Today’s writing is about the results of the police calling on Jack, after he reported his house being broken into.
They arrive.
The make the same mistake the Italian police did, mistaking him for Jacob, who since he murdered a woman in the hotel back where the conference was being held, and is still at large.
What would any reasonable person expect?
And along with this revelation is another, that his suspicions about Maryanne were right, because the Detective has to let her go on orders from ‘someone connected’.
From this we can infer that she is either a homeland security person whose been looking for, or had Jacob under surveillance before he killed, or a private detective, though Jack has bigger problems to worry about.
He is being arrested and hauled off to the station for questioning.
And he’s not holding his breath that Maryanne will be doing anything to sort the problem out. She probably has her own problems now that Jack knows who she is, and the fact her mission has been entirely unsuccessful,
And, no, Jack didn’t tell her about the diary, but you can just bet that’s what’s she’s after.
Today’s effort amounts to 3,139 words, for a total, so far, of 39,918.
It was true to say that very few people knew our department existed. In fact, I was not sure quite who it was I worked for, but when I’d been first tasked with the assignment, a transfer precipitated by a transgression that might have ended my career, I was certain I had been sent to purgatory.
At least, that’s what the sign on the door said.
The office, if it could be called that, was in the basement, around so many twists and turns in the passages that it was easy to believe you had entered another dimension. It wasn’t located in the building you walked through the front door of, but somewhere else nearby. Through the walls, you could hear the sounds of cars, but whether it was a nearby road above the ceiling, or they were parking, it was not easy to say.
On another side, the sounds of trains passing through tunnels were barely discernible, and sometimes only noticeable by a slight vibration of the coffee mug on the desktop, of which there were four, the maximum number of occupants in the small area, but I have never seen who two of the other four were.
Such was the nature of our job. We operated in secret, hidden from the world, and the others. I was never quite sure why.
…
The interview, when I thought was going to be fired, was given by an old man in a pinstripe suit, long past the age of retirement. In fact, had I not known better, I would have said he was dead, and all that was missing was the cobwebs. He had no sense of humor and got straight to the point.
“You are being transferred to PIB effective immediately.”
He didn’t say what PIB stood for, and the no-nonsense tone told me this was not the time to ask.
“Many have come, but few have stayed. It’s not a job to be taken lightly, and a word of advice, the work you are about to undertake is not to be discussed with anyone but the person you have been assigned to work with.”
He then handed me an envelope, sealed, and that was the end of the interview.
I did not get to speak a word. I had this speech memorized, ready to explain why I had failed so badly, and what I was prepared to do to make up for it, but I was not given the opportunity. Perhaps I should just be grateful I was given another chance.
I waited until I was out of the building, and a block away in a small cafe, and the cheerful waitress had brought my coffee and cake. It was, in a small way, a celebration I still had a job, working for the organization I had set my sights on way back when I was in school.
Making sure no one was sitting too close; I opened the envelope and took out the neatly folded sheet of paper.
It was blank.
Was this some sort of joke?
There was a loud noise outside in the street, a car backfiring, and it caused a few anxious moments, particularly for me in case it was trouble, but it wasn’t. When normality returned I went back to the sheet of paper, picking it up off the top of the coffee cup where it had fallen, and something caught my eye.
Writing. Specifically, numbers, but what I thought I’d seen had disappeared, or hadn’t been there at all.
A shake of the head, perplexed, to say the least, I took a sip of the coffee. As the cup passed under the sheet, a pattern was discernible, displaying then disappearing. Bringing the cup back under the sheet, numbers suddenly appeared. It was a telephone number. It was also very cloak and daggers.
Was it a test? Because at that moment when I saw the blank sheet of paper, the meaning was very clear. It was a puzzle, and if I didn’t work it out, then I didn’t get the job. I’d simply been told to turn up at an anonymous building to see a man whom I doubted would answer to the name I’d been given to ask for again after I left.
I entered the number then pressed ‘call’.
Seven rings before a woman’s voice answered, “Yes?”
No names, no identification.
“Mr McCall gave me an envelope with this number in it.”
“You worked it out?” She sounded surprised.
“By accident, yes.”
“Well, four out of five candidates don’t. Consider this to be your lucky morning, the day is not over yet. Where are you?”
I told her.
“Then you’re not far from Central Park. Go to the souvenir store and wait.”
“How will I know you?”
