Peter, Prue Ch. 02

"So you're a psychologist now," Peter said, fighting her invading words with sarcasm. No one likes to be told that the past few years of his life have been the life of a puppet.

He sat up straighter.

"You're talking about the woman I love," he said. Is it love, he thought. Shouldn't it be loved?

Julia blinked. A smile curved her lips - an oddly wounded smile.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I know. There have been times that I loved her too. But she never cared, you know. She never really cares about love or friendship. We just had our duties. There is no consequence to her relations, no commitment. Whenever she was done playing with us, she put us back into her cupboard - like dolls."

A cold shiver touched his spine.

"I don't believe this," he said. But he knew he did.

A young couple entered the tearoom. Tourists, probably - wearing anoraks and a backpack and all. They had the preoccupied eyes of lovers who knew they were the only persons in the world - their private world.

Peter felt a pang of sadness.

"I can't believe you," he said.

The wounded smile returned to the woman's mouth.

•••

Julia watched Peter through lowered eyelashes.

So he still loved the little bitch. He didn't believe her, he'd said, changing it touchingly into 'I can't believe you.'

Was he a wimp?

She studied his face - the strong jaw, the deep eyes. She liked his mouth, and his hair, of course - dark, thick, wavy. He'd always stricken her as energetic and decisive. But she knew that in the end he was helpless. He'd fallen hard for the spoilt brat, and never gotten back to his feet, had he?

Not even now; not even after all this.

'You're talking about the woman I love,' he'd said. What else had to happen before he saw the light? She chuckled soundlessly. Then again: was she so much better? Wasn't she as hopelessly hooked by the little monster?

She reached once again for his hand - now he let her.

"I couldn't believe it either when she dumped me," she said, allowing sympathy to seep into her words. "Until you picked her up my shoulder was constantly drenched with her tears, you know. I had to change my tops twice a day at times."

She smiled to lighten the mood.

"And later too, after she married. Whenever you said a cross word to her or even threw her a wrong glance, she ran back to me to blubber all over me again - even after not seeing or calling me for months."

Julia didn't want to sound or look bitter - she wanted him to be that.

She wanted his feet back on earth, just like she'd had to. She wanted desperation - hear the hissing breath that comes with the ice cold shower of disillusion.

"We were lovers, you know?" she said in a very small voice.

It wasn't true. She'd ached for Prue to be her lover, back then, and yes, they'd kissed and hugged. They'd been very close, but in the end Julia was the only one to fall in love - the only one to pay with her heart.

The utter indifference of Prue had crushed her.

"She's a lesbian?" Peter emphasized the last word with incredulity.

Ah, Julia sighed inwardly, wrong question, you stupid man. She wasn't and I wasn't. Not until then and never again. It was love, not hormones. It was real - until she proved it never was.

"Didn't you know?" she asked.

Pour it on, she thought. Make him doubt and doubt even more. She watched his confusion and his pain. It should have satisfied her, but it didn't.

"We fucked like rabbits until you came along and spoiled it all."

Ah, heaping lies on lies - and it didn't work - not for her.

But he believed it. He believed everything she told him, even if he said he didn't. It had been too easy - just dropping a line; two lines, and sitting back to watch it all go to hell.

Should she feel bad?

Maybe, but they did it all to themselves, didn't they? In the end: was it worth anything, all this so-called love? One anonymous message and the whole house of cards tumbled down.

Two simple little words had smashed right through the pink windows of Prue's tiny, fragile dream world, making her shallow thoughts run around like a nest of panicked mice. Julia knew they would.

But what about him?

If he loved her so much, why didn't he trust her enough to talk? Why did he assume she cheated without asking her anything? What love was this? An anonymous bastard dropped a line and he let himself be hooked and dragged up like a stupid fish.

No, he didn't deserve her. She'd proven it.

***

How stupid he'd been, Peter thought.

He looked at the woman across the table, seeing her mocking eyes, her insufferable half-smile - he'd been a simpleton, indeed - and a gullible one.

So he'd married a lesbian.

She must've been laughing at him behind his back - still must. But if so, why did she marry him in the first place? And why did she then go out and fuck all these men? No logic there at all.

But when had logic ever found a place in Prue's brain?

