Setting about my day with my new plan in tow was slightly more difficult than I had originally imagined, as I glanced down at the now-cracked screen of my cell phone.  I paused for a moment, one foot planted firmly in a pile of gray slush, the other still on the sidewalk, and laughed uneasily at his latest text message, which was clearly intended for her and not me.

Heading home now…we don’t have money for karaoke tonight, do we?

Behind me (and unseen, fortunately, to the public), The Beast rose up again, placing two overly-firm hands on my shoulders and trying to rouse me to reaction. He did it on purpose, it muttered in my ear, just to get to you.

The Beast smiled coyly as the tension slowly crept up my neck and my grip tightened on the cell phone.  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and sucker-punched.

A whimper of shock and shame, followed by fleeting footsteps.  The Beast wasn’t going to win this time.

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“It was a funny sort of weekend, wasn’t it?” Derek said, generously spreading out the fresh bagels he’d brought with him.  “Weird vibes all around.”

“You’re telling me,” I muttered, diving into the bagels as if I’d not eaten since the last time Derek brought food.  “I’m still not quite sure I was the person who experienced my weekend.  A little too dramatic for my normal liking.”

The days leading up to Tuesday breakfast with Derek had been wrought with unsettling, vulnerable emotions which plagued me, continually, throughout most of my weekend.  The situation with Jon had come to a head (much as I had anticipated it might, though the emotional bee-sting was deeper than expected), leaving my seemingly-strong ego slightly tattered and very bruised.

“What was so dramatic about it?” Derek inquired innocently.  I had, up until that point, almost forgotten that he didn’t know about my strange little non-fling with the man who was never meant to be mine.  Then again, no one did, save for Soundman Sam (due largely in part to his geographical displacement and utter lack of knowledge base regarding that facet of my life).  Removing Jon’s involvement in my weekend drastically cut down on the level of expected drama, and I was left fumbling for my next words.

“I saw the Coworker,” I muttered, hoping this would be enough of a shock to fill in the dramatic gaps.  Derek chuckled a bit – not out of surprise, per se, but more with an air of expectancy…a hint of, ‘I told you so’.

“I hope to Christ you don’t refer to me to other people by some stupid nickname,” he laughed.  “If I find out you do, I’m gonna stinger splash your ass.  Now…do tell.”

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“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, I DON’T EAT GRITS, BITCH!”

The rousing laughter from the table was broken almost instantly by the condescending bark of the heavily-made-up, aging and bitter waitress who was taking advantage of her one opportunity to pull rank on anyone.  She was not amused by Roger’s antics.

“One more outburst from you all and I’m gonna have to ask y’all to leave,” she growled, flipping her over-processed and bodiless ponytail as she stalked off angrily.

“Yeah, Roger,” I giggled.  “Now eat your damn grits and shut the fuck up!”

We had stopped just after midnight at the sixteenth Waffle House we encountered (Jim was counting) for much-needed caffeine and trans fats, and were somewhere in northern Arkansas, surrounded by just the type of people one would expect to run into at such an establishment.  Megan sat across from me, slouching in the tattered, faded red vinyl booth, incredibly happy that our little pit stop signaled the end of her driving contribution, poking around at a soggy stack of miserable little pancakes.

“There’s simply not enough money in the world to get me to consume this shit,” Roger moaned, half-drunk and probably still a little bit high.  He had driven us from Boston straight through West Virginia, and was now able to settle in for the remainder of the excursion.  “Whose idea was this place anyway?”

“Yours, princess,” Kevin quipped, throwing an overcooked bit of hash brown at Roger.

“Bullshit!” Roger yelled, jumping to his feet.  “Do I look like white trash to you? I would never do such a thing.”  Our waitress, Miss Congeniality, marched right over at the sound of Roger’s little outburst.

“Alright, that’s it. Who’s payin’ this check?” she snarled.  We pointed to Scott, who had remained silent throughout Roger’s antics.  “Well pay up, and then get on outta here.  And I don’t wanna see y’all back here again, ya hear me?”

