Chapter 3

I generally wake at the same time every morning regardless of the time I've retired the night before. Actually I almost always awaken about an hour before I'm due to get up; I don't sleep the sleep of the dead anymore, there will be plenty of time for that later and while I love to sleep, I love even more waking and not having to get up. No stretches are better than the ones that stretch into languor and back into sleep. The ones where you grab every pillow you can get your hands on and wrap them around your head and give thanks with a murmuring moan for being able to just lay there until you drop off again. Sleep related moans generally start with an 'A' and sexual ones with "M's" and "U's". Groans, yelps and squeals use an entirely different alphabet. Screams are older than words, that's why you can't scream in a different language.

This one was a little different though, this Sunday morning. I had fitfully slept last night with a mind rolling too fast for the relaxation required for deep sleep. It was a two part evening with the second assuming a far different tone than the first. I doubt Lauren had slept well either. I wondered if she lay there with regret for having opened up to me or relief for having done so.

I had watched her pad quietly off my porch at three o'clock this morning after sheepishly thanking me and profusely apologizing for her intrusion. I did my best to make it clear that while I might be able to offer very little in the way of a solution I absolutely didn't resent her appearance at my door or her sharing her burden with me.

Now, in the light of morning, rather than the disjointed middle of the night kind of thoughts that accompany a mind racing at bedtime, I could step my way objectively through Lauren's plight, how she got there and how she may be able to escape. I'm far more familiar with the failings of relationships, the weaknesses and destructive patterns, than I am with the successes. Why wouldn't I be? It's my data base. I'm aware of, and thankful for the successes and they always capture my attention and admiration. They are the last bastion against what many of us deem futile and nearly impossible to achieve, a monogamous partnership and a harmony founded and based upon a deep, trusting love and maybe most important of all, a true friendship. If something like half of all marriages end in divorce I think it's safe to assume that something similar would be true for non marital relationships. I would venture to say at least half of the remaining half remain together out of some form of inertia or indecisiveness in something less than a blissful state. If this information is factual, and I think it's a relatively safe guess, it means something like three fourths of us have failed in every relationship we've ever had.

This tangent of thinking required coffee with perhaps a lump of sugar to cut the bitterness. I sat sipping coffee once again where only hours before I had done the same with a distraught woman trapped in a nightmare and wondering how she got from where she was to where she is. I slid off the stool, cup in hand, and walked to the front of the house and looked out the window to see if she was standing at the front of her garage smoking a cigarette. Seeing her there more often the past few weeks was understandable now. I would often see her there early in the morning from my bedroom window, garage door open, standing there smoking. A few times times we had waved while she was there as I drove either in or out. The weekend I moved in she broke from a small group on a Sunday football afternoon, all standing in her driveway with a bottle of beer in their hands, and came to where I was unloading boxes of books from my vehicle and introduced herself. Since then, the past three of four months, I had gotten to speaking terms with most of the group and been invited to one of the Sunday afternoon beer and football big screen TV events and felt some obligation to reciprocate but chose to do it on a Saturday night instead. That's how I got to where I was when she slipped quietly by my door early on a Sunday morning .

Of course with such limited exposure to her over such a short period of time I knew next to nothing about her but from simple observation and some of what she told me last night I was able to discern some basics. Late-ish twenties, married, no children, quietly attractive, soft but well spoken, more confident as a person than as a woman. Driven and ambitious enough to have been successful in high school, college, and to be continuing to pursue a graduate degree. She didn't say but I guessed law given her current employment and most likely the urgings of the lawyers at her firm. Made sense anyway. Husband upwardly mobile and built for sales, not a boastful man, nor arrogant, but with the focus on self that seems to radiate from those in the initial throes of success, especially when they see even riper fruit to pluck on the horizon, the world being their plum. It can seem so easy for awhile, longer for some than others. I thought he was approaching that rung where you have to leave some things behind, lighten your emotional load so as to fare well at higher altitudes. Shedding of some of the soft thin skin so as to toughen the hide for the battles to come. Friends can fall by the wayside here, wives and children can become strangers. He wasn't there yet but he was winding through the maze and headed for the portals where all the good stuff awaited him. They would be the first to move on, upscale themselves, acquire things that you look happy and good sitting in, smiling and waving to the rest of us. I've ridden and sat atop such finery and I looked better than I felt.

