Samantha turned serious again, steepling her hands as she asked, “But what would you do if you were really tested? What would you do if you sank into a deep fit of depression? What if you were out of money and you were about to lose everything? What if humiliation of the worst sort was about to come down on you like a thick, black fog? What would you do then?”
“Your son told me about your husband,” I said. My statement elicited little reaction from her—it only seemed to darken her eyes for a second. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done in his shoes. I think there a lot of people who carefully plan their suicide, but I tend to think that most do it during an episode of profound depression. Some leave notes behind and some don’t. But all I can say to answer your question is that I learned a long time ago that, especially as a manic-depressive, you have to live your life one day at a time. It sounds trite to say it, but they are words that I live by. Well, I try, anyway.”
“Have you ever tried?” she asked. “I mean, to kill yourself?”
“No,” I answered. “I have to be alive in case someone needs me. It’s as simple as that.”
“Who? Who needs you?”
Maybe Miranda does, I thought. But probably not.
“Maybe you do,” I said, trying to shake off memories of the one I’d left behind over a decade ago. “Hell, I don’t know. I could be the factor in someone else’s life that prevents them from doing evil, from doing something that could bring harm to themselves or to others. I want to stay alive so I can be counted on.”
“You’re a romantic, then?”
“Yeah, I believe I am.” Until this day I’d never really articulated these beliefs to anyone.
“Devin said you were still mad at his father,” I said. “Is that true?”
“He’s a son of a bitch for what he did,” she said acidly. I could see she was trying to control her anger. I quickly tried to make light of the situation.
“You know what?” I said. “I used to work with this woman who had been widowed twice. The first husband died in a car wreck, the second had cancer or something. Anyway, she would just always tell me about how wonderful these men were, how they had been the salt of the earth, pillars of their community, men of high moral character. Each marriage had lasted less than five years.”
“So what’s your point?” Samantha said impatiently. “I don’t like long stories. Get to it.”
“I never said this to her but I will tell you: I think this woman was proof of the fact that death can be a good career move in marriage. If that first husband hadn’t been in that car wreck, maybe they would have made it to their seventh year. But maybe not. Most marriages nowadays don’t even make it for six years. If he had lived, he probably would have started fucking around on her, picked up a cheerleader type that he’d really wanted all along, bought her a Corvette and hidden her in some lakeside lodge up in North Carolina. The wife would have figured it out eventually—maybe a call from her accountant to alert her to some suspicious expenditures—and that would have been it. They would have divorced and they would have hated each other until their dying day.”
“I have to admit,” Samantha said with a wan smile, “that’s a decent theory you have there. Depressing, but it makes a certain amount of sense.”
“Damn right it does,” I said, slapping the table. “If Elvis had lived and not died on the toilet, he’d have ended up like most other rock stars or actors: a has-been with a really awful comb over.”
Samantha laughed heartily, and doing so seemed to relax her.
“I have a concern I would like to voice with you,” I said.
She sighed and made a moue. “What’s that?”
“Well, what happened last night kind of caught me off guard a little. Normally, after I break up with a girl, I go to the doctor and have a full series of labs run on my pecker. I get checked for AIDS, genital warts, any kind of STD, the works. I call it my Clean Pecker Guarantee. It provides some assurance to my next lover that I am not inserting into her vagina an instrument of disease and death.”
“That is very commendable of you,” Samantha said. She started laughing again, and then she howled, “Whooooo! You are something else.” She got up and collected my dishes. “You’re full of shit, but you’re still something else.”
I offered to help but she refused it. She ordered me upstairs to take a shower in the master bathroom and to then hop into bed.
“We’re not finished yet,” she said.
…
Following three hours of the most incredible sex ever, during which time I engaged in sexual maneuvers I had never contemplated nor even imagined, Samantha transitioned into doctor mode yet again. We were still in bed.
“I think you’ve made the right decision regarding your meds,” she commented. “I believe every man should be his true self, and that he should have to manage his true nature. Psychiatric chemotherapy is a crutch used by both patients and doctors. It shields both patient and doctor from having to deal directly with the underlying problems.”
“But that’s how you make your money these days, isn’t it?” I asked, perplexed. “You’re contributing to the problem.”
“Honey, I’ll say it again. Money has no mother.”
“There’s your own brand of bullshit, Dr. Fleming.”
“But it’s true.”
“Why did you scale back your practice?” I asked. “Why do only the rich and famous deserve your counsel?”
“Because I think it’s all bullshit,” she said. From her back she nimbly flipped over and straddled me. “Why don’t you just shut up and fuck me.”
“No,” I said, carefully returning her to her back. “I understand you’re the top dog in pharmaceutical sales around here. But can that possibly be more profitable than charging seventy or eighty bucks every five minutes for med checks? And just how many rich and famous people are around here anyway? Do you have the entire PGA tour contingent from Isleworth and Bay Hill coming through here to secretly obtain meds and counseling from you?”
“Mr. Smith, I’ll tell you why I’ve scaled back my practice, but you have to tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.” She tried to get back up but I kept her pinned down. She must have enjoyed the physical force I was exerting, because she was purring like a kitten.
