Part III - Chapter 1 (19). The End of the Beginning

The beginning of this tale started with a phone call from the Fu. Yes, she owned her own phone, a land-line and, fancy that, a cell phone. It was also true that her husband had his own phone and he too had a cell phone. She owned a house on a hill far away and down the coast. Her husband lived with her there but everything belonged to her. She was incredibly wealthy but was not averse to having a bottom-feeder like me as a friend and, for an oh-so brief-moment, as a lover.

All the while I was married I longed for a relationship with a woman that could drink like I did. Celeste was one of those people who’d have a few drinks; wine with dinner, maybe a cocktail or two after dinner, but walked away leaving half a glass when she felt a buzz coming on.  I assumed that this was a character defect of some sort because losing control was what I loved about booze. It seemed to me that her moderation was based on fear of her loss of control. I saw her do that but once in the nine years we were together. It was at her cousin’s wedding that she had one too many glasses of champagne and suddenly developed an English accent. I got a kick out of her bouncing around the reception and interrupting conversations, to talk about merry old London. She never did get good and drunk after that nor had she ever been in merry old England.

Man, that Fu was the first woman I’d ever hooked up with that drank worse than me. Even Nunnie didn’t hit it as hard as the Fu did. The Fu moved into town and bought a house on the Riviera to separate from Nick. He was still with her but their relationship was disintegrating. He spent most of his time going back and forth between Buellton and Santa Barbara, leaving the Fu alone in her place to do as she pleased. My job-site happened to be a remodel on a house just up the hill from hers. After work, I stopped by her house and we messed around in her studio. If I wasn’t in love with her before, I most certainly was in love with her after she bought that house.

Her house was modest by Santa Barbara standards but it was worth more on the market than I could earn if I had fifty working years left. There was a music room with a baby grand and French windows on three sides at the end commanding a view of the city all the way to the Channel Islands. It was full of light, tastefully, and sparsely, decorated. We spent most of our late-night hours in that room. Hardwood floors in all the rooms were covered by distinctive oriental carpets of a unique and simple design. She said that they were Tibetan in origin and I haven’t seen anything the likes of them since then.

The master bedroom upstairs opened up on one side through double doors to her art studio. The other side had French doors that seemed to invite us out onto a balcony for breakfast. We spent considerable time in the studio. I stretched her canvasses, or pounded out poetry on my Remington, while she worked on her jewelry or just stood nude for my appreciative attention as I sketched the contours of her lithe body. Her studio overlooked a terraced garden that arose to a Koi pond midway up towards a raked Zen garden overseen asymmetrically by a huge granite boulder she called “The General.” The whole garden could be seen and appraised best from the studio but, when down there in it, the whole picture revealed itself enticingly like a first-time lover disrobing.

The house drew me in as much as her sleek gymnast’s body. My apartment was a dark and mildewed place and Homer was my only companion most of the time. I tried to stay away but a combination of my reticence, and her fear of getting close enough to be hurt by anyone, drew us together like the opposing poles of a magnet. This last round started one night, after a few hours in Pal’s. We found ourselves in an embrace that ended after a few hours of rolling around in her bed, talking about her marriage and how she loved me and how she’d grown to loathe her Nicky.

“What are we going to do about it?” I asked, hoping for the right answer.

“Max, I love you but I don’t know. I’m confused. I haven’t felt like this about anyone since… oh, I don’t know.” Her eyes darted like sparrows from phantom to phantom across the ceiling as we lay on the bed, twisted in the sheets, sweating from love-making and smoking a bit of herb.

“I want you, Adrienne,” I was surprised at my words and knew that more powerful ones were to follow had she not pressed a hand to his lips.

“Please, Max, I know what you are going to say.” She brought her hand down to his chest. “You have a good heart. I know that you love me but it is useless. I am a … oh, what’s the use? I’m a drunken junkie and can’t have love in my life.”

“What if we quit drinking and help each other?” I was willing to go to any lengths for her; even the suicide of sobriety.

“Oh, yeh, that will work out real well… look at me now. That’s what Nick and I were doing when we got married.”

If a stake were driven through my heart it wouldn’t have been any less painful, “But Adrienne, this is our chance to be real with our feelings.”

“Yes, maybe you are right, Max.” She held me desperately. That embrace was so much like that last embrace from Ariel, I could’ve wept. A horrible knot dammed up inside my throat and chest but still no tears… no release.

“Please, go to sleep, my dear eccentric American friend, my Max.”

Her affection was infused with a passion that faded into the oblivion of slumber.

A nudge pulled my consciousness out from that void. It was the Fu shaking me saying, “Max, wake up. Wake up, Max.” she whispered urgently.

“Uh? Wha…”

“Nicky’s home. He’s downstairs in the music room.”

“Does he know I’m here?” I grumbled. Then the fear, the realization of what she was saying stirred me to full alert.

“I don’t know. I went down to feed the dogs and I saw him sitting there on the couch with that damned pistol. I couldn’t tell if he was awake.” She was out of the bed and putting on a pair of jeans.

“What do you want me to do?” I wasn’t so sure of myself now and wanted nothing more than to be far away from Nick and his forty-five automatic and back in my place with Homer.

“Go, you can get out through the kitchen… go Max, I’ll call you later.” She gathered my briefs and socks from the floor where I’d thrown them. I stepped lightly down the stairs, slipped out through the kitchen and put on my jeans and boots without socks while hiding behind a fern in the garden.