“You won’t, I’ll recognize you.”
Then the phone went dead, and I was left looking at it as if I had the ability to see, via the phone, who that person was. I shrugged. How many others had failed even the most basic test, to figure out what was on the sheet of paper, and, was it an indication of the work I would be doing?
I spent the better part of an hour watching the squirrels at play. They scuttled around on the ground chasing each other or their imaginary friends or leaping from branch to branch in the shrubs and trees. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world, and I wondered what that would be like.
Unfortunately, I had to pay the rent, bills, and eat, all of which required having a paying job. I had been looking at having to return home a dismal failure and fulfil the destiny my father had predicted for me.
“David Jackson, I presume?”
I looked sideways to see a woman about my own age, dressed so that she would look anonymous in a crowd. It was anyone’s guess how long she had been there, but that, I guess was the point. She had been observing me, and no doubt assessing my suitability.
Could I blend in? Perhaps not if I was that easily identifiable.
“I am.”
“What if anything has been explained to you about the job?”
“Nothing. I was asked to meet a nameless man in an anonymous office and was handed an envelope which led to my call to you.”
After I said it out loud it sounded crazy.
“If you don’t mind me asking but how did you work out how to read the letter?”
Moment of truth, was there a right or wrong answer? Most if not all the people who received it would not work it out.
“Quite by accident.”
She smiled. “The truth is a rare commodity in our business. But then, you’re one of a very select group of people who made it to this level.”
“Just out of curiosity, what happens to those who done work out how to read the number?”
“They don’t get to stand where you are. Welcome aboard.”
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.
Well, we knew something was going to happen when Jack walked in the front door of his modest residence.
It’s been trashed.
We have the clues, we know what they are looking for – that item his mother fortuitously dropped off at the travel agency.
No one knows what it is yet, but it is going to be an important part of the puzzle moving forward.
And now Rosalie has it, it means that she is in danger.
Of course, this is the time to contrast his relationship with Maryanne, and that with Rosalie. Back, before he left, he realised he had a thing for her (though is ‘thing’ the right word to use?) and had said he would meet with her when he got back.
So, a meeting is set. Without Maryanne tagging along.
In the meantime, there is that disaster called his residence to deal with, and, of course, he calls the police to report the break in.
We know where that’s going, don’t we?
Today’s effort amounts to 2,028 words, for a total, so far, of 36,779.
You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives.
So sayeth my sister, who for years refused to acknowledge I was her brother.
The point is, as I was trying to tell Nancy, the woman who had agreed to marry me, “my family has long been ashamed of me because I refused to become a doctor.”
“That’s no excuse, I’m fact that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
To most people, it would. I agreed with her. But then, her family had not had a forebear who stood shoulder to shoulder with George Washington at the Siege of Yorktown.
It was a statement my mother had often pulled out of nowhere at dinner parties, and sometimes in general conversation, just to impress. I thought of trotting out as another example of ridiculous statements, but though better of it.
It was a situation I had not bargained for, and probably why it took so long to find someone to share the rest of my life with.
Perhaps I hadn’t quite thought through what would happen once I asked the question, and it was a yes.
It was not as if Nancy and I hadn’t taken the long road with our relationship. She had been burned a few times, and I always had my family in the back of my mind as the biggest obstacle.
In fact, I always had considered it insurmountable, and because of that, rarely made a commitment. But Nancy was different. She was very forgiving and had the sort of temperament saints were blessed with.
Her family sounded like very reasonable people who lived up state out of Yonkers on a farm she simply said had been in the family forever.
She didn’t have big city aspirations, was not impressed by wealth, travel, large houses, or a resume a mile long with achievements. It was everything I didn’t have and didn’t want, and my job as storeman and fork life driver was one where I could go to work and leave it there.
Nancy on the other hand, was a checkout clerk at a large supermarket, with no aspirations to be a boss or run the place. She had a run in with a tractor early on in life and could manage a lot of the farming basics.
Her parents sent her to the big city to learn a different trade, but she just wasn’t interested. She was a country girl and would never change.
We met when she was attending the same pre wedding party that I was, both with different partners at the time, and both of whom were more party animals that we were.
A week later we ran into each other in the same bar, and it grew from there, and after a rather interesting six months or so, we had ended up making the ultimate commitment.
…
“I guess, now, we have to tell our parents,” she said, stating what was to her, the obvious.
