by Candy Caine
“Sir, would you like to order?” The waiter interrupted.
They had forgotten he was standing there.
“I’ll have a turkey club with coffee. Thanks.”
“What good news?” Lynne prodded.
Carla began to beam again and picked up where she’d left off. “Martin and I had a big breakthrough this weekend.”
Richard felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule.
Since Carla was facing Lynne with Richard by her side, she didn’t notice his smile die and his face pale when she said that. But Lynne did. She suddenly wanted to tell Carla not to continue with her confession.
Unaware of the drama unfolding around her, Carla continued. “Martin told me that I looked great and couldn’t keep his hands off of me. It was as if he finally saw me for the first time in months.”
“Who knows,” Lynne began tightly, “this could be the beginning of the end of his cheating.”
“I don’t know about that.” Carla said.
“Why not?” Lynne asked. “He’s got a great wife at home, why wander?”
“Richard, what do you think?” Carla asked.
“Huh?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Carla asked, turning to look at him. She grew alarmed at the sight of his face. “Richard? Is something wrong?”
“Ah, yeah. I just remembered I’ve got to get back to the office.”
“You’re not staying to eat?” Carla asked, her brows furrowed with concern.
“I’m afraid not,” Richard gritted, placing a twenty on the table to cover his meal.
“At least wait until the waiter brings your sandwich and have it wrapped to go,” Lynne suggested. Poor guy, she thought.
“No time,” was all Richard said before rushing away.
“What was that all about?” Carla asked Lynne.
“Maybe he didn’t want to hear about you and Martin.”
Carla pondered that reply. It never had bothered him before. Suddenly she knew that something had changed between her and Richard. Guiltily she recalled the passionate kiss after his office party and the erotic dream she had the other night. She pushed the thought away, reminding herself that she was a married woman. A woman trying to win back her husband’s love.
Lynne brought her back on point. “I’m glad things went well with Martin.”
“You were right. I should never have let myself go.”
“I know.”
“Thanks.”
“For what, Carla?”
“For being there with me. For being my friend. I don’t know—everything,” Carla said feeling her eyes growing moist.
“Hey, that’s what friends do. They stick together,” Lynne told her as she patted her hand. “Don’t cry. You’ll make your salad salty.”
The waiter put the dishes on the table. He hadn’t even noticed that Richard wasn’t there.
“By the way, I almost forgot. How are things going with Haywood?”
Lynne smiled, her whole face lighting up. “Where should I begin?”
“How about at the beginning?”
“He’s very sweet. Definitely not like the other guys I’ve dated. Even has all his teeth. There’s a boyish quality to him I just love. And he’s never been married and doesn’t have a dozen kids.”
“Now, that’s a plus.”
Carla knew her friend was referring to the last guy she dated. He had told her he was divorced and had a kid from that marriage.
What he’d neglected to tell her was that it was his third divorce and that he was the father of five other kids.
Six months into their relationship, all of his ex-wives decided to go on vacation at the same time and he had to watch his entire brood, ranging in age from ten down to eighteen months. Needless to say, Lynne saw him in a different light after that.
Lynne continued dreamily, “Well, Saturday we saw you at the Scarborough Fair. On Sunday we took a drive to the zoo. Believe it or not, I had a blast. I had cotton candy and we took pictures together in one of those booths.”
She opened her purse and removed several strips of small photos.
“You make a great-looking couple.”
“Yeah, we do, don’t we?” Lynne agreed. “Of course, you’re not looking at all the pictures.”
“You mean the ones you took out where he was making faces,” Carla said grinning.
“Yeah, those. By the way, was it me or did you notice how strangely Haywood looked at Martin?”
“I did notice and Martin got very defensive when I asked him about it. Did you mention something to Haywood, as well?”
“He told me he thought he recognized him from some place. I got the feeling it was more than that. However he didn’t want to discuss it, either.”
“I guess it’s really a small world, after all,” Carla admitted before she attacked her salad with knife and fork.
Lynne broke the silence. “Doing anything special for Christmas, Carla?”
“No. We’ll just exchange gifts and I’ll watch Martin watch TV. How’s about you?”
“Just going to snuggle with Haywood all day.”
“Don’t we live exciting lives,” Carla said.
Both women laughed.
Chapter Nineteen
Richard had to get out of that diner as quickly as he could.
As he listened to Carla talk about Martin, he could feel his heart breaking. He didn’t have to be a genius to read between the lines. Thinking of her in Martin’s arms sickened him. How he wished Carla had never started to lose weight. As she shed each pound, she moved further from his grasp. And now it seemed that he was going to lose her for good.
It just wasn’t fair. It sucked big time.
He’d just been struck by lightning twice—zapped straight through his damn heart again. What the devil was wrong with him? Was he a magnet for misery? Why had he allowed himself to get involved with a woman he knew he could never possess? He knew it was stupid from the get-go, and yet, he did it with his eyes wide open. With Courtney, his fiancée, he never saw it coming—or had he merely refused to believe all the signs? Despite all the hours he had spent debating that question, the jury was still out.
