Bethel's Meadow (21 page)

“Oh shit,” I said. “I completely forgot. Damn. How do you know all this stuff? Don’t answer that. Anyway . . . you call her ‘Water Girl?’”

“Everybody calls her Water Girl. I thought you knew that. Anyway, the word got back to me because the thing at Barton’s tonight is one of those social networking events thrown by some Hispanic business council. You have to pay twenty bucks or something to get in. I’m really digging the Hispanic chicks of late. Lots of Anglos go there, too. Anyway, I’m going there to work my magic. So I’ll see you then?”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Not that I’m too excited about watching you bullshit your way through another evening again.”

“All right, bubba, see ya then.”

I put the phone back in my pocket and began a little internal debate with myself. I’d made the commitment to Rachel Draper first, but when Glory started smiling at me, it had happened yet again: in my vivid imagination the outside world had been blown to bits. In that state of being there was only me and Glory. It was my bubble, created just for the two of us. It was the only thing in the world that was our own.

The decision was simple. There was a zero percent chance I was going to walk back into that library and disappoint Glory again.

So I called Rachel Draper and canceled.

24

T
HE LASAGNA WAS DELICIOUS—the best in the history of mankind. And the company couldn’t be beat. The anticipation and excitement I’d experienced in the hours preceding this date had truly energized my soul. But we were at the starting line, and to build a solid relationship would require patience and tender loving care. My plan was to take it slow and easy, and to enjoy every moment of it. I really wanted this to be the one thing in my life that worked out.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Glory Nolan—she looked so unbelievably beautiful. I twice dribbled a little red wine on my chin because I couldn’t focus on my glass. Though we were both dressed casually in blue jeans and T-shirts as per our agreement, she had her red hair done up in big wispy curls, which somehow had the fantastic effect of drawing even more excitement out of her majestic, refulgent blue eyes. I really wanted to get fresh with her, but I’d already decided I wouldn’t try, no matter what kind of vibe I might have perceived. It wasn’t until I had seen her in these tight jeans that I realized how fantastically built she was, all the way around, from head to toe. But still, it didn’t matter. I was going to keep my hands and impure thoughts to myself.

I thought Glory was a very cool and classy lady. She said nothing in an attempt to induce guilt in me for not having kept our previously scheduled date—I had been feeling guilty enough about that already. In fact, Glory kept the conversation comfortably light, not digging too deeply into any one area of my life, personally or professionally. She should have been a psychologist. She was a wonderful listener, and she somehow had the ability to know when she was about to push too far.

I did, however, tell her a little about my life as an orphan in Oklahoma: how I’d been shuffled between foster homes and how I had barely scraped my way out of high school. She wanted to know why I had been more successful in college than I had in high school. I’d never really thought about it before. I told her I supposed it was because my four years in the dormitory at the University of Georgia had proved to be a much more stable environment for me. I’d never made it for four years with any one set of foster parents in Oklahoma.

After finishing our second serving of lasagna, I poured the last remaining few ounces of the Merlot into our glasses, dividing it equally between us.

“Come on,” she said, after having taken the last swallow from her glass. “Tell me about some of your pet peeves when dating a woman. What really sticks in your craw the most?”

With that sexy smile of hers I would have answered just about anything.

“Okay,” I said, rubbing my chin while I thought of what to say. “Here’s an issue I have often encountered. I’ve had this happen
three
times to me. I’m cursed with this same thing over and over. In fact, it happened last about two years ago. I was dating this girl from Altamonte Springs, an accountant with one of the big technology firms over in Lake Mary. We’d been dating for about six weeks. One night, over dinner, she told me that three months earlier, before she had met me, she and her ex-boyfriend had booked a weeklong cruise to somewhere in Mexico. It was one of the fancy cruise liners, not Carnival or anything like that. It was a luxury liner, and it had cost them a fortune. It was nonrefundable.”

