Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 13 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 13

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate

Thomas Jones (1892-1969)

Days of aimless seduction and deception had suddenly come to a screeching halt, and Lori found herself unprepared to deal with her exposure. She was having such difficulty justifying her actions to herself, how could she possibly explain her behavior to another? She had tried to get faceless words on a computer screen to provide clues as to how he was feeling, if he was feeling, what he was thinking. She had tried connecting with him through the guise of a stranger, simply because she had failed to make this connection on her own. Yet why it was so important to sneak a taste of his forbidden fruit seemed to be an even bigger enigma to her than the truth of who he really was.

She knew that no intrinsic good could come of accepting the overtures she herself had made. He was a flesh-nibbling carnivore lurking in the shadows of a blood-splashed den. And she had made herself prey. It was as simple as that.

Her phone was ringing. 

“Hey, there,” Nick said, stretching out the lengths of his words. 

“Hey.”

“So?” he asked. “What was all that for? Huh?”

“Not sure,” she breathed into the receiver. “I guess I … I don’t know.”

“What? Tell me.”

Silence.

“Please?” he begged. “Please tell me.”

“I … wasn’t sure if … if you still wanted me, or not.”

“I want you,” he said. 

“Really?” 

“Yeah.”

“So … do you … want to get together … sometime?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“When?” 

“How ‘bout next week?”

“O.K.” she said.

“O.K.” Pause.

“All right.” Pause. “Bye.”

“Bye.” 

From: Desiree Jones 

Tonight?

From:  

ill be at the station til sign off!!!!!! tonight 

Lori’s phone rang. She raced to answer it.

“Did you get my e-mail?” Nick panted into the receiver.

“I just got it a second ago,” Lori said. 

“So you wanna come by tonight?”

She paused. “There’s an errand I have to run, but after that I’m free.”

“O.K. Could you drive me to my car afterward? It’s at the Commuter Rail.”

“Sure.”

“O.K.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.” He quickly hung up the phone.

Lori arrived at the deserted station to find Nick looking harried and tired, with his taut mouth positioned in a straight line across his face, his body rigid and mechanical. It was obvious that there was some place else he wanted to be, yet he dutifully followed her into the rear, dimly lit production studio and immediately began going through motions like an actor in a XXX feature film.

“You can leave those on,” he said, pointing down to the woolen socks she had started to slip off of her feet. “You don’t need to unbutton your blouse, either.”

She stood awkwardly near him, not understanding what, if anything, he wanted from her that evening. As he started moving his hands and pelvis thoughtlessly about, she stupidly followed his lead.

He leaned against the wall of the studio. He placed his hand on his sweaty forehead and gazed distantly at her.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, solemnly. “I didn’t eat anything all day, and I just got dizzy for a second.”

They merged again, two dogs in heat barking orders and changing positions many times over in a crowded recording studio in the back of a dark, vacant radio station. For the next twenty minutes, Lori was a rubber blow-up doll, an inhuman porno shop sex toy prodded and bent by someone who was barely aware that she was even there.  

“Would you … like to get together again sometime?” Lori asked as she drove him to his parked car at the Commuter Rail train station several towns away. She knew that if his behavior had been any different that evening, there would be no need for her to ask him such a question. She also knew that if his behavior had been any different, there would be no need for her to ask herself the same.

“Mmmm … possibly,” he said, with a hint of a smile on his face. He grew quiet as she drove along the highway. He turned his head briskly away from her.

 “Is there anything wrong?” she asked. His stillness bothered her. There was evident anger in his eyes as he gazed out the passenger side window.

“I dunno,” he said.

They drove along in silence for quite some time. She cleared her throat and looked over at him. He was still staring out the window at the passing, darkened landscape.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

 “I dunno,” he said again. 

She knew that he hadn’t eaten, and wondered if it was just his hunger that was making him irritable. After all, he had seemed fine earlier in the day.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and continued watching a blur of black trees sweep by. “Sometimes, I feel … guilty, I guess, ‘cause of Mona.”

A deafening hush that lasted through several traffic lights and a well-illuminated bridge made Lori feel queasy. Her palms were so clammy that she was having difficulty gripping the slippery steering wheel, and her mouth and throat had become so dry that she couldn’t swallow without needing to cough.

In a weakened, hoarse voice, she made a desperate attempt to ease the tension, to make some sense out of what had quickly become so senseless. “So … tell me a little about yourself,” she said.

 “There’s nothing … that you need to know about me,” he growled. 

