Ingrams & Assoc 3: American Life 03

Tara showed up today. I haven't set eyes on her in almost seven years. Not since the divorce hearing. She said she was there to apologize. I laughed and not in a nice way. She stood there in her thousand-dollar shoes, fresh from getting out of her hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes. She did look good, I have to say.

The years have been kinder to her than to me, but then she always did have the genes for it. I guess her decision was the right one for her. She's on the board of Mecano's now. She's done well for herself, so I guess dumping me for Peter Assfuck was the right move. It's certainly paid off for her, divorcing me and marrying the VP of sales. A fast track from running that small design room where she started, for sure.

She told me that her husband, that Peter Assfuck, had just done to her what she did to me – lined up a new replacement with prospects, younger and hotter than her, and he'd just gone for it and left her. He'd cleaned her out her financially and she said she now understood what she'd done to me. How I'd felt. How sorry she was. How she'd taken the love I'd given her for granted as her due, and that she just assumed she'd get it from anyone she chose to let. How she knew I'd never leave her or cheat on her, and how she knows now what a stupid choice she made. She knows it's too late now, but she has that need to make restitution. There must be something she can do. Can we at least be friends?

I'll give her the fact that she did look contrite, but honestly, I'm so fucking trodden on now, it's too little too late.

I just looked at her. Eventually she ran down. I tried to explain that it's nice for her that she now realizes, but it's all too fucking late for me. I've been through that particular path twice now and I've no desire to retread it again because she's come to this epiphany. I don't think she knew that Penny had left me, or the circumstances, but I've no doubt she'll find out all about it now she has a clue.

I tried to explain that it doesn't make my life one iota any better that she has a better understanding of how I felt when she left. No, she didn't leave. She shat all over me from a great height. Manny's favorite phrase. She fucked that guy for months before leaving me, 'testing him out' as she said at the time. 'Needed to be sure he could satisfy her sexually as well as professionally.'

What a bitch.

Yeah, still no real forgiveness here.

But then I look at my life since it all went down and I am forced to admit it's not been great. I didn't go out and write the great American novel, nor did I write great songs or become a powerhouse in business. I guess I'm either not creative enough or just too beaten from all the shit that's come my way. I think I have at least the right to claim that. I just tried to stay afloat and not lose it totally.

Anyway, I tried to point this out to her and she just looked at me and said, 'What can I do to make this up?' I told her, 'Not a damn thing.' And pointedly asked her to leave.

She did at least do that. And this time it didn't cost me anything, except for my dignity after crying for the next hour. I thought I was over this. Obviously not.

Thank god for Jim Beam.

*****

Tara Western sat in the chair in the conference room, stunned. What she had just heard had knocked the wind out her. It had been such a good day so far. A good week in fact. A tip she'd gotten from a friend in Silicon Valley about a small internet startup had gone through and become gold. Two years ago, she'd invested a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, gotten some investors stock and last week, the company had sold to Twitter for almost fifty six million dollars. Her hundred and fifty thousand dollars investment was returned almost thirty-fold, making her an even richer woman than she'd been.

She'd also discovered that the slutty bitch that Peter, her ex-husband, had left her for, had just suffered a miscarriage. Tara was real enough to understand that her smile when she heard that news was awful, but also a realist enough about herself to know that that was who she was. She'd never regretted anything she'd done in her life, with the exception of one thing, and she wasn't about to start feeling bad because she was happy that the bitch who'd marched into her marriage and taken the man she'd chosen had something bad happen to her. Fuck that. Life was too short.

When the call had come through from the front desk that an investigator was waiting to see her, she was overjoyed. Finally, someone from Pearsons Investigations had some news! She was annoyed they hadn't called first – she'd be taking that up with them later – but just glad that perhaps they'd found Joe.

She had swept into the conference room, where they'd put the investigator, and found a lithe young woman, with bound blond hair, and who was just taking a writing pad out of her bag, her iPhone already on the table in front of her. Tara thought you could tell a lot about a person by how they laid things out on an empty table. She thought that this investigator was obviously methodical, everything was squared away and even her bag vanished under the table when she was done, instead of on it, looking untidy.

