The Perils of Pauline Page 12

Going back to school means coffee dates with Michael at the Dingy. Well, shouldn’t I finish what I’ve started?

  CHAPTER 14

  Command Post Exercise

  Command Post Exercise: an exercise in which the forces are simulated, involving the commander, the staff, and communications within and between headquarters.—Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

  If only George would stop barking at every tiny little thing, the house would be quiet and peaceful tonight. This morning Donald flew off to Calgary with the Doubles prospecting team—a team that includes good old Lindsay—to assess possibilities for a new Canadian branch. Yesterday I put Serenity on a bus to go visit her Dad for a few days, and Olympia and Jack are both at friends’ houses for sleepovers. Cool.

  I pour myself a glass of wine and lie on the couch with my laptop. Michael is online. I message him: I’m alone. I have the house all to myself.

  Almost immediately, my cell phone rings. Furious, George leaps off the couch to bark at the door, his fur rising in a sharp ridge across his back. Jumping up, I grab his collar and try to shush him while answering: it’s Michael.

  “What’s all that barking about?”

  “George thinks he’s a tough dog. He’s making me nervous; there’ve been a lot of break-ins in the neighborhood recently. I wish you were here.”

  “I wish I could be there too. Carmen’s gone out but I’ve got Nick tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s asleep, though. We can talk. Hang on a sec.”

  A minute later he comes back on the phone. “I want to share something with you,” he says. “It’s a poem I wrote.”

  The poem is about a couple. They’re paddling together across a pretty hidden lake. The woman reclines, trails the tips of her fingers in the water and then runs them across her throat letting the droplets trickle down.

  Michael pauses to say, “Go ahead, trail your fingers in the water too.”

  “My fingers are already dripping.”

  I like where this is going. Michael sure knows how to make a woman want to get naked in a canoe.

  I don’t think Michael actually used the word throbbing but that’s what everything in the lake is doing. Frogs dart their long licking tongues in a frenzy of tasting, touching, and teasing while dragonflies flirt around stands of cattails. The man continues paddling across the lake with slow intention and purpose. He dips his big, thick, sopping wet oar, plunging it, deeper, harder as the cattails sway, undulate and moan, and the rippling waves swell.

  By the end of the poem, I’ve sunk to the carpet, throbbing too, all hot and sloppy with desire.

  “Now you have to come over and mop me off the floor.”

  “You know I’d love to.”

  Michael wishes me a good night. Oh well. Maybe there’s a good show on. I scan the channels while George patrols the perimeter. At the back door he stops to growl deep in his throat; this time I, too, hear a noise: a muffled thump on the back deck. What could it be? A cat? A skunk? A raccoon? A ruthless, throat-slashing woman-raping killer?

  It’s just the cat. After double-checking all the door locks, I turn off my phone and lie down on the couch with the television remote. George jumps onto the couch with me and settles down, his huge bony head resting on my feet. I’m glad Shae didn’t come back to get him after all. Serenity says she took off up north to plant trees. For good.

  I’m fast asleep when George suddenly flies off the couch to hurl himself at the front door in a barking frenzy. This time he refuses to shut up. Peeking through my blinds I see, parked in front of my house, a police cruiser with all of its lights flashing. Two officers are ushering a man into the back seat. Stepping out onto the porch, I spy Lewis standing on his front lawn, arms folded across his chest.

  “What’s going on?” I say to Lewis.

  “That sneaky SOB was sitting in his car with the lights off, right over there in front of your house. Casing out the neighborhood.”

  As the cruiser pulls away from the curb, I spot Michael’s car parked across the street.

  I hurry down to the station, aim my voice into the microphone in front of a plate glass window and explain the situation to the officer in charge. The OC turns to his computer, types in my name, address, and phone number and points me at a chair in a long hallway.