Such a simple statement with so many connotations. I had deliberately steered the conversation away from all of them, and so, at this point in time, she knew I had parents, grandparents, and three other siblings. And that they lived on the other side of the country.
Asked why I had moved so far away, I told her that I’d failed to meet their expectations and preferred to be as far away as possible. My brothers more than made up for my failings, so it was not necessary I stay there.
It was only recently I’d told her those expectations were of me following the family tradition into medicine. It was when I told her my father was a pre-eminent thoracic heart surgeon, my brothers top of whatever field they’d chosen and my sister, a well-regarded general practitioner.
When she asked in what way I’d failed, I said it was not in the education because like all Foresdale’s, we were always top of the class, and as much as I tried to fail, the teachers knew better.
I just refused to go to University. Instead, I tried to disappear, but my father had the best private detective at his disposal. It took a very long, loud, screaming match to sever that tie, get disinherited, and leave to make my own way in the world.
Perhaps, I said, it would be best to just say I was an orphan.
That, of course, to Nancy, was not an option. She came from practical people who always found a solution to any problem, and they had had a few really difficult ones over the years.
But, for the first time, there was an look of perplexing on her face. Maybe she was thinking that she should have asked more probing questions about my family before agreeing to be my wife.
“I think I can safely say that your parents will be more approachable than mine. Those expectations on me will also fall on you.”
And having said it aloud, it sounded so much more like a threat. The problem was, I knew what there were like, living in that rarefied air where the upper classes lived.
I might be a forklift driving storeman, but I was still a Foresdale, and my match had to be commensurate to the family values.
“Then we’re just going to have to go visit them and lower those expectations. I’m not afraid of them.”
No, I expect she was not. I’d seen her deal with all types of miscreants at the checkout counter, rich and poor alike. She had the sort of gumption I always had wanted but was too much of a coward to confront the problem.
Perhaps now, it would be the perfect opportunity.
“We should go next week. I’ve got some vacation days owing, and I’m sure the boss will let you go if you tell him the reason.”
Practical as ever. Confront the beast and get it over with.
“Sure. I’ll talk to the boss, arrange the tickers, and let someone know we’re coming. But I will not be staying at the house. That way if it gets too intense, we can leave.”
I saw her shrug. I’m not sure she agreed that was a good idea, but I didn’t want to see them corner they way they had a habit of when any of us children brought anyone home. I did once, and never again.
“It will be fine.”
Famous last words.
…
I had the phone number of my sister Eric’s, stored on my phone, not that I’d ever intended to call her. It was there because she had called me, I had made the mistake of giving it to her when I left, because she asked me for it.
I hadn’t spoken to her since I left home all those years ago, nearly ten by my reckoning, and perhaps it was a testament to my father that not one of them had called, or even reached out.
Being cut off literally meant that. But it was not something that irked me. I was glad not to see them. I could easily keep up with them in the newspapers and magazines, such was their visibility.
I was surprised Nancy hadn’t made the association.
I don’t know how long it was that I stared at that number, finger hovering over the green button. My first concern was whether I’d remain civil, or how long it would take before I disconnected the call.
Then, courage summoned, I pressed the button.
An anticlimax might occur is there was no answer, or the number had been disconnected, but such was not the case. It rang.
Almost for the full number of rings before a familiar voice answered. “Good morning, this is Erica speaking.”
If only I’d learned to answer a phone properly like that.
“It’s Perry.” Damn, I hated that name, and once I left home, I adopted my middle name, James.
“Now that’s a blast from the past. Never expected to hear from you again.”
“Believe me, if I had my way, you wouldn’t, but there’s a person who insists she meets the family. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.”
“Good for her. I always knew you’d meet a sensible girl who wouldn’t put up with your nonsense. I’m assuming you asked her to marry you?”
“I’m beginning to wonder if I should have just outright lied and said I was an orphan.”
“Yes, and how would that have worked when we finally ran you to ground. Besides, your father has known where you’ve been hiding all along. You are still a Foresdale, and that will never change.”
“Even when I’ve been ex-communicated from the family.”
“That’s only your assumption. Everyone here might have expected you to change your minds somewhat earlier, but we never doubted you would return. Now, just who is this Nancy, and who does she belong to?”
There’s nothing like having a travel agent on hand when you need to make some urgent bookings because your travel arrangements have gone up in smoke.
