I’ll be what I am

A solitary man

Solitary man

I’ve had it to here

Bein’ where

Love’s a small word

Part-time thing

Paper ring

— Neil Diamond

TWO-DOLLAR BILL

Why did I have to push it? Maybe it was because I’d just read about Edmond Dantes’ revenge: misunderstood, but vindicated after many years, he served his dish cold.

“Penny for your thoughts, Peter?” Aasha smiled, slipping her fingers through my hair. I’d found a Canadian two-dollar bill at the bottom of my penny jar, a remnant from a honeymoon now seven years ago. I frowned at the pink bill as I sat on the carpet in front of the TV.

In the movie a man kept getting sent back seconds in time only to fail to save a train from blowing up. Everyone just kept dying on the precipice of deliverance. It was like my childhood memories of my beloved Buffalo Bills, who advanced to the Super Bowl four times, only to be denied a championship in each heart-rending contest. Friends liked to chide me that getting to the big dance that often must not be that bad. Yeah. Maybe we should all have congratulated Sisyphus on getting his boulder so close to the top of the hill so many times. I hated trite clichés and none more than, “Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” No one could really know both sides of that equation, so who could say?

“What’s that?” Aasha asked.

“Canadian two dollar bill,” I said, looking down at the crowned, youthful visage of Elizabeth. “Pink. Who can hate a country with pink money?”

“Do you want to hate Canada?” Aasha smiled, leaning down to kiss me on the forehead. Fresh jasmine filled the air as her midnight black hair flounced forward and tickled my cheek. I actually felt a little guilty for finding the young queen kind of hot.

“I just think if somebody was going to blow up the world, they’d probably leave Canada for last. Canadians don’t seem to be instigators.” I crumpled the bill and shoved it in my jeans pocket.

“Your mind takes some interesting detours.” Aasha smiled again with a winning, teasing smile, “Just don’t let it ever distract you from listening to my heart.”

“Must be this movie,” I said. On screen, the train blew up again.

“Well, you’ll pick me up tomorrow night about seven?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I pulled her face to mine and let my lips linger a little longer than usual on hers. She’d referred to our dinner invitation.

Why did I have to push it?

“His mind was filled with a single thought: that of his happiness destroyed for no apparent reason.”

— Edmond Dantes

The pink and brown piece of paper brought back nostalgia and pain all in a moment. It had been five years since I’d seen or even heard from Eve by her choice. My first honeymoon was coming on eight years old. Now I was emptying my jar, cashing in my pennies to spend on a new honeymoon. Even given the circumstances of the painful breakup with Eve, it wasn’t until I fell in love with Aasha that I’d been able to let Eve go. It can be only love that can quench the pain of lost love.

Crossing paths with Eve at the Starbucks a couple weeks back had startled me. Now the two-dollar note was like salt in an open wound, bringing the painful reunion back to mind. I was sure the blood had drained from my face, but I can think on my feet.

“This is Aasha,” I beamed, “We’re getting married in September.”

The amused look Eve displayed showed none of the crestfallen envy I had hoped. Not even a hint of discomfort at the ethnicity, demeanor, or evident beauty of my choice. No indication that she was shaken by our first meeting in over five years.

“Aasha. Such a pretty name. What does it mean?” Eve’s smiled seemed to radiate genuine interest and pleasure.

“Hope.” Aasha whispered, clinging to my hand a little tighter, pressing in like she wanted to hide behind me. Of course, she knew we had run across “that woman.” Eve could be intimidating, quite the woman of the world now. I had naturally spoken of her to Aasha on several occasions. I didn’t want to rehash bygones or vent bitterness. I wanted instead to reveal to her that deepest par of my heart, which ached with betrayal and was dying to find consolation. My heart had been broken, never fully to be restored, but scarred forever, at least part of it, with a brutal tearing asunder.

“She’s getting her doctorate in theoretical mathematics.” I had to blurt it out so that if we never met again Eve would know it. I wanted to stick it in her memory like a little folded note to rustle around in her psyche like some little itch in a hard to reach place. I wanted her to know I found someone to replace her. Not a charitable sentiment, but not one bound to ruffle Eve.

“Numbers,” Eve said, “Right up your alley.” When I wasn’t reading classics, I worked as an actuary. Double major in classics and romance languages leads to working in insurance statistics. What are the odds? You’d be asking the right guy.

