I went down to the sundry shop in my hotel, bought a bottle of beer (yes, I guess I’ll have the Sam Adams if that is all you have) and was sitting with my feet up, a glass at my elbow with two generous sips already taken out of it, and my Sinclair Lewis novel open in my hands.
What? Which one? I think it must have been Cass Timberlane.
No, most people haven’t heard of it. I hadn’t heard of it either. It was just something I had picked up at a second-hand book store somewhere, attracted more by the author’s name and the way it looked. It had lost whatever dust jacket it had originally had, and there was nothing even stamped on its dark cover. You had to look at the spine, and there you only saw four words. Cass and Timberlane and Sinclair and Lewis. Four names, I guess, but none of them really meant anything, at least not anything that would tip you off as to what you might find between the book’s covers. Unless, of course, you knew who Sinclair Lewis was and which direction his prose was likely to take you.
What was it about? Well, believe it or not, it was, as I remember, a novel about husbands and wives, and the difficulties they had staying married in the modern world -- modern, of course, in that case meaning the 1940s.
Yeah, I guess that is kind of interesting. But not really what I’m here to discuss, is it? Should we spend the rest of our hour talking about the books I’ve read?
No, no offense taken. Anyway, there I was, my stocking feet up on someone else’s coffee table, sitting in the corner of someone else’s sofa (a sleeper, no doubt, knowing that in a pinch this hotel room could therefore be converted to a double/double), a passable beer at my side and lost in the pages of someone else’s story, when, without warning, my phone emitted a vibrating pulse and the little red light on its front began blinking at me.
It was a text. That much I had come to understand. Someone had just sent me a text, and I quite consciously decided to ignore it. I mean, I was in my happy place. At that moment I was convinced that there wasn’t anything that anyone could text me that would give me greater peace of mind than what I was already experiencing.
But a few minutes later the damn thing vibrated again -- meaning that someone had texted me again. Was it the same person? Probably. Back then I didn’t receive a lot of texts and the idea of two different people sending two different texts in such a short span of time seemed unlikely. It was the same person and, whoever it was, they wanted my attention on something. Maybe it was Jenny. Maybe something had taken a turn for the worse at home. Maybe it was Pamela Thornsby. Maybe something had changed with my scheduled interview tomorrow. Either way, the speculation was enough to get me to put my book down and pick up my phone.
R U THERE? was the first text and it was from Bethany Bishop.
I NEED 2 TALK 2 U. was the second, and it was also from Bethany Bishop.
I sat there looking at the letters on the screen. They were small and non-descript, but they felt imbued with an unrecognizable power. They told me very little, but something had evidently happened. My mind ran through the scenarios. Had she been fired? Had she been injured? Had she left her husband?
The phone vibrated while I held it and new letters appeared on the screen. PLEASE CALL ME IF U CAN.
I pushed the button that would dial her number and sat there listening to it ring once, twice, three times.
“Hello?”
“Bethany?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Alan.”
“Alan! Oh my word. I wasn’t expecting you to call so soon.”
It was hard to tell. The connection was not the best, but I sounded to my ears like she had been crying. “Are you all right? Can you talk?”
“Yes, I can talk,” she said, and this time I definitely heard her sniffle. “The fireworks are over and he’s left the house.”
“What? Who has left the house?”
“David. We had a fight and he stormed out of here.”
David was her husband. She had had a fight with her husband and now she was reaching out to me. Not her mom. Not her minister. Me. What the hell did that mean?
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” Bethany said, “I’m just so sick of his nonsense.”
“What about Parker?” I asked, suddenly thinking about her little boy.
A pause. “What about him?” she said in a suspicious tone.
“Is he all right?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with expressive relief, “he’s fine. David would never do anything like that!”
“What happened?”
That opened the floodgates. For the next ten minutes I sat and listened as Bethany described the fraying edges of her relationship with her husband. It had started innocently. The laundry needed to be folded and she wanted him to do it. More explicitly, she wanted him to want to do it, to do it without having to be asked, and when he wouldn’t, she asked him, and he blew up at her. He swore, he raged, he shook his fists in the air. She cried, desperate for him to be more attentive to her needs, but unable to communicate that simple feeling in a way he could understand. They argued. They fought. He shouted some more. She cried some more. Eventually, he left the house. He took his jacket, his car keys, and just left. Where was he going? Away from her! And now she was alone. Did he leave her? She didn’t think so, not really, but he was gone wasn’t he? What if he didn’t come back? What if he was gone for good and she never saw him again? Could she handle that? Would that be the end of all things, or just another thing that happened? She wasn’t sure.
Throughout it all I did not say a word and did not even shift position. For most of it I simply watched the bubbles in my beer glass form, float to the top, and disperse.
“Hey, I’m sorry to burden you with this,” she said eventually. “It’s not a big deal, I guess. I’m just feeling down and I needed someone to talk to about it.”
“I’m glad I was available,” I said.
“Where are you?”
There was something mischievous in her voice that gave me pause. The first frightening thought that passed through my mind was “she knows, she knows,” but what she knew and what I was afraid of having her find out I couldn’t say.