“Oh my God,” Glory said with a shocked look. “She didn’t do what I think she did, did she?”

“Yes, I’m afraid she did. She said she still wanted to go with the guy. Neither one of them could tolerate taking such a huge financial loss. But not to worry, she said, because even though they’d be sharing a cabin, they wouldn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t buy that bullshit, did you?”

“Hell no,” I said. “I showed her ass to the door.”

Glory leaned over to give me a high-five, saying, “Kick ass!”

Then I said, “But let me give you another scenario. Let’s say if you had a million dollars, and let’s say I had no money at all. If we were dating, and we’d been together for a while, would you ever go on a vacation without me, if I couldn’t afford to go with you?”

Glory emphatically shook her head. “I wouldn’t think of such a thing. I’d pay your way. We’d be together in all kinds of weather.”

“But what if my code of ethics prevented me from taking money from you? What if you were really burned out and just had to get away for a trip?”

“Stop,” she said, throwing up her hands. “If I had to get away that badly, I’d make you go with me, even if I had to slip a drug of some sort into your drink. So make no mistake about it. If we’re a pair, if we’re together, then we’re together for everything. If one of us is down on their luck, then we both are. We would help each other, with no score being taken. It would be understood from the beginning that we would never hold anything over each other’s head. The give-and-take would be honest and heartfelt. The only condition, though, is that neither of us could be stingy. We share. We share in
everything
.”

“So you’d never leave me alone?”

“Hell no, I wouldn’t.” She looked at me with complete sincerity. In her eyes I saw nothing but the truth.

I smiled at her and stood. “Let me help you clean up. The Lakers’ game is about to start.” Suddenly I had become a basketball fan. It kind of made me think of Samantha for a second, but I quickly brushed off the memory.

“No,” she said as she stood herself. “Until we’re going steady, you’re the guest in my house. Go flip the TV on and I’ll just put this stuff in the dishwasher.”

I sat on the couch in the den while watching the pregame show on ESPN. At last Glory and I would be seated next to one another. I was so excited that my mouth was dry and my heart was about to explode.

“I made some dessert for us,” Glory said as she appeared in the den. “But I forgot the whipped cream, darn it.”

I stood and said, “I’ll go get it.” I pulled the keys from my pocket and started for the door.

“No,” she said, racing to the front door to head me off. From atop the credenza in the foyer she grabbed her purse. “Just sit down and I’ll run over to Publix. It’s just two miles away. I’ll be back in a flash. The game starts in two minutes—I don’t want
both
of us to miss it. I just love Pau Gasol. You’ll have to tell me how he’s doing when I get back.”

Glory hadn’t been gone for thirty seconds when everything turned into pure hell. From down the staircase emerged a rather tasty-looking brunette number: short, maybe not even five-feet tall, full figured but not fat, possessed of mammoth-sized melons. She was wearing tight shorts and a loose-fitting tank top. She had a dark suntan that contrasted nicely with her sparkling blue eyes. Or maybe they were green. Curiously, despite wearing no bra, her tits weren’t bouncing about—they weren’t moving at all.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said rather sultrily. “Name’s Tricia.” As we shook hands she said, “I’m Glory’s roommate.”

She took a seat on the couch about five feet away from me, and smiled. “What are we watching?”

“Basketball,” I answered. “Glory ran to the store real quick.”

“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “You get your hair cut by Michelle over at the spa where I work.”

“Yes,” I said. “You must be one of the masseuses who work in the back?”

“I could give you a massage right now if you’d like,” she said as she slid next to me. “Turn around, sweetie, and I’ll do your neck. You look really, really tense.”

The woman had incredible fingers. It was the best damned massage I’d ever had. I had never realized how tense I was. The massage went on for about five sublime minutes. She was babbling about something, but I wasn’t paying much attention because I was so relaxed and lost in a beautiful nothingness inside my mind. I could almost sense the presence of the meadow. Not a vision, per se, just a feeling. . . .