Maybe that was it: she was Prue and Prue just wanted what she wanted. She always had, hadn't she? She wanted a man to marry, because a real woman should have a man. But she also needed to have other men to dance and flirt with (fuck with too, it turned out), she needed clothes and more expensive clothes to buy, far away holidays, a bigger house, a career... and a woman to fuck.

Everything Prue wanted, Prue needed to have.

He slumped in his chair, watching his latte turn cold.

"So did the two of you stop fucking then?" he asked, wondering why he asked. "I mean: after she and I married?"

Julia smiled. Even without words it told him they hadn't stopped.

"Would that be worse than what you saw on the pictures?" she asked, picking up her cup and emptying it. "Women, men? What's the difference?"

He knew she was right, and yet she wasn't.

Prue going on fucking her girlfriend was worse, in a sense. It meant she never stopped, even right through the first star-struck months of their romance - the months that were the turning point and the cornerstone of his life. It was the time when the whole world shrank to become her. At the same time she grew into becoming his entire world. Finding her had lifted him to a level of existence he'd never dreamed possible. Everything became light and effortless.

She'd become his anchor and his wings.

There had been no limit to his trust in her. But all this time she'd gone on fucking Julia - and whomever else. Behind his back she'd mocked what he thought they had, sticking her middle finger into his dreams.

His eyes burned. He knew tears would soon run down his face. He didn't care. Or maybe he did, but that concern was too far down his list of miseries.

Her hand was on his again, squeezing.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

The words pulled him out of his trance.

"I have to go," he said.

"But you can't leave like this," she protested. "I can't let you go away this upset. I worry, Pete."

He shrugged, picking his jacket from a chair.

"Don't," he said. "It isn't your fault, is it?"

She kept staring at him as he wrestled his body into the jacket.

"But what if it's all a lie?" she asked.

He didn't seem to have heard her until he was halfway to the door. He stopped and turned around.

"A lie?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

"Well," she said. "All you really had at the beginning of this mess were anonymous messages. They might be lies."

"But now there is more; there are pictures," he said. "They don't lie, do they?"

Julia rose and walked up to him.

"She was drunk, Pete, really drunk. It must have been the stress, the misery. She doesn't remember a thing."

He hesitated, trying to read her eyes.

"But there is more," he said. "There are these things you told me... her seeing men in your flat... the two of you fucking after she married me...?"

The cool blue eyes were steady.

"Just words again, Pete," she said. "Just words from me, weren't they?"

The silence stretched on for a while.

"You mean you still lie to me, Jules?" he finally asked.

***

"Daddy?"

Prue feared her father, she always had. He wasn't big or strong; he was even shorter than her mother. His head had been balding as long as she recalled. When one day she saw The Soprano's she was amazed how much her father looked like a shrunken James Gandolfini.

Only his cigar was the same size.

"Princess," he said. He never called her Prue. Only a few times she remembered him calling her Prudence. When he did that, he usually was upset about something, like the time she told him she wanted to marry Pete.

He didn't like Pete.

Then again, he'd never liked whichever boyfriend she brought home (not that there had been many.)

Endeavor ("for God's sake, call me Andy") Arthur Gascoyne inherited (beside his first name) the company his grandfather started back in the early 1900s. The old man imported machinery for textile mills from Lancaster, Great Britain, the old country from where his family had immigrated. Later on they'd started building machinery themselves, expanding into other industries.

When Andy Gascoyne took over in the late eighties, there was a huge crisis going on. Watching the panic and cut backs all around him, he shrugged and took the greatest risk of his life: he bought three of his main competitors for a song, cut and slashed the staff back into a lean bunch of eager young wolves, and came out on top.

It had been a crazy gamble.

He'd hurt and ruined families and half the time he hadn't known what he did, but success against all odds gave Gascoyne the aura of being invincible - a minor God.

He brought that divine aura home, where his wife was way too headstrong to fall for it. But his two sons and his little daughter did. In the age-honored way of the true asshole he bullied both boys into becoming arrogant but gutless men, one a coke addict, the other an incurable playboy and womanizer.

His little girl Prue he turned into a spoilt princess.

"Daddy, I don't want a divorce anymore."