“You’re supposed to be helping someone move, but you’re not doing that, are you?”
So she didn’t know. I mean, she knew I wasn’t doing what I had told Mary, but she didn’t know what I was actually doing. That was good, wasn’t it? No one at the office -- not even Bethany -- should know that I was interviewing for another job. If word should get out about that, things could get even worse for me than they were now.
“Alan?”
“What do you know?” I asked her. “What’s the grapevine saying about me?”
“Not much,” she said. “Just that you took two days off to help a family member move.”
“My mother-in-law,” I added quickly.
“Oh, okay, your mother-in-law. But that’s not true, is it? Are you going to tell me where you really are and what you’re really doing?”
“I’m in Boston,” I said, liking the illicit chill that the words sent up my spine. That was stepping up to the line but not stepping over it.
“Boston?” Bethany said. “Is that where your mother-in-law is moving?”
I stopped and reflected carefully on Bethany’s words. She had more or less just bared her soul to me -- talking about her husband and her marriage in a way that shouldn’t be shared outside a therapist’s office. And now she was fishing for something secret and private from me. Somewhere deep inside she knew I wasn’t helping my mother-in-law move, but if I insisted she would believe me. I could hear it in the way she asked her questions. Tell me, her disembodied voice seemed to say in my ear. Tell me with whatever you want. A truth, a lie, it doesn’t matter. Just tell me. Tell me something and I will believe it.
“No,” I said, making a fateful decision. “My mother-in-law isn’t moving anywhere.”
“Then why are you in Boston tonight?”
“If I tell you, Bethany, you have to swear not to tell anyone else.”
“Of course. I swear.”
“I mean it, Bethany. No one. Not even David. Do you understand me?”
“Sure, sure, I understand. What is it? You’re not interviewing for another job, are you?”
She sounded torn, like she both wanted to guess right and didn’t want her guess to be true.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. The interview is tomorrow morning.”
“OH MY GOD! ALAN!”
I had to hold the phone away from my ear, she shouted so shrilly.
“What are you doing? You’re interviewing? For another job? You can’t do that! You can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Alan! Because! What about all the work we’re doing to fix the company? What about our battle against Mary? You can’t leave now. How can I keep working there without you?”
Her words were emotionally-loaded, and it was a real challenge for me to sort them all out. Frustration. Anger. Betrayal. Those were the top emotions, coming through loud and clear. But under them were emotions darker and more sinister. Sorrow. Fear. Jealousy.
“I’m sorry,” I found myself saying, even though I didn’t really feel sorry, and then I found myself dropping all kinds of other cliches on her. I was just keeping my options open. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. I had to look out for me and my family first.
She listened, but didn’t really seem to hear me. When she spoke again, her voice sounded quavery, like it had when she had first started talking about her fight with David. This upset her. A lot. Maybe she was being silly, but still, she felt like I was abandoning her, like I was setting her adrift, like I no longer cared about her.
I told her I didn’t know how to respond to any of that, and that I now regretted telling her why I was really in Boston.
“Alan, do you remember that night on the beach in Miami?”
The question sprang up like a sudden threat, conjuring up images in my mind of sharpened blades laced with poison.
“Yes,” I said softly. “Of course, I do.”
“Did you not feel something that night?”
“Feel something?”
“Something between us. Did you not feel something happening between us that night?”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. Of course I felt something. I felt a lot of things that night. The cool sand between my toes, the moonlight on my skin, Bethany’s warm hand clasped in mine. But more, she meant something more than that, and of course I had felt that, too. The connection, the comfort, the satisfaction of being at ease, at being in someone’s company without having to pretend, or strut, or hide. We had both felt that, and we knew that we had both felt that. That is partly what had made it so powerful, the knowing, and the not needing to speak about it.
But now she was talking about it. She was bringing it out into the open -- over a phone line, no less -- as if it was something to be discussed and analyzed. Did she not know that it, whatever it was, would not stand up to such recognition, to such scrutiny? Talk about it and it will die, and all we’ll have left is half-formed memories that could never be fully articulated or shared.
“I know you did, Alan,” Bethany’s tiny voice whispered in my ear. “I don’t need you to admit it, because I know you felt the same thing I did. Something changed between us that night. Something personal and meaningful and long-lasting.”
“It’s true,” I croaked. “But what does that have to do with me being in Boston?”
“It’s not that you’re in Boston, Alan, and it’s not even that you’re there to interview for a new job. It’s that you didn’t tell me. How could you not tell me! Don’t you think I deserve to know that you’re thinking of leaving the company?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, still not entirely sure if I was or wasn’t. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way. Jenny has done so much of the behind-the-scenes work on this, the fact that I’m seriously working to get out of the company hasn’t really hit home for me.”
At the mention of my wife’s name I could sense a stillness come over Bethany’s end of the telephone call, and then an almost crystalline iciness in the words she finally chose to speak next.
“Yes, well, I guess that makes sense, Alan.”
“It does?”
“Yes. Look, I think I just heard David’s car. I’ve got to go now.”
“Ummm. Okay.”
“Good-bye, Alan. Good luck at the interview tomorrow.”
Her line clicked off and I was left alone in my hotel room.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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