Cupid Painted Blind (four stories) Read online

  Cupid Painted Blind:

  Four Short Stories

  Copyright © 2012 by Bryan Young

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: February 2012

  The works herein are works of fiction. Names, characters, products, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  I

  The Missed Opportunities of Days Gone By

  “Hello?” I said into the phone, accepting the call from a number I didn’t recognize.

  “Hey,” the feminine voice on the other replied, as though I should know the sound of her voice.

  I was completely at a loss. “Can I help you?”

  “It’s Brooke.”

  Her name stopped me. It couldn’t possibly be her. We hadn’t spoken in years, maybe even a decade. “Brooke?”

  “Yeah, Brooke Baker. This is Mark, right?”

  Jesus Christ. It was her. “Yeah, it is Mark. Brooke. Wow. How are you? It’s been a long time since… well… since anything.”

  “I know.”

  “So, how are you doing?”

  “Okay, I suppose…” Her voice belied her words, though. Something was up. “I… It’s just been so long and I guess I wanted to hear your voice.”

  “I don’t think I had a number for you. Ever. I offered a couple of times, but…”

  “I was a brat back then.”

  And that’s how a random phone call turned into a two-and-a-half hour catch-up session. We spoke of everything under the sun: people we still knew, how different we were, how the same we were, how everything had changed. We both admitted to each other a long lost desire for one another, a fire that had burned out. It was a heat that was long past.

  We spoke of our relationships, where we were now, both married, neither with children, myself divorced.

  The conversation ended abruptly in a way that was beyond my comprehension. “Damn it,” she said. “Chris is here. I’ve got to go.”

  “Chris?”

  “My husband.”

  And without so much as a customary goodbye, the line went dead.

  At the time, I thought it strange, but after the initial strangeness wore off, I gave it no more thought. I carried on about my business for another week as usual, paying no mind to the call.

  I was on my drive home from work the next time she called, unexpectedly. I had my phone on my lap and was startled by its sudden vibrations so much that I dropped it on floor beneath my feet. I swerved a full two feet into the next lane of traffic, trying my hardest to retrieve it. Once I got my hand on it and sat upright once more, I corrected my lane placement, fighting off that split-second of vertigo and panic and finally answering the phone call. “Hello?”

  “Mark?”

  “Hey,” I said, not recognizing the voice yet. “How’s it going?” I ask, hoping to buy a few more words to figure it out.

  “Good,” said the voice on the other end. “This is Brooke,” she said, somehow understanding my confusion.

  “Oh, hey, Brooke. How are things?”

  “Things are good. Fine. You know. I just wanted to call and say hi.”

  “Well, hello there,” I laughed politely at my own joke. When she didn’t respond, I asked, “So, what’s new?”

  “I wanted to see how you were. To talk to you. It may sound weird but I think that… you know… I missed talking to you.”

  “You missed talking to me?” I was incredulous, but had to focus on the road. I took a sharp right turn toward my house.

  “Yeah. It’s odd, but since I talked to you last, I’ve really had a feeling of regret. Like we were some kind of missed opportunity.”

  “I’ve kind of felt that, too. But, you know, so it goes. But we can be friends now, right?”

  “I hope so. I’ve already had to tell my husband about you. He’s not very… well, let’s just say he’s really jealous.”

  Warning sirens were going off in my brain. Jealous husbands were not anything I had any experience with and they weren’t anything I wanted any experience with. But some part of me felt like I was thinking like a sissy. Fortune favors the bold, I thought to myself. But what did that even mean in this context? Would I runaway with this girl? Of course I was attracted to her the last time I saw her, but that was a lifetime ago. Though I had to admit feeling flushed by the idea that this girl who I’d been attracted to so long ago was, in fact, attracted to me. It was flattering to think that I’d left a strong enough impression on her that she said she missed me. I could feel my heart and my head walking in different directions on this one. “Jealous? Of little old me?”

  “Well, we’ve been having a hard time lately. And it’s just been really stressful for him. And me. I’m not even sure if we’re going to last.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean… It’s a long story. It’s complicated.”

  “It’s always complicated, but I understand that.”

  “You always understand…”

  “So, do you want to go out and get some coffee or something sometime?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t trust myself. I have a crush on you, and I don’t want any problems.”

  “Problems? Now I don’t understand.”

  “I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

  I had arrived at my house and had a mountain of work to do, and as much as I wanted to continue talking to her, I had to let her go and told her as much.

  “Well, I need to go. We’ll talk again, right?”

  “Bet on it.”

  And then she hung up and we went our separate ways once more. I tried my hardest to put her out of my mind, but it was impossible. She kept floating back to the top of my thoughts.