There was silence on the other end of the line; then the sound of a throat clearing.

"He cheated on you, remember?" her father said.

"I cheated too."

"No, you didn't."

"I did, too, daddy. There are pictures, remember?"

"You were drunk, darling. They set you up. Maybe he did, just to have the pictures. You were raped."

"But why would he do that? I started the divorce thing, daddy."

"He tries to get around the nuptial, the bastard. He wants to blackmail you, get at your shares."

Prue fell silent after that. Was it true? Did Pete set her up for her money? But he never even asked about the trust fund or the share options.

He never did.

"Well, it is too late anyway," her father went on, filling the silence. "All the legal work has been done. Can't go back on that."

Gascoyne's voice was in full bully-mode by then. He knew it prevented most people from thinking on their own when he used it. It certainly did with little Prue.

"I'm unhappy, daddy," she said, using her own lil-girl weapon against the bullying voice.

"Come live with us again, honey," he said, melting into his devoted father role. "Leave that murky shed. Take whatever you like to keep and come over. Be my sweet princess again. Just collect your things and I'll send the movers over. No sweat."

Prue didn't answer for a while.

To go and live in the huge, palace-like mansion-at-sea again? The thought attracted her, while repulsing her at the same time. She'd been mindlessly happy there, but she was 17 back then. Now she was almost 25, a woman, having lived on her own, fenced for herself... ah, well, mostly.

She should be proud of her independence, but was she?

What did it even really mean, independence? She'd lived with Julia before marrying Peter. From daddy's Princess she'd become Roommate and Girlfriend, then Fiancée and Wife. She had her job, the one she got through Daddy. The job she'd called in sick to.

Had she ever been on her own? Really?

"Oh, daddy... I don't knooooow."

"Then let me buy you a nice beach condo. There are pretty ones, brand new and only a block away - swimming pool, Jacuzzi, lots of young people."

She sighed.

"You are sweet, daddy."

Gascoyne cleared his throat again.

"Anything for my little Princess. Can't see you unhappy and do nothing."

"I'll think about it."

"Do that, honey."

"Bye, daddy."

***

Back at the tearoom Peter stared at Julia.

They both stood; she was nearly as tall as he. Her red lips didn't quite close. They were moist and seemed to tremble.

Was she nervous?

"Maybe I lied," she said. "Maybe not. But that isn't the point, is it? The point is: you believe me. Just like you believed that first message - and the later ones. Why did you believe them, Pete? They were just anonymous words. No proof, nothing."

Peter felt dizzy.

"You mean," he said. "You mean: nothing could have happened? We may have fought and divorced over nothing?"

She shrugged.

"Hard to be sure. But more important: you don't know either. There is no real proof, is there?"

The dizziness increased.

"But the way she acted, the words she used, the divorce she started, the pictures..."

She took his arm.

"Please, let's sit down again, Pete," she said, pulling him back to the table. "You look pale. Have some water."

She signaled the waitress, mouthing the word water.

He sat down, suddenly very tired. Julia patted his hand.

"She acted weird, yes," she said. "But what about you? Refusing her hugs, walking away from the table, starting to drink..."

The water came; he took a gulp.

"But her night out - the men, the pictures?"

Julia shrugged again.

"That was later, wasn't it? You'd already left her, she drank like crazy. What did you expect? And what did it mean, if anything?"

Peter stared out of the window, seeing nothing.

He tried to analyze what happened from the moment he received the message about Prue cheating. The things they said and did at home and in bed. The new messages. Him leaving. The phone calls.

Then he focused on Julia again.

"Have I been a fool, Jules?" he asked.

She smiled.

"Don't ask me," she said. "Maybe. But only because both of you were."

He finished the water.

"I have to call her and see her," he said. "We need to talk. I have to be sure."

Julia smiled again.

"Amen," she said.

They both rose. On a sudden impulse he embraced her.

"Thank you, Jules," he said, kissing her cheek. "God, have we been fools."

Julia watched him leave, a frown on her face.

***

"Prue?"

"Oh God, Pete, it's you."

"We may have made a mistake. We need to talk."

"Yes... yes. Where? When?"

"Now, at the house."

"Yes. Yes."

