Three Sides of the Coin (Catherine I) (2 page)

             
Most men don't know that stating that a woman is lovely feels threatening to them and should rarely be done with a woman you are not intimate with, while commenting on their good taste in clothes conveys both a respect for their taste, aka their minds, and for their knowledge of what works for them and their lovely bodies. 

             
I enjoy going to England because I call it 'visiting my adverbs.'   I enjoy the English language in all its splendor and love what they have done with it in England, what with the word 'Quite' replacing 'yes' as a reply, and throwing in little extra descriptions with every narrative.  "That was a lovely dust up in the second half of yesterday's football match with the bloody United, eh?"  "Quite so."   In America, it seems ever so much more gay to use the English language like the Brits, so "Wherever did you find it?" would be main stream British in London, and approaching the city limits of ‘Gayland’ in America.   And when it comes from an American metro-sexual looking guy like me with smooth little hands, it often sets a woman wondering if I am asking on behalf of social graces, for my mother, or for myself.  Seldom, it seems, do women suspect it is a line to get to spend more time in conversation with them.

             
"Paris Paris," was her reply, turning her head to see what I would do with that, seemingly redundant, answer.  But she was in my wheel house now and I pondered momentarily whether to be flip with a toss off line like "I heard you the first time," or to impress her with my depth of knowledge and ask which store as I knew the chain had more than one, or as I chose, to play straight for the Metro angle.  "One of my favorite stores in Phoenix.  I assume you live there?"

             
"We live in a suburb there," she replied playing the married card, just in case I missed the wedding ring on her hand while she sipped water from her glass, with a slice of lemon.

             
"Would you be able to travel?" I asked, trumping her married card with my business card, "We have some business in Phoenix, which is how I know of the stores there, but a lot of work would have to be in other cities if you were to join with us."

             
"I can travel some," she said cautiously, "but since my husband travels a lot, I'd very much like to not travel when he is at home.  Besides,” she said with a smile and a head tilt, "we don't know so very much about each other's work just yet, do we?"

             
I loved this woman's adverbs and unless she designed with crayons and string, I was hooked.  "We don't need to force travel on people, we can work around any schedule limitations.   This isn't like being on Doctor's call.  Our windows of opportunity usually stretch pretty widely.  As far as your work is concerned, we'd like to see your portfolio and hear your ideas.  As far as our work is concerned, we can show you our operations here and show you some of our local buildings as well as designs and photos in other cities.  We are looking for someone who is different, but not incompatible with our building designs.  Up to now, there has been too much rework, too late in the build to suit us.  We need a visionary who can fix the weak spots in the designs before we pour the concrete.  Can you read blueprints?"

             
She looked evenly at me and said "Yes.  I have also studied interior architecture and while I cannot do the math on bridge loads and concrete shear strength, I can certainly recognize a load bearing wall and figure out the correct direction to open a cabinet door and plan the drawers to fit the work surfaces in a kitchen.  I find a lot of men can't figure that one out when all they have to do is ask their wives.  But that probably isn't a problem for you." 

             
She paused and so did I.  Did I suddenly come off as a flaming gay, or did she have me as someone who wasn't the marrying type, or someone who was so sensitive he didn't need a wife to tell him how to design a kitchen?  She blushed at the silence as she couldn't think of a polite way out of that statement.  I decided to let that die its own death and took the conversation into a more productive direction.

             
"In fact, I do have that problem, or we wouldn't need a good interior designer.  My mind goes to structure and a laundry list of features.   You would design those features to fit the space.  It will be my job to find the creative way to path the electric, provide the support and price the materials.  You do icing, I do cake."

             
We concluded the discussion with a tour of our facilities, which were just down the street, and a fax number for her to send the job application for the best affect on the hiring process.   I tried, successfully I trust, to act casual and not desperate lest I scare her away.   We parted an hour later, her smile lighting up my day and sparking a hope for a business future with her.