Alas, he had somehow over the course of the night transformed himself into a salivating, crimson-eyed, bat-like creature from the deepest recesses of the most sinful compartment of Hell. Like a released coiled spring, the excruciating silence came back and lingered hatefully in the air until Nick reluctantly sliced through it. “Hope wanted to get together with me a couple of weeks ago, and I ended up canceling out on her.”

Hope was someone Nick had met long ago through the Internet, an Asian girl whom he had boasted many times about to Lori at the Belchertown station. His relationship with Hope had always been strictly sexual, and he claimed that neither had wanted anymore from the other than that. Lori said nothing in response, not sure if he was trying to make her feel better or worse, or if he was just trying to fill the achingly abundant stretch of time ahead of them. 

“Then why did you invite me out to see you tonight?” she asked.

 “I don’t know,” he said, casually. “I guess it was the messages … that got me going. I really don’t know.” He stared hard at an overhead telephone wire lining the road. 

She sat statuesque in her seat. The mix of songs that she was playing off of an old homemade cassette transitioned from carefully cued up classic rock masterpieces to one-hit ninety wonders that she had forgotten she had once liked. The nasty music was feeding far too fittingly into the humility of the moment. She started to move her hand toward the fast-forward button on the stereo, yet the impenetrable force field that seemed to be surrounding Nick blocked her from getting anywhere in and around the passenger seat he sat brooding in. She pulled her arm back and impatiently waited for the music to end on its own. 

Nick began talking again. Lori listened semi-attentively as he described his fantasy of getting bisexual Mona together with sexually liberated Hope and watching from a short distance as they performed for him. She listened, digested, absorbed, and stifled her tears just long enough for the two of them to finally reach the train station. He closed the passenger side door without saying another word to her, walked swiftly away to his car, and left her alone. 

The following morning, Lori struggled to get out of bed. She sat down in front of the computer, and stared blankly at her e-mail “inbox.” She opened an old, unread message that Rutherford had sent to her the day before. Her eyes heedlessly glossed over each line, taking in each typed word but failing to grasp any attached meanings.  

From:

Subject:  Bun fun

To:

I swear, chilly nights like these here at the lake make me honestly feel like despite all the crap in life I really am the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.  I LIKE being alone here with my cat and the natural order all around me.  It would be nice if I had an 18 year-old Swedish cheerleader waiting for me in the bedroom, but I can’t ask for TOO much, eh? 

I feel inspired. Let’s write a play, Lori. We could be like Shakespeare. Anon, good lady! Were I to know thy breath but for a night then may the devil take me in the morning! 

Piz-eace!

Rutherford

Lori clicked the mouse of the computer and exited her e-mail site. She noticed that the little glowing red light on the phone by her desk was on. She had turned the ringer off the night before, and so wouldn’t have known if anyone had tried calling her. She forced herself to listen to a message that had been left on her voice-mail. 

“Lesbian lover!”

It was Angela’s voice.

“It’s like two in the morning, and I just wanted to let you know how much you’ve come to mean to me as a friend, even though we’ve really only known each other a short time. I know this message sounds horny … Oops! I said ‘horny’!” She giggled. “I was going to say either corny or hokey, and it came out as… horny! Isn’t that hilarious? I crack myself up sometimes.”

Lori slowly placed the receiver down and sighed heavily. She was so far gone that she could only see darkness, even in the glow of blinding light. She lifted the receiver of the phone back up and began dialing.

“Hello?” Nick said in a cheery voice.

“This is Lori.”

“Oh, hi,” he said, his tone deepening.

“Are you upset with me?” she asked. “You seemed so … angry last night.”

“No,” he said, laughing lightly. “No, I’m not angry at you. I was just … really tired.”

 Lori could barely hear him over the fulminating sound of her own thoughts. The words, “What we did last night was so, so wrong, and I’m so, so sorry,” fell from her lips and into the receiver before she could really comprehend what she was even saying to him. “I’ve never hated myself more than I do now.” She felt that the words she had chosen sounded embarrassingly familiar, as though they had snuck into her memory from an old Grade B movie.

He was quiet for a few seconds. “Well … um … Thank you for calling.  And I’ll talk to you soon, O.K.?”

“Good-bye,” she said. She hung up the phone in the same automated way that she had lifted it. She walked back over to her bed, sat down on its edge, and then slowly leaned her back against the mattress. She pulled the covers up to her chin. It felt as though a love affair had ended, except her anguish this time around was compounded by the guilt of knowing it never should have been, and the humiliation of recognizing that it barely even was. 

(stay tuned for chapter 14…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)