“Why yes ma’am!” Roger shouted in his best mock-southern accent, standing at attention and saluting the dragon waitress.  “And I do apologize for this unfortunate inconvenience.”

Scott shoved some cash into the waitress’s hand before grabbing Roger by the collar and almost dragging him out of the restaurant.  We shuffled outside, laughing, where Scott was eye-to-eye with Roger.

“Do you think it was the white-trash thing?” Roger asked, staring back at Scott.  Scott burst into laughter.

“That might have done it, yeah.”

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“Wat’s going on?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the text message from the Young One – the one that came, as usual, at about 10:30 on a Saturday night after each of us had had our chances at a night out.

I had called him on it once, a few weeks back, and insisted to him that I was not, in any way, his little booty call.  Feigning offense, he did his best to argue that his intentions were purely the opposite.  And yet, still – he persists.

The weekend before I had the luxury of being predisposed – albeit, having a reasonably mediocre time downtown – and was able to quell his poorly-masked request instantly.  On this particular weekend, however, he had caught me in the middle of a tremendously exciting solo screening of Sleepaway Camp.

There came an unsettling moment of indecision which caused my skin to crawl, as I chastised myself for even entertaining the notion of accepting his offer of a healthy round of string-less physical activity.  I certainly could have done with the entertainment (musing to myself about the last time I was so engrossed), but the aftermath was not something I was in the mood to suffer through.

The issue with the little boys was that, even though they moonlighted as these wanna-be-big-time-players, they were still quite sophomoric when it came to their concepts’ of women’s expectations, post-romp.  The Young One would linger – at times well into my Sundays, putting me in a foul state of mind for the remainder of the day.  He’d want to monopolize the last, few precious moments of my weekend with superficial embraces and teenage makeout sessions, while I desperately wished for the power to will him away with my mind.

I no longer had the desire nor the patience to take the Young One under my wing and school him on the ways of the wiser world.  The necessary time spent in his company certainly did not warrant that kind of effort on my part.  If he hadn’t already learned the rules of the booty call (even in its simplest tenets – never, ever, ever spend the night) by now, I was under no obligation to waste my time attempting to educate the wayward little soul.

I ultimately left it alone, deciding that no comment would be the safest route to take.  I spent the remainder of the evening, instead, pondering Cute Neighbor Boy and his cryptic, ambiguous behaviors over the chilled bottle of pinot that he did not stop by to share.

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 “Jesus Christ, this bed’s comfortable,” I mused to Taco as I snuggled in closer to her and the mass of pillows she was perched on.  It never failed to amaze me just how cozy my freely-acquired bed truly was, and I took a moment to revel in my nocturnal fortune.  As Taco pressed her wet nose against my head, my ability to keep my eyes open started to fail heavily.

Comfortable; nestled; surrounded by impending sleep on all sides, when suddenly the blasting sounds of the hallway fire alarm shattered my perfect cocoon-like slumber.  I stumbled from the bed to the closet in a semi-trazodone-daze to throw on some pants, fortunately recalling my lack of proper outerwear, as Taco panicked near the front door.

Standing at the door with the dog leash in hand, I contemplated ignoring this one as so many of my neighbors routinely did.  Taco looked up at me pressingly, making every attempt to shoo me out of the apartment, and reminding me of the more immediate issue: the terrifyingly loud fire alarm which left the dog trembling in fear.  There was to be no ignoring of the alarm. Not this time.

Taco led me down the hallway to the stairwell, where she clumsily (due mainly to her panicked speed) faltered down the three flights of stairs to the first floor.  A thick cloud of white powder poured out of the first floor laundry room, indicating the brilliance with which a resident must have put powdered detergent in the liquid soap compartment.  This is why I was woken up???

We made our way outside and over to my parked car, where Taco excitedly waited for the men in the big loud truck to come and make the bad noise stop.  As two ladder trucks pulled up in front of the building, I spied a scraggly-looking guy making his lone way up the parking lot.

Shit.

