Bethel's Meadow

by Shultz, Gregory

  “The steaks are done,” she said during a commercial break. “I’m just waiting on the baked potatoes now. It shouldn’t be too long.”

  For the rest of the first half we sat there drinking and watching the game, just like two old friends. Every time Dwight Howard dunked, or when Jameer Nelson sank a three-pointer, Sam would pump her fist and give me a high-five. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and by halftime I was cheering along with her.

  “Okay,” she said when the halftime buzzer sounded, “let’s eat and maybe we can get back on this couch again by the third quarter.”

  I was served a sumptuous feast. The steak, an eight-ounce filet, was out of this world (Sam told me she’d obtained the steaks from the same source that supplied Ruth’s Chris Steak House). I never knew that a damned baked potato could taste so delicious, but this one surely did. She served mushrooms and garlic butter with the steak. Along with the red wine I’d uncorked to go with the meal, this was one of the best dining experiences I could recall having in a while.

  Whoever said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach must have fallen in love with Dr. Samantha Fleming at some point.

  During the meal I complimented her on the food and drink, which elicited a prideful and nearly childlike smile from her. I knew she wanted to needle me about my personal life, but I just kept the compliments coming. Not only about the food but also about the drapes, the carpet, the wet bar down the hall, the water fountains in the backyard, the elegant chandeliers, and the fancy wine glasses. When I ran out of household objects to compliment her on, I told her I liked the highlights in her hair, that I liked her nose, her delicate cheekbones, the way she walked, the way she talked . . . Hell, I was so drunk by then that I can barely remember what I was saying. Finally she put a stop to it.

  “Let’s go back to the game,” she said. “At the end of the third quarter I’ll bring out dessert.”

  The Magic were in a close contest. They had blown a big halftime lead and Dwight Howard was in foul trouble. None of their three-pointers were dropping into the bucket, and it was looking bad. When the third quarter ended the Magic were down by five. Sam got up and ran back to the kitchen. She returned two minutes later with two plates and dessert spoons.

  “This is my homemade flan,” she said. I’d never had flan before, but with caramel sauce drizzled on top, it looked delicious. “I hope you’ll like it. Everybody loves my flan.”

  I loved her flan.

  The Magic regained control of the game after Jameer Nelson started sinking three-pointers with a confident and masterful touch. Sam’s spirits were elevated by the Magic comeback, and when the final buzzer sounded she jumped off the couch and started cheering: “Yessssssss!” She turned around and said, “Stand up and cheer, Mr. Smith!”

  I stood and cheered with her. It was then that I realized how tall she was, maybe five-nine. She really did look like a supermodel. And here I was, in her home, watching basketball with her like we had known each other since childhood. Then she hugged me. Her face was pressed against my chest and I felt as hot as the summer sun. She then looked up. Without warning she gently pressed her soft lips against my own. We held it that way for maybe ten seconds, and then she amped things up by slowly slipping her tongue deep into my mouth. And did we ever kiss. If I was on fire before the kiss, I was now a blazing inferno. After two minutes of this she started to remove my shirt.

  Dammit!

  I stopped her and took a step back.

  It was the last thing I wanted to do.

  Believe me.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I just have to step out front for a second and make a phone call.” She smiled incredulously, a look that said something like this could never possibly happen to her. But I kept walking.

  It was eleven-thirty now. As I closed the front door behind me I pulled out my cell phone and tried calling Caitlin again. This time she answered. I had trouble hearing her. It sounded like she was in a loud bar.

  “You won’t believe this,” she shouted. “We’re in a nightclub partying with the Minnesota Timberwolves. You wouldn’t believe how tall these guys are.”

  “I bet you the bloody fuck I would,” I said.

  “What the hell did you just say to me?”

  “Call me when you’re done,” I said. And then I hung up.

  I stood on the front porch for two minutes, half hoping she’d call me back. It didn’t happen. I went back inside.

  “Tell me about her,” Sam said as I stepped back into the living room. She was sitting on the couch. She had cooled down. Our moment had passed.

