Center of it All Epilogue

NOTE TO JIB VOTERS - This is the final installment of Center of it All. It was inadvertantly put on the Jerusalem Post Site as the main link for this series. You can find the beginning of the series here.

The rink was cold, but the smile on Eli’s face kept me warm. We hadn’t spent much time together over since the divorce, but I was determined to spend more time with my children. Today, it was Eli’s turn.

We held hands, talking, as we skated around the rink a few times. Then, she skated away, looking like an angel on ice, to skate with her friends.

There had been a cloud that settled over my life years ago. I had been living in darkness for so long, I hadn’t even noticed it was there, until it went away. The nightmares had lost their hold on my nights, and I was back to giving my clients the kind of service I could provide.

My skate got caught in a rut on the ice, and I went crashing down, sliding on the ice into the wall.

Eli saw me fall and skated across the rink to see if I was OK.

“Are you OK, Daddy,” she asked.

“Never better, sweetie, never better.”

The preceeding story is fiction. You can find the beginning of this story earlier on this blog.


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The House Part 2

Center of it All XIII

I waited two days to hear from Nechama. While I waited, I walked through Manhattan, and watched. There was a life force that took Manhattan’s busy one way streets, an energy that I had never encountered in any other city on earth. I both envied and pitied the people who lived and worked in a city that never slept, never slowed down, and would mercilessly roll right over you if you happened to slow down.

On Wednesday night I stuffed myself with hot wings and burgers at Lippy’s, the new trendy kosher bar that everyone I talked to recommended. When I came back to the hotel, she was sitting in the lobby. I recognized her instantly. Looking at Nechama was like looking at the female version of Yoni. Yoni had always been the best-looking guy at every Yeshiva we attended, and he passed down every bit of his good looks to his daughter.

I walked over to where she was sitting, and introduced myself.

“I’m Tuli,” I said. “You must be Nechama.”

“How do you know,” she asked.

“You look exactly like your dad,” I answered.

She looked uncomfortable at the mention of her father, and I reminded myself that even though I had once known Yoni Winters better than anyone in the world, the girl sitting in front of me had never seen him, met him, and had probably never met anyone who knew him.

“Have you eaten,” I asked. “We could go have dinner, or find somewhere quiet for coffee.”

She had already eaten, so we decided to go out for coffee instead. She knew a place in the area, and fifteen minutes later, we were sitting inside a poorly lit room drinking. Frappachino for Nechama. Black coffee for me.

“So you knew my dad,” she said, after the server walked away from our table. It was a statement, not a question, and I nodded yes.

“When I was a little girl, I always dreamed that my dad would come and pick me up and take me to the park or the zoo or something. And then one day, I just stopped caring about him. If he didn’t want us, I mean, why should I give two shits about him, ya know.”

As she talked about growing up without a father, I thought about my girls. Were they destined to have a similar conversation when they grew up?

There time would come for my attention. Tonight, I was focusing on Nechama.

“Did you know him well,” she asked.

“A long time ago I did, back when we were your age. Your dad was my best friend growing up.”

“We did everything together. We were roommates in Yeshiva, spent vacations together, hung out in the same crowd. Hell, I even married an ex-girlfriend of his.”

“So what happened,” she asked.

“He left. He walked out on my life and I never saw him again. That was 17 years ago. Until the past few months, I never realized how much I missed your dad.”

“What happened over the past few months?”

“I got a call from a hospital telling me he had died. He had no family, no friends, he just died alone. So I flew to Phoenix where he had been living, and that’s when I discovered he had a daughter. I did some investigating, and found you.”

I tried to read Nechama’s face as I talked about her dad. It was probably the first time she had ever heard anything more than basic details about his life. I wondered what she was feeling, but did not feel like I had the right to ask.

I finished my coffee, and called the waiter over to refill my cup.

After he walked away, I continued.

“The first time I ever heard a word about you was when I read this letter. I don’t know when he wrote it, and I can’t answer every question you have about him. I hadn’t seen him since right after I got married.”

I reached into my pocket, and pulled out the folded letter Yoni had left for me on his computer. I held it out to her, and she reached out and took it.

“This is a scary letter,” I said to her as she unfolded it. “I don’t know if he was crazy or using drugs or what when he wrote it.”

I drank my coffee and waited as she read the letter.

“What does this all mean,” she asked me. “All the screaming and voices. Do you know what the fuck he’s talking about? And the money, is he serious? Or is this whole thing some bullshit?”