Anyone else would have had the devil’s own job sorting out their travel arrangements.
And, yes, Maryanne is coming along for the ride. Is she feeling obligated to look after him, or is there some other reason. As yet, it’s not clear.
But it’s a day of planes, trains and automobiles, attempts to locate his mother so he can find out more about what’s going on, and then get home where it may, or may not be, safe.
So much for having a holiday.
So much for going to his first conference. There’s going to be some explaining to the head agent.
Today’s effort amounts to 2,237 words, for a total, so far, of 34,751.
It seems that this novel, going on the amount of writing so far, is going to be bigger than 50,000 words, at the half way mark, or near enough, I’m at 35,000 words, give or take, which indicates a story of 70,000 words.
We will have to wait and see what happens. I have more planning to do.
There’s a saying, no good deed goes unpunished, and it’s true.
Perhaps when I had the time to sit down and think about the events of the previous week, I might strongly consider minding my own business, but there is that strong sense of obligation instilled in me by my mother all those years ago that if we ate on a position to help someone, we should.
The fact this person didn’t want help, even where they clearly did, should have been a warning sign. It would be next time.
…
I was working late, as usual. Everyone had left the office early to partake in a minor birthday celebration for one of the team members, and I said I would get there after I wrapped up the presentation, due in a day or so.
That, of course, everyone knew, was the code for not turning up. To be honest, I hated going to parties, mingling, making small talk, and generally being sociable.
For someone who had to standing in front of large crowds making sales presentations, that sounded odd and it probably was. I couldn’t explain it, and no one else could either.
When I finally turned the computer off it wasn’t far off midnight. I brief gave a thought to the party, but by that time everyone would have gone home. Time for me to do the same.
Sometimes I would get a cab, others, if the weather was fine, I would walk. It had been one 9f those early summer days with the promise of more to come, so I decided to walk.
There were people about, those who had been to the theatres or after a long leisurely dinner and were taking in the last moments of what might have been a day to remember, each for different reasons.
When I stopped at the lights before crossing the road and making the last leg of the walk hone, a shortcut through central park, and yawned. It had been a long day, and bed was beckoning.
Perhaps if I had been more alert, I would have noticed several people acting strangely, well I had to admit it was a big call to say they were acting strangely when that could define just about everyone including myself.
Normally I would walk through central park after midnight, or not alone anyway. But there were other people around, so I didn’t give it a second thought.
Those other people disappeared one by one as I got further in, until it got to the point where I was the only one, and suddenly the place took on a more surreal feeling.
Sound was amplified, the bark of a dog somewhere nearby, the rustling of branches most likely being brushed against by animals like squirrels, and a few muted conversations, with indistinguishable words.
Until I heard someone yell ‘stop’.
I did.
I was not sure what I was feeling right then, but it was a frightening sensation with a mind running through a number of different scenarios, all of them bad.
I turned around.
No one.
I did a 360-degree turn, and still nothing, except, the voice again, that of a female, “Look, no means no, so stop it.”
I couldn’t quite get a fix on what direction it was coming from, so I waited.
A man’s voice this time, “You should not have led me on.”
“I said nothing of the sort. I said I would walk home with you, there was nothing else implied or otherwise.”
Got it. I heard a rustling sound to my left, abs an opening between shrubs, and crossed the lawn.
On the other side about 20 yards up the path, a man and a girl, probably mid 20s were sitting close together.
She said, “stop it,” and pushed his hand away.
I saw him grab, and twist it.
She yelped in surprise, and pain.
I took a dozen steps towards them and said, “I don’t think she wants or needs the attention. Let her go.”
He did, then stood. Not a man to be trifling with, he was taller and heavier that I was, and suddenly I was questioning my bravado.
“This is none of your business. Take a hike or you’ll regret it.”
I looked at the girl, who just realised I was standing there, a look of terror on her face.
“Is this man assaulting you?”
She said nothing, just glanced at the man, and then away.
“There is no problem here. Keep walking.”
I asked her again, “is this man assaulting you?”
She looked at me again. “No. Please go away.”
“There. You should be minding your own business. There’s no problem here.”
I could see from her expression there was, and it might have something to do with the man she was with.
I had done what I could, so it was time to leave. I just had to hope there was not going ti be an addition to the crime statistics overnight.
“As you wish.”