She called that night and it was final. That is where this story had begun. Again, I entered that purgatory of “just friends”. She’d come to my place to smoke a joint and beg some pot to bring to her latest lover… but that was all. She had finally kicked Nick out of the house. Having done so, I harbored some remote hopes. Her pattern of drawing me in and pushing me out had been completed. I was out now and she was getting it on with an ex-Navy SEAL. I had to admit that I couldn’t compete with that.

She was still leading me on by complaining about her Seal, like she had done with her Nicky. She said she was in love with the SEAL but the SEAL wasn’t in love with her. She resorted to espousing nothing but contempt for him but, regardless of her contempt, she still bedded down with him whenever she could.

The SEAL drowned in a diving accident: a yacht had ignored his diving buoy and the propeller cut off his air. She mourned the SEAL like a widow at his beach memorial along with several other women who were in love with him. After he was gone I thought once more that I might have another chance with her but she hooked up with Rod, an unemployed construction worker.

Construction was booming in Santa Barbara at that time and it was impossible to be unemployed unless one’s reputation was shot. That was one of the benefits and curses of a town the size of Santa Barbara in the construction trades. Reputation was everything. If you worked well, showed up when you said you would, fairly conscientious about your work, and maybe even got along with people, you never went without a job unless there were no jobs to be had. If your reputation was like her latest beau, you sat at the bar in Manuel’s all day waiting for a call or someone like the Fu to show up.

She did show up one day and the free loader did move in with her. They started doing heroin together as a way to stem her alcoholism. Two months later she complained to me that she couldn’t get rid of him.

She still wouldn’t have me though she came by to smoke a joint and complain so I asked her, “Am I such a loser that you prefer a free-loading junkie to me?”

She didn’t answer.

I demanded, “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Where else was she going to cop her junk?

I should have known. After all, wasn’t she doing exactly what I’d been doing since Celeste packed the Audi and took what was left of me away?

“What are you guarding your heart from, girl?” I turned to the Remington, with my back to her, and put a blank sheet of paper in the roll. I waited to hear the screen door slam and looked out the window to watch her walk away.

I took some time off to go on vacation for a Labor Day annual get-together with family and friends at Priest Lake Idaho. The afternoon before I left for Idaho, the Fu stopped by my place. I saw her coming towards the door with a six pack of beer. She had been crying and, though I’d rarely seen her wearing make-up, her cheeks were streaked with mascara. I let her in the door hoping she would tell me that the Freeloader was out of her place.

“Is he gone?”

“Who?” She said as she passed me an imported beer. She drank imports but I had no use for paying more for anything I was just going to piss away. Still, I appreciated the gesture.

“Rod, the Freeloader.” I was getting impatient with her and was ready to get rolling. The van, I’d dubbed, Furthurmore, was packed and Homer was already boarded at the Cat Palace.

“Oh, him,” She sat on my couch and cracked a beer.  “Yes, he is still at my house. When he isn’t at Manuel’s, he’s drinking my vodka, smoking my pot, shooting my dope, and eating my food.”

“So, why is he still with you?” I could taste the bile rising in my throat and washed it back down with a sip of beer. This crap was getting old. My heart was breaking with the realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do about her bullshit and that I was doomed to forever being the sounding board for whatever jerk had put his hooks in her.

“He is like a fungus… a parasite.” She spat out in disgust.

“Well, the parasite has found a host in you,” I countered.

She bent her head down and sobbed but there was something I sensed was fraudulent about her remorse.

I continued, “I wouldn’t be so upset with you had you not rejected me for someone I could respect but… to take up with… with this sad excuse for a man… this toy-boy!”

She motioned, patting the cushion, for me to sit next to her on the couch. I cursed myself for following her summons. I put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head to my chest, “Fu, you know I love you and you know I care for you more than anything…”

“I know, please stop saying that…” she put her forefinger to her lips, “Shhh…,” and nuzzled closer into my chest.

Her affection stirred my longing but it also cemented my resolve, knowing she would pull back as soon as the hunger gripped her.

I threw down the gauntlet, “I can’t take this any longer. I’m leaving for Idaho in an hour and, when I come back, he has to be out. You have to choose.”

“But, Max, whatever I choose, it won’t be you.”

“Then take your imported beer, your spoiled brat impulses… take ‘em out my door and leave me alone,” I tugged her by the arm off the couch, picked up the six-pack, and towed her to the door.

She turned towards me. Our lips met. I jerked away. She cried out, “Max, don’t do this. You know I love you but I can’t be with you.”

“Then good-bye Fu. It has been Hell knowing you.” I broke away from her and closed the door.

I watched her walk out to her car, “Why GAWD, why do you put these women in my face only to have them ripped away?”

I hadn’t really cared one way or another about any woman after I’d packed my little Ariel and the dogs into the Audi to be driven away by Celeste over a decade ago. This was the one time I’d given my heart so completely to anyone since then. To suffer the indignity of having it stomped on and trashed was more than I could handle. I was prepared for the run to Idaho and hoped to sort things out… to get my priorities straight on the long ribbon of asphalt.

Before I met the Fu I felt my soul had been a roach that prowled in the dark for a scrap of hope and scurried away, back into hidden crevasses, from the light. Now that I had laid my heart bare, the Fu stepped on it as though I was the cockroach an annoying and insignificant bug... and, in the vocabulary of the exterminator, a pest.