  I sit and stare at a rack of pamphlets with titles like So You’ve Been Charged With An Offense while hoping the officer didn’t smell wine on my breath. It’s been hours since I had a sip but that’s enough to pretty a picture up nicely. My hair is uncombed and there’s cat hair on my sweater from lolling around on the carpet pretending I’m a water nymph. Yes, I am the real deal of a reliable witness, sitting in a police station in the middle of the night with stringy hair and booze on my breath. In fact, I might well be harmful to Michael’s case.

  An hour passes. An angry-looking woman shows up to collect her son, picked up earlier for underage drinking. The kid is still unsteady on his feet and the woman hauls him away, her eyes beveled with cut-glass ire.

  I go back to watching the officer in charge ruffle through papers on his desk. He refuses to make eye contact with me. Every time the phone rings he yawns, stretches, and answers in a bored voice. More time passes. Finally Michael emerges and the officer buzzes him out to the hall. Michael isn’t smiling.

  “I’m free to go,” he says to the wall above my head.

  “Do you want a ride home?”

  “It’s probably better if I grab a cab.”

  He turns and heads for the door with a rapid stride. I follow him outside onto the stairs where he lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. As an afterthought he offers me a puff but I shake my head, no. I wait but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he intently watches the smoke trails as he blows them, one after another, straight up to the night sky. There is the faintest tinge of dawn on the horizon.

  I can’t stand it anymore. “What happened?”

  “I was sitting in my car trying to text you when those bozos showed up and dragged me down here. They said there was a robbery in the neighborhood earlier tonight, and I fit the description of the guy. I’ve been discharged as a case of unfounded arrest.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  Michael doesn’t look relieved. He looks like the angry mother.

  “There’s an incident report with my name on it in their files. Forever. Forever. It says suspected robber. In block lettering.”

  “The file is closed now. And those files are confidential.”

  Michael’s voice goes wry and incredulous, and he says, as if to himself, “I’ve never been a person of interest before.” And shakes his head, sadly.

  Then he looks at me as if he’s reflecting on the progress of his life since he met me. I feel like that edgy girl who gets everyone else to smoke in the schoolyard.

  He turns his head away. His jaw tightens and he says, “They wouldn’t let me see what else they wrote on the file.”

  “I’m sure it’s okay. Try not to worry.”

  Michael takes another deep drag off his cigarette.

  “Carmen came home just after we talked. I told her I was going out to a spoken word thing. I should’ve been home hours ago. I guess it’s the great big dog house for me.”

  He yanks out his phone and checks the screen. “They wouldn’t even give me my one call.”

  A taxicab pulls up to the curb. I watch him climb into the back seat and lean forward to give the driver his address. Just after the park, the big doghouse on the left. Before closing the cab door, he leans out slightly and says, distractedly, “I’ll call you. Wait, maybe you should call me. I don’t know.”

  “Take care,” I offer as the window goes up. He slumps back in the seat and the cab pulls away.

  CHAPTER 15

  CONPLAN

  CONPLAN: In the context of joint operation planning, level 3 planning detail, an operation plan in an abbreviated format that may require considerable expansion or alteration to convert i
t into a complete operation plan or operation order.—Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

  “I have news.” Donald rolls in the door, off his flight from Calgary, wearing an intense expression on his face. “Doubles is offering me a sweet deal. They need a top gun out in Calgary to set up the new branch office. Eight months out west and I’ll get a promotion. They’re promising me a directorship. And a big increase plus living expenses.”

  Calgary? Calgary is way out west. And way up north in Canada where it’s bitterly cold. The west is full of cows. They have stampedes up there. And gas and oil wells all over the place. And snow. Lots of snow. My mind races on past a vision of an endless line of oilrigs propped in snowbanks to a string of questions: does Donald want us to move west with him? And what about Lindsay? Lindsay is up for a directorship, too. And she’s been with Doubles longer. She’s next in line. What are they doing with her?

