A Beauteous Flower

The Ugly Silence and the Loneliness, the She-Dragon and the Fairy Godmother and the Brutally Honest Conversation

*****

Deva waited in the kitchen while Madison tried to speak to Daniel again. The bedroom door remained closed and locked and Madison's pleas made no headway. A dejected and tearful Madison descended to the kitchen where Deva greeted her with a big sister hug.

"He locked me out of the bedroom and won't talk to me," Madison confirmed to Deva.

Deva looked sympathetic and Madison teared up a bit.

"I didn't think he would get angry. I didn't think he could get angry. I've never seen him angry before"

Deva shrugged as if to confirm that Daniel had cause, and Madison had to concede that, even though she was not used to such admissions. Typically, when past boyfriends got angry Madison's go-to tactic was to turn it on them and bury them with violations they had committed that were "worse" than what she did. It was a tried and true method that she and her girlfriends had perfected over time, however, in this case, that was hard to do. Besides, a guilty conscience was enough to keep her from that play.

"What am I going to do?" Madison asked in a small voice that vibrated with shivers.

"Well," Deva ventured. "The best tactic with guys is to get naked and let them decide if they're still angry at you. It might be a good time to reach way down deep into that bag of sexual tricks you've held in reserve."

"I haven't held back anything with Daniel!" insisted Madison, slightly offended by the suggestion. "He's not some guy I met for a one-night stand!"

Madison made a calming gesture with her hands.

"OK, OK. No offense. What I mean is it might be a good time to indulge him in his favorite fantasies. Does he like it when you dress up in costumes, or when you do or say certain things? You've got to distract him."

Madison bit her lip and thought for a moment. What did Daniel like sexually? Now that she was forced to think about it, she couldn't recall a single time when she had asked Daniel that question. Like the rest of their life, their sex life centered on her and what she wanted when she wanted it. Previously, she'd never had to try with guys. All she had to do was be interested and the guys came to her and that was all there was to that. Up until this moment, she had just assumed Daniel was like every other guy and he would be glad to get whatever she doled out at the time. However, after what Cassidy had said, it pained Madison to have to admit she wasn't sure what Daniel liked or didn't like sexually. Madison felt her stomach sink. Could it be she might not be the sexual goddess she had always assumed she was?

All these thoughts showed on her face with a sheepish look to one side.

"Madison...!" gasped Deva in mild shock.

Madison looked helplessly at Deva, so Deva didn't finish the thought. Unfortunately, Madison could see on Deva's lovely face the fact that this was a major oversight on Madison's part. Like a good best friend, Deva ignored the elephant that had just materialized in the room.

"I guess you'd better get up there and lay it down on Daniel like your life together depends on it because, well, it kinda does."

Madison nodded her head absently, so Deva wrapped Madison in a big sister hug and kissed her on the cheek.

"Go to it, Madison. Go work this out."

Madison listened to Deva's car roll down the driveway. After a few more minutes to collect herself, Madison climbed the stairs. Her plan was simple. She would fuck Daniel unconscious to assuage his anger and then delete that security video, forget any of this ever happened and never let anything like this happen again. She might have a guilty conscience afterward, but that was something she could work out on her own.

"Go for it, Madison," she whispered to herself as she knocked on the door.

No response.

"Daniel? Daniel, baby? Daniel, I'm cold and I need you to warm me up!"

Still no response. She decided she'd better ramp up the sexiness.

"Daniel, I know you're angry. I should have checked with you about the party. Just open up and I'll make it all up to you."

Madison struck a sexy pose as she anticipated Daniel would open the door.

"Come on, baby," she cooed in a bad girl voice. "I know I was a bad girl. I deserve some punishment. I do. So just let me in and punish me! I can take it!"

Madison winced as she said the next line because she had no idea what she meant when she said it, but she forced it out of her mouth anyway because it fit the role she played.

"I'll do all those things you like!"

The door popped open with such force that Madison's hair was sucked in behind it. Daniel stood, stone faced, and stared at her with a blank force that could cut battleship armor. Before she could say anything, Daniel spoke.

"So that's how little you think of me?" Daniel asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Daniel..." Madison stammered uncertain.