It had been more than just having his friend, Jared’s, name included in her Fave Five. Her running to hug him whenever he came over to see Richard at the place they were sharing, or accidentally bumping into Jared—twice. The way she looked at Jared when she didn’t think Richard was looking. Maybe because he truly loved her he hadn’t been able to connect all the dots back then. If love was an acceptance of all of another’s faults and short-comings, then where did love end and stupidity begin? According to his mother he was looking for love in all the wrong houses of worship. Had his family’s coolness toward Courtney played a part in his losing her?
When he first brought her home to meet his parents, it was far from love at first sight. Perhaps that night was the beginning of the end of their relationship. His mother took one look at Courtney with her willowy shape, long blonde hair, large violet eyes and summed her up in one word, “Oy!” Mrs. Stein, looking at Courtney through the lens of history, saw her as a Cossack trying to steal another Jew from the tribe of Abraham.
After the dinner, Richard took Courtney home to her parents’ house. They had been looking for an apartment since they had gotten engaged. That night was one of the times he’d wished he’d had a place where they could be together. When he returned to his own parents’ house around two in the morning, he found his mother waiting up for him. She had encamped in his father’s easy chair, dressed in her cotton paisley bathrobe. Her hair was wrapped in toilet paper to prevent it from getting messed while she slept. Why she bothered to wrap it was a mystery to him. She slept like a mummy in a coffin, arms folded across her chest, never moving. When Richard was six, he came into her bedroom and thought she was dead. He ran to get her pocket mirror and placed it under her nose to check if she was still breathing.
His mother’s being still awake could not
be a good omen. He soon found out how right he was when she metaphorically blasted him with both barrels of her shotgun. Her verbal barrage was peppered with all the Yiddish expressions she was able to remember from his grandmother, which, thankfully, were only a few.
“Why are you still up, Mom?”
“Waiting for Elijah.”
“It’s not Passover yet.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I was waiting for you.”
“No need. I’m a big boy now.”
“We need to talk.”
“Can’t we do that tomorrow? It’s late and I’m tired.”
“She isn’t pregnant, is she?”
“Who?” Richard heard himself ask, knowing very well to whom his mother was referring.
She rolled her eyes toward heaven, a habit she did whenever she thought he was acting stupid. “That blonde shiksa, that’s who.”
“She has a name, Mom. It’s Courtney. Get used to using it, because we’re getting married.”
“So, she is pregnant.”
“No!”
“Good,” she said and grinned like she did when she was hatching some hair-brained scheme.
“Why? What are you up to?”
“I’m just happy. You can still dump her.”
Richard felt like a dormant volcano at the point of becoming active. His pressure was skyrocketing and despite the fact he didn’t want to allow her to push his buttons, he felt himself losing control.
“I love Courtney, Mom. I don’t want to lose her. End of conversation,” he said turning away from her.
“What’s the matter? There are no Jewish girls left?”
Turning back, he said, “No. There are none that please me. We’ve already taken this route, Mom. It’s a dead end.”
“Tell me again, Richard. Why don’t you like Jewish girls?”
“Aside from the fact that the first thing that comes out of their mouth after they learn your name is what do you do for a living so they can assess how much money you make a year?”
“Jena Gould wasn’t like that,” his mother countered quickly.
“We have nothing in common.”
“What does that matter? At least I’d have Jewish grandchildren.”
Finally the real reason for the conversation was now out in the open. Richard should have known. Judaism was a matriarchal religion. Only children born of Jewish women were considered Jewish. Courtney was Lutheran and despite the fact that Richard was Jewish, their children would not be.
“Children are children no matter what silly religious tag you attach to them. Look, I’m tired. We can just as easily argue about this tomorrow,” he said and walked toward the steps.
“I’ll put my head in the oven,” she declared.
“Go ahead. It’s an electric oven. You’ll burn all that toilet paper on your head.”
Richard’s father hadn’t approved of his choice in a life’s partner, either, but he let his wife be his mouthpiece. Even if he’d tried to speak, he’d never be able to get a word in, anyway, so his father retreated to the safety of the den whenever the verbal assault begun. Therefore, it was with his mother that Richard continued to verbally joust over the next several months.
Things concerning Courtney’s hook-up with Richard wasn’t any more hunky dory in the Redmond household than they were in the Steins. The only difference was that Mr. and Mrs. John Redmond were closet anti-Semites. It killed them that their only daughter was going to besmirch the gene pool and give them impure grandchildren, but they kept it to themselves. In their hearts they hoped that if they didn’t seem negative, which often tended to have an adverse affect, she’d eventually come to her senses and change her mind.
When Courtney didn’t seem to be any closer to having an epiphany and seeing the light, the Redmonds felt compelled to start planning her engagement party. This event should have been listed in the Guinness Book of Records under “The Most Outrageous Celebration”. A person having come in off the streets would have thought he’d wandered into a battle engagement with both families encamped on either side of a walkway. There was no mingling and little interaction between the Steins and their relatives and those of the Redmond’s. One of Courtney’s second cousins accidentally ventured across the great divide and barely escaped with his dignity. Richard’s Aunt Bella couldn’t understand the concept that if you talk about a person standing two feet away, they will hear you.