  As if reading my mind, Donald says, “Lindsay Bambraugh is working on the international development portfolio a lot these days. She’s not that interested in staying in New England.”

  These days, decision-making discussions between Donald and me are all too often as intricate and choreographed as a rare bird-mating dance on a late-night wildlife documentary. Donald hasn’t spoken to me this solicitously in months. He really wants this promotion.

  I begin with a show of ruffled feathers: “You want to move to Canada? For eight months? What about the kids?”

  Donald opens his beak slightly as he realizes that I’m deftly serving the first volley of the Mating Dance Game of Convincing Me to Stay Home With the Kids While He Flits About Freely Out West (leaving me to my own free-flitting agenda). Your move, Donald.

  “I can’t see all of us going. I don’t know how that will work out for the kids’ schooling,” he frowns, as if Jack and Olympia might be irreparably harmed by the sight of a Calgarian classroom, no doubt a cheap thin prefab, listing precariously under the harsh prairie winds. Of course, Jack and Olympia are being schooled in a crumbling building that saw the Kennedy administration come and go, but what of that?

  I frown and nod too, and then adopt a look of innocent thoughtfulness. “We’d have to rent the house. I don’t know what sort of people might want to rent a house for only eight months though.”

  We pause to shiver at the thought of our basement becoming the hub of a grow-op or a terrorist cell or, worse, a frat boy hangout.

  It’s critical to be the one to come up with the last objection so the other one will have to offer up the alternative arrangement. We furrow our brows as we try to think of more compelling objections. Donald isn’t giving in too quickly.

  “And then there’s Serenity,” he says.

  “Yes, Serenity. And of course there’s work, what will I do for work?” I add, cleverly ignoring the part that I’m unemployed and doing absolutely nothing.

  Donald gives in first. He squints at me and pops the question:

  “Do you think you would be up to holding down the fort here at home?”

  Eight months on my own with the kids here at home. And Donald might never come back. The pain. Eight months on my own with Michael. The pleasure. Oh my.

  Donald tucks his wings under and cocks his head as he waits for my reaction while I tilt my head upwards in a thoughtful angle. He adds, “It will also give us time to think.”

  “Yes. We do need time to think.”

  It’s as easy as two birds falling off a wire.

  “As far as marital policy goes, do you think I should be letting Donald run wild and free in Canada for the next eight months?” I ask Bibienne as I stretch my arms up over my head and lean back further in my chaise lounge.

  There’s nothing better than relaxing in Bibienne’s backyard drinking pink lemonade spiked with vodka and watching the kids filling the pool with grass. Bernie hates grass in his pool but he isn’t here and Bibienne just waves at them benignly once in a while. As long as they don’t bother us and don’t get grass in her drink, they can do whatever they want.

  Bibienne says, “Marital policy? I don’t get it. I thought you two were splitting up?”

  “Call it a trial separation.”

  Bibienne shrugs. “If he keeps sending back the child support, it would work for me.”

  I stare down at my toenails. Ugh. Time to book a pedicure.

  “He’s going to send support payments right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  I wish I could tell Bibienne about Michael but I’m afraid she’ll disapprove. He’s the reason I’m cool with the Calgary plan. I’m not so cool with the thought that Lindsay is, perhaps, a key player in this whole arrangement and, if so, this clearly means she’s winning in the Donald department. If that’s the case, am I willing to forfeit?

  “You think you can handle everything on your own?”

  “Plenty of women do.”

  “Not without a decent cleaning service, they don’t. Better get some help.”

  “Good plan.”

  Which is about all the planning I’ve done so far.

  My final Grade Report has arrived in my inbox. I scan the marks: B+ in Modern American Poetry. No more, no less, than deserved. I scored top marks in drumming, and Donald will never believe that I aced both Financial Management and Organizational Behavior.

  Funny, but I haven’t heard from Michael for days now, ever since he got picked up by the cops. Is he angry with me? Or is he finished with me? Is it possible Michael is one of those serial profs who take advantage of female students? Was I nothing but the freshman flavor of the year?