  I walked over and sat next to her and sighed.

  “My girlfriend is a total bitch,” I said. And when I said it, I really meant it. I was very close to pulling the plug on my relationship with Caitlin, and even now I have to admit that it was Sam’s kiss that had pushed me to that point. Still, it was true: Caitlin was a total bitch.

  “I won’t cheat on her,” I said. “Even though she’s as mean as a double-peckered snake, I must remain faithful to her until it’s officially over.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  The doctor was in.

  “Well,” I said, “I know how all my guy friends feel about this, but I’ll try asking a woman now.”

  “I’m listening.” She sounded almost like Frazier Crane when she said it. “What’s her name?”

  “Caitlin,” I answered.

  “Okay, tell me about Caitlin.”

  I looked at Sam and she seemed genuinely concerned. She’s a professional, I thought. I can trust her.

  “A couple of weeks ago I asked Caitlin if I was the best she ever had.” One of Sam’s eyebrows arched and she laughed. I continued anyway. “And you know what she said to me? She said that no, I wasn’t the best she ever had, not by a long shot. I mean, she got really demonstrative in making her point. She even told me who her best was. It was some asshole she had met out on a trip to Atlantic City a few years ago. She said his name was Michael. Man, did we ever have a come-to-Jesus meeting about that one.”

  “Your girlfriend was just being honest,” Sam said. “And maybe you’re not being attentive enough to her in bed. Have you thought of that? Maybe she needs something you’re not giving her.”

  Right at that very instant I wanted to ball the daylights out of Dr. Samantha Fleming, just to show her what I was made of. I wanted to render her speechless, only to have her later say, “What a total bitch your girl is. You are the best I ever had.”

  “Let me tell you something,” she said. “And you can tell your girlfriend I said this.” Sam grabbed my arm and pulled herself closer. I thought she was going to kiss me, but instead she came out with this: “The best sex is the sex you are having right now. And let me tell you, I’ve had some mind-blowing sex. Trust me on that one. No sex from the past, no matter how good it was, does anyone any good now. The best orgasm you can have is the one you’re having right now. Orgasms are ephemeral. They are completely meaningless after they have occurred. Your job as a lover is to do your damnedest the next time to satisfy your partner, so that she’ll want to come back to you for more. Because as anyone with half a brain knows, you are only as good as your last sexual encounter, just as a quarterback is only as good as his last game, or as Jameer Nelson is after his last game-clinching shot. Everyone loves a winner, and nobody loves you when you lose.”

  “God, Sam.” I held up my hands in surrender. “My headache was completely gone and my stomach was just fine, until you delivered that lovely little treatise on sexuality. Now I know where Sidebottom gets his material.”

  “She doesn’t put out often enough for you, does she?” Sam asked.

  “Hell no!” I said. “I need it all the damn time, as often as I can get it. And you want to know why, Dr. Fleming?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because I’m the horniest bastard God ever put on the planet,” I said. “And I’m tired of being made to feel ashamed about it. Sex is better
than just about anything I know. It’s better than opening night on Broadway, it’s better than a tasty steak, it’s better than a chocolate-fucking-cupcake. It’s better than a roller coaster ride, better than getting a parking space in the front row for being employee-of-the-fucking-month, better than beating a field sobriety test when you’ve been caught driving drunk. It’s better than hearing the preacher pronounce you man and wife, better than getting straight A’s, better than being named MVP, better than winning the mother-fucking lottery. And believe me, that’s saying something, because who ever wins the fucking lottery?”

  Sam started clapping and whistling. She seemed genuinely enthused by what I had just said.

  “What are you going to do about it, Mr. Smith?” she asked. “Are you going to grow a pair and break up with the ice queen? What are you going to do?”

  I fell back on the cushions and sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “I admire you for your loyalty, for not cheating on your girlfriend,” she said. “I’m sorry I put you in this position.” I knew the doctor was full of shit.