"Ten minutes."

"Yes. Oh God. Pete?"

"Yes?"

"I'm so glad!"

***

Peter walked down the street.

He'd sat on a bench in the little park, thinking, before he called Prue. A load had been lifted off his shoulders. He felt relieved, but at the same time insecure, as if an anchor was lost. Sure, all his securities of the last weeks had been ink black, but they'd still been guiding lights into a well-defined future - a dark and dreary future, but a future nevertheless.

Pain and misery had become well-hated companions.

All he now had were wishes and hopes - the wish that everything had just been a bunch of misunderstandings; and the hope that in the end it didn't destroy what they had.

They were sweet sentiments. He distrusted sweet sentiments.

Walking, he tried to define his feelings for Prue. Thinking of her, he felt an old thrill, a deep longing. It proved he never lost his love for her. But it seemed he'd gained something else, something he never had: distrust, an omnipresent discomfort whenever he thought of her.

Even if all the messages had been lies, they started something he could not shake. The growing distrust, the suspicion and the fights had tainted his feelings, ruining their innocence forever, it seemed. And of course there had been the pictures.

He sighed, waiting for a stop sign before crossing.

His cell phone chimed.

A damn anonymous message again, he saw. Growling he snuffed it, never reading the text. But before he could put away the phone, it pinged again. He once more clicked it away, only to hear it chime again.

"Don't hurry," the message said. "Give the guy a chance to pull up his pants and run."

Peter had a feeling of déja vu as he stood still, studying his phone while the world went on about him. Then he shrugged, plunging the damn phone into his pocket and crossing the road. A car honked, brakes screamed.

He'd crossed at a red sign.

On the other side he stopped, feeling his heart race. The text, followed by the traffic mayhem had shaken him. He took a deep breath; then he started running. After three minutes he turned into the street where his house was, one of the nice middle class homes with small lawns and a short driveway.

Theirs was the third from the corner.

Someone in a raincoat hurried from their driveway to a gray sedan parked in the street. The door banged shut and the car took off with squeaking tires.

Peter stood nailed to the concrete of the sidewalk.

He panted from the running. His phone chimed. He ignored it. Sitting down on a bench he tried to get his thoughts lined up. It felt like fishing in a soup of boiling debris.

The anonymous texter had warned him.

He ran to surprise the fucker. The asshole had been there, at his house, with Prue. A wave of fresh tiredness descended on him. The godawful slut. "Oh yes!" she'd said when he called to come by. "Oh yes," while the asshole was no doubt fucking her.

"Thanks, but no thanks, Jules," he murmured.

Pete rose from the bench and left the street.

***

Prue waited.

She wore a nice blue dress, cute, nothing overly sexy. Time had been too short for her to worry about what to wear, which make up to use, how much, or no make up at all, maybe.

In the end she just brushed her hair and made a pot of coffee.

Then she sat down to wait. Ten minutes, he'd said. Her heart fluttered. They'd talk. They should have before, of course. God, they'd been silly. She'd forgive him. Of course she would. And he'd forgive her. No divorce, no solitude. Prue and Pete again, Pete and Prue.

Sorry, daddy.

Ten minutes. God, they're long when you're waiting.

She leafed through a Cosmo. She leafed through a Harper's. She squared everything nicely on the coffee table. Flattening a wrinkle in her skirt she watched the clock. Two minutes left.

She sighed.

Everything would be well again. Oh God, these weeks had been awful. The fights, the awkwardness, the lonesome nights. She watched the clock.

One minute, tops.

Then she heard a car tear off, roaring and screeching. Damn neighborhood teenagers, she thought.

Time was up.

Allow him a few minutes more. "Ten," he'd said. Well, 'ten' is a ballpark figure, isn't it? Like 'a dozen' or 'a few?' A 'couple,' she added. Then she rose and walked to the window. The street was empty. There were splashes of sunshine on the asphalt that still shone from recent showers. A few cars were parked in the street and on the driveways.

A gray cat jumped a fence.

"Where are you, Pete?" she mumbled. "Coffee's getting cold."

Peter never came.

After ten more minutes Prue called his number. It went to voice mail. She didn't leave a message, but five minutes later she did, asking what happened.