Orchard Grove Read online

  Checking the time on her wristwatch, she said, “I have to get up early for school tomorrow. No slack for the teacher’s aide.”

  “I’m hot for teacher,” I said.

  She laughed and placed her hand on my forearm, giving it a squeeze.

  With that, I paid the tab, and we took off for my downtown Albany writing studio.

  We weren’t through the door before we were undressing one another. We barely made it to the bed where we spent the next couple of late night hours rocking and rolling and loving one another’s bodies even though we barely knew one another’s first names.

  By the time the clock struck midnight, she was getting dressed again. I signed a copy of Break Up, my one and only published novel for her, inscribing it, “With love.” Four months later we were married by a Justice of the Peace in the white-marbled city hall on State Street in downtown Albany. Susan finished grad school and continued to teach pre-school while I kept up my daily writing routine like a man possessed, but only managing to sell my scripts to indie studios while the major outfits continued to shut me out. Oh well, I knew the situation wouldn’t last forever. That as long as I was swinging the bat, eventually I’d nail a homerun again.

  What all this meant of course, was that I wasn’t making nearly the money I had been in LA, but what the hell, this was Albany and living in this city of less than one hundred thousand souls wasn’t nearly as expensive, or sunny, or glamorous. Christ, you couldn’t even find a decent restaurant in Albany. But what was important was that Susan and I were building a life for ourselves, having slapped some of the indie movie cash I’d managed to hoard away down on a ranch home in the sleepy, but oh so stable suburb of Orchard Grove in North Albany. Humble beginnings for sure, but it was also an idyllic time too when you really thought about it.

  But the idyllic turned out to be a flash in the pan. Or perhaps not a flash but a slow roast.

  After nine years of marriage, nothing bad had penetrated the invisible fortress we’d managed to build around ourselves. Trust ruled the day, meaning we didn’t go around seeking extra-circular affairs, unless of course, getting together with some friends for a little wine, dancing, and swapping counts which it most definitely does not (swapping is consensual and sensual). We did not argue over money since we had enough coming in to pay the bills plus more than enough left over for some vacation time in New York City, Cape Cod, Miami, and even a two week trip through Italy and France as a belated honeymoon five years back. We drank responsibly, and did not do drugs other than the occasional recreational weekend stuff when the friends popped by or we visited them. We did not suffer from depression, or food addictions, or even allergies. No boredom, no sad pillow talk of shoulda-coulda-woulda. Not even sickness had managed to snake its way into our lives. We also did not get pregnant even though we did not consciously try to prevent a child from coming into our lives. It simply didn’t happen, and on the occasions I tried to talk with Susan about it, she shrugged the whole idea off as something that would happen if it was meant to happen. Case closed.

  In a word, Susan and I were happy with our lives… Happier than most anyway.

  Until recently… over the past year… when even the contracts with my indie film companies began to dry up and we had no choice but to turn to selling pot to make ends meet. Unless, of course, I was willing to give up my writing for a proper job. I had always run as a man who wrote scripts, and I was convinced that I was just going through a sales slump was all. That eventually it would pick up. I was writing, and that’s what counted.

  But then the Cavittos moved in next door, even the writing stopped.

  From the looks of it, whatever was left of Susan’s and my impenetrable wall was about to crumble into so much dust and charred rock, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, when God destroyed the lust-infested city with brimstone and fire, sending the inhabitants straight to hell.

  I sat at a dining room table that contained only a wood bowl filled with store bought apples and my typewriter, a sea-green Olivetti/Underwood Lettera 32. I sat as still as a stone, my eyes glued to the white paper and waited for my muse to speak to me the way she always had, until Lana arrived and my concentration became entirely focused on her. For a time, it seemed like my muse would no longer come to me. That she was jealous of my affair with Lana. Perhaps more jealous than Susan could ever be. But then you have to still be in love with someone in order to be jealous.