I quickly deduced that the scraggly man was, in fact, Captain Teabag, whom I had the fortune of having not seen in about two weeks.  Countless nights of his random, unanswered door-knocking had (or so I thought) finally ceased a few weeks prior after I had finally lost my ability to be polite and simply stated, “No, I do not wish to hang out with you.”

The security of nighttime darkness, coupled with identity-shielding wide-brimmed hat and my positioning on the far side of the parking lot, would soon prove pointless as I looked down at Taco’s unmistakably short stature.  I could hide myself, but I could not, in any way, hide the dog, thus making me as discernable as John Candy at a dwarf-tossing contest.

But I had yet to be noticed by my sketchy little would-be stalker.

I contemplated remaining by the car for a moment, until I noticed Captain Teabag stopping to chat up each and every resident coming out of the building.  I could only assume he was, once again, trying to bum a smoke or even a dollar or two.  Having found no success with the first couple, he quickly made his way over to another, much younger, couple instead.

I took advantage of Captain Teabag’s lack of visibility to lead Taco around to the other side of the parking lot, where we meandered for a moment in the bushes (Taco quickly grew bored of the shrub-sniffing as the rain had washed most scents away).  Bravely, I inched closer and closer to the front door of the building, waiting for the fireman’s go-ahead to go back upstairs.

Within seconds, the Captain was at my side – well, maybe not by my side so much as practically riding piggy-back – rambling and mumbling too fast about his failed attempts to stop by my apartment.

“So, have you talked to anyone lately?” he asked.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, puzzled.  I wondered what he meant, and if he had actually had the balls to ask me about scoring weed for him. 

“You know, do you have a boyfriend?”

Holy crap, I thought to myself. He’s actually serious.

“That really doesn’t matter,” I snapped, losing my patience at record speed.  “Or, at least, it shouldn’t matter to you.”

“Why’s that?” he questioned, staring blankly at me.

“Because as far as you’re concerned, I may as well be a married ex-nun-turned-lesbian. I wasn’t interested before, and I certainly haven’t had a change of heart.” I desperately looked around at the crowd of residents gathered outside, hoping to find my rather large, gangster-looking neighbor.  Having been kept fully abreast of the situation with the Captain, he was more than ready to come to my defense if needed.

The Captain was still talking – or rambling, I suppose – about nothing specific: shouting out random, nonsensical conspiracy theorist bullshit as if anyone was paying attention.  I managed to ignore him for about ten seconds.

“Do you ever just shut the fuck up?” I asked him, staring him in the eye.  “Because you really, really need to. Like, right now.  I’m going home.”  I stormed towards the front entrance, where I asked one of the firemen if it was safe to enter.  Perhaps he saw my sheer annoyance or a hint of my impending aggression, but he allowed me in, despite the still-blaring fire alarm.  I just wanted to go to bed.

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At the sight of his cherry red BMW pulling into the parking lot, I rolled up my windows and switched off the ignition.  I hated waiting in that lot for Jason, but it was an agreed-upon happy medium in the almost-unmanageable distance between us.  I just wished that, for once, I wasn’t the one waiting in the car. 

I playfully hopped into his passenger seat, and just as I had sat down, he threw a disposable 35mm camera into my lap. 

“What’s this for?” I asked with a grin.  Surely, some sinister master plan was afoot. 

“Today, my dear,” Jason said slyly, pulling his sunglasses down slightly, “we are going to go mullet hunting.” 

Though I had never heard of such an adventure, I burst into giggles at the mere concept of what the name implied.  Always the consummate people-watcher, he had obviously ascertained with ease that this would be right up my alley. 

“Is it the proper season?” I asked. “Will we need permits?”  Grinning, he leaned over and kissed me sweetly on the cheek.  It never seemed to matter how long it had been since I’d seen him – I still got goose bumps whenever he kissed me. 

“I’ve got it all taken care of,” he assured.  “Now, where to? I have a feeling Lowell’s good hunting grounds this time of year.” 

………….

“Wait, wait, stop!” I shouted excitedly.  “There’s one!”