The woman smiled at Tara and stood up and offered her hand. "Hi, I'm April Carlisle. I was hoping..."

Ruthlessly, Tara interrupted. She'd been waiting for this news for months, and she didn't want to beat around the bush.

"Did you find him? Tell me you found Joe. I've been paying you clowns for months now, and no one has gotten a sniff of him. All I need to know is where he is. So, I ask again, have you found him? That's all I want to know. If not, what the hell are you doing here?"

April closed her mouth, then said, "Just to confirm Mrs. Western, we are talking about Joe Sullivan, yes?"

Tara's eyes narrowed. "Yes, of course we...wait a minute. You aren't with Pearsons, are you?" she said. She stood up, leaning over the table, hands as knuckles pressing onto the lacquered wood.

"Um, no, not as such."

"What are you hear for?"

"Well, I am an investigator. I'm tracing Joe Sullivan, which is why I am here."

"What for?" replied Tara, suspiciously.

"I... I have some bad news Mrs. Western. If you were looking for Joe Sullivan, you can stop now. I'm sorry to inform you that Joe has passed away."

There was a stunned silence and Tara dropped back into her chair.

"He's...what? He's dead? He can't be dead. I haven't..." she mumbled.

April kept her silence. Better to wait until Tara asked more pointed questions. There was a minute or so of Tara staring off into the distance and mumbling words to herself. While she did so, April watched her.

She was a handsome woman – not yet past her prime, although definitely in the sunset years of it. She had the indefinable something of an older woman who takes care of herself, is extremely presentable, looks great but still has lines and some grey streaks in her hair. Yet she had something that made you ignore that, and only see the cheekbones and the eyes and the full mouth, rather than the laugh lines and the grey hairs.

Eventually Tara came back from her thoughts and looked at April.

"Who are you again?"

"I'm April Carlisle. I represent..."

She was interrupted again, thankfully, before she lied some more.

"How do you know he's gone? What's your source?"

"He died three nights ago, here in town. He was murdered, protecting a woman from a mugging."

"Oh Joe..." said Tara, her eyes tearing up and her face lowering from the direct gaze to April. "I never got to say sorry. I'm so sorry. So sorry."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Western. My understanding was that your marriage to Joe ended quite a few years ago?"

"Yes," said Tara, snuffling. She looked around for a tissue and April handed her one, having secreted a pack on the table. "Thank you. Yes, it did. It...didn't end well. I behaved... badly. I hurt him. I thought I was doing the right thing but I understand the hurt now. I was completely blind to what I did and he...he just accepted it. Well, as much as he had to. He just went on without me and I went on without him. I had my eyes firmly on the horizon, and Joe, well, Joe was more of a day to day person. He lived in the moment and I was...well, I am someone who is all about planning."

Again, April was silent.

"I was so young. So sure. So full of the need to break that glass ceiling. I knew how to do it. So I did. Joe and I used to talk about the people around us, about the future, about our plans. I just didn't realize that for Joe, it was just...an exercise in What If. For me, it was concrete. This was where I was going. I thought he understood. We were both along for the ride. At some point it became necessary that one of us get off because it could only hold two and I needed someone else along. I had thought he always understood it.

"I didn't realize till much later that it was just what I was telling myself so I could feel ok about what I did. I honestly believed at the time. That Joe and I needed to end so I could keep ascending – that's what we'd agreed on when we were talking about the future. I just wasn't listening. Not to Joe, anyway."

There was more silence. April got up and walked over to the water jug, on a side table of the conference room. She poured two glasses, walked over to Tara, who was running her hands through her hair in distress, and gave her one. Then she returned to her seat, all without saying anything.

Tara took a sip of water and continued to unburden herself, the woman speaking now not at all the same one who had entered the room.

