Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [71]
Mary Kay was too busy with her machine-gun chatter to notice the way I gripped the table for support. Talk, talk, talk. Mary Kay had even nattered while we made love, a proclivity that had kept me from completing the business at hand on at least one occasion. She’d gabbed our breakup to death in much the same way Holly had, analyzing the smallest details until I wanted to bay at the moon.
I introduced the women, telling Mary Kay that Stephanie was a doctor, that we were working on a fire department project together. Don’t ask me why I cared what she thought. Mary Kay and I would never see each other again. Before she left, Mary Kay ascertained that Stephanie was from out of state and would be leaving soon, all of this done in one polite exchange after another.
I couldn’t help thinking how much of my life had been frittered away on women I knew were only passing through. It seemed such a colossal waste of time. But then, I’d always been misguided about what it took to be a man. It was no accident I ran away from home and moved directly into an army barracks, no accident, either, that within two years of my exit from the service I’d become a firefighter. One macho trade after another. And of course, Lorie had been gorgeous. Demented, but gorgeous.
My years of standing around on street corners handing out Bible tracts alongside timid females and gawky men had polluted my entire adult life. I was still trying to be a man’s man. Anything but the sissy on a street corner.
After our waiter left, Stephanie said, “That must have been a tangled web.”
“What?”
“You and Mary Kay.”
“Not really.”
“So why did you feel you had to make sure she knew you and I weren’t romantically involved.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did everything but pull out a grease pen and print strictly business across my forehead. You ashamed to be seen with me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You practically apologized to her for being with me.”
“She’s a little touchy, is all.”
“Because of the way you broke up?”
“I suppose.”
“It is over, isn’t it?”
“It is, but she was having a hard time believing it.”
“You didn’t make it plain?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“How could it be any simpler? You don’t want to see her anymore. You move on. She moves on.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Selfishness always is. Were you seeing her before Holly or after?”
I picked up a piece of bread and broke it. “Before.”
“You took a long time to answer. It was during, wasn’t it?”
“I’m tired.”
“You dumped her.”
“We decided to make some space.”
“You decided to make some space.”
“She wasn’t fighting it. She—”
“You’re not the kind to tell somebody it’s over, are you? No. You’re too passive-aggressive for that. You like women hanging around. Clinging. Making you feel wanted. Important.”
“You drove up here today to attack me?”
“I’m not attacking you.”
“Funny. It feels like you are.”
I’d harbored some slim hope that Stephanie Riggs would remain my ally throughout this ordeal, that she would be there to the end, but it was a pathetic hope. Too bad there was no one else to hold my hand when I turned into a vegetable, not unless I wanted to resurrect my relationship with one of the Suzannes or Mary Kay or one of the others.
“She’s still carrying the torch and you love it.”
“Basically, we’re just friends.”
“If there’s one thing you’re not, it’s friends. So what woman hurt you so badly you can’t trust any woman? That you want to torture them all like this?”
“What’s trust got to do with it? Is that what Holly wrote in her diary? That I’d been betrayed?”
“I’m guessing it was your mother.”
The meal had been in front of us for some time. I sprinkled grated cheese on my tortellini and picked up my fork. “I’ll be dead by the end of the week. What does it matter?”
“Dead?”