim lack of appetite.
As David Gates and the rest of Bread crooned “Make It with You” on seventies XM radio, the women (immersing themselves in carbs of both the aural and oral variety) devoured the muffins with a voraciousness fitting a pack of Survivor contestants at their final, prevote buffet.
“That helped,” Tamara commented. “But I had a…weird day yesterday.” She squinted at Jennifer and Bridget, remembering Aaron’s return of the trimmer to her house, his visit to her kitchen and the peculiar conversation that followed. How much should she tell her friends?
“Oh, God! Me too!” exclaimed Bridget, brushing crumbs from her lips and chin. Muffins or no muffins, she’d eaten one of Dr. Luke’s heavenly cannoli at the dental office yesterday afternoon and remained incapable of getting that taste out of her mouth.
“Me three,” murmured Jennifer, thinking, of course, about her IM session with David the morning before. Then louder, “Really weird.”
“What happened with you?” Tamara asked Jennifer, figuring if she quizzed the others first she’d get a clue as to how much to reveal.
“David instant messaged me,” Jennifer told them. “He wants us to meet. In two weeks.” She gulped two long, consecutive swallows of her latte. “Should I do it?”
Bridget crumpled her napkin, trapping a few errant chocolaty morsels. “What did he say? What led up to this?”
Jennifer explained about scouting on campus for a party location and tried to put into words the pull of a man who wooed her with multiples of thirteen and talk of Bluetooth devices. Her friends were understandably perplexed.
Tamara frowned. “When he left you, at the end of college, did he explain why he was breaking things off? Talk with you about it personally?”
Jennifer shook her head. “But he faxed me a note a week later.”
Bridget pivoted toward Tamara for confirmation. “Did she just say he faxed her?”
“She did,” Tamara said. Then, to Jennifer, “What did this post-breakup fax say?”
At this point, Jennifer had to careen a little bit away from the truth. As always, there was what David said, and there was what David meant. Outsiders could never decode his words correctly.
“He explained that he needed space to make a few decisions. That he didn’t want to lead me on if he couldn’t follow through. He apologized for not being strong enough to tell me this in person, but he hoped I’d forgive him someday. That it was all for the best.”
“Did you believe him?” Bridget asked her.
“No. N-Not entirely.”
“Then why do you think he really did it?” Tamara said.
“I think his sister got into his head.” Jennifer took a deep breath and downed the rest of her latte. “I think that bitch had an ulterior motive.”
Bridget blinked. Unlike Tamara, Jennifer only swore on rare occasions and usually under her breath. Plus, these curses were directed inward. Jennifer didn’t make a habit of name-calling so, to Bridget’s mind, David’s sister must’ve been one serious Medusa.
Tamara’s eyes widened as she heard this, too. Her gaze and Bridget’s locked across the table before Tamara, not about to let social niceties prevent her from getting the dirt on the ex-boyfriend, turned her attention fully on Jennifer. “Huh. Wanna elaborate?”
Jennifer inhaled deeply and cleared her throat, unaccustomed to delivering long speeches or sharing such personal stories, but she was willing to make a partial exception this time. “Sandra is five years younger than her brother and me. David and Sandra’s parents didn’t have the best marriage. Not so much shouting and overt aggravation”—unlike her own family, Jennifer thought—“as it was a continual freeze out.” She shivered remembering the war being waged in front of her eyes during her few visits to their house. The battleground of raised eyebrows, clenched jaws, deadly silence during mealtimes. Or worse, the forced joviality. “They had a really stiff, undemonstrative family life and, as the only kids in the house, David and his sister formed a special bond. Almost like a sibling pact, actually. It was an unspoken decision to ignore their parents’ coldness.”
“So, the two of them are pretty close,” Bridget said.
Jennifer nodded. “Well, Sandra came up for Little Brothers and Sisters weekend one time, after David and I had been together for about eight months, but before I’d met his parents. Even though I was really nice to her and showed her around the dorm and made her s’mores, she moped around the whole time and kept looking at me like I was the devil incarnate. David tried to tell me that she was just overwhelmed, a small-town girl on the big college campus. But I’d overheard her telling him that he seemed like ‘a different David’ when I was around.”
“She was threatened by you,” Tamara inse
rted. “And she thought you were going to come between her and her only family ally.”
“That’s really sad,” Bridget said.
“Oh, yeah. I pitied her at first, too. Then summer vacation came and David invited me home with him for the weekend.” Jennifer shuddered at the memory. “We were between our sophomore and junior years in college then. Sandra had just finished her freshman year of high school. In her words, since David got to have ‘a friend’ stay overnight, she should be able to have one, too. Her parents agreed, and Sandra’s ‘friend’ was a flirty little airhead named Marcia. A teen as different from Sandra’s brooding, manipulative behavior as humanly possible. Maybe because Sandra wished she could be as easygoing and bubbly as her friend, or maybe just because Sandra could control her so well, she had a soft spot in her frozen heart for Marcia.”
“And David was attracted to her?” Tamara asked.
“Not at all.” Jennifer paused. “Well, not at first. At first he thought she was a dork. Marcia had no academic talents. She was very much a C student, which David—being brilliant—looked down upon. But she was lighthearted, made Sandra less grim to be around and even I thought she was kind of fun. David told me how much he appreciated seeing his sister happy, so he continued to encourage their friendship.”
Bridget leaned forward. “But?”
“But Sandra was just setting up her master plan. She wanted David and Marcia in her life, and she wanted me out of it. So she convinced Marcia that David had a secret crush on her but couldn’t act on it because of me. And anytime David was home from college, Sandra would parade Marcia around in front of him. We both thought it was funny and juvenile at first, but as the girls got older—high school sophomores, then juniors—it started getting more serious.
“The last time I was there, it was spring break of our senior year in college. Not even two months before he broke things off with me. Marcia was seventeen by then, tall and pretty. She’d had a few short-term relationships that I think Sandra managed to talk her out of, and she still held a torch for David. Sandra knew David and I had been making future plans. We weren’t ready to get married yet, but we were talking about getting jobs in the same area, putting a deposit down on an apartment, moving in together. But Sandra just wouldn’t let up on the Marcia thing, and David had stopped complaining about how irritating it was that Marcia had this crush on him and was always baking pies and things with Sandra at their house. He said it was like having ‘another little sister,’ and I, convinced he and I had a life together, tried to ignore the way his sister kept working to exclude me.
Friday Mornings at Nine Page 7
