Momentarily, the door opened and one of the guards entered the room. “I need to use the facilities,” I said.
“Use whatever facilities you like,” he said. “You’re free to go.” He unlocked the door behind us and held it open, standing absolutely still while awaiting our departure.
We were standing now but made no attempt to leave. Leonora asked the guard to repeat what he said.
“It only gets said once,” he said. “That’s the regulation.”
I took Leonora’s hand and tried to lead her through the door and she took a step or two then stopped at the doorway, refusing the final step to freedom, glancing at the guard, who had not moved since he opened the door for us, who was standing at attention with an almost imperceptible smile, a congested smirk on his inexpressive face.
42nd Night
We separated at the revolving doors, exchanged phone numbers and shared a gypsy cab into the city. The otherwise silent driver was the first to notice. “There’s been a pink Cadillac following us for the past three miles,” he said. “I’ll try to lose him for you if that’s what you want.”
I studied the Cadillac through the back window, recognized one of the airport security people as the driver. “Lose him,” I said.
“Whatever,” Leonora said.
The driver, who had an eastern European name with no recognizable vowels, warmed to his task. He got off the highway, indicating his destination at the last possible moment, made a series of sudden haphazard turns, throwing us together in the back seat in compelling ways. The next jolt separated us, but the following intricate maneuver brought us together even more persuasively.
We rode at dangerous speeds through back alleys, jumped a fence or two, crashed our way through the back wall of a garage, damaged a few unwary parked cars. If I wasn’t inescapably tangled with Leonora and my hands were not otherwise occupied, I would have applauded the performance.
When the dust cleared, our oversized pursuer was still in the driver’s rear view mirror.
“There must be more than one of them,” he said, “or this guy is top of the line.”
It was a glum realization and we each in turn bemoaned our lot.
“We’ll pretend he doesn’t exist,” I said. “It’s worked for me before. Just drop us at the nearest motel.” I was intent at taking to its conclusion what circumstance had set in motion.
“I finish what I start,” the driver said, “or my name isn’t whatever it says my name is.”
I started to protest but Leonora deflected my argument with a kiss.
So we drove awhile on back roads with a sense of purpose that made us feel we were getting somewhere. After a while, the driver admitted ruefully and with some reluctance to our being hopelessly lost.
It was Leonora’s suggestion, but the driver took it up immediately as his own. “Why don’t we just follow the pink Cadillac,” she said.
“They seem to know where we’re going.”
Once we got ourselves behind the Cadillac, discovering its two occupants in heated dispute, our former pursuer seemed to have no problem accepting its new role. It led us the grimmest possible version of a merry chase. Eventually, we found ourselves on the highway going against the traffic. Survival seemed a low percentage option.
The more it tried to lose us with cunning maneuvers, the more determined our driver became to hang on its tail.
Eventually, it pulled up in front of my former house (or a similar house on a much too similar street) and we took the parking space two doors down.
We hunkered down in the cab waiting for the people in the pink Cadillac to make the first move. They seemed to be waiting for us to do the same.
Our driver, exhausted from his exertions, had fallen asleep, was snoring as if it were a jazz riff.
And, so caught in the grip of our long standing circumstantial passion — actually it was a reconnection this time — Leonora and I spent our first night back in the city, waiting for someone else to make the first move.
43rd Night
In the morning the pink Cadillac was gone, taking with it our most persistent topic of conversation. We didn’t have sufficient cash to pay off the cabdriver, who had run up a huge tab on the meter, so Leonora stayed in the cab as hostage to our debt as I warily approached my former residence.
It was no great surprise that the lock refused to entertain my key so I leaned on the buzzer.
A man I knew slightly in other circumstances answered the door. “I hope you’re not selling anything,” he said and then he recognized me and closed the door in my face.
I leaned on the buzzer with renewed persistence.
The same man answered, a woman who bore Molly an uncanny resemblance standing behind him with her arms crossed in front of her.
“What in God’s name do you want?” he asked.
“I want to know what’s going on,” I said. “I used to live in this house. The woman standing behind you used to be my wife.”
“And?”
I had no answer to the question of And so we faced each other angrily, perhaps uncomprehendingly, without benefit of language. “Look,” I said, which was everything I had to say.
“If there is nothing else,” he said and would have closed the door in my face yet again if I hadn’t gotten my foot in the requisite space.
There was something else, something lucidly inchoate that I was unable to imagine into words.
“Darling, I’ll phone the police,” said the familiar voice behind him.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, sweetheart,” he said, and I had to restrain myself from thanking him.
Leonora, who had worked her way to the bottom step of the stoop, climbed up alongside me. I sensed some kind of belligerent energy coming off her, which set off a distant alarm.
“You might be a little more civilized about this, you prick,” she said, her arm puckered in the air like a cat’s paw.
“I’d ask you in,” Molly said, “but the place is an unholy mess.”
“Nothing can be gained from this,” my replacement, Donald, said, once again locking my foot in the vice of the door. The woman who resembled Molly disappeared briefly, returning with an oversized shopping bag which she thrust in my direction between the man’s arm and his side.
“This is probably what you came for,” Donald said in Molly’s voice. Perhaps he was lip-synching for her. I was too close to the scene to make an exact determination.
When I reached for the bag, the hand extending it withdrew. “You have to move your foot first,” someone said.
“Don’t be a sucker,” Leonora said, which made everyone laugh.
After that, after the shared laugh, the tone of things changed and we were invited inside to see the improvements they had made in my exile.
“I was hoping to see an unholy mess,” Leonora whispered in my ear. “You know, I’m beginning to like these people.”
As we toured the house, which seemed pretty much as I remembered it, we were invited into the kitchen for coffee.
Donald, who seemed to be wearing one of my old jackets, asked if he could interview me for his new book, which dealt, as far as I could understand his explanation, with the sexual behavior of the recently divorced.
I said no, said it twice by my count, but as Molly later reported, Donald’s success in life had been dependent on never taking no for an answer.
Molly muttered something to Leonora and they were gone before I had actually seen them leave.
“Shall we begin,” Donald said, straddling the chair opposite mine. He riffled through the pages of a notebook before settling on a question. “How often did you pleasure yourself during the first month of your separation from your former mate?” Donald asked, reading the question from a notebook.