When Love's at Work (2 page)

The first few hours of the retreat, Pure
found herself wondering what she had gotten herself into. The group
was supposed to reflect on obstacles they had experienced in their
faith journey. As if she was going to spill her guts to people she
barely knew. Well, the women that began sharing talked about how
they never lost faith, never doubted, and if you just believed in
God, everything would be fine.

Pure knew she was in the wrong place.
Practically everyone in the Bible had doubted at one time or
another and here these women were saying you should never doubt, or
ask questions, or wonder why. Were they kidding?

There was a half hour break and Purity was
deciding how she was going to make a graceful exit and head back
home when Meg Silvers and Courtney Abrams came walking over from
opposite directions. The three women almost collided, as they were
all lost in their own thoughts.

“
Woah, sorry,” Meg said.
“Guess I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

“
Me either,” agreed
Courtney.

“
I was paying attention,”
Purity said. “Paying attention to where the road out of here
is.”

“
I was thinking the same
thing,” Meg replied with giggles ringing in her voice.

“
Me, too!” Courtney
exclaimed. “Just what in the hell is all this crap about just
believing and never having any doubts? I have a ton of
doubts.”

“
You swore! You’re going
to hell,” Meg said, her smile contradicting her words.

“
Are you really going to
leave?” Courtney asked Purity.

“
I don’t know.” Pure
looked down at her feet.

“
If you stay, I’ll stay,”
Courtney said.

“
If you stay, I’ll stay,”
Meg joined in, meeting Courtney’s eyes and then
Purity’s.

“
Well, if we’re going to
hell, we might as well all go together,” Purity said and put her
hand into the middle of the circle the women had
created.

Meg put her hand on top of Purity’s, then
Courtney put her hand on top of Meg’s, then Pure again, and Meg
again, and Courtney again until there was a frenzy of hand slapping
going on.

“
I’m actually looking
forward to this retreat now!” Meg said excitedly. “Let’s go move
our stuff into the same room.”

As they walked toward the cabins on a windy
gravel trail flanked by pine trees, Pure thought about her new
friends and thanked God for having their paths cross at just the
right time.

“
Hey!” Courtney stopped
walking, turned around and looked at the two women. “What’s your
name?”

They exchanged names and continued walking,
the scent of lavender and hyacinth filling their senses as they
followed the path.

Meg had ash blonde hair, cut short in a bob
with the ends in the front hanging a bit longer than the ends in
the back. Freckles crossed the bridge of her pert little nose. She
resembled a pixie with a lilting voice and a radiant smile.

Courtney was the complete opposite with
straight blue-black hair, one visible peace symbol tattoo on her
left ankle, ten piercings in her ears, and more black and silver
jewelry on her arms than Purity owned. She was striking with her
olive skin, blood red lips, and black eyeliner.

Rinsing her mouth with Listerine, Purity’s
thoughts came back to the present. Yep, they would be waiting to
hear news of the night’s events and if she didn’t e-mail them soon,
they’d be calling, even though it was almost midnight.

Courtney was a night owl. As long as Pure
had known her she couldn’t call her house before 11am or Court
would spend the first ten minutes of their conversation demanding
to know what was so important that she had to be woken up to hear
it.

Pure curled up on the sofa with her laptop.
As soon as she logged on to the internet she heard Courtney’s duck
quack, signifying she had received an instant message.

“
How’d it go?” Court
wanted to know.

Purity sent a message back. “Superb!
Wonderful! Fabulous! And, best of all IT’S OVER!!!!!”

“
Five exclamation points.
That’s a good sign,”

“
How was your
night?”

“
You don’t even want to
know.”

“
What! Why?”

“
It’s hard enough to fend
off a guy with two hands, let alone one who seems to have twenty. I
couldn’t say good-bye fast enough.”

“
Sorry,” Pure
replied.

“
Such is life. You think
God’s trying to tell me something?”

“
Look before you
leap?”

“
Ha!
I
was
looking,
he
was leaping! LOL.”

Purity sent Court a smiley face icon, then
wrote, “I’m beat, Court, I’m skipping church tomorrow and sleeping
in. Want to get together in the afternoon?”

“
Skipping church? You bad
girl. Tomorrow afternoon sounds great. How about around 2:00pm?
I’ll bring Ben and Jerry if you bring
pasta-something-or-other.”

“
Consider it done. See ya
tomorrow.”

Purity fired off an e-mail to Meg asking her
to pick up some french bread and swing by her place the next day
around 2:00pm, then added that everything went great with the
event.

Pure ignored the rest of her e-mails. They
could wait until morning. She logged off the internet, then went
into the kitchen and peered into her refrigerator. She hoped she
still had a bag of mixed salad greens so she could throw together a
salad for tomorrow’s meal. The salad would help balance out the
calories from the ice cream, she reasoned. There it was and it
wasn’t even slimy. Score! Now it was time for some shut-eye.

Chapter Two

It was 2:00am when Purity sat bolt upright
in her queen-sized bed. Sweat trickled down her back and her
breathing ragged. She gulped air hungrily into her lungs. Pure felt
like she had been running for hours. It was just a dream, only it
wasn’t, not really. It was a memory. A memory of Derek
Worthington.

Purity grabbed the water bottle she kept by
her bed on a side table and let the cool water refresh her dry
mouth. She reached for the phone and called Courtney.

“
What’s up? Why are you
awake in the middle of the night?”

“
I had the dream, uh,
memory again.” Purity tried to keep her voice from
breaking.

“
I’ll be right
over.”

“
No. No, Court, you don’t
need to come over. I just… I just needed to hear a friendly
voice.”

“
That damn self-righteous
sonofabitch,” Courtney began. “They should have castrated him.
Strung him up by his balls and then yanked ‘em right off, or
worse!”