Eve’s sunny tresses had been clipped short to nestle around that ivory, pale face and set off those cat-like green eyes. The same eyes that had captivated me at her symphony performance I’d attended in school. My hand had enveloped those soft fingers, equally skilled thrumming the neck of a cello or the nape of my own. Tiny callouses on fingertips summoning the hairs of my neck like music from an instrument. Our first encounter.

“Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?” — John 6:70

I had not suspected then that the petite girl sheathed in demure black, blonde hair pinned up, tiny pearl earrings dancing, had a hidden restlessness crouching to spring free. Eve’s whorls of rich yellow hair that were bound up that night might tumble unbound once a clip was pulled.

In less than a year, she’d been my honeymoon girl. She and I once shared the pink two dollars, all we had left when got back to Indiana to start married life in our tiny apartment over the secondhand clothing shop.

Neither of us had ever been north of the border, so we took off up there after the ceremony; drove around Canada for two weeks without a plan, finding everything out about each other and making love in out of the way hotels and B&B’s. We drove, we cruised, we bussed. We even took a short trip by rail. Only no planes. I have a fear of flying. I prefer trains and wished they would stop blowing up. I clicked off the set.

My wry comments on the barren loneliness of the landscape as we drove hour after hour through the patchy forests and hills of New Brunswick, miles and miles between lonely donut shops and beer drive-thrus were what first brought the nickname, “culture boy” from her lips. I did love my classic literature and the culture that bred it. The rustic panoply of Canada held little for the literate, unless one counted Thoreau and his love of nature.

“You’ll have to come to our place for dinner.” The intensity of the smile Eve was flashing at Aasha made my fiancée look away and down. The answer would be up to me.

I was thrown by the “our place” part of the invitation. Of course I knew there must be a significant other or others, I just didn’t want to think about whom. This is where I could have said, should have said, just let it go with a polite, “No, thank you.” But I couldn’t.

“Sure, we’ll come,” I heard myself saying, glancing to my fidgeting fiancée, who blushed and demurely assented, eyes carefully rising to smile back at Eve. That’s my girl, so innocent, yet so courageous.

The contrast couldn’t be more marked. My fiancée, swarthy and smooth, dark eyes shining like moonlit water, slender body framed in hair black as coal. Eve, blonde hair almost as short as mine, pale skin, lightly freckled, her body and spirit molded lushly for either confrontation or seduction.

Eve, impulsive, performing, always spoiling for an audience. Aasha, prudent, retreating, content with solitude, comfortable in the background.

I knew Eve might be touring and performing with some big acts by this time, probably worldwide, but I consciously kept myself from being curious about it. Because I listened to all my classical music on iTunes, avoiding cello music, and avoided TV, I didn’t know how successful she might be by now.

She still lived here in the city, not New York or Paris or anything. We settled on 7:30 two weeks hence, the day now coming to call like my memory of Eve’s voice as she pushed out the door of the coffee shop.

“Learn any Hindi yet, culture boy?” she taunted. I had not, but returned Eve a wry smile, wanting to appear undaunted.

No, Eve, this time I had chosen wisely, bringing two people together meant for each other, each a balm for what ailed the other. I had fallen for her, Aasha, my hope, almost immediately, she reading Shakespeare in the library atrium, her legs crossed, her toes revealed through the sandal on the foot that was bouncing regularly yet idly like a metronome as if rehearsing some lilting concerto.

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds…

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

— William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

She explained that she had been an orphan in the streets of Delhi, rescued by a French mission and chosen for education in America by a wealthy benefactor. Presumably for her beauty and intelligence, both of which leapt from her and seized me like a pouncing jaguar.

I was eager from that hour for her to love me, yearning for the day she would agree to marry me. I can be like that. I already worked out what I want, and when it shows up, I’m ready. On several occasions Aasha counseled hopeful patience, as her affection for me seemed to grow steadily, but not at the breakneck speed hope was blooming in my own heart.

“I know you want me to love you, Pete,” she’d said. “Just know that when — and if — I do, I would be totally committed to you. If I love you I will launch myself wholly, untethered into you and your love, falling into endless love with no retreat, diving into a bottomless chasm never to return. The only thing is, I have to be sure, but when I love; I will love all the way.”

It was an amazing yet unsettling sort of prediction, like she’d spent a little too much time ruminating on the goddess Kali as a little girl in her native India, but at the same time, the promised undying loyalty was precisely what my betrayed heart needed to hear. I needed to love like that, more, to be loved like that. To feel this buoy of constancy in the sea of fickleness I’d sailed in up to this point boded reassurance that overwhelmed anything I might misunderstand behind the sentiment.