  It was two days later that I received a text message from her telling me that she was moving unexpectedly. Out of state. Permanently.

  WANT TO GO FOR COFFEE BEFORE I LEAVE? She wrote.

  YES, I texted back.

  THURSDAY MORNING SOUND GOOD? She asked.

  After about thirty seconds of wondering, I realized that even if it was a bad time for me, I’d rearrange whatever I had to see her. It was, after all, for the last time. Nothing untoward could happen, right?

  Thursday arrived along with a knot of tension in my stomach. I had no idea what to expect. I spent most of the day before trying desperately to find a recent photograph of Brooke on the Internet, but came up with nothing. I didn’t know her married name and her maiden name turned up even less.

  I didn’t realize it until it was too late that I’d arrived early. I had meant to arrive about five minutes late, just to not seem so interested. My mind must have been preoccupied because I got there with a full twenty minutes to spare.

  I ordered a coffee, picked a back corner of the room and spent two hours waiting for her before I realized she probably wasn’t coming.

  My heart sank.

  I hadn’t been stood up in a long time and I began to wonder if this was some type of elaborate prank that had taken almost a decade to come to fruition.

  My coffee was cold by the time I finished it, and it was at that point that I realized I no longer had a reason to be there. I felt a sinking sensation in the bottom of my stomach that blossomed into a b
itter taste in my mouth.

  Time passed. The bitterness I felt melted away to sadness after a day or two. A day or two after that the sadness melted away into something even less tangible than that. What could have I expected? At best, all I could have expected was a pleasant couple of hours catching up with her. It’s not like we were going to get involved in some torrid love affair. At least I don’t think that would have happened.

  My work kept me too busy to think about any missed possibilities and thinking back to being stood up still had a nominal sting that made me disinterested in dwelling on the thought.

  I wish I could say that anything that happened to me between then and what happened next was interesting or of at least mild importance, but it wasn’t. My life went on in it’s same old boring and drab style until one evening after work, two weeks after that fateful day at the café, my phone rang again.

  Predictably, it was Brooke.

  “Brooke?”

  “Mark, how’s it going?”

  “Fine. Fine, I guess. Better. You know, there’s no… ah… hard feelings or anything.”

  “I’m glad. I didn’t mean to stand you up.”

  “Well, what did you mean to do?’

  “I’ll tell you about it someday. But I really need a favor and you’re the last person I wanted to ask, but you’re the only person I can get a hold of.”

  “It’s nice to be needed.”

  “Well, this is kind of a big thing and I really wouldn’t ask if I weren’t really in a jam.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well… I’m on the road. I’m on my way out of town and my car broke down…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And the tow truck company said that if they can get out here today, it won’t be till tonight.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I can’t get a hold of anyone who can come help me.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He’s driving the truck. And I can’t get a hold of him.”

  “Oh.”

  The bottom fell out from my stomach as soon as I realized the implication of what she was saying.

  Slowly and deliberately, I asked her, “Where did you break down?”

  She gave me a mile marker number that was about 85 miles down the main highway heading east out of town, perhaps thirty miles from any town in any direction. With a sigh of hesitation, I said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Sit tight.”

  I couldn’t just leave her there, could I?

  On my way out of town, I stopped at the gas station to fill up for my trip and spent the whole time thinking about what could happen. There’d been a sexual tension on the phone that I doubt either of us could put our finger on.

  That mix of shy dread and expectation filled me up like a tall shot of Scotch coursing through me, filling my belly with warmth and causing shortness to my breath.

  Being alone in the car, driving each and every one of those lonely miles, stirred inside me that feeling of arousal that seems to take dead aim at men and boys the world over. Inexplicably, there’s something liberating about solitude that, when taken in small doses, makes it hard to control erections. I tried my hardest not to think about her, how she looked all those years ago, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. My desire burned even brighter when I realized that in an hour or so I’d be alone with her…

  …It was then that I knew that I was letting my imagination run away with me. The only word that she would be able to use to describe my behavior would be “gentlemanly.” She was married and anything there might have been between us was obviously something we were fated against years ago.

  And so my thinking on this went back and forth the entire drive.

  But it was the gentleman who finally came to her rescue.

  My first glimpse of her in more than ten years was her profile. She was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, waiting patiently for me to help her. She’d shortened her hair since last I’d seen her. With the distance between my car and hers it seemed a darker, less natural shade of auburn.

  As soon as I shifted into park, she’d noticed I was behind her and we both got out of our cars.

  She’d put on weight since the last time I saw her, though not in a bad way. Before, I’d always thought her too skinny, now she was curvy. She was beautiful. We were both lucky it was the gentleman Dr. Jekyll who had arrived and not the adolescently over-stimulated Mr. Hyde.

