Illusions Complete Series (10 page)

His face instantly changed. Panic, fear, anger all flashed through his eyes. I wondered why he didn’t have a hard time talking about him the other night. Come to think of it, he really didn’t say much about him, except that he was a retired CEO of Flash Utility, being active from 1975 to 2003, then left it at that.

“What was fascinating about it?” His voice had a hard edge to it now. He sounded demanding, sarcastic.

“Well, you didn’t tell me much. I, I, I’m trying to find out more about you.”

“You don’t need to know about my father to find out more about me.”

I suddenly felt that I was wrong to Google the man. But the morning when he was talking in his sleep, begging his father to stop something, made me want to find out more about Benjamin Whitney.

“Well, I Googled him…”

That was a mistake. I suddenly saw rage in Ryan’s eyes. Then he looked away.

I went on “You know, it occurred to me, after looking up your dad, that I didn’t know your last name.”

“You still don’t know my last name.” His voice was very hard-edged.

I was getting somewhere. But at what price?
“It isn’t Whitney?”

“No. It’s Gallagher.”

Time to drop it.
But it was too late. Ryan was standing up, and backing out of the apartment. “Uh, thanks for the iced tea,” he said, opening the front door. “Uh, I’ll call you,” he mumbled.

And he was gone.

Chapter Ten

After Ryan left, I was back on the couch. I didn’t feel as miserable as I did the last time. I was more confused.
OK, so he and Alexis were drug addicts together. Big whoop. Rich kids doing drugs in a tony private school? That’s almost a cliché. That’s definitely not what he’s really worried about. Even if Alexis “went to the press” about that, who cares? Ryan is an unknown, except that he’s the son of a prominent businessman. Yeah,it’s kinda bad that he did drugs with her the other day, but, if he says that he doesn’t  want to do it anymore, than I choose to believe him.  

I couldn’t concentrate. I gravitated towards the computer, mindlessly flipping through Yahoo stories about the world’s fattest dachshund, and what Lady Gaga was up to that week. Some relationship advice was also on the Yahoo front page, so I flipped to that. I even flipped to my Match account.
Hmmm. Two different guys are hitting me up.
I put that on the backburner, for the time being.

I drummed my fingers. Sighing, I got on the Google home page, typing in the words “Benjamin Whitney.” The usual came up – his biography, his causes, the news about his retirement, the news about how Flash had lost money in 1999, but Benjamin still got a $30 million salary that year. There were stories about how he possibly was forced into retirement because he just didn’t have the business acumen anymore.
Yeah, so what? CEOs are forced into retirement all the time.

Taking a deep breath, and doing something that I hadn’t yet done - probably because I just now learned his last name - I Googled “Ryan Gallagher.” I came upon notices that Ryan Gallagher is on Facebook. Not the same guy. There was another story about a Ryan Gallagher, with an accompanying picture. Definitely not the same guy. There was a Ryan Gallagher who was an artist, but I glossed over that, thinking it probably wasn’t him.
Nothing bad so far.

Then I Googled “Ryan Whitney,” deciding to go ahead and do a search only on the Google news page. This bore fruit. Apparently his drug abuse had made news at the time, as he had spent time in a Mexican jail trying to smuggle some drugs into the country. He was 22.
A drug dealer, too?
I read the story carefully. It turned out that it was small-time, just some pot, and he was only in the jail for three days. Since he is the son of Benjamin Whitney, this passed as news. I found another article about him entering rehab. Again, this was only news because of his father. His picture accompanied both articles. He looked quite a bit different – thinner than he is now, his hair was longer, his shoulders were hunched, and he did not look happy.
Would you look happy to have your picture taken as you are led into a Mexican jail or going into rehab?

Ordinarily, this stuff might alarm me, but he already told me about the drug abuse, so I wasn’t all that surprised that he was in the news for it. And it wasn’t like it was national news. These articles were from the Kansas City Star, so the story was pretty contained.

The one thing that did interest me, and set off little alarm bells, is that Ryan’s last name
is
actually Whitney.
Why would he tell me that his name was Gallagher? 