Patterns, repeated east and west, north and south. Passing through the gates with the predictable results. Behaving in the manner that you know and what you know is what you see and experience. Make more money, inhabit more square feet and fill them with better, bigger accoutrements. Invest more time in pursuit, less in what you will later learn is really important. I didn't know of course and could only speculate but if pressed I would have to go with the percentages and say in all probability their relationship had followed patterns and they had failed to determine their own course and suffered from a lack of originality rather than taking the road of non conformity, the road less traveled. The path of resistance is a lonely one. It's easy to do, that's why so many people do it, follow the patterns, do what's expected. Why try to put the round peg in the square hole when it just won't fit?

It's a common refrain, a lament often heard at particular points in coupling. 'Why can't it be like it once was, like it was when we couldn't keep our minds, eyes, hands off of each other? That's what I want, make it like that again and everything will be just fine, I promise, make it just like that.' Next step is 'why can't you, why don't you behave like you used to, do the things you used to?' The half of the other half I was speaking of,a mixture of unsatisfied dissatisfaction, apathetic love, a lonely togetherness of varying degrees. Doubts creeping in, questions, 'this my lot in life?' If onlys and maybes and what ifs. Magic lost can reappear but it's not one of the patterns, its reemergence is as unlikely as a beautiful woman opening your door in the middle of the night. Hope is a thing with feathers some poet once said. I prefer 'love is an emotion best served fresh.' Like it has an expiration date; good until......best if loved before.......

This melancholy musing was interrupted by the chirping of my cell phone and I knew before looking that it was her. I had given her the number before she left and told her it was the best way to reach me if she wanted to tell me the rest; I also gave her an out in case she didn't want me involved any further. But I suspected she would having witnessed the degree of her desperation and how foreign intentionally malicious behavior was to her, especially directed her way.

I'm your salvation? Shoes you don't want to be standing in.

"Hello"

"It's me, Lauren"

"All is well? I mean, there? From last night?"

"It's fine. I walked through the back yards. So no one would see, even though I'm sure everyone was long crashed. Don't worry, your reputation is intact"

It was good to hear her laugh, soft though it was. I was expecting remorse, embarrassment, it seemed more like she now had a partner in her crime. And to her it was a crime and she had declared herself guilty. I saw it more as naive and perhaps foolish but she would wear guilt like a cloak and I would not be able to disrobe her of that. It wasn't my job to try but if I could help some with it on the way I would. It's difficult to be indignant when wracked with guilt.

"I'm sorry to call so soon, or at all. But I need to know if you're in for more, if you have any ideas or need to know more, or...I don't know, maybe just tell me it has to end bad, that there is nothing that can be done? I know I'm asking a lot and I have no right to ask anything but....

I broke in knowing she would ramble on not knowing when to stop, so I stopped her mid apology. This wasn't counseling and I'm certainly not theraputic.

"No, It's OK, it is. I'm just not sure where to start but I'll need to know more and you have to decide if you can do that. As long as he's anonymous he's safe. I have to know what you know of him. He's coming out in the open, that's good, at least as far as finding out who he is. But I can't just walk up to him and tell him to stop."

"No, I know that, but don't you have a better chance of stopping him than I do? I've tried to be resistant with him, he laughs. And I fold. Help me stop folding, no, that's not fair to you, you can't do that. But you can help me think straight, you already have, straighter anyway. I need a plan, something. I have to go. I can call tomorrow night? Craig leaves tomorrow afternoon for a couple of days and I have a class but after? I'm scared, Mondays are bad because of the weekend, he knows he can't have me on the weekend although he's starting to push for that."

"Call me, it's ok, I'll be here, and Lauren?

"Yes?"

"Don't give in tomorrow, stall, put him off, tell him you're sick, have an appointment, anything."

"But, what if...."

"He won't, he's too pleased with himself at where he has you, he won't blow it for one day, be firm, tell him to fuck off if he pushes. Let him see some backbone. Trust me, he'll wait."

"Yes, I've wanted to do that....I was just afraid.....at how he would react, what he might do".

"It'll be ok, especially with Craig out of town, it'll buy us some time. Doors locked, watch to see if someone is following you wherever you are, wherever you go. What kind of car?

"It's white, medium size, I don't know, just white, not big, not small".

"I'll keep an eye out for anyone suspicious but I doubt he's going to be cruising by here. Wouldn't make sense unless he had contacted you, knew he was going to see you. You ever see him drive by when you're out smoking?"

"No, and believe me I watch for him. OK, tomorrow? God, thanks, I can't tell you....I....

"Go, it's really OK, just don't get your expectations too high, but call, I'll be here".

We OK'd and byed and I walked to the front window knowing I would see her appear, light a cigarette, draw deeply, and hold her head up and blow a stream of smoke into the air. She did. I thought I saw some fight in her eyes rather than the bitter resignation I had seen when she was talking last night. Better than hanging her head.

I fought off for the most part visualizing her standing exposed at a window.