“The money is real, Nechama. I have paperwork we can get to tomorrow. But if you have the time, I want to tell you a story about your dad. I don’t think he ever recovered from what happened. And your mom had the bad luck to walk into his life right in the middle of it all.”

“You see, a long time ago, Yoni and I found this abandoned house,” I began. I told her about the things we had found there, and how each summer we would always go back.

Throughout fifteen years of marriage, I had never told Fran this story. Of all the stories in my life, this was the one that mattered, but I could never quite force this story out. I wondered if I would have the strength to tell the whole story to Nechama.

I thought back to that day 19 years earlier, and suddenly, I was there again.

“What do you wanna do tomorrow,” Yoni asked.

“Let’s go to the Smithson house for one last time,” I answered. “We haven’t been there all summer, and I don’t think I am coming back to the mountains next year, so this is like, my last shot to go there.”

“OK,” Yoni said. “But first we’re stopping for some pizza in Liberty. If I eat any more of this camp food I’ll fuckin die.”

The next morning we davened, and jumped in Yoni’s car, heading for Pizza. We grabbed a few slices, saw some girls that we knew, and then headed out to the Smithson house.

The conversation was light and the music was loud. Yoni told me he had broken up with Fran, and he didn’t even know they were dating. “You fool around with someone for a couple of vacations, all of the sudden they think they’re your girlfriend,” he said to me.

Yoni had his eye on a different girl, and he was supposed to hook up with her that night. Pizza, bowling, dance club. Who knew? Menachem had told him that this girl puts out a little, and Yoni was hoping to get a little action before the night was over. As for me, I was hoping to see Fran, but I wasn’t ready to tell him that.

It was about 12:30 by the time we got to the Smithson house. Three hours, we had promised ourselves. Then, we needed to get back, shit, shower, shave, and get ready for our off night.

We each had our favorite areas of the house. Yoni loved going through the basement, I liked exploring the master bedroom.

We noticed someone had been to the house since the last time we were there. Probably some camp kids who stumbled on it just like we did, Yoni laughed. Neither of us thought anything of the footprints leading into the house. We walked into the house, and each went our separate ways. Yoni, downstairs. Me upstairs.

I walked into the master bedroom, and started to laugh. There were sheets hanging off the bed, like someone had been sleeping there. I walked over to the closet, and opened it, expecting to see the vintage clothes hanging there. As I opened the closet door, a hand reached out from behind and grabbed me.

“Make a noise, and you die, bitch,” the stranger said to me. The stranger had a knife in one hand, and I could see what I thought was a gun sticking up above his waist.

He was strong, and the knife waving in front of my face was all the convincing I needed to listen. He pointed me over to a chair, and took out some rope from his bag.

He never took his eyes off me as I walked over to the wooden chair that was on the other side of the room.

“That’s right, piss head, nice and slow. Stop.”

I stopped. I was terrified.

“Take off your clothes before you sit down.”

I unbuttoned my shirt and he saw my tzitith.

“A Jew,’” he said, “I’m gonna whup me up some Jew Stew tonight.”

He saw me hesitating. “Take it off, take it all off so I can see your tiny little jew prick.” The knife in his hand told me he was serious.

I did what I was told, and sat down on the chair. I straddled it, so that I was facing the back. and my captor tied me securely to the chair.

“I’m gonna enjoy killing you, jew, and then I’m gonna cook you.”

Before that moment, I had never known fear. The real fear. Not fear of a test, or a teacher, or of failure. Fear of dying, and no one finding out what happened to you.

I wondered if anyone else was in the house with this monster, and then I remembered Yoni. Yoni was in the basement, looking through the Smithson’s storage area. Every time he had gone down their, he came up with someone incredible; I wondered how the day was going to end for him.

I was completely immobilized. My feet were tied together in front of the chair, and my hands were geld down with a rope that looped under the chair. I was tightly gagged, and could barely make a sound. There was no way to call for help, or to warn Yoni.

I watched the man as he took out a flask, and took a swig. He had been quiet since he tied me up, but he started talking to me again.

“I ain’t never ate a man before,” he said. “Girl’s, women, yeah. But you’re the first man.” He pulled a tray out of the closet, and brought it over. “This is my collection.” Mounted on the board were bones. “Everyone I eat, I keep something to remember them by.”

Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that he was actually going to kill and eat me.

“You ever think what its like to watch someone cut you up and eat you, cuz today you’re gonna get your chance,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re gonna get to watch.”

“I always like to start with some toe soup. Maybe I’ll cut your dick off and toss it in for flavor. Toe dick soup. Don’t that sound fine.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time, so don’t you worry. Ain’t no part of you gonna be wasted. I don’t know how long I’ll keep you around for. This wuz this one bitch, I kept her alive until all she was was a stump with a head. And I fucked her good, that legless stump bitch. He pointed to a bone on the souvenir tray.

“That was her.”

He took another swig from his flask, and walked to the corner of the room. He had a burner in the corner, and gallons of water stacked against the wall. He took out a pot from the closet, and filled it halfway with water. Then he put it on the burner, and started to boil the water.

“Yer toes goin in there.” He laughed a loud, devilish laugh, and walked around the room.

“I’ve been doing this for since I was a kid, younger then you, I’ll bet. I even got a special knife for carving.” He put the knife he had been carrying down on the bed, and reached into his bag. He pulled out a shiny knife. “Jewboy, meet Carver. He’s gonna be the last thing you feel, when this is all over. I’m gonna shove him straight up yer ass, and cut up yer back. That’s when you’re gonna die.”

He reached into his bag again, and pulled out a rubber cord. “This here, now, this is yer friend. This is gonna keep you alive.” He carried the rubber cord over to me, and tied it tightly around my leg.

The water on the burner was starting to boil. “One order of toe soup coming up.” He held my foot firmly in his hand, and cut through my foot as easily as if was butter. Intense pain shot through from my leg straight through my body, and I tried to scream, but the gag on my mouth kept any noise from coming out. He made three more slices, each one more painful than the last, and then he showed me four bloody toes in his hand. He walked over to the pot, and tossed them into the boiling the water. Then he took out an onion and some carrots from his closet, and sliced them up with the knife, before tossing them into the pot.

I don’t know when he got there, but I saw Yoni standing just outside the door. Our eyes met for a second, and then I looked away.

“Not too much meat on yer bones, boy, but you can’t complain when a meal walks into your room.” He stirred the soup, and walked back over to me. He was standing right in front of me, looking intently at me. He reached for his flask, and took two more swigs. His back was to the door of the room; he had not seen Yoni standing there.

“I ain’t never had toe dick soup, but if I cut yer dick off, how am I gonna keep you from bleeding out. Fuck it. I don’t need you to be alive.”

“I’m gonna cut it all off. Dick nuts and all.”

He took my penis in his hand, and ran his knife along my leg, slicing it open.

He moved his knife away from my leg, about to cut off my penis. He never heard Yoni coming, and didn’t know there was another soul in the room until he felt his own hunting knife under his back, and twist.

The knife in my captor’s hand fell harmlessly to the ground. He never saw Yoni. He was dead before he hit the floor.

I looked at Nechama. “Your dad saved my life, but he was never the same after that. Neither of us were.”

“Yoni carried me to the car. Then he went back to the house. He took out his cigarette lighter, and lit some furniture and papers on fire. Then, he took me to the hospital, where they stitched up my leg and closed the wounds on my feet. We told them I had a lawnmower accident.”

“I’ll always owe your dad, for the rest of my life. I have never told that story to anyone. Not my ex-wife, friends, anyone. Yoni and I never talked about it either. I think we thought that if we pretended it didn’t happen, the memories would disappear. But they never have.”

“I think the reason he left your mom was he didn’t think someone who killed, no matter what the reason, could be around kids. Just a gut feeling I have.”

I had been talking for over an hour, and it was late.

Nechama hadn’t said anything since I began telling her the story, and I looked at her, wondering if I had burdened the wrong person with my story.

“That is the most horrible story I ever heard,” she said, as we waited outside for a cab.” We took the taxi back to her mother’s house, to drop her off.

We both got out of the cab when we reached her building. I paid the taxi driver, and walked Nechama to the building entrance.

“I need the air,” I told her. I’m gonna walk the thirty blocks to my hotel.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for telling me about my dad. I’m glad he was there for you.”

She turned, and walked into the building. I headed back uptown to my hotel.

The preceeding work is fiction. You can find the beginning of this story earlier on this blog.