Chapter
2:  Narrator

Who is this Catherine?
 
Please be patient.   Catherine is a complex creature.  It will take time to discover all three sides of her. And if I do this right, you just might discover someone else in this book:  You.  You might have done the same thing if you were in the same exact situation.   In that regard, this book could also be about you.  You will discover something about you as well.  But, please be patient.

Catherine was, simultaneously, both successful and unfulfilled.  But let's do first things first:
Successful.

             
She was, after a fashionable (for the time) trial marriage, a divorcee. She married the man she knew she should have married first (had she known what she wanted and needed).   But it took that first marriage to find out some of what she wanted and needed.

             
Richard was, true to his nickname, a dick.  But he was charming and funny and an actor in college when she met him.  Catherine was an art and design major, which pretty much placed her in a category of women who looked for style over substance, a combination of traits that Richard had to perfection.  At parties everyone hung on to his stories and were reluctant to leave his side, perhaps not to miss the next hilarious interpretation, and perhaps, Catherine imagined, upon later reflection, not to become the subject of his often cruel, but funny jokes.  She knew Richard could not help himself, he neither felt remorse for his cruelty in humor, nor resented others who would cut him as deeply.  In this respect, he seemed fair.  Cruel, but fair.  Not really something you want on your gravestone.   And since Texas, by that time, was a no- fault divorce state, it wasn't on the separation papers either.  Richard, the Dick, moved on to two more wives, two alienated children,  and two more divorces before succumbing to years of smoking, golf, bacon and TV.  By the end, he had found Christ, and the funeral was well attended.  There is no mention of what was on the gravestone, and we'll leave that to Richard and Christ.  We feel sure they will work out the details of forgiveness, of which there should be many.

             
Catherine moved on in another direction.  Where Richard had parleyed his acting skills and ebullient personality into a job in sales, she had gone back to school and obtained a Master's in Interior Design, got herself ASID certified and became fairly successful.  By successful, we mean she did not go broke, and by fairly, we mean she had enough clients she could send off the clients that made life miserable for people such as herself.  Gone were the price takers, bargain hunters looking for free advice under the guise of shopping.  Gone were the clients (or at least a lot of them) who had more dollars than sense.  Some of them thought good design was wild and gaudy, encouraged by Hollywood made for TV movies who showed wildly gesturing Designers (Gay working best, but feather boas on a woman were sufficient), flinging exotic, but highly commissioned and highly expensive, art, colors and furniture about the room.  Catherine could see little difference between their design and the vibrant Crayola pictures stuck to the refrigerator with magnets, other than the price and that quite often the pricey items stayed within the lines, but not always.

             
Some time after Richard had gone, Steven came into her life.  This was the man she should have married first.  He was gentle and smart, clever with his hands and devoted to her.  She gave him two children.  Or perhaps it might be more appropriate to say they inflicted (Let's not be mean about this.  The kids were alright, but they were kids and there is never enough patience in most of us parents) two children on each other.  The two, a boy and a girl were imaginative and active.  By the time of this story the two had moved on to college and out of the house.  It amused her to think of how the standards for success changed over the years.  When she and Steven first peered into the cradle, the thoughts ran along the lines of the children getting straight A's, being valedictorians, 2-3 letters in sports, getting full ride scholarships to Harvard or Yale.   By the time the two children had left for college, the fulfilled desire on Catherine and Steven to be alone was the triumph, and an additional success was marked by the short list of:  no one died, no one got pregnant, no one was addicted to drugs, no one landed in jail, and there were no visible tattoos.  As a further plus, their children's credit ratings were not pre-ruined by bratty credit cards and rolling balances at Best Buy for CD's, TV's and sound systems.

             
Steven came as a surprise to her.  A friend from high school mentioned his name, sometime after her divorce from Richard, and found a way to get them to exchange phone numbers.  At the time, he was working in Kentucky, crawling endlessly through the books in a company that either was not expecting them to be seen, or hoping for the story not to be told. 