  But then something began to happen inside me. A series of words didn’t fill my head, but a face did. Let me correct myself… In my head I saw a series of faces flash by, like I was sitting all alone in a four-walled room with the shades drawn and projected one-by-one on a big white screen before me, were the still faces of the people who now dominated my time and my thoughts.

  I decided to begin only with a name. Positioning my fingers on the keys, I typed…

  LANA

  She’s a lovely apparition, and she knows it. A seductress without purposely trying to seduce. A heartbreaking beautiful attraction without trying to make herself attractive. A voice calling to me without her having to make a single sound or utterance.

  Lana just is.

  Blonde, or what some might refer to as strawberry blonde, she is of average height for a woman but her body and her being (her presence) is anything but average. She has no qualms, moral or otherwise, about sunbathing topless in a quiet suburban neighborhood like Orchard Grove, and while she knows that I have been watching her, I’m not so sure it turns her on so much as it is something that she has come to expect from a man like me… a man so easily and hopelessly drawn into her web.

  She claims to have been born and raised in Albany, but from what I can glean, she hates it here and wishes only to be back on the beaches of Venice and Santa Monica. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would want to spend any more time in that plastic place than they have to. Land of sun, lies, false promises, and flavors of the month, be it a brand of frozen non-gluten yogurt or a never before heard of movie starlet with a Pepsodent smile to die for.

  I can only wonder what her life was like there… who she seduced, and how many lovers she kept at one time. Judging from what her husband said about her already “starting in” in Albany, it was a lot.

  Lana is a take-no-prisoners kind of woman.

  I can see that from a mile away. A sultry character played by Sharon Stone if this were a Joe Eszterhas “Basic Instinct” kind of script. If I had even an ounce of strength left in my post-op body, I would throw a drape over the bedroom window and forget she exists. It might make a great opening scene to this script even. But then, my dreams would haunt me, and I would wake up wanting (needing) only one thing: Lana… her ass, her breasts, her hair, her mouth.

  Lana, I love you, I lust you, I hate you, I don’t even fucking know you. But I need you like a junky needs a fix.

  To Be Continued…

  JOHN

  A hopeless case. But a dangerous one at that. Like a powder keg set beside an open flame. You never know when the damn thing is going to explode. Beguiled by a wife years older than him, he might have made one hell of a good cop at one time judging by the framed photos hanging on their den wall. In those photographs, you can almost taste the goodness in his eyes… the eagerness to please. The spit and polish. The I’m-gonna-be-the-one-to-finally-make-a-difference quality to his deep, blue, alive eyes. Eyes that, when I looked into them for the first time just an hour ago, had become flat, bloodshot, lusterless, and tired.

  Rather than hope, there is rage boiling up from his bulbous belly. Mark my words, if John Cattivo doesn’t kill someone someday (and I’m not talking about a dangerous criminal who’s shot at him first), he will either kill himself or be killed by someone who hates him. His ending will not be a happy one.

  To Be Continued…

  CARL

  I’m guessing he’s a Carl with a C rather than Karl with K like Karl Marx. The latter would suggest parents with an intellect, a sense of irony, and uppitiness for
lack of a better word. But the former suggests quite the opposite. Average parents who gave him an average upbringing in an average city like Albany where nothing too good or too bad happens. I’m guessing he was super jock in high school, a chick magnet (maybe the girls gave him a nickname like “God” or something), and maybe quarterback of the football team, but not quite big or fast enough to make the squad in college, meaning that by the time he’d been handed his high school diploma, his life had already peaked.

  He attended JuCo for two years before deciding to be a cop since, in his rather simple mind, it was as close as he could come to his high school football glory days without going back in time. Not a leader, but a follower who hates Cattivo’s guts but will follow the superior officer’s orders without hesitation or question nonetheless. A man who believes in the concept of team and refers to his fellow officers as “brothers in arms.”

  Is it possible he’s in love and lust with Lana as much as I am?

