Chapter Thirty-One

- The Intial Shock -

It happened so quickly.

She faced down; her voice hit the table and ricocheted back and forth against the huge glass window, the sound repeating over and over in my ears. Individually, each of her words was clearly English, but the order she put them in output a language I didn’t speak. I looked to her eyes for a translation, but there was none to be found. My girlfriend, my 4, always looked me deep in the eye and said exactly what was on her mind. The gaze from the stranger sitting across the table landed everywhere but on me. Even when I figured out what she was saying, every new sentence contradicted the last.

“A breather? What does that mean?”

“I just need a little space, that’s all.”

“How much space?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t get it. Three days ago we were making love on a beach in Mexico.”

“Yeah, and you practically kicked me out of your house when we got back.”

“I was trying to give you space. You were so adamant about guys getting clingy on you. Which is it? You either want the space or you don’t.”

She had no answer. My chest folded in on itself. The uneaten sandwich I held suddenly became unbearably heavy and my hand dropped down to the table. Whatever appetite I regained that week beat it back to Mexico.

“I made sure we spent two nights apart this week so you wouldn’t feel claustrophobic. Last night you were all over me in bed. For god’s sake, you were kissing me three hours ago. What could have possibly changed since then?”

“Nothing.”

“If nothing’s changed, why do you suddenly need a breather?” I was trying in vain to wrest some logic out of this conversation.

“It’s not sudden. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

“So you wait till now to bring it up?”

“I’m sorry.”

“There has to be a reason. If you tell me, we can deal with it, whatever it is.” Her eyes darted back and forth nervously.

“I just don’t want to be in a big relationship right now.”

“Okay -- we can slow down. That would probably be best for me, too. But I don’t want to stop completely.” That sounded more than fair to me. But then she hit me with a sucker punch.

“I want to have fun in my life. You’re too negative all the time.” Oh my god. She sounded just like my ex wife.

“What are you talking about? I’ve been on top of the world since we started dating.”

“You’re always putting me down. You insult my clothes, the music I listen to.”

“Is this still about that dress? You didn’t even like it when you looked at it a second time.”

“And I can’t handle all your sarcasm.” I shook my head in disbelief.

“You thrive on sarcasm. Sarcasm is what made us friends in the first place.”

“Well, I don’t like it anymore.”

“What part don’t you like? The part where I get a haircut and you call me bald? Or the part where you leave me a note saying you were going to find someone else to kiss because I’m not around?” Perhaps rubbing her face in her own shit wasn’t the best strategy, so I shifted gears.

“Last night you tell me you love me, now today... This just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m sorry. I’m no good at this.”

“No good at what?” I wanted her to spell it out, just in case there was something I wasn’t getting. She never used the words “break up” but I caught her drift. The Temper kicked in and I stood.

“You’re right. You suck at this.” I was on the sidewalk before it registered I was angry. She surprised me by chasing me down the street.

“Wait!” She caught up to me and grabbed my arm. “Where are you going?”

“What do you care?”

“You can’t walk all the way back.” That’s one thing she didn’t know about me -- I could have walked the mile and a half back to the office without breaking a sweat -- fuck if it mattered that the Lungs weren’t exactly functioning just then.

“Get in the car.” I calmed myself and thought about it for a moment. Maybe I could talk some sense into her on the ride to the office.

“Okay.”

All the way back I tried to get her to define “breather” for me, but she wouldn’t be pinned down.

“So you don’t want to see me at all?” I asked her once we’d parked in my spot.

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then why won’t you give me a straight answer?”

“There is no straight answer. I told you I’m no good at this.”

“Maybe you need to think about what ‘this’ is,” I said as I got out of the car, gently shutting her door, containing the tempest inside me. If the Temper had its way, I would have ripped the door off its hinges and smashed it through her windshield.

“I can’t fucking believe you did this at lunch,” I said as we walked toward the office. The door to the stairwell swung open just as I reached for the handle. Christian appeared from the other side and smiled broadly at us.

“There’s the happy couple.”