“Where?” he asked, attempting to scan the crowd and pull the car over at the same time. 

“Three o’clock,” I observed, pointing the way.  “I think it might even be a femullet!”   

As he parked the car alongside the only open stretch of curb for miles, I hopped out of the car to get a better view.  Confirming the sighting, I rushed back to the car. 

“It is! C’mon, let’s go!” 

“How are we gonna get this one?” he asked quizzically, pondering the cityscape for an excuse to take pictures under the guise of tourism.   

“Easy,” I stated.  I twirled a few steps in front of Jason, spinning my loose, floral skirt.  “So what do you think of my new outfit?” I asked loudly.  After a minute or two, he finally caught on to my plan and played along. 

“You look beautiful in it,” he swooned. “Let me get a picture of you in it!” 

I poised myself by a light post which overlooked the outdoor sandwich shop where the Femullet was lunching, positioning myself perfectly so that she was just behind me in the camera’s frame.  As he snapped away, a self-assured smile crept across his face. 

“Perfect, got it!” he proclaimed, grabbing my hand.  “Let’s go!”  

We ran back to the car as if passers-by were aware of our mission, where we finally collapsed into fits of laughter.  As we drove down the street, we happened upon a public beach where a large, extended Hispanic family function was seemingly taking place.   

“Your turn,” I laughed, spotting a handful of young men sporting our desired hairstyle.  “The hunt is on!” 

We casually strolled down to the water’s edge where I made Jason stand, casually, while I pretended to take a picture of him.  As I instructed him on where to stand, two of the Hispanic men crept casually into the background, smiling playfully.  The older of the two suddenly became quite brave, putting his fingers up in rabbit-ear-formation behind Jason’s head.   

I had managed to snap three or four shots before Jason suspected something was amiss and turned around to investigate.  At the sight of the men, he threw his arms up into the air, cheering excitedly. 

“Hahah! Yes!!!” he shouted, doling out high-fives to the men behind him.  Smiling, we waved goodbye to our mullet-ed friends and rushed back to the car.

“I don’t know how you did that,” Jason muttered, “but you’re a genius. Live mullet interaction.  Unbelievable.” 

“So, where to now?” I asked with a smile. 

“I’m thinking Nashua.”

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I stared helplessly at my watch (again), as if hoping that my glower would amass the power needed to intimidate time into moving backwards, or, at least, stand still.  It was going to be more than close – at the rate with which the pilot was leisurely circling the airport, it was going to be a downright miracle. 

Weather had delayed our departure from Dallas, giving me ample time to unwind from the morning’s inter-state mad-dash (which had somehow been well-orchestrated enough to put my arrival in Dallas at an obscenely early hour). The unforeseen delay, however, was now poised to severely mar my chances of successfully making a twenty-five minute connection time, and I sat restlessly in my center seat, desperately trying to salvage my plan. 

I hadn’t spoken to any other passenger during the flight.  A subtly-dressed woman in her early thirties sat in the aisle seat next to me, quietly reading her magazines with headphones on. At one point during the flight, she had looked over and kindly offered an ear bud from her MP3 player. Smiling, I had graciously declined, somewhat surprised by the gesture.  Reflecting on her generosity, I tapped her arm to get her attention. 

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said quietly, “but I’m supposed to make a connection that leaves in twenty minutes.  Do you mind if, when we land, I get out ahead of you?” 

The woman looked down at her watch, out the window, and stiffened up. 

“Let’s switch now,” she suggested, “that way you can high-tail it out of here.  That’s gonna be a tough one!”  

I could have thrown my arms around this stranger in appreciation for helping me as we quickly switched seats, leaving me in the aisle seat, with one foot in the aisle, ready to go.  The other passengers at the front of the plane, noticing the 30,000-foot game of musical chairs taking place, soon grew curious until my kind savior spoke up. 

“Twenty-minute connection,” she stated grimly, with obvious sympathy in her voice.  Those around us, having remained relatively quiet during the duration of the flight, were now suddenly keyed up as a cycle of watch-checking and window-scoping unfolded.   