"You think you can just have sex with me and make it better? You have so little respect for me you think you can just fuck this away? Without even an apology?"

Madison flinched in on herself. She had figured he was angry and that she would have to apologize, but she didn't imagine he would be this impervious. Daniels face was so expressionless it looked like a mask and Madison almost did not recognize him. Was this man the same Daniel who had always been so gracious and gentle to her? What had happened to that man? Madison fell into automatic pilot, reverted to her tried and true boss bitch angry boyfriend tactic and reflexively denigrated rather than validated.

"Daniel, it was just a party. Don't overreact...."

Daniel's blank eyes blinked, and Madison was completely unprepared for his next line of thought.

"Don't overreact?" Daniel questioned flatly. "I go away for a week on business and while I'm away my wife throws some teen-aged house party with a hundred of her closest friends who proceed to invade my privacy and destroy my possessions and my wife didn't put a stop to it?"

"Daniel... wait..."

But Daniel deadpanned on undeterred.

"No. No 'wait'. You didn't put a stop to it, did you? Why? Oh, that's right you were too busy to notice while your party guests boozed it up, snorted coke off my Nebula award, smashed my things, burned my work, and made porn movies all over my desk."

"Daniel..."

"No, no, you're right. I overreacted because the party was just some stupid flight of fancy and what you did to Gandalf only took a few moments of heartlessness. What really had you distracted was the tete a tete you had with the blond guy."

Madison's blood froze. Daniel knew.

"Daniel, I'm..."

"Sorry, yeah I know," Daniel finished for her in a disaffected monotone. "You're so sorry that you flirted with and kissed another man in our home that you'll 'do all those things I like' to make that better. What am I? Your second-choice man for the evening? Is that it? You struck out with him, so you plan to fuck me so good I forgive you for the fact that I'm the second man you decided to have sex with today?"

Madison's mind reeled as she struggled to find a way to reverse course. Daniel's implacable logic spun the facts out to conclusions she hadn't imagined, and she could not keep up.

"It's that simple, is it? Is that your solution to this? You offer me consolation prize sex like a case of Turtlewax for some loser on a game show? What, did you save something special for this occasion? Some sexual stunt you've never performed on me? What have you held back that was so great that it would make up for betrayal?"

"Daniel, I didn't betray you..."

Daniel's face twitched, but he mastered himself almost instantly. His voice stayed low and flat like cast iron.

"Oh, no? Why? Because the fact that you flirted with and kissed another man in my own home, and humiliated me in front of a house full your friends doesn't constitute a betrayal in your estimation? Is that it? That's where the line is? Oh, I see it now. I did overreact."

Daniel eye's bored into Madison's eyes and, horrifyingly, the situation went much deeper than she had thought. In fact, it might have no bottom. Madison cringed internally and tried to think of something to say. The cold logic of Daniel's thoughts made a counter argument seem impossible. For the first time in her life, a man had completely outflanked Madison in an argument and, uncertain of what to do, Madison resorted to tears.

"I'm sorry," Madison squeaked and then covered her mouth with her hands.

"I bet you are." Daniel averred. "Sorry that you got caught."

And then what had seemed totally catastrophic metastasized exponentially and became much deeper and much worse. Before Madison could blink, Daniel raced down a line of thought she hadn't even conceived of before this moment.

"How many other men like that were there, Madison? How many other men have there been over the time we've been together? How many other men did you flirt with and kiss while I wasn't there? How many did you have sex with? When you were supposedly out with your friends on girls' nights? When you were supposedly at the grocery store? How many times have I been made a fool of in my own home?"

"Daniel it... I didn't...," Madison blurted without thought. "One time!"

Daniels face twitched again and that told her that she had said exactly the wrong thing.

"Once? That's your defense? You only did it once?"

Madison's thoughts stalled. No matter what she said, the conversation spun off in directions she couldn't anticipate. She had forgotten how smart Daniel was and now that he had the facts, his mind tore off in directions that were way beyond the boundaries she had planned for this conversation. She hadn't even considered that this could lead the conclusion that all his trust in her might disappear, and that this could permeate every facet of their relationship like a deadly fungus. But now that Daniel showed her the logical conclusions he could draw from the facts, she could not conceive of any excuse or counter argument. Not that there were any excuses or arguments she could have made to refute what he said, but at least she would have known better than to come here and throw gas on the fire.