This gave me an idea. Getting on Wikipedia, I typed in the name “Benjamin Whitney.” Under “spouse,” it became clear. Benjamin Whitney’s spouse’s name was Margaret Gallagher.
Well, that mystery is solved. Ryan is using his mother’s maiden name.
Margaret “Maggie” Gallagher was an opera singer who was born in Ireland.

Why was Ryan using his mother’s maiden name?

I skimmed the article, as I was mainly interested in Benjamin’s personal life, so I skipped ahead to that section. Then something in that paragraph made me completely lose my breath. The section read “In 1986, Whitney was accused of inappropriate contact with a minor child. Charges were never filed, but the child’s education was paid for, leading some to believe that the child’s parents were bought off.”
What? Where was that story on Google? 
Then I remembered that anybody could add content to Wikipedia. Still, I would imagine that Ryan, and Benjamin for that matter, were aware of this entry.

Why wouldn’t Benjamin sue for libel?

Because truth is an absolute defense to libel.

I flipped back to Google news, typing in “Benjamin Whitney” and “inappropriate contact” “sexual abuse” and “minor.”
Nothing.
Why would that be on the Wiki page and not in the news?

Because the story was buried.
Completely buried.

It was all becoming clear.
No, no, no, stop thinking the worst. Maybe Benjamin doesn’t know about the Wiki entry, and somebody has it in for him. It’s possible. Anything is possible.

Somebody was at the door. It was Ryan. I shut down my computer, and deleted my search history.
You can’t be too careful.

I opened the door. He looked kind of drunk again. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey. Come on in.”

“Sorry about earlier.”

“Not a problem. Come in, sit down.”
America’s Next Top Model
was playing on the television.
If the messy apartment, the wrecked car and the general brokeness of my situation doesn’t scare him off, trashy television probably won’t either.
Nevertheless, I clicked it off.

I had invested in some better wine glasses since the last time he was here. I also had signed up for a wine-tasting class so that I could provide some better wine than Two Buck Chuck. However, at this time, it was Two Buck Chuck or nothing. I poured a couple of glasses of wine, then joined him on the couch.

He looked at me. “I need to tell you something.”

My breath caught.
Is he going to tell me something about his father?

I waited, expectantly.

What came out of his mouth was not what I was expecting. “I’m in love with you,” he said. He continued to stare at me. “I know that sounds crazy, we’ve only just met.”
Yes, crazy, but he told me that he thought that he was possibly falling in love with me after the first date or so. Take this with a large grain of salt.

He continued. “God, I just can’t stop thinking about you. Since the moment I met you, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I even dream about you.”

I felt flattered and overwhelmed. Well, he certainly was laying it on thick. I wanted to tear down my walls and really believe what he was saying, but it was unbelievable. He hardly knew me, and he could, literally, and I do mean literally, have any woman he wanted. Any woman. And I hadn’t forgotten that there was somebody named Nick in the picture. Until he was ready to tell me about who she is, I refused to trust him. Not to mention his complicated relationship with Alexis. There were just too many issues around this guy.

He continued. “All I could think about just now, after I left your apartment, was how I hoped that you still want to keep seeing me. I hope that you believe that I don’t have a need to go back to the horse. I mean, I’m an addict, I will always be, I guess, or so they told me in rehab. But I realized this week that I don’t want it anymore, and probably never will again. God, I hope that you believe that.”

“Of course I believe that.” And I did. There really wasn’t a reason not to.
Well, except for his relapse…
But I immediately put that out of my head.

“I just can’t believe that crazy Alexis, my drug abuse past and the fact that I regularly see a therapist isn’t scaring you away.”

“Come on, we all have our issues.”
Some have more issues than others, but still…

“I’m being serious here. I’m in love with you,” he repeated. “I can see myself spending the rest of my life with you.”

I furrowed my brow. What was he saying?  Why me?  What about Nick?