“What the hell is he doing?” one passenger asked, noting the lack of weather in our arrival city.   

“He’s just circling the runway,” another noted with slight disbelief.  There were no obvious reasons why our pilot would not be attempting a landing – no air traffic, no weather; no signs at all of why we were not on the ground. 

The chatter at the front of the plane grew louder as I found myself with a loyal, yet frustrated, gang of supporters, all of whom were focused on my connection time.  As my own tension quickly infected those around me, an overwhelming sense of annoyance spread through the cabin. 

“Just land the god-damned plane already!” an unknown male voice shouted. 

“She’s only got fifteen minutes!” a woman exclaimed. 

Within a few minutes, apprehensive sighs of approval swept through the cabin as the pilot finally began the descent into Dulles.  The slight jolt of the plane as the wheels touched pavement had never been as welcoming as the dozen-or-so passengers around me quizzed me on the details of my connection.  As soon as the captain gave the go-ahead for mobile phone usage, about ten people, myself included, frantically whipped out cell phones and Blackberries. 

“Who’s got a Travelocity number for me?” I shouted, desperately trying to connect to my email and frantic for information.  There was a strange quiet in the cabin as passengers everywhere dutifully searched their mobile internet devices for some tiny scrap of contact information.  All at once, voices shouted numbers at me until we had finished taxiing to the gate.  I had only ten minutes left. 

“I’ve got it!” someone shouted, yelling out the number to me from two rows over.  The crowd tensely waited as I desperately tried to get someone on the phone. 

Before I could get a voice, the cabin door opened, and the crowd of passengers parted like the Dead Sea, all but personally escorting me out ahead of them.  As I hurriedly dashed for the door, I turned briefly, throwing a hand up in the air. 

“Thank you!” I yelled, to no one in particular, and rushed down the jet bridge with shouts of encouragement following in my wake.

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“Well, I don’t really see it as dumping you,” he reasoned, “more like we’re taking a break.”

“That usually involves both parties having a say in the matter,” I explained to him, making every attempt to curtail my desire reach through the phone, rip out his tongue, and whip his backside with it.  “I see it as you dumping me. It’s fairly simple, really.”

He stuttered for a moment, desperate to find something meaningful to say to keep me from hanging up the phone, before finally settling on a self-pitying and troubled groan.  “I really wish you’d look at it differently.”

I’d been dating The Young One for a mere three to four weeks, routinely reassessing the appropriateness of my decision to ignore the obvious age gap between us and attempting to assuage my fears of becoming a dirty old cougar, when a sudden twist of fate incited within him a decision to flee this little thing we had started.  With a maturity level that was unable to comprehend any proposed logic behind his decision, I simply couldn’t see how he expected me to wait it out while he ‘got his life together’.

Never one to accept wisdom from those who have walked in his shoes, it was pointless to try to explain to him just how long it actually takes for one to get one’s life in order (given the depth of chaos my own life was still immersed in).  It was pointless to question why, when life takes an unfortunate turn, he felt it better to cast me aside, blaming superficial circumstances and weak reasoning.  It was pointless to wonder why he chose to hurt me.

The overwhelming desire to point out the obvious to him was maddening – I wanted nothing more than to take him by the shoulders, shake him, and tell him that he was insane to think I’d sit idly by, waiting for him to decide to come back to me when we only had a miniscule amount of time under our collective belts anyway.  Just because he thought he was in love, doesn’t make it real.

“Listen,” I said, exasperated by the thought of him, “you can’t expect me to wait this out for you.  You made a choice, and in that process, you pulled a pretty hurtful move.”

“Abby, please,” he begged, “don’t just disregard what we have. Please.”

“I don’t have to,” I said flatly. “You already did that for both of us.”

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I could feel him there, that ill-intended inner critic who always seemed to be lurking at those inconvenient yet opportune moments, waiting just around the corner holding tightly to the other end of the tripwire.  I tried to ignore the whispers that kept urging me to give up, to abandon ship, but I was feeling vulnerable after having received some harsh criticism over the Leicester project earlier that day.