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Center of it All XII

Life had not dealt Gila Carmen a good hand. I sat on her broken, worn out couch, and looked around the room. $49.95 and a few days was all it took for me to find her address, a run down apartment building in a rent-controlled building in lower Manhattan. The five locks on the door gave testimony to the safety of the building. For some reason, the Mezuzah on the door surprised me.

The four-room apartment stank of poverty and cigarettes, a stench that felt as if it had permeated the walls and everything that entered the apartment. My allergies acted up immediately, the result of at least three cats that had the run of the apartment. I scanned the room looking for signs of a child, and saw some pictures of a girl on the shelf of a bookcase across the room.

As Gila made tea for me in the kitchen. I wondered how her life would have been different if she had never met Yoni. She would probably be married, with a family and a community. Instead, she lived the life of an outcast, forced to raise her daughter away from the pointing fingers and whispers that would have gone on behind her back.

She was pleasant on the phone, a bit curious as to what I wanted, and completely resigned when I mentioned Yoni’s name. Still, she invited me to come visit, and here I was, and as I waited for her to come in the room with tea, I thought for thousandth time since we set up this meeting how to talk to her.

She sat down on the chair across from the couch, and we drank our tea, making some small talk about winter in New York, and how expensive everything was in Manhattan.

“You said on the phone you had some urgent business regarding my daughter, Nechama” she said suddenly. “What is it?”

Her forthrightness caught me off guard for a moment, but she was right. Nechama was the reason why I was in New York.

“A long time ago,” I began, “I went to Yeshiva with Yoni Winters.” I looked at Gila, trying to read her reaction to Yoni’s name.

“That’s a name from the past,” Gila said slowly. She sounded sad as she continued. “I always thought he would try to come back into our lives. I used to hate him for how he treated me back then. Now, I don’t feel anything at all for him. What does he want?”

“He doesn’t want anything,” I said. I wondered if my words were the words she had dreamed about for years. Would they be taken with glee, or sadness? “In fact, he died a few months ago.”

“He died alone, in a charity hospital in Phoenix, this past summer,” I continued. I waited for Gila to say something, but when my pause was filled with silence, I decided to press on.

“I hadn’t seen Yoni in years, and I never knew he had a daughter.”

I told Gila about the time I spent in Phoenix, and some of the things I had learned about his life. “I got the sense that Yoni lived a very lonely, very sad life,” I told her when I finished.

She stayed quiet, and I felt uncomfortable with the silence, so I kept on talking. “Yoni was my best friend when we were kids. He saved my life once, and I’ve always felt like I owed him something. When he died, he left me a letter asking me to come find his daughter and talk to her. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you first, because I don’t know what she knows about her father, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell her about him.”

I stopped talking. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that my shmuck friend had abandoned her so long ago. I wanted to tell her that the Yoni I knew would never treat a person the way he treated her, but what was the point. She didn’t ask for nor want my pity.

Finally, Gila broke the silence. “I used to pray that he was dead. And then one day, you wake up, and look around, and there is a beautiful little girl walking next to you, and you think to yourself, this is such a miracle. This little girl, who I would have never asked for, is my life. And that’s when I stopped hating him and stopped thinking about him.”

“Do you have a picture of her?” I asked.

“It’s over there, on that end table.”

I stood up and walked across the room. I picked up the picture and looked at her. “She looks just like he did when he was this age. How old is she?”

“She’s eighteen. A great girl. She’s a freshman in Brooklyn College, on academic scholarship. She was the top girl in her high school class.”

I put the picture down, walked back over to my seat, and sat down.

“I’d like to meet her,” I told Gila. “There are some things Yoni wanted me to tell her.”

Gila lit a cigarette, and thought for a minute. The silence filled the room, and I waited for her to answer.

Finally, she began to talk. “I need to talk to her first,” Gila began. “We haven’t talked about her father in years. I need to make sure it’s OK with her.”

“I’ll talk to her tonight, and call you at your hotel sometime over the next few days and let you know.”

I thanked Gila for talking to me, and went back to my hotel. And waited.

This story is fiction. You can find the beginning of the story on this blog.

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Center of it All XI

There was a time when Fran and I could sit and talk for hours. Conversation flowed between us, whether it was about the kids, work, or the weather. She always thought there was nothing we couldn’t talk about, and maybe she was right. We would sit on the couch, or play a game, and spend the entire time drawn in riveting conversation.