  “Rules are rules,” I said. “Every man has to have a code to live by. He has to be true to himself.”

  “I’m going to go fetch your meds now,” Sam said as she stood. “You’re welcome to sleep over. I have an extra bedroom you can stay in. Your girlfriend never has to know.”

  “Forget about the meds,” I said as I stood to leave. “I’m going home to deal with this shit with Caitlin, one way or the other. And I’m going to grow a pair by not tapering right away from the meds. I’ll sleep whenever I sleep.”

  “I’ll give you a few pills anyway,” she said, “in case you get desperate and change your mind. It could happen.”

  “Sam,” I said, looking directly into her beautiful eyes. “Could I be so bold as to ask for a rain check to continue that make-out session we just had?”

  She smiled and winked. “I’ll give you my number. I like you, Mr. Smith. I want to get to know you. You call me if things change.” She then grabbed her own tits and said, “But don’t wait forever. These babies are fabulous, and they won’t stay pent up for long.”

  7

  IT WAS THREE A.M. I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to fall asleep. I had the pills Sam had given me, which would have quickly put me to sleep and placed me on the road to recovery. But if I was going to break the cycle of dependence on the meds, I reasoned that the shortest distance between two points was a line. Just quit cold turkey, I thought, and bear the consequences. It wasn’t like I was trying to come off of morphine or cocaine. How bad could it get? How long could the pain and discomfort persist?

  Not for long, I hoped. I wanted nothing more to do with psychiatrists and their cynical drug treatment plans: Just dope ‘em up and send them on their way. More important, however, was rediscovering my one and true self. As I saw it, the only way to accomplish that was to withdraw completely from the meds. If it turned out I was just too crazy for society to tolerate, I’d sell everything I own and go live in some hippy commune in the California Mountains. If there weren’t any communes anymore, I’d go to Tibet and practice Buddhism.

  As for Caitlin, I’d been calling her once every half-hour since I had arrived home at a little past midnight. She wasn’t answering. I tried to console myself and allay my fears. If she was a cold fish with me, I thought, then she probably would be with anyone else. Well, except for that asshole from Atlantic City who had given her the time of her life. Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was sexually deficient, at least in her view. Maybe she was getting what she needed right now from a seven-foot tall first-round draft pick.

  I then recalled what Sidebottom had done a few years ago when he had suspected his then-girlfriend of cheating on him. We had a truly crazy friend named Valentine, who was something of a GPS (Global Positioning System) specialist. At Sidebottom’s request, Valentine surreptitiously rigged the girl’s car with a GPS tracking chip. He then told Sidebottom to call him at any time he wanted to know where his girlfriend was.

  I’ll never forget Sidebottom calling me a few days later. He was drunk and I could tell he’d been crying. On a late Thursday evening, Sidebottom’s girl wasn’t answering her cell phone. So he called Valentine to get a fix on her location. It took all of thirty seconds to find her car. Instead of being at work late (like she had told Sidebottom), she was ten miles away from her office. Where was she? That’s the best part. She was two miles away from Sidebottom’s house, at the home of her boss.

  Sidebottom didn’t confront her with it until Valentine had tracked her to the same man’s home for the third time in three weeks. As Sidebottom would later discover, his girlfriend had a standing date every Thursday night with this man, the same night this man’s wife attended a weekly church choir group. So while the boss’s wife was singing her heart out in praise of the Lord, her husband was putting it to Sidebottom’s girlfriend. And that left Sidebottom crying in his beer every day for six months.

  If I were in that position, I’d just call it quits on the relationship before I would even think about planting a GPS chip. Once the trust evaporates and suspicion takes over, that’s pretty much it.

