John Lutz - The Ex

“I think we’d better forget this afternoon.”

“But we can’t, and you know it.”

“What about Molly?”

“Molly has her own destiny.”

“It includes me, Deirdre.”

She shrugged, as if resigned but tolerant. “I can accept that for now.”

He wanted to leap up, grab her by the shoulders, and shake understanding into her. But he knew he wouldn’t. He shouldn’t.

“I’m not talking about for now,” he said. “We’re going to have to avoid seeing each other.”

She laughed at him as if he were a bright child who would eventually see things her way “Are you afraid of losing control again? I’m not. I’m a Taurus-I know how to accept and control my destiny. That’s something everyone should learn, David. The world would be so much happier.”

“I don’t like losing control.”

“Of course you don’t. But the only thing we have to fear is being afraid, David.”

“It isn’t fear,” he told her. “Or guilt. At least I don’t think so. What we started today can only lead to trouble.” He looked at his hands, gripping the edge of the table where his computer glowed. “No. I guess, to be honest, I am afraid. I’m afraid of loss. I don’t want to lose what I have.”

She seemed amused. “You won’t lose me. I promise.”

“You know that isn’t what I meant.”

She walked over to the bookshelves and examined a stack of manuscripts. Then she moved near the desk and ran her fingertip lightly over the brass frame of the Molly-and-Michael photo. “What you’re really afraid of, David, is destiny. But maybe you’re right. Either way, surely we can remain friends. Molly shouldn’t object to that.”

“Friends?”

“That’s all I’m asking for now, David.”

He didn’t answer her. He knew it was futile.

She walked to the door, then turned around and smiled at him. “David the Virgo.”

As she went out, she bumped into Lisa.

David watched the two women exchange a look he didn’t understand, even though he could almost see the charged arc of emotion. Without a word, they walked away in different directions, as if nothing had happened.

David wondered if Lisa had overheard any of his and Deirdre’s conversation. It was obvious that Deirdre thought so.

He looked again at his hands gripping the edge of the computer stand, so hard now that his fingertips were white. It was as if he needed something solid to anchor him in the familiar and manageable world. Strong currents were running and he didn’t understand them. But he knew that an undertow was drawing him inexorably toward where he feared to go.

He forced himself to relax his grip and watched his fingers gradually loosen, slide slowly, then release their hold on the firm, hard wood.

David stood that night before the medicine cabinet mirror in the bathroom. He was wearing only Jockey shorts and was holding a white T-shirt. After getting Molly’s hand mirror from the top of the toilet tank, he turned his back to the medicine cabinet.

It took him only a few seconds to find the angle where he could hold up the hand mirror and see his back in the larger mirror.

Deirdre hadn’t scratched his back with her fingernails, she’d gouged it. Four parallel tracks of congealed blood on each shoulder blade ran toward each other, not quite meeting at his spine. They were so uniform there was little doubt she’d deliberately marked him as if to claim him. That would be unmistakable to Molly.

He put down the hand mirror and worked his T-shirt over his head. It was one of his larger ones and draped loosely from his shoulders. Then he picked up the hand mirror and checked again in the medicine cabinet mirror to make sure no fresh blood was seeping through the shirt.

His eyes met the eyes of his reflection. There was something different about the man staring back at him. He hoped Molly wouldn’t see it.

He shook his head hopelessly at his image, parting his lips as if to lecture himself. But neither he nor his reflection had any knowledge to impart.

With a sad smile, he laid the hand mirror back on the toilet tank and left the bathroom.

In the dim light of the bedroom he settled down on the bed beside Molly. The air conditioner was running and he felt cool air pass like liquid over his bare legs.

The sheets rustled as Molly moved close to him. She kissed him on the mouth, and in the tautness of her lips he felt rather than saw her smile.

David kissed her back, then yawned and maneuvered her around so that she was facing away from him and they were lying on their sides molded together spoon-fashion. He reached back and adjusted his T-shirt, then lay with his arm thrown over her and patted her wrist.

“Kinda tired tonight, hon,” he murmured. “Only cuddle, okay?”

He felt her body tense. “Sure,” she said into the darkness, “we’ve got the rest of our lives.”

He knew she was lying there awake, staring at the shadowed wall, and hoped she couldn’t feel the vibration of his quickened heartbeat.

In the morning, he wondered which of them had fallen asleep first.

Deirdre had eaten supper at a deli near the movie theater. Now she sat alone in the dark, watching Esther Williams do underwater calisthenics. At least that’s what they looked like to Deirdre. She thought she could do what Williams was doing, and look better doing it. She might even be a better swimmer.

Well, no, she had to admit. Maybe not a better swimmer. But Williams was a strong-looking woman like Deirdre, an athlete with curves. And probably, if you took swimming out of the mix, not as good an athlete as Deirdre. Maybe even if you left swimming in. Deirdre was sure she could have beaten a young Esther Williams at the decathlon. Or in a martial arts tournament. She smiled at the idea.

Deirdre loved to sit alone at the movies, secure in the darkness, lost in the world on the screen. She had always been fond of dark, safe places: movie theaters, closets, basements. But at the movies was the best place of all to be, with not only security, but a world that was as real as her own, brilliant and actual before her, claiming her eyes and her mind.

Everything in Williams’s world was so perfect, so beautiful. Problems and people moved in and out of her celluloid life, but always things worked out for her no matter how menacing her antagonists or how gloomy the outlook. The screenplay took care of her like benign fate.

The music swelled. The screen was now filled with dozens of beautiful women in one-piece bathing suits diving through flaming hoops into the spacious pool. The camera followed some of them underwater, where they smiled as they kept their form, legs tight together and toes pointed, and rose toward the surface like graceful mermaids.

Deirdre preferred old movies. They drew you into their world and held you there. The new movies came out of the screen at you, tried to startle you with abrupt, jarring images like on MTV and with sudden loud noises. Sometimes they posed questions without answering them, and she would leave the theater perplexed rather than reassured. But tonight, she knew as she watched the aquatics and troubled love affairs, that by the end of the last reel everything would be resolved. As it might at least possibly be in her own life. If it happened to Esther Williams, why not to Deirdre?

She sat transfixed by the movie until the final credits had run and the house lights came on to reveal the dinginess of the theater and the flawed humanity of the patrons rising from their seats or filing up the aisles toward the lobby and exits. A very thin man who looked unhealthy, with a yellow-white beard, glanced over at Deirdre as he passed in the aisle. He grinned toothlessly and winked. She gave him an angry look and he walked on. He was nothing like any of the men who had courted Williams.