In fifteen years, there were only two things we never tried talking about. The first was Yoni. That he had disappeared from our lives made his absence in our conversation easy. The second was the day at the house. It was my secret, my cross to bear. Perhaps she never asked about it because she didn’t know anything about that day.

That day at the house caused a rift between us, unfair because she never knew the damaged goods that she had married, and never had a chance to try and heal those wounds. On those rare occasions when she found me out of bed in the middle of night, sweating profusely and unable to go back to sleep, she would ask what was wrong. And I would lie each time and make up something about work or money troubles.

There was always some truth to what I was saying, which was why Fran never pushed me, never forced me to bear myself to her.

When our marriage did fall apart, there was never any doubt in my mind that standing between us was the Smithson house. Even though it was no longer occupying my thoughts, even though the dreams had disappeared, the lies I told to cover up that day had a deteriorative affect on our marriage. It was a fault line that eventually cracked through the solid foundation we had built.

And when she told me she wanted a divorce, I knew that slowly, over the years, I had pushed her away.

I could have come clean then, and there were nights, sitting alone and crying in a house that was once filled with the voices of children and the scents of family, when I nearly called her, begged her to let me come home, and told her what really happened. But the words were too hard to say, and had been left unsaid for so long, so they remained buried, unspoken, forming a wall between us.

It had been a long time since Fran and I had anything resembling a conversation, but now I needed to talk to her. About one of our taboo topics. I needed to find out whatever she knew about the other girl.

Our divorce had been smooth, as divorces go. She got the house and custody, I got alimony I needed to pay, and the clothes on my back. Eighteen months later she was remarried, and I was trying my hardest to bury myself in my work and see my kids every once in a while.

I had only met my ex-wife’s second husband a few times, mostly as we passed children back and forth, and as much as I hated top wish it, I hoped he treating Fran well, and being a good father to my kids. Whenever I called, I prayed that he wouldn’t answer, and when he did, there were a few awkward words that would pass between us before he would mercifully pass the phone over to the woman with whom I once shared a life.

“Yoni,” I muttered as I dialed the phone, “this one’s for you.”

The phone rang, and Eli answered. I was so focused on what I would say to Fran or her second husband that it didn’t occur to me that my daughter would answer.

“Hi Eli,” I said, pleased to hear her voice on the other end of the phone.

“Daddy,” she shrieked, and then asked when I would come take her ice skating. She just got new skates, and wanted to show me how quickly she had learned to skate.

I promised her I would talk to her mother about going skating, and asked to speak to her mom.

Fran must have been standing right next to the phone, because she took it from Eli immediately after Eli said goodbye.

“Yes,” she said, and I could hear the weariness in her voice. “What do you want?” she asked me.

“Eli wants me to take her skating,” I answered. “Is this Sunday afternoon OK?”

“If you were involved in her life you’d know she was busy this Sunday, Tuli. Besides, that’s not what you called for. What do you want?”

“I need to see you. I need to talk to you,” I said quietly.

“We’re talking now.”

“Not like this. I need to see you in person. It’s important.”

“Are your parents sick?”

“No”

“Then what do you need to talk to me about?”

“Can you meet me for lunch tomorrow? Please?”

“What for?”

“Yoni died,” I said slowly and softly.

“Good,” she answered. “I hope that bastard’s burning deep in Hell.”

“Wow. I never knew you were that angry at him. After all these years.”

“Look, he lied to me, made me feel things I had never felt before, and then the son of a bitch dumps me for Gila Carmen.”

I grabbed a pen off my counter, and wrote the name Gila Carmen on a notepad next to the phone.

“Gila Carmen?” I asked.

“Yeah, That big slut. I was never friends with anyone girls from Milwaukee after that.”

I wrote Milwaukee on the paper under her name.

“How come you never told me that before,” I asked.

“There were a lot of things we never talked about. Not that you cared. Look, I have to go. I’m not getting together with you, and I don’t want to talk about Yoni Winters ever again. You want to talk to someone, get a girlfriend, call your shrink, I don’t care what you do.”

I was still holding the phone next to my ear when she slammed the phone down on the cradle.

I looked at the piece of paper on the counter. I had the information I needed to start searching.

The preceding story is fiction. You can find the beginning of this story on this blog

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Center of it All X

I took a deep breath, the cold air comforting as it filled my lungs. It was November in Michigan, and cold air felt familiar, felt homelike. It had been two months since I returned from Phoenix. Two months since my life felt like it had been turned upside down.