Richard feared what the wedding ceremony would be like after barely surviving the engagement party and its aftershock. He never got to find out because two weeks prior to the ceremony, Courtney and Jared, his closest friend and best man, fled to Las Vegas and got married by an Elvis Presley look alike in one of the small chapels that dot the Strip.
His mother tried to console him. “It’s all for the best. What do you expect from a shiksa with no upbringing?” she confidently said. He was certain she now felt vindicated about how she felt about Courtney.
He could just imagine what she’d say if she knew about his romantic disaster with Carla, whom he assumed wasn’t Jewish, either. After all, he thought wryly, how could she be if he was attracted to her? There was no excuse that he could hide behind when it came to Carla. She’d told him right at the starting line that she was married and was trying to save her marriage. In fact, she thought having coffee with him was like cheating on her husband, at first.
He wanted to be her friend—or at least that’s what he told himself and that’s where he should have kept their relationship. She seemed to be able to keep their relationship platonic, so why couldn’t he? Was it a flaw in his character? Could it be he had some weird psychological problem, whereby he was only attracted to women with whom relationships were doomed to disaster?
Richard had to be honest with himself. He was drawn to Carla from the moment he first peered down into her soft, doe-like eyes. It wasn’t just lust—though he longed to ease his arousal in her warm, soft body— but more like a kindred or spiritual connection. He felt a unique closeness toward her that he could not fathom any more than he could explain the riddle of life. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her as she spoke about her unhappy marriage. He wanted more than anything to mend her aching heart and love her the way a woman like her should be loved.
As a result, he thought of ways to spend every spare moment with her. He’d come up with the crazy notion that if she saw him all the time, he’d begin to grow on her.
This was fantasy at its best. After all, wasn’t she striving to win back her husband, for God’s sake? There would never be any time for him. He had to face it. She’d never be his.
Richard had been walking aimlessly since he’d left Carla and Lynne at the diner. His mind was drowning in a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts and emotions. As the noise in his head became deafening, he had the sudden urge to get stinking drunk. It might be only temporary, but at least he could get his mind off Carla and have some inner peace.
The bar he wandered into looked like a dive. Even in the middle of the day it was dark and so smoky that Richard’s eyes began to tear up within seconds of his entry. His clothes were going to reek for a week. He walked toward the bar and sat down on an old beat-up looking wooden barstool that was probably sat on by some caveman.
On his left sat a middle-aged man who might have been there for the entire past week. The tan trench coat he wore was as creased as his waxen face. His red-lined bulbous nose reminded Richard of a worn road map, while his glassy red-rimmed eyes seem fixated on a bottle of Scotch standing on a shelf behind the bartender.
There was one other man perched on a stool farther down who was engaged in a lively conversation on his cell phone. Though he swiped at the air making furious hand gestures, no one paid him any attention.
Perfect, Richard thought. Hardly a chance of meeting someone who knew him here.
Though he’d wanted to shut down his mind, Richard found himself replaying every word Carla had said at lunch. Her happiness of nearing the goal she’d set was like
needles pricking his flesh.
Martin didn’t deserve her. And from what he could infer from all the talks he’d had with Carla, Martin never had. She was the kind of woman who should have a guy who loved her—and only her. This love should be limitless. She should come first, second and third.
It would be that way with him. However, he had to face it, that was a dream that would never come true. From the look of things, Carla was still very much in love with her husband.
Richard held the cold glass against his forehead. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! He was furious with himself for being such a romantic fool. When was he going to stop chasing women he could never have? He cursed himself. What had happened was his own damn fault. He’d never told her how he felt about her. But then, why would he? She was married.
Still, you led her to believe you were only interested in being her friend. Maybe, just maybe, had you told her how you cared she might have looked at you differently.
He should have advised her that Martin would always cheat on her and that she’d be competing with nameless other women for the rest of her married life. Damn! This was all water under the bridge. Bridge? What bridge? It was more like a whirlpool and he’d gotten sucked up and was going under, drowning in his own self-pity.
Richard was halfway through his second Scotch when a tall, attractive-looking red haired woman sat down next to him.
“Want some company?” she purred in a sultry come-on voice.
He shook his head and chugged down the rest of his drink. “I was just leaving.”
Walking outside into the hot sun, a solution to his problem came to him. Perhaps it was time to find a cooler place to live. They needed lawyers in New York, too. He trudged back to where he’d left his car.
Chapter Twenty
Jessie Thompson had watched as Jake deteriorated with each passing day, fearing he’d hurt himself if she didn’t come up with a way to raise the money he needed for the bookie. Thus far, by selling the last pieces of jewelry her mother had left her, they had been able to make two payments on the interest only. But now the bookie wanted more and was threatening Jake again. She didn’t want to lose Jake. Her love for him gave her reason to get out of bed every morning. What would she do without him?