  Whenever Caitlin would mess with my head just for the fun of it, she’d always say afterward: “Oh, get over it. I was just yanking your chain.” Maybe that was what she was doing now, yanking my chain by not answering the phone and acting like she was getting along famously with the Timberwolves’ starting lineup. I knew she felt I was being too possessive and distrusting, so maybe this was my payback for the crime of giving a shit. Whatever the case, I was getting tired of her act. The lack of sex alone was putting me on edge with her. I have always wanted to have a relationship that works as well in bed as well as it does out of bed. And with Caitlin, I wasn’t doing well in or out. Her mean streak and constant verbal abuse were putting the relationship to the test. But as mad as I was, I knew I’d be lonely if I showed her ass to the proverbial door.

  In my days as a player in the bar and nightclub scene (which was basically my entire twenties and on into my early thirties), the trick of getting over the girl you were with (and about to lose) was to quickly find another girl and bed down with her immediately. It was the best method of softening the blow. And the antidote to my current problem with Caitlin was Dr. Samantha Fleming.

  During my evening with Sam, I hadn’t thought once of Caitlin until the lovely doctor had kissed me. It was then that my guilty conscience took control of my cheating heart, just as it had taken control of it while I was in the powerful presence of the redheaded librarian. My conscience is the mechanism that keeps my moral compass in check. But now was the time to recalibrate that compass. I wasn’t willing to attribute Caitlin’s mean-spirited behavior to her childhood anymore. After all, like her I was also an orphan, but I’ve never used my bitter childhood as a license to mistreat and disrespect others. At least, I really hope I haven’t.

  I turned off my cell phone and disconnected my land line. If I wasn’t going to sleep, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay up all night waiting for Caitlin to call, though that seemed very unlikely.

  I went to the living room. Propped against the piano I didn’t play anymore was my new guitar. I powered up the laptop computer that was sitting on top of the piano and then logged on to the guitar instruction website. Sitting on the piano bench, I started strumming away, practicing and playing whatever the online instructors told me to. These guys made playing fun, teaching actual songs that other people would want to hear. I immersed myself in my guitar playing, and for the next four hours I didn’t think about a damned thing.

  And it felt good.

  …

  Hours later, while lying on the couch reading Atlas Shrugged, I glanced up at the grandfather clock next to the piano: it was eleven a.m. I still hadn’t slept, but I was pleased I had read 450 pages of Ayn Rand’s literary masterpiece. I was using speed reading techniques I had learned as a boy. That, combined with the benefits of the self-in
duced mania I was now finally enjoying, had allowed me to breeze through that book as quickly as I had. My mind was sharp. I didn’t feel like my feet were stuck in the mud anymore, which is how I had always felt while on the meds.

  I felt a little hung over from the wine I’d had at Sam’s house last night, but I really didn’t feel all that bad. In fact, she’d been right. The alcohol had done me less harm than good. The rich food she’d served had alleviated my nausea and softened my killer headache. It didn’t make sense, but she knew more about combatting withdrawal symptoms than I did. Operating under the same theory, after finally putting down the guitar at six a.m., I made myself a hearty breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and orange juice. After that, a shower and a shave had me feeling mostly human again.

  I had thought of lacing up my running shoes and hitting the streets, but I didn’t want to push my luck. Besides, I only ran to keep my weight down, and in the past two days I had lost five or six pounds, even though I’d had two big meals. I made a mental note to ask Sam if significant weight loss could occur that rapidly just from halting the meds.

  I got up from the couch and sought another way of killing time. I spent an hour on the Web searching for a job. Since falling among the unemployed the previous summer, I had received only two calls for interviews after having emailed over 300 résumés. Though I wasn’t enthused by the idea of leaving Orlando and its wonderful weather, I’d decided weeks ago to geographically broaden my job search (I’d go anywhere except Oklahoma). But I couldn’t find an employer that was willing to pay relocation expenses.

  Afterward, I turned on my cell phone and reconnected my land line. Five minutes later Caitlin chimed in on the cell.

  “You tried calling me six times after midnight last night, you insecure and distrusting little prick.”

  “And a jolly good morning to you too, Tinker Bell!” I wasn’t in the mood right now for her acid jabs. In fact, I figured I wasn’t going to be in the mood to do anything with her ever again.