“When do you think you’ll be ready to take the leap?” I was confident this moment would come.

“You have to give me time,” she said, “I’d never want to hurt you, Pete.”

In the more painful moments of my young life I had mostly, though unjustifiably, identified with the shepherd boy cum king, David, whose brothers despised him, whose son tried to supplant him, whose king hunted him down to kill him, who never seemed to find the right woman in the right place.

In a Psalm he had complained, “My mother and father have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up…” As he did, I would ultimately triumph in the face of a similar lack of loyalty.

I am alone in the deepest part of me and want desperately to let someone in to fill the void. I wanted Aasha to leap into that chasm, to dive into me as she had said, to join and know the deepest part of me. To find the right woman had taken me all of my thirty-one years. Did women feel the same about how hard it was to find a good man? I felt sure they did.

While I was still searching but not finding — I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one woman among them all.

— Ecclesiastes 7:28

I tried to protect Aasha from what was riding on my hopes of our relationship working out, turning into the union I had always dreamed about from my youth on. In spite of my confidence that she was the one for me I wanted her to have the freedom and the space to choose what and whom she wanted.

She had certainly had past suitors both back home and over here. Currently, it was evident, at least to me, that her dissertation advisor, Arun, had quite the crush on his young charge.

Arun was athletic and not bad looking, in addition to having a Ph.D. and tenure. He was in his late thirties or early forties, a formidable cricket player in his time who still kept in top physical condition.

On the few occasions I saw them together, I suspected there was something more than a mentor/student relationship between them, a friendship and perhaps more. When I casually inquired about the nature of Arun’s interest in her on a couple of occasions, Aasha was strangely noncommittal. Not wanting to push the issue or appear jealous, I let the issue drop.

Seven o’clock arrived and I pulled into the lot of Aasha’s apartment. Before I could collect her, she eased down the stairs leading from her door on her heels, dressed smartly in a dark green, knee-length skirt and a white peasant blouse, her hair unpinned, bounding down around her shoulders as she approached, her eyes moving from checking the front of her outfit to the ground before her as if she might trip at any moment.

Aasha looked as glorious in this simple outfit as she had in the blue silk sari she’d worn that night a month ago on the balcony forty floors above the bustling New York streets. Her eyes had glinted in harmony with the dangling earrings that turned and sparkled in the dim light as she turned her face up to mine.

“Marry me, Aasha.” The merlot from our dinner still tasted pungent in my mouth, a truth serum.

Her hesitation was almost imperceptible.

“Kiss me,” she said, moving closer.

I kissed and she received my lips, as if testing the taste of the wine still lingering there. A pregnant moment hung in the night breeze before one word.

“Yes.” A smile widened on Aasha’s lips as her eyes flashed at the emotion of my reaction, taking in the powerful, dizzying effect her affirmation had on me. I took her in my arms and kissed her more passionately, feeling her take it in and then after a moment return my kiss.

This was the moment. I released my heart from the prison it had occupied these last years. All the pain of rejection, the fear of not being desirable, the perceived injustice of life all fell away like scales from the eyes of the apostle on the Damascus Road. I released what was falling, falling into the wide berth of love, my heart the captive of this gentle beauty. I released our kiss and let her come up for air.

“Hey, kid, you sure look great,” I said, taking her in. My attempt at incorporating a little Bogart, though I hardly fit the role. Except I wasn’t a pretty boy either. I was just your average guy in the looks department.

Now, on this night, as she glided into the passenger seat she gave me a different sort of kiss.

“Let’s go. We don’t want to be late.” A peck on the cheek did nothing to allay the tension that hung in the air between us.

“Are you OK?” I asked, frowning.

“Of course.” She turned her head to look out the passenger window.

I don’t pretend to understand women, but this never prevents me from the endless speculation that never culminates in a satisfactory answer. This could be just the way of women, a mood. I couldn’t remember anything I might have said to offend her. Could it be that she sensed my reason for this dinner date? That in a way I was showing her off to somehow get back at or prove a point to my ex-wife? Did she see something unpleasant in me and was she now recoiling from it?

Sean met us at the door.