“You want a quid pro quo here?” I asked. She nodded. “Okay, I’ll go first. I wrote a book.”
“Really?” she said. That seemed to rev her up a bit more. “I always wanted to fuck a writer, but only a really good one. Are you a good writer, Mr. Smith?”
I shook my head. “Apparently I’m not. I’ve sent query letters to fifty or sixty agents and none of them were interested. I got nothing back but form rejection letters. Agents are worse than bad dates when it comes to doling out rejection.”
“Can I read it?” she asked. “What’s it about?”
“I’d rather not say more about it than that,” I said. “At least not for now. I guess I should tell you that I am unemployed.”
“Yeah, I know that,” she said flatly. “Wally told me what happened with you guys getting replaced by the Indians.”
“Well, anyway, that’s how I found time to write. I even hid what I was doing from my girlfriend—my ex-girlfriend, that is. She would have just laughed at me.”
“I might know some people that could help get your book sold,” she said. A kind offer, but it sounded dubious to me.
“No, thanks. If it gets picked up, I want it to be because I put in the work to get it done myself. I’ve revised the manuscript three times since the last rejection I got. If I get to a point where I think it’s close to being ready, I’ll let you and other friends of mine read and critique it. But I’m not ready yet.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “But I will get your book published one day. You’ll have to learn to trust me. I’m the kind of woman who can get things done.”
“Well, I gave up a secret,” I said. “Your turn.”
“Okay,�
� she said, “here we go: After Marty died three years ago—that was my husband—I just couldn’t carry on with a full-time practice anymore. I was totally burned out from it. I’d only done it for eight years but it had seemed more like twenty to me. We owned three houses and a yacht, and his construction business somehow ate up a lot of our money. Especially when you consider the laundering of cash to obscure his gambling activities, it was the biggest financial black hole you could ever see. I had to work double the hours of other psychiatrists, sometimes working more than that, including weekends and holidays. Things were that bad.
“Finally, after Marty died, I had to settle his gambling debts using all of the life insurance proceeds. I just couldn’t go back and effectively start over. It took over a year to settle his gambling debts, and I lost two of the houses and had to have a fire sale on the yacht to finally even the score with those lunatic mobsters. And now, this house is all we have left, and I’m just barely making payments. We had taken out a second mortgage on it before he killed himself, the rotten bastard.
“Anyway, I’m just burned out, baby. I am burned, burned, burned out. Devin wants to go to an expensive college in two years, and the only way I can see to do that and to still keep this house is to do whatever it takes to get more money in my bank account.”
“So just go back to practicing full time,” I said. I shouldn’t have said it. Good thing I still had her pinned down or she would have decked me.
“Listen up,” she said angrily. “I’m done with doing that bullshit full time. So-called manic-depressives and schizophrenics are just the most pathetic people God ever put on the planet. It is such fucking bullshit. There’s no blood test or MRI or anything of the sort to truly identify a manic-depressive. We have only the whining and self-pitying accounts of their sorry lives to go by.
“No, baby, I’m getting my money some other way. I’m going to find a man, a good man, a wealthy man who can take care of me. I’m almost forty, baby. I’m not going to start over again. No fucking way.”
After that diatribe I let her go. She turned away from me and curled up into the fetal position. It was really odd. She didn’t say a thing for five very long minutes. When I finally touched her shoulder, she flinched and told me to leave her alone.
“That’s a hell of a way to begin a new relationship,” I said to her. “I think I’ve worn out my welcome. I really didn’t mean to upset you.”
She turned over and smiled. It was a sad and tender smile. It really got to me.
“Before you go,” she said, “you have to do one thing for me.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Fuck me.”
10
I WAS READING PAGE 750 of Atlas Shrugged as I lay on my living room couch. I wasn’t buying into all of Rand’s philosophical views, but it was still an inspiring read. I was ready to get off my ass and do something with my life. No more of this bullshit of feeling victimized because an Indian had taken my job. After all, the higher-ups at the banking company were only trying to bolster their profits by cutting back on expenses. Why pay a hundred and twenty grand a year to an American citizen when you can get a really hungry foreigner to do the job for a fraction of that amount? I convinced myself to just accept it and move on. I resolved to get back to work again, doing anything I had to do to make money.
Samantha was right: money has no mother.
It was close to seven o’clock on Sunday evening. Despite having slept on the floor in Samantha’s living room last night, I did feel much better than I had at any point yesterday. A mild, nagging headache and a hint of nausea were all I had to tolerate right now. The only thing I was really trying to recover from was the freight train named Samantha Fleming. She had more energy and more sex drive than anyone I had ever known. It was as if that woman had wanted to swallow me whole.
She’d wanted me to stay for lunch, but I told her I had to get home and do some work around the house. I had lied to her. I’d spent my afternoon instead trying to get through Atlas Shrugged. I wanted to finish that book so I could go back to the library and give the redheaded librarian my informed opinion of it.
Though I had broken up with Caitlin, I hadn’t given myself enough time in between relationships to cool my head. But Samantha was an irrepressible force of nature that had drawn me in so fast that I hadn’t had much time to pause and consider things. I’d had more sex in the past twenty-four hours with Samantha than I’d had with Caitlin in the last three months combined. And though Caitlin had done a lot to alienate me, she still deserved better than coming back home to Orlando to discover that I was already with someone else. It just wasn’t right.