"Daniel...."

Daniel's face remained implacably stone.

"Oh, but it's OK, because Madison saved something special for me for just such an occasion."

Daniel gestured toward their bed.

"Come on, Madison. Let's see it."

Madison shook with emotion and her lips quivered uselessly. Daniel's disaffected tone mercilessly exposed the fact she had been seriously careless and had done way more damage than she anticipated. She wanted to say something, do something, to fix the problem, but she was too shaken to keep up.

"Oh, come on." Daniel deadpanned. "Come on in and do what you came here to do. Do me so good that I forget all about this. I can't wait for this. I want to experience something so incredible, so spectacular, that I forget all about how my wife destroyed the peace of my home, forget that she let her guests destroy my things, forget that she stuffed my best friend in a closet... and...."

Then Daniel administered the coup de grace and held up a freshly printed screen grab of Madison in Steve's embrace, their lips pressed together. Madison nearly collapsed to the floor in humiliation. The picture was the worst kind of evidence, almost as if Daniel had caught her en flagrante delicto. The magnitude of what she had done hit home and Daniel's flat voice rang on like the stroke of doom.

"... And that she made me for a fool in front of all those people. In my own home."

"Oh, Daniel...." whispered Madison.

She placed one hand on her stomach and the other over her mouth to quell the spasm of nausea that shot through her. This was worse than she had ever anticipated. Way worse. One careless day had caused so much damage, and to her horror, she realized that Daniel would pay the price for her carelessness. Emotion twitched on Daniel face, so he shook his head slightly and took a deep breath to regain control. A horrified Madison watched Daniel's face become as inscrutable as a porcelain mask. He went icily calm, and his voice stayed flat and detached. For a long moment, Daniel stared at Madison and then made a decision that Madison felt before he acted.

"Daniel...wait!"

Daniel slowly shut the door and silence settled like a thick pall over the situation. It surrounded Madison like a dense cloud of doom. Downstairs the grandfather clock tick-tocked the seconds away and the cold wind stirred the curtains over the windows. Madison's shock at the emotional blankness from Daniel ebbed away and when it did, the import of what had happened settled on her. Had her relationship with Daniel just ended? Too amazing to believe, it almost crippled physically, and Madison pressed her hands and forehead against her bedroom door, so she did not faint.

"Daniel?"

Silence.

"Daniel, answer me! Please!"

Silence.

"Daniel? Daniel, can you hear me? Are you OK?"

Silence.

"Please Daniel! Please! Daniel? Daniel! Talk to me, Daniel! Please!"

Silence.

"Daniellllllllllllllllllllllll!"

No answer from behind the door. Only flat stillness. Madison shrieked and cried at the locked door of her bedroom until her voice was horse and she shivered with cold and fear. Daniel didn't answer, not even to tell her to go away and Madison felt lonely, cold and adrift amidst the flotsam and jetsam strewn about by the pretty wreck of her vanity. Cassidy had warned this would be bad, but to see it explode like a hand grenade right in her face was too fantastic to believe. How could she ever hope to repair her relationship with Daniel after this?

Of more immediate concern, Madison worried if was Daniel OK. He had two handguns and a shotgun in the bedroom. What if he did something terrible? It would be all her fault! Madison pressed her ear to the door in terror. Finally, she heard the springs in the bed creak as Daniel lay down.

"Daniel?"

Madison's heart cracked a little as she heard absolutely nothing from behind the bedroom door. Her Daniel was behind that door, and he was in pain. Pain that she caused. She had seen it in his face, even if only briefly, and now she couldn't reach him or hold him. He shut her out with the rest of the world because she had left his heart all broken and smashed and now this steely silence might be all that was left of their relationship. Everything she wanted in the world was behind that door and she couldn't reach it anymore. She cursed herself for a fool.

"Daniel are you OK?"

Silence.