“So you’re him” He gave me an appraising turn of the head and wrinkle of a one-sided grin quickly turned to a generous smile and offer of a hand, which I grasped and shook. Sean was all Brooks Brothers and Cartier with a patterned, lime green tie that whacked you in the eye. His gelled black hair was underpinned by his dark, five o’clock shadow which set off a cleft chin.

“Forgive me,” He bent briefly in a bow at the knees with a toothy grin, “I’m simply a mess from doing depositions all day. Ghastly! Come in, come in!”

After releasing my hand, Sean quickly moved to grasp Aasha’s, bending to plant a kiss on her extended hand as he smiled up into her eyes. Flamboyant. Spreading it on a little thick, I thought. My mind was spinning. Who was this guy?

Aasha seemed as instantly comfortable with the man as I was uncomfortable. I knew I was a fortunate man to have her and couldn’t help, even now, being acutely aware of the competition. I tried to keep myself from speculating about the nature of Sean’s relationship to Eve. He was dapper, rich, dark and handsome, but at least in respect to Eve, why should I care anymore, really?

Eve emerged from the kitchen carrying a platter of some sort of puffy bread and hummus.

“Chola Battura!” Aasha squealed, dipping the warm pastry in the aromatic chickpea blend.

Eve was, I had to admit, stunning. She glided from the kitchen in a wispy, yellow, patterned sundress. Somewhere along the line she had learned to cook! The little white apron tied around her waist only made her more fetching. She smiled in satisfaction as her hors d’ouevre met with profound appreciation all around.

Eve played it down, even after serving a delightful lamb curry, prepared I am sure, especially for Aasha’s appreciation. I thought it was peculiarly magnanimous. The woman had perhaps, to her credit, grown in the time since we had parted. The woman I knew was self-absorbed enough to have herself in mind even in the most altruistic appearing acts.

“Sean is the better cook by far, but he had a busy day. I’m glad he could take time out just to join us.”

I didn’t ask about Sean and no explanation of the nature of his relationship to Eve was offered.

But the evening belonged to Eve, as she primed Aasha to spill her life story, aspirations, likes and dislikes, some of which I was learning for the first time. Sean and I listened, throwing in the odd comment. A couple of times we tried a conversation of our own, but each attempt fizzled out after a few, shallow exchanges.

I suspected lack of interest. A flashy lawyer couldn’t so consistently take whole minutes to say nothing.

“How did the day go other than the depositions?” I asked.

“Well, it is what it is, you know?” His chin was buried in his hand, elbow resting on the white clothed table, “At the end of the day, Friday’s Friday, which is all good.”

What did Eve see in this guy? Was he her lover? a roommate? Just a friend? Someone brought here to impress me? I couldn’t tell. The animated chatter between my fiancée and ex-wife continued all the way out the door and halfway to the car. I was happy to see the glow on Aasha’s face as I imagined she was feeling some relief that my ex-wife was not the dragon lady one might suppose from her treatment of me years earlier.

After some comments between us about the dinner and the night in general, we both settled into silence for the balance of the ride to her apartment, both of us lost in thought.

As I opened the door for Aasha to exit my Hyundai, she rose to her tiptoes grasping my arms and planting a lingering kiss on my lips. I grasped her trim waist, pulling in close to return the kiss. Aasha held the kiss as she reached to cradle my face in her hands and finally broke it.

She looked into my eyes for a long moment like an appraiser deciding which sort of diamond this might be after cutting and polishing.

“Good night, Peter,” she said.

“Good night, darling,” I relented, wanting very much to be invited in for coffee or a drink, but sensing a vibe that said this wasn’t in the cards. What of it? We had a lifetime.

So Judas kiss’d his master

And cried ‘All hail!’ when as he meant all harm.

Henry VI Part 3, 5. 7

After that night I didn’t see Aasha for about a week and a half. I got a couple of texts in response to my calls and e-mails pleading time to work on her dissertation, which was due in August, making room for our simple wedding and honeymoon in late September. So, naturally I hesitated to interfere, though my heart was crying to see her, and thus suggested meal or coffee breaks where we could meet, each of which met with polite refusal.

“I really need to focus just now,” read one of the texts. I could hear her saying it, needing to stay in the flow of what she was doing. She needed to stay in the zone.

Even though I was now confident that my sweetie did not return her advisor’s amorous interest, I still had to push visions of Arun leaning over Aasha’s shoulder, his nose taking in her scent as he explained the finer points of some proof or differential equation to his beautiful apprentice. For a mentor to take advantage of his student would not be an unprecedented event.