But was I falling in love with Samantha? No, I can’t say that I was. A part of me definitely wanted to, but I knew there was trouble with her. She was just too bitter to enjoy life, and it seemed like she was emotionally devastated, to the point of being beyond salvation. There was no light in her eyes, none at all. I wished like hell that I was wrong, but I’d had a sense about these things all my life. Samantha Fleming reminded me too much of . . . my mother.
I suppose that is why the only person I was truly falling in love with was the sexy redheaded librarian. She definitely did have that magical light in her eyes. There was nothing in my gut warning me about her. We’d made some sort of cosmic connection. It was just basic chemistry at work. I’d never experienced anything in my life like it. It was more than just a passing infatuation. I was determined to find out if it really meant something.
My reflective mood was disrupted by the sound of the front door opening. There was only one person who would come to my house unannounced and walk in like he owned the place: Sidebottom. I had spoken to Sidebottom this morning and informed him that Caitlin and I were no more. I didn’t mention anything about Samantha Fleming, though.
“Hey,” he yelled as he walked in. “Put it on ESPN, bubba. I want to see SportsCenter. My cable’s out.”
I handed him the remote control. “Make yourself at home, Sidebottom. There’s beer in the fridge.”
He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Now that you’ve broken up with that bitch, we can get back to our old visitation schedule.” Sidebottom never held back his feelings. I would have knocked almost anyone else on their ass for talking that way about Caitlin. But Sidebottom was a special case. Most humans have a self-censoring mechanism that prevents inappropriate and insensitive comments from spilling forth—Sidebottom didn’t have that.
Sidebottom returned and plopped his ass on my old black recliner. He flipped on ESPN and immediately went on a rant: “I swear to God, Smith, I’m going to email ESPN and tell them to stop dressing all their anchors in suit and tie. That is such bullshit, man. When I turn on the sports, I want to feel relaxed and at home. It stresses me out to be around anybody that’s dressed to the nines. Why does ESPN make them do that? Why not just a T-shirt and some jeans, just like you and me are wearing right now? When I drink beer and watch the sports, I want to feel like I’m one of them, one of the gang. Instead, when I watch SportsCenter, I feel like I’m in a goddamned court deposition. Hell, they dress Erin Andrews like she’s headed to the streets to pick up a john. Why not allow the guys to let their hair down a little also? I mean . . .”
I let Sidebottom prattle on for a while longer. I eventually interrupted him and told him about me and Samantha. They had known each other since childhood, and I didn’t want him to learn about our involvement from someone else first. I didn’t give him graphic details, but I made it clear that I felt I was in over my head a bit because of how aggressive she was.
“Huh.” He wasn’t angry or upset, but he did look perplexed. “Are we talking about Dr. Samantha Fleming here? The woman I grew up with?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged his shoulders and scratched his head. “You’re the first since her husband offed himself. In fact, I’m floored to hear this. I didn’t think she’d ever be with a man who wasn’t a millionaire. She’s sort of in financ
ial dire straits right now. And with her looks, I don’t quite—”
“You don’t quite understand why she’d be with a guy like me?” I said, more than a tad pissed off at what he was implying.
Sidebottom held up his hands and said, “Sorry, bubba. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that since Marty died, she’s been very frigid in the company of men. I mean to tell you, since the cat split the scene known as life, she hasn’t liked anyone she’s run into. I’m not lying to you, Smith. She’s been celibate this whole time.”
I didn’t want to say anything more about Samantha. I was trying to make sense of it all. Why had she picked me to be her first since the passing of her husband?
“Let me tell you a few things about Sam.” Sidebottom had a rare expression on his face that I didn’t recognize. He was being completely serious. “This isn’t a woman who sleeps around. I mean, she and her husband were supposedly into some weird sex things from time to time, but she never really cheated on him. Just some mild swinger stuff. But I digress.
“I’ve known Sam since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. She was what you would call an ugly duckling, except that’s not what the assholes in grade school and middle school called her. She was called the Roly Polack, a play on roly-poly. I swear to God, kids can be such total and complete cocks. Anyway, a funny thing happened to her during the summer between eighth and ninth grade. She had gone back to Poland for the summer to visit her grandparents, and I didn’t see her again until the day school started back up. Bubba, let me tell you, I didn’t even believe it was her. It was a total and profound physical transformation. She came back completely thin, filled out with pretty much the same awesome tits you see now, and an ass that every one of those knuckle draggers on the football team wanted a piece of.
“But you know what?—and I just loved her for this—Sam never once went out with any of those muscle heads. All during high school she just kept getting hotter and hotter, and everyone pretty much had to just eat their heart out, because she was big-time picky about who got to take her out on a date. Sadly, one of the few lucky bastards wasn’t me. She always told me she loved me like a brother. We lived just two doors down from each other, so that was just as well. Anyway, I never saw her out on a date with anyone. She told me about a few older guys from other schools, and later some college guys she dated.
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