  Another bewitched man reduced to a useless emotional pile of rags and bones. I’m guessing that when I saw him on the phone behind the wheel of the black Suburban, his face in distress, lit cigarette dangling from his lips, he was leaving Lana a long message about how he can’t possibly live without her. That’s the way I’d write it anyway. A message that will only be listened to half way through before she deletes it and makes herself another iced coffee.

  Should I be jealous of Carl?

  Not in the least. I’m just as pathetic as he is.

  To Be Continued…

  The doorbell startled me out of my writing daze.

  Shooting a glance over my shoulder through the big living room picture window, I spotted the big brown UPS truck parked up against the curb at the end of the drive. Standing on one foot, I shoved the crutches under my arms, crossed through the living room to the front door, opened it. The stocky young man was dressed in his summertime brown shorts and shirt. He held a small package in one hand, and a clipboard in the other. Looking down at the box, I could see that it was from Victoria’s Secret.

  “Looks like the wife is trying to cheer you up, pal,” he said, handing me the electronic clipboard. “Sign on the dotted line,” he added.

  I signed and he handed me the package.

  “Thanks.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” he said, tossing me a wink. “Careful of the foot.”

  Shutting the door, I stared at the box. It was addressed to Susan. I didn’t think a whole lot about it since my wife was always ordering things online. Clothes that we couldn’t afford, for the most part. So some new underwear came as no surprise.

  Shoving the box under my arm, I carried it with me into our bedroom, set it down onto the small antique dressing table that Susan used when she made up her face and also to do her bills or write the occasional letter. It was then I noticed a few new additions to the tabletop. A brand new bottle of perfume, for one. Also, a new leather-bound notebook filled with expensive paper. Like something an artist would carry into the woods for sketching.

  Why hadn’t I noticed the new items by now?

  Maybe I’d been far too busy looking out the window and, at the same time, ignoring Susan’s table. After all, it was none of my business what she kept on top of it or didn’t, and for all I knew, the notebook and the perfume had been there for more than a year. After a while, you stop noticing certain things in a marriage.

  Still, I couldn’t stop my curiosity from getting the best of me. Picking up the notebook, I opened it to the first page. That’s when I saw her name. Lana, scrawled in blue ballpoint in feminine cursive. Below the autograph was a simple XO and directly beside that was a lipstick red kiss made from Lana’s actual lips pressed up against the page.

  My heart pumped.

  Only an hour or so ago, Lana told me that she and Susan hardly knew one another. That their only connection was the P90X class. I thought about the WhatsApp message on her phone. The word “Baby.” Did Susan and Lana know one another better than she was letting on?

  I took another look at the Vic Secret box. In all the years I’d lived with Susan I’d never once opened her mail. That is, unless she asked me to. Did I start now just because I sensed a deception in the works?

  I felt the slight, almost featherweight of the package in my hand. Felt my fingers pressing into it. Then, just like that, I was tearing it open. Inside I found a pair of thong panties. Pink and, as far as I could tell, made of pure silk. Expensive stuff.

  There was a note that came with it.

  A small pink envelope about the size of one you might get along with a dozen roses. Susan’s name had been written on the envelope in blue ballpoint.

  I opened the envelope.

  “How nice it would be to see you in these,” it said. It was signed, “You know who.”

  I felt my pulse beating in my temples. Returning the note to the envelope, I put the package back together as best I could. When Susan came home from work, I would have no choice but to lie to her. Tell her it arrived this way. “You know how the mail can be sometimes,” I’d tell her.

  I set the box back down onto the table and ran the possibilities over in my mind. Either Susan and Lana were far closer than I thought or some strange man who referred to himself as “You-know-who” was sending my wife sexy underwear. Maybe she’d been seeing him for some time. It’s only been the past year that Susan and I started to drift. It’s possible she’s been conducting an affair for that entire time. But then, why was my gut telling me that you-know-who was Lana?