  “Hi,” was all she said before we were locked in a brief and innocent embrace, the kind only old friends were capable of.

  The faintest touch of our cheeks as we parted sent a shiver down my back. It got worse when I glanced into her deep brown eyes.

  I’d need to stay away from her.

  “So,” I asked, “what’s the trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get it started. It was smoking pretty badly before. Don’t worry about it. I’ll have it towed. They know the car is here and where to take it.”

  “Where do you want me to take you?”

  “They’re towing it into the next town. They said there was a motel there.”

  “You’re going to stay until they fix the car?”

  “I don’t have much of a choice.”

  She giggled when I opened the car door for her. After she got in, I walked around the back of the car, took a deep breath, and got in on my side.

  Not knowing what to say, I focused on the road and the street signs. A sigh escaped me when I realized the next town was almost forty miles away.

  “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “No, it’s so not a problem.”

  “Yes it is. You didn’t have to come all the way out here for little old me.”

  I stole a glance of her while I checked my side-view mirror. I could have sworn she was biting her lower lip seductively, but my mind could have been playing tricks on me.

  “It’s seriously not a problem. I was probably just going to get drunk at home by myself anyway.”

  She laughed. “That’s not true.”

  “You never know.” It was true. Completely. I might have watched a movie, too. I don’t know. I hadn’t decided.

  “Seriously though, I really can’t thank you enough for doing this. I can’t believe I can’t get a hold of Chris.”

  I wonder if she even tried.

  “Maybe he’s up in the mountains or something with no reception.”

  “Maybe.”

  There was a delicate and palpable tension in the air. I could feel it with every breath, pounding in my chest, emanating from the both of us.

  We’d go minutes with out talking and have small spurts of exchanges like that. I couldn’t tell which was preventing us from talking more, the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in so long, or the fact that we were both repressing ourselves sexually in this situation.

  Hell, maybe I was being too presumptuous. Maybe it wasn’t sexual repression, but emotional frustration. We really didn’t know where we stood on any level.

  After a long and agonizing car ride, we arrived at the motel. It was a true motor hotel, borne of some bygone era. It was a single row of bungalows, each with it’s own door and single picture window. Behind each window were sets of miserable, gray drapes.

  The whole scene reminded me of a Hitchcock film.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asked, innocently enough.

  “Ummm…”

  “At least hang out with me for a little while.”

  Damn it. I didn’t know what to do. “Okay. But I don’t think I can stay for long.”

  “Okay. Let me go check in.”

  She got out of the car and I watched her walk into the windowless office. Her jeans were tight and so form fitting that they must have been a mold and she must have been poured into them. Her sultry gait was mesmerizing.

  I looked away.

  As she was occupied in the front office, I tried hard to seem busy, doing something or another. I pulled my phone from my pocket and cycled throu
gh my contact list, looking for someone I could text message to occupy my focus. Stopping at each name in my phone, I thought long and hard for a moment about what I could possibly say to them. After my third pass through my phone book, I couldn’t find anyone I’d like to text. I looked up again and she was coming out of the office with the key to a room.

  Walking by the front of my car, she cocked her head in her direction with a wink, clearly indicating that I should get out and follow.

  And so I did.

  I walked into the musty motel room and my head swam as though it was my first walk into a strange girls bedroom. Some small voice trapped in the deep recesses of my being told me that I should be leaving quickly.

  But I couldn’t.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “Thanks again, so much, for coming all the way out here for me. I know you’re busy.” There was a softness to her eyes and face that seemed to indicate that she was just as confused by what was going on as I was.

  “It was seriously not a problem.”

  Though neither of us seemed to be moving, we were somehow inching closer and closer together.

  “It was sweet of you. Especially after what I’d done to you.”

  The closer we got, the harder I found it to breath, though I worked as hard as I could to seem calm.

  “You’d have done the same for me.”

  I’m not sure how we could have been any closer to each other without touching.

  “I think we missed an opportunity… all those years ago.”

  Even closer. The sun blasting in the window faded to black as my eyes slowly closed shut of their own accord.

  “I think so, too…”

  II

  Cupid Painted Blind

  Michael toed the fresh snow with his shoe, revealing the frozen black slush left from a week old storm. He pulled his jacket collar up over his bare neck and tried to look at nothing in particular.

  Trying desperately to keep the coral rose in his left hand from sight, he carried on, continuing his way down the street along the uneven, un-shoveled sidewalk. He left a dissipating trail of breath behind him as well as a long line of footprints in the snow. Every step brought him closer and closer to her house and further and further away from contentment.