What amazing timing. She and I just looked at each other dumbfounded and broke into unexplainable laughter -- funeral laughter. Christian had no idea what was so funny. Neither did I.

“I’ll call you later,” she said to my back as I passed through to the inner corridor. I just held up my hand and let the door swing shut behind me. Once I was sure she hadn’t followed me, I ran full speed for the men’s room. Thanks to Mexico, I hadn’t put much of anything in the Stomach that week. Even though I’d woken up hungry, all I’d had so far was a cup of coffee. Five minutes of heaving cramped the Stomach muscles, but all that came up was a short stream of yellow bile that burned the back of the Throat. I hugged the walls back to my office.

“Are you sick?” Tall Straight Assistant asked when I fell into my chair. “You don’t look so good.”

“She dumped me.”

“Fahhck you.” He laughed, thinking I was kidding. Lucky for him he had the kind of boss he could say that to.

“She wants to take a breather.”

“You’re serious. Shit. Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

“She just did it at lunch?”

Then it hit me.

“Oh my god. That’s why she did it in the middle of the day -- I can’t do anything about it. If I went up to her now, that would cause a scene and I can’t do that.” I thought about it. “Can I?”

“No. Absolutely not.” Two things TSA had that I didn’t: One, a sense of right and two, a sense of wrong. That would be very wrong.

Nervous energy was bouncing around inside me like a Superball. Any chance of me concentrating on work went out the door and I needed to do the same. I had to figure things out and think very carefully about how I would play this the next time I spoke to her.

“I have to get out of here. You’re going to have to cover for me this afternoon. If she calls, make up anything. I’m in meetings or whatever. Do not say I went home early.”

“You got it. I’ll see you Monday.”

I fished my keys out of the center desk drawer. How proud of my one-key life I had been. Now, the only-child house key that hung from my ring had several work-related siblings: one each for the office, vault, desk, and file cabinets. I still hadn’t gotten used to the additional weight of the newbies and felt uncomfortable letting them hitch a ride in my pants pocket, so the whole family traveled loosely in one hand, their jangle announcing my movements.

Into the stairwell heading for the downward steps to the main lobby and exit, I froze as the door closed with a pneumatic wheeze. The keys rattled like a snake in my grip as I pondered the choice before me: Go home and think things out, calm myself down and talk to her later that night, or be a man and climb that one flight of stairs, march down the hall to her cubicle and force the issue. Remember, I had become the guy who faced the tough choices head-on. It was time to make one.

“Tell me exactly what you mean by ‘breather.’”

“I am not going to talk about this now. Not here.” Her teeth strangled each word and there was something in her eyes I’d never seen before: hatred. Even during the few arguments we’d had, anger like this never made an appearance.

“Then let’s go someplace and talk about it.”

“I have to work and so do you.”

“Fuck work.” The sore Throat wasn’t interested in whispering.

“Will you please keep it down?” She double-checked each direction to make sure no one else was listening. The Evil Human Resources Witch’s lair was perched at the short end of the corridor, just three short cubicles away from 4’s. We didn’t need her goring into our affair with her crooked nose.

“You’re right,” I conceded. “Can we talk about this tonight?”

“Yes. I’ll call you.”

“When?” Oh, shit. I didn’t want to say that. That was Clingy-Guy speak.

“Later.” The sound of her breath under her voice made it clear I had made stupid choice number two and possibly three.

I snuck out of the office and crossed the street at a place there was no chance she could witness me leaving. The first two long blocks of Wilshire to La Cienega I concentrated on getting oxygen into my lungs and calming myself the fuck down. The bumper-to-bumper traffic was horrendously loud. Even so, my heart throbbed in my throat and I could hear the blood sloshing through my arteries. Once the techniques I learned in therapy kicked in and I’d settled into an even breathing rhythm, my mind was free to panic the entire half-mile to Robertson.

I couldn’t make sense out of anything. She wanted to take a breather and needed space, but she was pissed because I didn’t turn to her when I was sick. We took a fantastically romantic trip to Mexico three days ago, yet this was something she’d been thinking about for a while? She was drawn to my caustic personality, and now she can’t handle sarcasm -- not even her own. She threw every excuse in the book at me, but none of them made sense.