It seemed like an endless cast of characters, my (un)romantic life did; a script, a cheap off-Broadway production or, at times even, a badly-performed revival at some washed-up dinner theater somewhere off the highway.  I was stuck in the cycle, watching the lead roles change yet playing out the same scenarios with the same forced reactions and half-hearted efforts time after time, all the while maintaining some desperate hope that maybe, just once, the ending would change.

I could barely tell one bad date from the next, blending faces and names and histories and such until it was all a mashed-up giant man-mess, leaving me tired, frustrated and overwhelmed.  I desperately needed something to stand out – some bold soul to stand up in the crowd and stage the great walkout, saving me from the monotony of it all.  Lead the way, and show me your heart. Lead the way, today we will start.

Peering around the corner with a sly, self-assured and seedy grin, the vexatious inner critic waxed nostalgic, delicately reminding me of one pointless endeavor after another and the countless unmet expectations and disappointments we’d endured together.  I wondered why he tried to talk me out of things, since he obviously derived a sick pleasure from witnessing my various downfalls in such grand fashion.   He had been hanging around too much lately – wearing out his welcome and keeping me up at night rather than finding something more productive to do.

Perhaps if I surrendered my cause he would cease to find enjoyment in lingering.  Perhaps I should sleep on it. Perhaps I should simply dust off my steel-toed boots and forge ahead, trampling him in the process like an over-confident Spaniard in early July.

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“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” I laughed, as we pulled into a seemingly normal-looking home on a tree-lined residential road.

“You’re not backing out on me now!” Julie quipped excitedly.  We had made a promise, shortly before Micah had moved out, that we would visit a psychic together.  Neither of us had ever gone to one before, and though quite skeptical, couldn’t contain our curiosity.

A very pleasant woman in her mid-fifties greeted us at the door and led us to her living room, explaining what would be taking place.  One at a time, she would take us into another room and read our tarot cards.  Wanting to see how this would play out, I let Julie go in first while I waited patiently.

After about a half an hour, Julie came out of the small room off the living room with a puzzled look on her face.  I wanted to quiz her on her experience, but the psychic was standing in the doorway, beckoning me.  It was my turn.

I sat down on an old, comfortable easy chair as the woman took a seat across from me and produced a stack of tarot cards on the small table between us.

As we walked through the layout of the cards she had laid down, there weren’t too many surprises – mainly notions that pertained to personality aspects, which were too general to attach any truth to.  Suddenly, the woman let out a hearty laugh.

“Well, you certainly won’t be lacking for male attention anytime soon,” she laughed, with a sly smile on her face.  I stared at her, puzzled, wondering how that could be, considering that normally, I would be lucky to get out of the apartment without Micah trailing me, wanting to know my every move.

I laughed it off without saying a word, waiting to take the whole experience in before making any judgments.  I certainly didn’t want to inadvertently offer any small details for this woman to cling to, lest I be completely snowed.

After she was done taking me through my cards, she took my right hand in hers and examined my palm, citing various life lines and such.

“You have a classmate who died tragically,” the woman stated somberly.  “But not like your friend, not recently.”

I sat in shock, taking in her comment – it was completely true.  Julie and I had taken a weekend trip only a few weeks prior out to her hometown in Vermont, where we had spent some time with her friend Paul.  A week after we had been in town, Paul tragically committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a train.  Four years prior, I received a call at work from my father, who informed me that a high school classmate of mine, also named Paul, had been killed accidentally by a train.  Chills ran up my spine as I processed the information.

Moving on to more pleasant matters, the woman stared intently at my palm, tracing the various lines gently.

“I see two men,” she started to explain.  “There is a dark-haired male, as well as a light-haired male.  Both of these men feel the same towards you, but they may not know it yet.”

“Really?” I asked, intrigued.  “What else do you see? Are they men I know now?” She moved my hand closer to her face and concentrated for a moment.

“One of them you will marry within three years.”

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