I turned and retraced my steps to the other side of the shrubbery but instead of moving on, I stayed. The was something dreadfully wrong with what was happening, and I couldn’t let it end badly. Of course, if or when I interfered, it could end worse than that.
He spoke again. “You were smart not to cause trouble. You’d be smarter to just give me what I want.”
“You’re nothing but a disgusting pig.”
The sound of was might have been a slap in the face reverberated on the night air, assaulting of a different kind.
I went back.
The girl was on the ground, and the man was leaning over her, going through the contents of her bag.
“Hey,” I yelled, catching his attention.
Enough time to make the short distance between him and and expect a running tackle, rugby style. Mt momentum would counterbalance his excess size and weight.
But I hadn’t considered my next move, had I. Or the fact for his size he was very agile.
I did see something that had been in his hand as we tumbled, and that was a gun, small but lethal. This guy had to be a criminal picking off lone women in the park.
The gun had been jolted from his hand in the tackle and he and I were roughly the same distance from it, but he had the added knowledge that it existed whereas I was still processing the information.
He reached it first, I got to it, and him a second later, as he was raising it to aim at me. I had microseconds to think, react, and consider whether the next second or so was going to be my last.
I got my hand on the gun, not thinking to pull it away from him because that might help pull the trigger but push it towards him in the hope if he did pull the trigger, the bullet wouldn’t hit anyone.
Too late. There was a loud explosion as the gun went off, and I closed my eyes and waited for the seating pain, and possible death. Mt life did not flash before my eyes, not like some said it would.
One second, two seconds, three.
I was still alive.
But any sign of resistance had gone, and the man had slumped backwards on the ground.
I rolled off him and could see the blood seeping through his shirt in an area near where his heart would be. I felt for a pulse but there was none.
His face was stuck on a permanent look of surprise.
Behind me the girl had come back to life and was on her knees, staring at the man, and then me. “What have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything. He had a gun and was trying to shoot me.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. This is, oh my God.” She scrambled to her feet, hurried tried to put everything back in her bag. “Get out of here, now. Run, and don’t look back.”
“Why. The police should be told he was assaulting you.”
“You fool. He is the police, and when they get here, we’re both going to die.”
She grabbed her bag, took a last look, and then ran.
A few seconds more to consider just how bad this looked, not that I had put together the pieces yet, I could see what she meant.
A dead cop.
I got up and started heading back to the other path.
“Stop.”
Not this again.
I turned.
Two police in uniform, guns drawn. A dead police office on the ground and a suspect leaving the scene.
So what do you do when you start have doubts about everything to do with your life? It starts with a sleepless night agonising over why you were lied to.
Then, in the cold dark hours of early morning you turn to the only thing than can possibly give you answers.
The internet.
It’s time to delve into the prior life of the woman you are beginning to think is a complete strange to you, and what do you find.
Previous relationships with a man before she was married to the man she said was Jack’s father. And yes, the man in the old photos is very easily recognisable as his father.
What’s more, he is a criminal himself, and supposedly in jail. There’s more to that story.
Then Jack gets a cryptic message from his mother, who tells him she’s left a package for him at the travel agency, and that she is going away.
Seems everyone knows what’s going on but him!
Today’s effort amounts to 1,609 words, for a total, so far, of 32,514.
Like leg, arm is a word that is mostly associated with a body part.
Like being legless, another description for being drunk, being rendered ‘armless’ means you are no threat, in a rather awful but funny way by saying it.
I guess we all have a dash of ‘sick’ humour in all of us.
However, arm can also be used to describe a part of a structure too.
It could also describe the arm of an ‘armchair’.
But…
Arm also means to give people weapons like guns, usually from an armoury.
I’m guessing that a whole lot of people with arms is an army!
You can also say that taking those weapons away would be to disarm them.
It might take the long arm of the law to do it, too.
And to disarm someone doesn’t necessarily mean to take away their arms, but to ‘charm’ them with your wit and humour.
An arm can also be a river or streams tributary, so I could say instead of staying on the main river, I’ll take the ‘named’ arm, but just remember, sometimes this can be dangerous, getting off the main route.
On a boat, there is a yardarm, and this was once used to hang seamen who committed serious crimes such as mutiny.
A call to arms was to declare war,
And lastly, an arm of the defence services could be any one of Army, Navy, Marines or Airforce.
Just steer clear of the Navy for the aforementioned reasons.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 