  It’s precisely what I was mulling over in my mind when I made out the automatic chirping that can only come from a car lock being electronically opened. Sure I had other neighbors, but by now I’d learned to recognize the sound of her particular vehicle exclusively. The sound of its locks engaging or disengaging, and the gentle purr of its motor sounded like a thousand other vehicles in Albany alone. But somehow, hers was different. Everything about her was different and unique in ways that might not have been immediately discernable judging from her outwardly appearance. But she was unique all right, and that uniqueness could only be measured in terms of my growing obsession.

  Turning, I started not for the bedroom window, but the window in the full bath located off the front hall vestibule. It would give me a better view of her driveway.

  Crossing over the living room as fast as my crutches could carry me, I jammed my bad foot into the door jamb. The collision of swelled, surgically lacerated foot with the solid wood jamb nearly sent me through the roof. But still, I kept moving, knowing all the time that the real pain would be delayed. It was more important that I catch a glimpse of Lana as she was getting into her car than it was to perform a damage check on my foot. Just that one simple glance could make or break the remainder of my day.

  The single slider in the bathroom was identical to the one in the bedroom. I stood maybe a foot or so away from it while I watched a now fully clothed Lana get behind the wheel of her red, two-door, Ford Shelby GT500 convertible. As the electric pain travelled from my toes to my brain and back to my toes, I focused my gaze on her as she adjusted the rearview mirror to just the right position, and then slipped on the same pair of sunglasses she’d been wearing out back.

  She was sporting a black satin button-down shirt that was unbuttoned low enough to expose just a hint of red pushup bra, and both her wrists were supporting at least a dozen different silver bracelets. Her lips were painted bright red and her cheeks were tanned golden from the many mornings spent sunning on her back deck. Her hair hung down against her shoulders, but a colorful silk scarf was wrapped around it. From where I was standing in pain and no doubt bleeding, she looked every bit the Southern California transplant, which was something foreign for Orchard Grove. Didn’t matter that she was born in Albany. Everything about her exuded California confidence and sexuality.

  My foot began to throb with every pulse of my heart… Not a good sign.

  Looking quickly down at it, I could see that the index toe had indee
d begun to bleed. The pain was so bad my brow had broken out into a cold sweat and I felt vaguely nauseas. As my knees grew weak, I also thought I might pass out.

  But I didn’t care.

  The pain was worth every second watching her power up her sports car, and back out of the driveway. But once she was gone, I was again filled with an emptiness that was far greater than my pain, more disturbing than the blood soaking into my thin black sock, more confusing than knowing my wife and Lana were quite possibly striking up a secret friendship.

  Obsession… it had invaded my flesh and bone like a cancer.

  What the hell was happening to me anyway?

  Ten years ago I was a successful screenwriter living the kind of life any writing student would kill for. I had talent, money, notoriety, and the respect of my industry peers. But then, it all went bad because of a few bad choices drowned in booze and the tears that can only be shed by a husband whose wife is getting her orgasms elsewhere.

  But the tears dried when I met Susan. It’s true my career was still in a tailspin, but at least Susan had become my rock, my love and my happiness. But then, she left me too. Sure, we still lived together. But in many ways, she was already gone.

  And now that Lana had entered into our lives, all I could think about was being with her. Making love to her. Could she make me happy? Could she love me more than Susan ever could? Could she be the muse that I’d been looking for?

  Maybe my foot was a bloody mess, but I had become a very sick man. A man sick with love and lust. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my disease would turn out to be terminal.

  Inside the medicine cabinet, I located a box of Band-Aids, set them on the edge of the sink. Seating myself on the lid-covered toilet, I undid the Velcro straps on the black, plastic and nylon, knee-high splint, pulled it off and then gently peeled off the now bloody sock. The long incision that ran the length of my second toe (the index or Morton’s toe) had been reopened. The metal pin inserted into the very center of the toe, where the surgeon had drilled vertically through the bone, was now slightly bent so that it hooked upward at a thirty-degree angle. When the time came for the doctor to pry it out of my foot… and they would do so with a pair of workman’s pliers, or so I was told by the assisting nurse… it would hurt like a son of a bitch. No two ways about it.