Chapter One of a new novel. (Wish me luck...)
*****
It happens when you least expect it.
It must be a law of nature that things happen when you least expect it. Or a law of human nature, anyhow, that when you're looking for someone and needing someone, you never find them. You're too positive that you know what you want, and what you want is your own ridiculous dream.
But when you stop looking, when you put out of mind your ideas of just who you're looking for and what they'll be like, you open yourself to possibilities, and that's the only way it happens. After all, you really don't want what you already know. You have to make room for someone else, a different person, with a different mind, who feels things differently than you. When you stop looking, you open yourself for love and attraction to find new ways into your heart and change you. And sometimes they change you to make you more of who you really are.
Sometimes, in the darkest night, the dimmest, most unsuspected glow becomes a blaze, and before you even know what's happening, you're consumed in an overwhelming light.
That's how it was for me on that gloomy November day when I stopped by my bank to see about removing my ex from our joint account. It was five months since she'd left, and it had taken me that long to accept that it was over and that there'd be no reconciliation, no mending of fences, no compromise. We were incompatible, she'd told me, and I remember how our counselor had simply sat there and looked at me after Dana had made that remark, waiting to see if I had anything left to say. But what can you say to that? I suppose that was the end, right there, and we all knew it. Dana just didn't want to be with me anymore. Whatever I'd had to offer her wasn't enough, or wasn't right, or God knows what.
I don't want to recount the anguish that followed, the months of devastation, loneliness, despair, depression. Let's just say that by the time I walked into the bank on that dismal wintry day, I'd graduated to the ranks of the walking wounded, the emotionally crippled and the spiritually destitute. Grief had become second nature to me, something I took for granted, but it looked like I would live.
The clerk who sent me to speak to a bank officer was solicitous, the officer who directed me to Ms. Zamora was glad to get rid of me. I sat in Ms. Zamora' cubicle and waited for her as the subdued sounds of the bank murmured around me, a million miles away.
Ms. Zamora was young, young enough to be a daughter, and that didn't help my mood. She was neatly dressed in a brown skirt suit and very femmy blue blouse with a ribbon at the throat; wavy black hair that fell past her shoulders, and a pair of glasses I knew were supposed to make her look more businesslike, but only seemed to accent her coy femininity to me. She had the face of an angel on the body of a woman, and while most of me still mourned, some part of me noticed.
But despite all that, she projected an air of expertise and efficiency, from her sensible business heels to the ends of her perfectly manicured but colorless nails. She was a young woman who had had learned how to play this man's game: cool, professional, organized.
"Hello, Mr. Townes." She smiled as she walked in and gave me a firm handshake. "I'm Anamaria Zamora. How may I help you?"
As yet I wasn't really aware of anything special about her. I registered that she was beautiful just as I registered that she was young and female, but all that was of no real interest to me in the condition I was in. Beauty was something like sunshine or laughter, something for other people to appreciate. To me, she was just another bureaucratic functionary I had to deal with in this prolonged and difficult sweeping up of my ruined life.
"I have a joint account with someone I'm no longer with," I said lamely. "I'd like to get her name removed from my account."
The briefest cloud passed over her face. "Do you have your account number?"
I gave her my checkbook and she flipped it open and typed in the numbers.
"You shared this account for some time," she remarked.
"Yes," I said. "We did."
She typed in a few more numbers and said, "I'm sorry."
I thought it an odd comment for a bank officer to make, and I watched her as she scrolled around the screen for a bit, a look of concern on her face; a look of more concern than my simple request would seem to warrant. She seemed genuinely upset.
"The easiest thing," she said. "Would be for her to come in and remove her name herself."
She slid her eyes over me. "Would that be possible?"
"I don't know," I said. "We're not exactly speaking."
She nodded grimly and bit her lip. "Then the next best thing would probably be for you to open a new account in your name only, and transfer your funds. Does she have any money in the present account?"