  Should I go back to school or work? I have the weekend to decide: if it’s school, next Tuesday will my first day back at Dingwall. Do I withdraw and go into rubber resistors? With all the stress, this morning I got on the scales to find I’ve gained five pounds in two weeks. I need to take action. But what should I do? Take the job offer or finish my degree? But how can I return to Dingwall while Michael is roving the campus, preying on innocent female hearts? How can I diet when everyone knows diets don’t work?

  A dark pit of gloom opens wide across my solar plexus. I’m sorely in need of some energy work but the last time my chakras were exposed to healing influences, I ran out and spent $200 on recordings of the kind of music you would hear if you were stuck in an elevator in the middle of a forest.

  I’d even call Mom to confide in her, but she’s back with Brian and they’ve gone off to Vegas for a wedding-free honeymoon. She’s got herself a fancy new camera so she can upload daily snaps to her blog. I can see from today’s pic that she’s bought herself a snazzy outfit. Camel toes visits the Hoover Dam. Brian is beaming with pride. He’s a good guy. I’m happy that she’s happy.

  Of course, I’m unhappy that I’m unhappy. The best thing to do is find a quiet place to be alone, think, clear my head. I grab my keys, drive to the Clearview Conservation Park and lurch off down a hiking trail.

  I press on down the path until I’m panting and out of breath. Slowing down into a steady pace, I begin to notice birdsong and the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. I reach the pond lookout where I stand in silence and watch dragonflies darting over the water. The peaceful scene reminds me of the day I first met Michael, when he showed me the Great Blue Heron. I remember holding on to him, tightly, on the back of his motorcycle as we leaned through the curves together on a sunlit ribbon of a back road.

  Why do I need Michael to show me the Great Blue Herons of the world? Do I need men in my life at all? Now there’s a thought. Without men balling up my life, I can walk my own path and open my mind to the majesties of the natural world, unencumbered. Clearly it’s time I loosen myself from the sucking mud of relationships. Yes. From now on, I walk alone but free. Invigorated with strength from my newly forged inner direction, I continue walking at a brisk pace along the path.

  Walking alone is lonely.

  I yank my phone out of my pocket. That’s it. I have to know. Now. I text Michael: “
I need to talk to you.”

  Within minutes, I receive a text back from Michael: “Meet me at the Dingy.”

  Half an hour later, we are tucked into our corner. Michael holds my hand underneath the table and stares into my eyes. He seems to have forgotten the incident report. I won’t remind him.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I needed time. To think. I went up to the cottage.”

  “You have a cottage?”

  “Up in Vermont. It’s basic. It’s just a cabin beside a lake. I wished you were there the whole time.”

  “I would’ve liked to have been there.”

  He looks at me as if he’s in a confessional. “You didn’t call me. I thought you were upset.”

  “What?”

  “For showing up at your house like that.”

  “Why would I be upset? Besides, I did try to call you at work. I left a voice mail. And you didn’t answer your cell.”

  “There’s no cell access at the cottage. And I told you my office is closed for the last week of summer.”

  Right again. Where are my brains?

  “You don’t listen, do you?”

  He says this teasingly as if this is one of my most endearing qualities and he’d like to kiss me all over because I’m so adorably cute. I can’t help but think of how Donald says I don’t listen but in a much different tone of voice.

  Then Michael leans in and says, “I’m going back up to the cottage. This weekend. Will you come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  I drive home slowly, park my car in the driveway and hesitate before going into the house. I stare at my hands, still clutching the steering wheel. What am I doing? Did I just agree to a weekend alone with Michael?

  My phone rings: maybe Michael is having second thoughts too?

  It’s Mackie, home from a weeklong training exercise.

  “How was it?”

  “Terrible. I need the name of that lawyer you had when you got your divorce. You did alright out of that.”