It was a little more than a quarter of a mile till I reached Doheny and the conclusion that maybe she wasn’t very good at this because she never had to explain herself. All of her old boyfriends must have put two and two together and came up with the same five and a half that she did, so it made sense them. Well, I’m smarter than that and this shit didn’t add up.

The mile or so through the Rodeo Drive shopping district to Little Santa Monica, I obsessed over the idea of a second in time. This day really drove home the notion that I had no control of what happened on either side of that second when she said, “We need to talk.” The day replayed over and over in my mind as I searched frantically for something, anything that would explain what happened. That morning started as one of the most beautiful days of my life. I remember being left teary-eyed by the staggering enormity of my happiness. Our last kiss was no less luminous than our first.

God, what if it actually was our last?

And now, a few hours later, on the other side of that fateful second, everything was slipping out of my hands and my fingers couldn’t clasp to hold on.

As I rounded the corner at Wilshire and Little Santa Monica, I stopped dead in my tracks. Sharp pain shot through my chest and I couldn’t catch a breath. That made no sense, but why should it? Nothing else did that day. It had only been two miles. I should have been able to cover that running backwards with no problem. The Knees buckled and I fell to the sidewalk. Nobody blinked as I lay there, panting in the hot sun. I managed to pick myself up enough to lean against the CAA office building and rest in the shade till my breath returned. My shirt was drenched, but only in front. That made no sense, because I hadn’t been sweating at all. I wiped my face and pulled away a wet shirtsleeve. The moisture had come from my face. I had been crying and didn’t even realize it.

“Oh, fuck,” I said out loud, wondering how many blocks ago the tears started. Somehow, I found my feet and made for home, which unfortunately was another mile up the busy street through Century City. Every step was pure agony. The Feet dragged along the sidewalk, scraping my shoes on the hot concrete. Halfway up Little Santa Monica the law offices towered overhead and I realized that I wasn’t heading toward home at all -- I was running away -- again.

Calm down.

I can handle this.

The problem isn’t with me -- it’s her.

She’s just a little scared and all I have to do is stay calm and talk to her. She wasn’t dumping me -- she said so.

Our thing was perfect and all I had to do was get her alone that weekend and I could get it all back. That thought carried me past the Century City mall to Beverly Glen and into my apartment.

Everything was going to be fine.

We would talk to over the weekend and work it all out. I would do things to make her feel at ease telling me truthfully why she was freaked out.

Don’t use the phrase “freaked out.”

That would be accusatory and probably freak her out even more. She was going to feel totally comfortable and everything was going to be fine by Monday.

My answering machine was blinking two messages. Hearing her on the first one confused the life out of me.

“Hi, Hon, just calling to say I love you madly. Miss you.”

What’s that all about?

Of course, it was the old message I’d saved. The sound of her voice sent calming waves of peace through my body. I hit “save” again and listened to the second message.

That’s when my great weekend plans went to shit. The message ended, “see you tomorrow.” It was suddenly clear why on this Thursday my assistant said he would see me on Monday when I left. I wasn’t going to work on Friday. The message was from my parents. Not only had it slipped my mind they were even coming into town, they were coming TOMORROW.

Fuck.

I had to rent a car. I had to rent a car right then because they were arriving at one of those ungodly hours that people from the Midwest prefer till they experience their first taste of the 405 during the morning commute. Car rental places at LAX wouldn’t be open in time for me to cab it there, get a car and pick up the folks. Sending a car for them was out of the question. Inexplicably, there was a rental place across the street from my apartment in the middle of a residential district. A small miracle, but one I’d take. That task completed, I only had five or so hours to burn till 4 finally called.

“Hey.” She sounded fairly normal. “It’s me.”

“Hello.”

“What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Just tell me what’s going on. What changed?”

“I told you nothing changed.”

“Then why are you there and I’m here?”

“I need a little time to think, that’s all.”

“Okay. Why don’t you do that this weekend?”

“That’s a good idea. You’re going to be busy with your parents anyway.”

“Yeah. Funny how that worked out.”

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