“I know, I know,” he continued. “I hardly know you. You hardly know me. I know it sounds nuts, but I see you. I see your kind and generous heart. I see your sense of humor. I don’t really know myself why I feel so strongly. I just know that I do. I also think that you don’t judge me. I mean, how you handled the Alexis situation…I just knew that I was in love with you right then.”

The Alexis situation. What did he mean?

He continued on. “I mean, you didn’t come over and demand that I pay attention to you when I was talking to her at the park. You somehow understood that Alexis had to sit in the front seat last night, and that I had to drop you off first. I don’t know, you somehow understood the whole situation. I couldn’t believe how good you were about everything. Most women would have pitched a holy hell bitch about that situation, rightly so. Not you. You understood.”

Well, I’m glad that I have you fooled, because I didn’t really understand. I just didn’t know how else to react.

“Then when I just now told you about my drug problem, you didn’t bat an eyelash about it.” He hesitated. “Actually, after I calmed down the Alexis situation last night, I had some time to think, and that was when I realized that I wanted to marry you. I just couldn’t imagine another woman who would be so calm about what was going down.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Marry me? 
I could feel my breath heaving, my heart beating.

“Well, it wasn’t just the Alexis situation,” he continued. “That was what capped it off. It’s…I don’t know, I just feel comfortable around you. Like I’ve known you all my life.”

I took a deep breath. “Uh, how much have you been drinking?” A rude question, I knew, after all he had just told me, but I figured that most of this was alcohol talking.

Then again
in vino veritas –
“in wine, there is truth.”

“I had a couple of beers at the 810 Zone.” The 810 Zone is a bar down the street. “And a couple of Dewar’s and water.”

I nodded.
How long was he gone from the apartment – about three hours? He probably drank a lot in those few hours and he’s loaded now and babbling at the mouth.
Still, he didn’t look
that
drunk. His eyes were not bleary, his speech was fine, and he didn’t stumble. However, I remembered my Uncle Jack. That man could literally drink all night long and never slur a word. So Ryan might be drunk, and just not showing it.

He looked at me, his face wounded. “I know you think that I don’t know what I am saying, but I do. I think I loved you the first time I saw you.” Then he started humming a tune, then singing a familiar Randy Newman song,
Marie.
“I loved you the first time I saw you, and I always will love you, Marie.” His voice was actually very melodic and nice, unlike mine.
Is there anything this man can’t do?

He smiled. “My mother used to sing that to me when I was a little boy. But she used the name Ryan instead of Marie, of course.” He looked wistful.

“That’s very sweet.”

“Yeah.” He looked up at me, and for some reason, I thought of him as a little boy. “She, uh, wasn’t in my life much. My father, uh, and she divorced when I was ten. I lost contact with her altogether until just recently.”

I nodded. I wondered if he was going to tell me about her opera career.

He did hint a little. “She was a very good singer. I always loved that song.”

“So, did you have a mother figure growing up?”

“Not really. Benjamin never remarried. He was too focused on his career, I guess. Although my best friend’s mother, uh, kinda was a female role model for me. She was a very kind person, like my mother.”

He didn’t elaborate further.

My heart was pounding and my head was swimming. It was so much to take in all at once. He loves me, or is in love with me, he has a crazy, yet strikingly beautiful, ex-wife, he is a heroin addict.
All of these issues in such a beautiful package.

“Your mother, what was her name?” I played dumb.

“Maggie.”

“She’s Irish?” I pretended to guess by hearing the name.

“Yes.”

I waited for him to say more about her, but he didn’t.

“So…” He began. “Um, what do you think about what I just told you?”

I knew that question was coming.
“Well, I’m, um, flattered.”
Poor choice of words.
“Let me start again. I, am, um, um.” I took a deep breath. “Well, it’s really soon.” I finally said.

He looked hurt. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Way to go. But what should I say? 

We drank our wine in silence for a few minutes. I was feeling really uncomfortable. My emotions couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on between myself and Ryan. I was still stuck on why it is that he would like me, at all, in the first place, and now he was talking about marriage. I guess I was having a hard time believing that any of it was real.