Then she stopped and turned me around by the shoulders to face her. “Now you do me, sweetie.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “I really don’t know how to—” I stopped right there because just then she whipped off her tank top, revealing the beauty and enormity of what some surgeon must have recently implanted within her. I then remembered a song in which someone sang that it wasn’t what God made, but rather what He intended.

“I had my tits done a few days ago,” she said as she lay on her back. “The doctor says I need to have them massaged at regular intervals for a while. You know, to soften them up. So straddle me on top and get to work, sweetie.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. I felt like I was in a twilight zone yet again; yet another Allen Funt moment. How could all this stuff be happening to me?

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said, pulling me toward her by my wrist. “You’ll be helping out a friend. If you do a good job, I’ll blow you off before Glory gets back. Crossing Dusty Pond Boulevard from the grocery store takes five minutes alone, you know.”

I pulled back and sprang to my feet. “You’re crazy. I’m on a date with Glory. I don’t think she’d appreciate me giving you a tit massage. Sorry honey, but as magnificent as they are—the eighth fucking wonder of the world in fact—I’ll have to take a pass. Massage them yourself.”

She sat up and gave me a reproving glare. “Just so you know: Glory doesn’t put out until about the twentieth date. She’s a sweet girl and all, but she won’t put out for someone like you. She doesn’t care much for broken men. You’re just her charity case, someone for her to fix.”

“What? Who’s broken?” I was frightened more than anything else. I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing.

“You are, sweetie,” she said. “Glory was right. I can see it in your eyes.” She stood and tried to put her arms around me, but I refused the advance and backed toward the door.

“What did she say?” I asked. My voice was raised but I couldn’t help it. “Goddammit, what did she say about me?”

“Why are you getting all defensive?” The woman was a snake. She kept slithering toward me and I kept backing away. “She heard that you had some mental issues. I don’t know from who, but that’s the word about you. Schizophrenia or something. But you know what? I find it
sexy
.”

She had me cornered near the front door now. I turned around and reached for the knob. But then she quickly slammed into me and pressed her lips against mine.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to knock her down or push her away too hard. I didn’t want to do anything that could be construed as assault and battery. But I had to do something, mainly because her tongue had worked its way to damn near the back of my throat.

I gently grabbed her wrists and slowly pushed her away. I quickly opened the door and then I was out of there.

She didn’t follow me.

What a fucking lunatic
, I thought.
And just who’s walking around town revealing all of my secrets? Caitlin? Samantha?

It was the outside world yet again. For several years I had attempted to play the part of a gentlemanly bachelor. I had given up the nightclub scene and started looking for women the old-fashioned way: through friends, through work, even through an online dating service a few times. For the most part I was meeting high-quality people that way. But nothing had really gelled for me until I’d met Caitlin. Caitlin was a bitch, I had to concede, but at least she wasn’t off of her fucking rocker like the nymphomaniac in Glory’s apartment was.

I reckoned it was just bad karma, a payback from the gods for the way I’d treated the women in my life. From the time I’d broken up with Caitlin I had found nothing but trouble. I thought about the bubble again. I had wanted Glory in that bubble with me, insulated from the coldness and phoniness found in the bars and nightclubs, cut off from those who do nothing but interfere in the lives of others. If I had Glory, I could quit playing the game. But it looked like the game would never end.

Of the cursed outside world, I thought:
Explode into bits and completely disintegrate. I want nothing to do with you.

Glory now knew that I had long ago been diagnosed with something, though if schizophrenia was what she’d heard, it had been a tad off the mark. Whatever the case, someone had gotten to her. I had fallen in love with her smile, her spirit, her beauty, her geeky feet. She had seemed so much more genuine than everyone else. No fake boobs, no collagen implants, no Botox, no lasered-away laugh lines. She wouldn’t be into that bullshit. But now . . . now she was against me. She was now part of the outside world.