Yoni’s letter had opened up old wounds, and the nightmares that had lay dormant for fifteen years had returned with a vengeance. Nights were restless, sleep difficult, and frequently interrupted by screams ringing out of the darkness.

The tips my therapist had given me years earlier were ineffectual against my reborn demons, and as a result, I was edgier, more nervous during my waking hours. My work was suffering, and my pocketbook suffered as well. Two clients had left to find another designer they could rely on, and I had the sense that some of my other clients were looking around to find a new designer.

I was failing Yoni. For two decades, I hadn’t thought of him much, now he was always on my mind. His mission. His daughter. The money.

I brought his computer back from Phoenix with me. I spent hours going through his financial records, calling banks, and confirming everything that he wrote. If it was true that the one who died with the most wins, Yoni was certainly high on the leaderboard. There were millions of dollars sitting in different investment funds, bank accounts, and stocks.

After I left Phoenix, I tried to reach Yoni’s parents, to let them know that their son was dead. I reached a younger sister, who told me that her father had died years earlier, and that her mother was living in a nursing home, her mind long gone, her body holding on.

I didn’t know his sister well. She was ten years younger than Yoni, and never really knew him before he disappeared. She had long since stopped wondering what happened to him. She didn’t know about the money, didn’t ask, and since she wasn’t discussed in the letter, I decided not to tell her about it. It was an easy decision to make. She was mean on the phone, and earned no pity points in my personal scorecard.

I hadn’t begun to transfer any of the money to myself. I didn’t want to touch it until I had completed Yoni’s wishes, found his daughter, and gave her what belonged to her. My recent client troubles notwithstanding, I still had a sizeable amount of savings, and could probably live off my savings for years without feeling squeezed.

I had wracked my brain trying to remember a girl named Gila, but all I got was blanks. No face to match, no recollection of that name. The letter was too vague, there was no city, or other place associated with her. Who else might know her, I wondered. Who were Yoni’s friends the summer after we went to Israel?

I thought back to those days. So much had happened that summer. We got back from Israel, and went home, before meeting in the mountains. We worked as counselors that summer. It was the summer when “it” happened, when the haunted house became nightmarish. Was he seeing her then? I couldn’t remember.

So many things about that summer had been blocked out, lost in memory to time, and conscious avoidance. Yoni was still seeing Fran back then, but they broke up. I remember running into her at a pizza shop on one of those days when Yoni and I couldn’t get our off day together.

I had ordered two slices, and was sitting at the table eating when Fran walked into the Pizza shop. There was no way we could avoid each other, pizza shops weren’t known for their spacious seating areas and besides, Fran and I had become friends over the years. She was alone, and I had no idea that she and Yoni were breaking up.

I walked up to the counter where she was ordering a slice, and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hey Fran, what’s going on,” I asked her. “Yoni isn’t here today.”

“You don’t know,” she asked, her eyes getting wider and glassier with each word. “He dumped me.”

I ditched my friends that I was with, and went to sit down with her. She told me that they had been going out for a long time, but that it was all over. Last night he told her he wanted to start seeing other people.

I knew Yoni was seeing other people, I just hadn’t realized he was still going out with Fran. Hell, he had always been seeing other people. I just assumed Fran and Yoni weren’t a thing.

Fran kept talking, and eating, and talking, and eating. We went through a pie sitting there that afternoon. The worst thing, she said was the way she found out. She overheard a girl in her camp talking about Yoni Winters, her boyfriend. Fran thought it was funny that they both had boyfriends named Yoni, but when told Yoni how funny it was on the phone, Yoni told her he was going out with her.

Fran and I hung out together for the rest of the day, and before we went our separate ways, I asked her if she wanted to go out sometime. A week later, Fran and I were on out first date, bowling at some seedy, sleazy bowling alley.

I checked with Yoni to see if he was cool with us going out, and he didn’t care, he said he had someone else lined up and didn’t know he was going out with Fran anyway. He thought they were just fooling around. Anyway, he had another girl he started hanging out with.

Fran and I dated the rest of the summer, and into the following year. We tried a long distance relationship, which didn’t really work well, and then went to school close to one another so we could stay together.

Was the other girl Yoni dumped Fran for the mysterious Gila, I wondered. And if she was, would Fran even tell me.

I went inside the house, picked up the phone, and called my ex-wife.

The preceding work is fiction. You can find the beginning of this story on this blog

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