“
I haven’t had the dre…
memory in almost a year. It was probably triggered by his phone
call.”

“
He called you? When? What
did he say?”

“
He called today, while I
was on my way to the fundraiser. He left a voice mail saying his
mother had a stroke, who knows if she did or not. Anyway, he wanted
me to call him.”

“
Did you?”

“
Hell no!”

“
Did you report the
violation?”

“
Not yet. I was so busy
today. I’ll send an e-mail to Brad Thompson on Monday. He’s really
good about following up when I call or e-mail.” Purity was tired of
documenting violation after violation. What good was a restraining
order if Derek just kept ignoring it?

“
Maybe you should call
your shrink.”

“
I thought about that,”
Purity replied. “She said to call whenever I need to talk, but I’m
feeling better. She said PTSD can be triggered by a lot of
different things.”

“
Was it the same
memory?”

“
Yes, identical to all the
others,” Purity paused. “It feels so real in the moment. I can
smell the cologne he was wearing, feel the texture of his hands,
the softness of the pillow… well, until he started smothering me
with it.”

“
I’m all for sexual
exploration, but the whole asphyxiation thing just doesn’t make any
sense to me. I mean, how can lack of oxygen make your orgasm
better?”

Purity didn’t have the answer to that
question. To each their own, Pure always figured, but she had not
been a consenting partner in Derek’s pre-planned theatrics. When
Pure managed to shove the pillow off her face, adrenaline gave her
the strength to knock Derek off balance. She scrambled from the bed
and ran for the door clad only in her skin. She hadn’t thought to
grab a jacket, a purse or her shoes. She had been scared, almost
literally, to death.

Her fists became bruised from pounding on
the next-door-neighbor’s door wildly. Thank God the woman opened
the door and let her in.

Derek was seething when the police arrived.
He tried to make it sound as if Purity was overreacting and their
sexual encounter had just gotten a little out of hand.

Purity could see the signs now, in
retrospect. In the moment, though, she hadn’t noticed Derek
becoming more and more controlling. He had never liked Courtney or
Meg or Tapestry and had insisted that she spent way too much time
with them and not enough with him.

Derek began telling her what clothes he
liked best on her and which way he liked her to wear her hair. It
all happened slowly, over time.

It reminded Pure of that old saying about
putting a frog in a pot of boiling water. It’s hot and he’ll jump
out. But, if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and turn the
heat up slowly, he’ll boil to death. That’s what Pure felt like she
had almost done -- boiled to death -- only in her case it was
almost suffocated to death.

“
Pure? Are you there?”
Courtney asked.

“
Sorry. My mind was
wandering.”

“
You can’t live in the
past. It’s over and Derek Worthington is never going to be in a
position where he can hurt you again, ever.”

“
I know. My head knows. I
just want these stupid flashbacks to stop. When are they going to
stop, Court?”

“
Are you sure you don’t
want me to come over? I can bring my baseball bat and if that
asshole even tries to show up while you sleep, I’ll whack him over
the head with it.”

“
You would, too, wouldn’t
you?”

“
Damn
straight!”

“
Thanks, Court, I think I
can get back to sleep now.”

“
If you wake up again,
just give me a buzz. I’ve been drawing all night and I’m on a roll.
I won’t hit the sack for hours yet.” Excitement laced Courtney’s
words, she loved when her muse came out to play.

“
Can’t wait to see what
you’re working on.”

Purity thought Courtney was one of the most
talented artists she knew. She was always coming up with amazing
images, stories, or paintings that were usually shocking and a bit
macabre but also haunting and beautiful.

“
I’ll see you tomorrow,
well actually, today,” Courtney said with an energy fueled by
creativity and more than a few cans of Jolt soda.

“
Thanks, again, Court. I
love you.”

“
Love you, too. Sleep
well.”

The women hung up their phones. Pure
returned to her prone position in bed, noticing her heart rate had
returned to normal and her skin was no longer clammy.

Courtney returned to her drawing, choosing a
medium-black charcoal pencil to sketch out the labyrinth spilling
out of one side of a woman’s head. She liked the way the darker
coal made the skin look dry, scraggly and torn. It made Court want
to buy the woman some Vitamin E oil to rub on the area and
replenish the moisture in her flesh.

Courtney knew that some people thought her
artwork was bizarre. That was fine with her. She wasn’t involved in
the creative arts to please other people, she did it because she
couldn’t not do it. It was in her blood.

Sipping from her third can of Jolt, Court
found herself wishing she could be of more help to Purity when
those awful flashbacks hit. Right after the incident she used to
get them every night. Purity would wake up screaming and panting
for air. It was frightening. Court, Meg and Tapestry had taken
turns staying overnight with Pure for several months.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder sucked.

Putting the woman with the half brain aside,
Courtney quickly fleshed out an image of a man’s face and body
shape, then she added more details, everything except a penis and
testicles. These she added to the woman’s drawing as earrings.

Courtney worked diligently to get the
contour just right. She didn’t want anyone to notice that the
earrings the woman was wearing were actually a schlong on one
earring and marbles on the other. It would only be noticed on
critical inspection. The images turned out exactly as she wanted.
No one would ever know that the man was a castrated Derek
Worthington. Who said art wasn’t therapeutic?

Purity awoke, relieved that she couldn’t
remember having any more dreams after her night encounter with
Derek Worthington. She glanced toward the window where the sun was
painting grey leaf shadows on her blinds. The soft images were a
soothing balm.

Purity rolled over on her right side and
hugged her pillow as she thought about her life. Mostly, she was
right where she wanted to be, especially as far as her career went.
She really wanted the events coordinator job at The Kids’ Place,
but if it fell through she knew she’d find another place to work.
She’d never been without a job for more than thirty days.