             
She wrote a letter of introduction about herself and two days later panicked and called him to tell him not to read the letter when it came.  Of course, this just happened to be the time when the US Postal Service had its series of fortunate events and had delivered this particular letter, this particular time very quickly.  Even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while.  Steven had read the entire rambling mess and had seen the beauty of her within.  He asked if he could call her right back so she wouldn't have to pay for the long distance charges, and he did so, and they talked that first night for four hours.  By the end of the call they were in full love.  It took weeks for them to meet.  He had sent her a picture of himself, a thin, athletic looking man with a full, but neat beard, blazing blue eyes and, this was her favorite part, very large hands.  She could not take her eyes off the photo of those hands.  She wondered if he was as graceful and kind with his hands as he was with his voice on the phone.   For her own part, she did not choose to send him a picture of herself as she tended not to take good photos.  Almost every camera had the uncanny ability to find the wild dog red retina in her eyes.  She told him she would meet him at the airport gate (Such things were allowed back then.) and she would be the willowy blonde.  If she was late, she would meet him at the baggage claim.

             
We wonder why she used the word: "If."  She was preternaturally late to everything and should have said: "When I am late, we will meet at the baggage claim area."  She was wise enough not to describe her clothing, as she knew she would she would not decide that until the last moment.  As it happened, she was, in fact, late.  Steven deplaned to discover that approximately 50% of all women at the Tulsa airport are willowy blondes, and a good portion of them were willing to look him in the eyes.  But though he was such a nerd that uncertainty was his enemy, as frustrating as it was, he was good enough at reading between the lines to realize that Catherine would almost certainly be late.  Besides, he was 20 pages away from finishing the Sci-Fi novel he had brought for the trip.  After retrieving his bag and vainly searching every blue-eyed willowy blonde woman for some sort of recognition, he sat down and started to read.  As he finished the last page, an act of good luck as it turns out; he looked up to see a wide eyed blonde woman staring at him.  He smiled hopefully, and she stomped her foot and exclaimed, "Where have you been?"  He smiled, knowing there was no good answer and allowed her to save face.  Her eyes moved to his hands and back to his face and she smiled sheepishly.  He hugged her and gently kissed her lips.

             
Things moved fast after that and they both knew they were destined to marry, but his burgeoning career as an audit CPA for a multi-national company kept him on the road a lot and her newly minted career as an interior designer kidnapped a lot of her energy.  She found out that, not only could he dabble in the garage arts of wood working and yard maintenance, but he had plumbing, electrical, wallpaper, and masonry skills.  The mother lode husband for an interior designer!  She felt pride and comfort in the fact that anything she could conceive, he could build.

             
And often it came down to such events.  Many years later, once she found a need of a kitchen table of a size not commercially found (66 inch diameter), she had looked in a book for oriental design screens and in the section for octagons, found a sample that she liked and asked if he could build it.  He looked at it, asked if he could convert the octagon to a 16 sided polygon, so it would be less likely to poke someone in the hip, and took the design to the garage.  There he laminated two sets of plywood for the base, calculated and cut the shape to perfect geometric proportions and began handcrafting the design.  He used a walnut burl octagon in the center, radiated out in first 8, then 16 symmetrical directions using Peruvian walnut, and then he used Purpleheart triangles, Bubinga pentagons, and finished the outside in Indian Rosewood.   All in all, there were 600 pieces in that table top.  Each one was custom sanded with a 2% angle to hide the gap, place fitted, then a hole drilled below it.  Next he would crawl under the table, hand screw in a screw to mark the exact perfect place to drill a pilot hole, which he would proceed to drill.  Then he would glue the piece in place, crawl under the table and screw the part down in place, as both a clamp and a lock.  600 pieces!  It took weeks, then months to build.  Finally he sanded for days on end to obtain perfect smoothness and then he varnished it.