"I just...I don't even know what I thought. I thought it was the right thing to do. Joe wasn't going anywhere. I loved him, but that wasn't enough. I thought he needed to love me and allow me to do what I needed to do and I knew he wasn't going to do that. No real man would. So, in my own logic, I had to go. I had to go do what I needed to. I didn't know if Joe would understand or not – he didn't – but that's what I needed to do. It was a business decision. And I was right. I got what I wanted. I got the husband, the money, the title, the job I wanted. And do you know what else I got? Do you, Miss Carlisle?"

April took a sip of water herself and shook her head.

"I got a hole in my heart. I think Peter loved me, well, he loved the idea of me. He was kinky and I...well, I did what I thought was right for a wife for her husband. But I knew what I did to Joe. I tried to keep Joe here, you know? At Mercano's? I thought I could be good for him. He would have a powerful friend at court. Yeah, that worked out," Tara said, ruefully.

"I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, this man killed people in Kuwait. Did you know that? And I was calmly sitting there telling him that me sleeping with someone else and trading up to him was for his own benefit. What the hell am I? Who was I?"

Another pause. Another sip. Then Tara said, "Why am I telling this to you?"

April could have told her. She wasn't telling April, she was letting out her own thoughts unfettered, for once – April wasn't involved in the conversation, she was just the audience. It would have taken someone like Tara, - so concerned with her own feelings and needs, - years to understand the implications of what she'd done, how she'd hurt someone else, someone else who's only crime was to love her unconditionally.

Tara, deep down, recognized what she'd done and she needed to say it. But there was probably no one she could tell. No one of her work cronies, no one she could let her guard down in front of. April was not someone she socialized with. No one she knew. No one that she cared about. She could, ironically, be more honest with April than she ever could with anyone else. And given the state of shock she was in... this unburdening was inevitable. And April was not about to stop it, both because it was therapeutic for Tara and also because she needed to know. She was driven. She Needed To Know, in all capital letters.

"I don't know. But you obviously feel the need."

"I got cheated on too, you. Almost the exact same thing I did to Joe, Peter did to me. Found a newer model. Younger, more exciting. More likely to go places. I... you know, it didn't even really hurt that much? I could even understand where he was coming from. I'd been there. What really hurt? What really destroyed me? It was understanding what I'd done to Joe all those years ago. The realization. It just... pierced me, in my heart.

"I knew something was missing from my marriage to Peter, but I never really thought about what it was. It was Joe. He loved me for who he thought I was. Nothing more. Peter loved me because I'd do some of the kinky things he wanted, because I was hot and made him look good. Because he'd taken me from someone else. I never told him what Joe did in the Army. It would have totally emasculated him if I had. Joe was more of a man in his little finger than Peter was.

"But Peter was smart, he was well connected, his family was even more well connected and he understood the value of all this," Tara gestured around the room. "To Joe, this was a waste of life. His life was in the moment, not in the boardroom. It's taken me years to understand what he meant. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the spoils of my life. I've made some shitty decisions for other people, and I've done well out of it, but not having anyone to share it with...well, it kinda makes it a bit empty, you know?"

April nodded again. Internally she was trying to work out how to inject herself and the questions she had to ask into Tara's flow.

"I tried to get him business, in way that wasn't obvious it was me. I thought that might help. Especially after that bitch left him the way she did. A child with another man? Letting Joe think it was his? Fucking whore," said Tara, completely oblivious to her own culpability in her own situation.

"Well, he wasn't having that, - he saw right through it and sent the salesman back with a not that nice message -, so I went to talk to him. He still had that small company he started. That was a disaster. His best salesman ran off with his wife! If you didn't think this was a tragedy, it would be comical. Twice! How shitty is that?

"He just never went anywhere. In that respect, I was quite right in my decision. I tried to talk to him. I wanted to do something for him. Anything. I had tried when we split up, tried to make him understand that me being in a powerful position could be good for him, but his pride! He just told me to get out, in not so many words. I think he thought I was there to hurt him again. I don't know why he was so upset – it had been years. Isn't time supposed to heal old wounds?"

April knew why. Joe was still in love with Tara, and always had been. He couldn't resolve the fact that he loved her with what she'd done to him – she was right, he did have pride, but it was in direct conflict with what his heart wanted. No wonder he'd never made a go of his business. Idly, April wondered what Marianne had made of that. She was way too smart not to make that connection.