"No. Well, it's hard to say. You know how it is with couples. Everything gets tossed into the common pool. There's some complications though. Some auto-pay things I need to change, and the matter of savings."
I spelled out for her what needed to be done, and as I spoke I realized how involved it all was. I didn't want to screw Dana over, but I didn't want to be paying her bills anymore either. Our finances were surprisingly complicated for a couple who had as little money as we did, and at a certain point Ms. Zamora took out a pad and paper and started taking notes.
And at another certain point, I realized she was going far and beyond the call of duty. For some reason, she seemed to be getting personally involved in my story and reacting with a lot more sympathy than I'd expected. She was honestly trying to help me.
That made me glace at her desk, looking for clues to her personality. It was very neat and organized, with just one framed picture of an older couple on a cruise ship, smiling, their arms around each other. Her parents, no doubt. No picture of a husband, no kids. It seemed unusually forlorn.
I tried to catch a glimpse of her left hand as she typed. No ring. But was that a pale band where a ring had been? She was naturally dark, so it was hard to say.
In the end I couldn't help myself. "You're not married?" I asked boldly
I was still wounded enough that I didn't think the question especially inappropriate.
A tight smile, just this side of grim.
"Separated," she said. "Two months today."
Now I did feel stupid. "Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."
And I was, because after working with me for fifteen minutes to arrange my own financial split, I really had no business asking. And because it suddenly reminded me that mine wasn't the only broken heart in the world.
She stopped typing and took off her glasses and put the heel of her hand to her eye.
"I'm sorry." She reached for a tissue. "It's silly. Forgive me. We just have to-"
"No," I said. And without thinking I reached over and took her wrist. "No, that's okay. I understand, believe me. And after all you've done for me. This must be so painful for you."
"No, it's stupid. It's silly. But it just happens to be my birthday today too, and—"
She laughed at herself, or tried to, then waved me off and stood up.
"I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse me for a second. I'll be right back. I just need a moment. Please, help yourself to some coffee, I— Oh God, this is so embarrassing!"
She hurried out of the cube and I watched her go, for the first time seeing her as a person and trying to imagine the kind of man who could let something like that go. She was indeed beautiful, very well put together and youthful, and obviously sensitive and intelligent.
God knows what kind of weird things go on between two people in an intimate relationship,but it was hard for me to imagine what kind of flaw she might have that would lead to a break-up. Was she a clinger? A babbler? Too pushy? A nag? Bad in bed or non-sexual?
The spirits of banking propriety might strike me dead, but I knew that last one was false. There was an aura of sensuality about her, even in her grief.
I knew it with a small sense of shock, that Anamaria Zamora was a hellion in bed, or would be if treated properly. That innocent beauty, that tight leash of control she kept herself under, her emotionalism, that overripe body...
And just as shocking was my own reaction, the first response I'd had towards a woman since Dana. I could hardly believe it.
There are women you see who are gorgeous, or sexy, but you know there's nothing inside and they're not for you. Their beauty or demeanor speaks a different language than you do, and you know any attraction is all superficial and shallow. They're basically all packaging with no prize inside.
And then there are women who seem to speak in some secret tongue, who crackle with some electric tension or energy on your special frequency: sexual tigresses in lamb's clothing. They're not for all men to see; nature's worked it that way. There's a special matching that goes on, a fitting together. It takes a certain man to see inside and see that spark and sizzle, where another man just sees a young bank officer or female employee.
Not that I had any plans on Ms. Zamora at that time. I was totally out of meeting-someone mode, let alone even considering a date. Besides, we were about as unlike as it's possible to be: me an older, cynical and disillusioned chemist barely holding onto his dead-end job, and she a young, up-and-comer in the buttoned-down world of banking and finance. She was sweet, she was helpful and sympathetic, she was gorgeous, and she was in pain, and that's all I knew.
But that was enough for me to get my coffee and wait there in the little room where the coffee pot was, right outside the woman's bathroom.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Townes. I'm so embarrassed," she said when she came out. "If you like, I can have someone else help you."