Tuesday, August 4th, 2012. Not quite the end of the world according to the Mayans. I had my feet up, Polybius’ Punic wars, half-finished in my left hand as I tapped the screen on my phone with my right.

“Peter?”

A smile spread wide over my face and I sat up in my chair, laying the book face down on the floor.

“Aasha! Ready to come up for a little air?” I chuckled, certain that if the paper wasn’t complete, some major hurdle had been leapt.

“I can’t see you anymore.” Just like that.

“But, Aasha, don’t play around, we’re getting married next month! You’ll give me a heart attack!” Disbelief and denial. I wanted to believe it was a prank, but I could tell by her voice it was no joke. Knew it instantly, like a quick dagger that somehow froze my heart to ice.

“Peter,” she began haltingly, then a muffled exchange. The phone obviously covered by her hand. “I don’t — I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Aasha,” I scrambled to control the rising panic suffusing my abdomen, “Let’s get together and talk about this. I’m coming over.”

“Pete, I’m not at home,” Again muffled conversation. Was he there? The advisor? Giving her the wrong advice! “I can’t see you anymore. Please don’t try to contact me.”

“What? Aasha — you can’t mean — ”

“Never. It’s really better that it ends this way, Pete. Trust me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Is he there? Arun?” She wanted me to trust her? She wasn’t going to hurt me? I waited for strike three.

“Arun?” A giggle erupted, which she quickly suppressed. “How could you think — don’t you know?”

“What’s funny, Aasha? What’s humorous at all about this whole sudden catastrophe?” I could barely hold onto the phone in my trembling hand.

“It’s just — well, it’s ironic — look, Pete, I know this must be a shock, and very difficult for you. I couldn’t think of a better way to deal with it.”

No better way? If she’d held out another month there was definitely a “Runaway Bride” book or movie deal in it. We could have broken up by email or chat. If she wasn’t hurting me, this must be her version of mercy. What might be worse? Leaving without a word or a trace, abandoning me to wonder if she were even alive?

I opted for sarcasm.

“Maybe text me, ‘Goodbye’ and then just not show up for the wedding? This is — abrupt.”

I got another, drier chuckle out of her. I could always make her laugh.

Incredulity was darkening into despair as I tried to keep her on the line, wondering if this might somehow, impossibly be the last time I heard the voice of my sweet Aasha. The crushing part of it was that she knew that I had been betrayed and left suddenly before and that she knew very well what her admission must be doing to me.

“Peter?”

“Yes?” The upward inflection of her voice rallied hope in my heart, as if she might yet admit she still loved me.

“I have to go now. I’m sorry,” Aasha sounded tearful, “And I want you to know I only want the best for you. I’ll always think of you fondly.”

“How can that be?” I protested. “Your feet are doing the meaningful talking here.”

“Pete,” she paused, presumably to think about what she was saying. I wished she would. Really.

“You wouldn’t want to marry someone who wouldn’t be happy in that marriage, would you? You do want me to be happy?”

“Aasha, I love you,” I said. My answer wasn’t specific, but I thought it was comprehensive.

“I know it hurts now, but better now than later,” Aasha said.

Up to this moment I was full of expectation for something directly opposite of pain both now and later, so this sensible argument was not satisfying. The phone was still shaking in my hand. My heart was collapsing on itself. Could anything worse be happening?

“You might as well tell him,” the voice said. This time the mouthpiece was not covered…and it was worse.

Of course, Aasha didn’t tell me. Not that she needed to. I don’t remember the last few words she said before hanging up. I know neither of us broke my stunned silence. I fell to my knees, the cell still glued to my sweaty left hand as the connection terminated.

Hope had been dashed into dust and all the little specks were tumbling through the darkness. My star had fallen, its bulk combusting in a fiery inferno as it tumbled earthward.

I never saw or heard a word from Aasha again, although each year when the summer matures, I feel the irresistible and persistent pang to find her, to plead with her, to find some way to reverse perverse fate.

And swear,

No where

Lives a woman true, and fair

If thou findest one, let me know…

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

— John Donne, Song: Go Catch a Falling Star

A new door had opened that August night in that chasm where I had consigned my heart to free-fall on the night of our engagement.

This tumble headed not to a mystical union of souls, but sent me hurtling into a sightless void of darkness, isolation, pain, and I wondered if there was ever going to be a bottom.