"After that, he just...vanished. I've been looking for him ever since. He's just nowhere. I've had two PI groups looking for him. One thought he'd found him out in some backwoods town in West Virginia, but it didn't pan out. It's funny, because I know I've even been there, once. Joe took me. Some shitty little cabin in the woods. Joe said he'd gone there with his family as a kid. I will always remember his standing outside that cabin, with that stupid cap on and his fishing gear and his saluting me."

Alarm bells were ringing in April's head. Fishing, a small town in West Virginia.

"Was that town Shannondale, by any chance?" she gently interrupted, going straight for the question she wanted to ask.

"No," shook Tara's head, "it wasn't. It was some man's name. You know, one of those towns with a name."

April thought, then opened her pad and looked at her notes.

"Charles Town?" she queried.

"Yes, that's it. Some crappy weekend cabin place, like they have for summer camp. It was quite revolting and rustic and I made very sure he never took me there again. First class for this lady I'm afraid. I had thought it would be romantic, but it was dingy and smelly. Although, I do have to say, it was a good time for the nights." Tara smiled gently in memory.

April had what she had come for. Now she had to disengage. She made a point of looking at her watch.

Tara noticed. "Well, I'm sure you've got better things to do that listen to me ramble." The original Tara was back, in control and ready to move things along.

"Can I ask a favor. Can you let me know where the funeral is? I want to send something. It's the least I can do."

April nodded. "I'm sure I can arrange for that."

She picked up her phone and pad and tissues and stuffed them back in her bag, and walked toward the door. She made it out of the office without the distressed Tara ever asking her who she was with.

*****

I got the letter today from Penny. I'm not the father. I honestly thought I was. I thought it was the only way I could hold on. But I'm not. That at least confirms that it was going on for at least nine months, as we had claimed in court, but it's small fucking consolation. She did it to me. Let me think it was mine, all the way until she left to set up home and business with Mark Cuntface. I gave that guy everything. More than everything it would appear. He took from me everything I had to give.

All I have left is the business and it's in sorry shape now. He took most of my major clients; he'd been planning this for a while. I've not been doing the greatest job I could be, but I don't know that anyone could blame me. Divorce for a second time. Well Done Joe. You are a winner.

Still, clients don't care. They have demands and I'm not meeting them and frankly, right now, the next time someone calls me to ask where their shit is, I'm going to stomp on the damn phone.

Christ, this hurts. That Penny could do this to me. That I could be dealing with this a second time. I keep looking at myself in the mirror and wondering what everyone else sees. A sucker born every minute, eh? I guess I must have been born at least a thousand times then.

Do they see a two-time loser? Do they see someone to feel sorry for? Someone who is so far from the Alpha Male as to not be able to see it in the rearview mirror?

I still run. I still work out. I'm not fat. I'm not stupid – well, obviously I am for not seeing it for a second time – but I'm not stupid apart from that. I trust – obviously I've got to stop doing that.

I had thought that having a kid might give me something for this wasted life. I must have done something pretty damn shitty in a previous life. Wish I could remember what it was.

I'm going to move out tomorrow. This place is a dump anyway, and I need a new perspective. That and I can't afford it. But hey, choice over financials right? Can't let the bastards grind you down. Ha. Like I've any choice in that.

I did think about firing a lawsuit at Mark Cuntface but beyond alienation of affection, I can't even use the clause in my own rulebook about non-fraternization. It just doesn't apply. And as well, Penny might be a cunt, and he might be a cunt, but they have a kid and what his parents do is not his fault. He may not be mine, but I still loved him. Always will, I think.

I've also had to stop seeing Marianne. I can't afford that either. And I don't think there's really anything more to say anyway. Even Marianne thought that. So that's done too. I shall miss her. I did ask if we could be friends and she said she'd like that, but I don't think she wants to. I'm a loser and she can see that. I think she only said that because that's the 'right' thing to say in that circumstance, but I'm pretty sure that's the end of that. Sucks though. She kept me going when I had no one else.