Perhaps the best thing to do was let him sleep and then try to talk to him in the morning after she had time to think about what to say to him. Madison stood wearily and the cold Fall air gave her thin needle pricks of goose bumps. With nothing to wear except her bikini, she decided she had better get under some covers and quickly. She stumbled down the hall to one of the guest bedrooms and pulled back the covers on the bed. Cold sheets greeted her, and she clamped her eyes shut and wished with all her might this was a nightmare and that she would wake up, but she never did. She was in the guest room and Daniel was behind a locked door and refused to speak to her. Her life couldn't get any worse than this moment.

What was she going to do now?

*****

Silence.

That's all she had heard from Daniel since he showed her the picture of her in the arms of Steve the Oaf. Madison sulked in that silence and wondered if Daniel would ever give her a chance to explain. She wished he would do anything, laugh, cry, scream, just as long as he did it where she could see him and interact with him. Instead, Daniel locked her out of his life and Madison was at a total loss for what to do next.

Madison tried to go to Daniel to talk. Her siege of the bedroom began in the early morning after the party. She tried everything she could think of to get Daniel to answer the door and speak to her. She knocked politely, pounded incessantly, whined petulantly, threatened ominously, begged, and pleaded and screamed and cried herself hoarse, but Daniel didn't even acknowledge her. She tried to call his cell phones, but she heard them both ring in the kitchen.

Just silence.

Next, she decided to be a little more aggressive. Madison went outside under the balcony and called Daniel to come out while she threw little pebbles at the glass French doors of the balcony. She walked back to the woods and tried to get an angle where she could look into the bedroom windows. Finally, she went a little crazy and played loud music and danced naked by the pool.

More silence.

Unable to think of anything else to do, she tried to lure Daniel out with the aroma of food. She ordered a steak and baked potato from Outback, put it by the door and wafted the scent under the door. She yelled to him that she had Oreo cookies with milk for dessert and shoved an Oreo under the door after she twisted it apart. After she returned from a bathroom break, she found the Oreo shoved back out uneaten. The next day she ordered a pizza and left that by the door while she loudly stomped down the hall to lead the illusion she was not perched outside. For a solid hour Madison peered around a corner to ambush him when he opened the door to get the pizza, but to no avail. Dejectedly, she ate a slice of cold pizza for dinner while she sat in the hallway outside her room.

Still more silence.

Then Madison tried to force her way in and tried to defeat the button lock with a straightened coat hanger. The lock popped open, and the knob turned, but Madison discovered that Daniel had braced the door from the inside so it would not open. No matter what she tried Daniel would not open the door or speak to her. He didn't even tell her to go away.

Nothing but silence.

Finally, on the evening of the second day she gave up and settled on the living room sofa for a long snivel with a fresh box of Kleenex. How long Daniel could keep this silence up? He was a quiet man, but this was something else again. It was like he was gone, or maybe he intended to ignore her out of his life. If she had not heard the toilet flush and the shower run a couple of times, she could have sworn he was not in their room at all. Madison shivered uncomfortably as the silence mocked her.

Exhaustion finally took over and she fell asleep on the sofa with the last of the Kleenex clutched in her hand. A few hours later she screamed herself awake from a nightmare where she found Daniel in their bedroom dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Terrified, she sprinted up the stairs and pounded on the door and called tearfully to Daniel to at least let her know if he was alright. In a panic, she tried the doorknob again and, to her surprise, the door opened before her.

"Daniel?" Madison called through the open door. "Daniel?"

Still empty silence reigned. Carefully she entered the room with her heart in her throat, her chest tight with the expectation of Daniel's dead body sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor. It took her the better part of fifteen minutes to search the room and closet and then work up the courage to enter the bathroom. Nothing. No Daniel. No Gandalf. Nothing.

Just the roar of silence.

Confused, Madison peered out of the French doors to see if Daniel's truck was still in the driveway. The truck was still there, exactly where Daniel had parked it when he came home from his business trip the night of the party. That accursed party. What had she been thinking that day? A whole day of one bad idea after another and this was the result.

Lonely and bitter silence.

Just then the sound of the kitchen door broke the two-day old quiet. Madison's heart leapt in her chest, and she sprinted down the stairs to the kitchen. Maybe Daniel had come back from wherever he had gone, and he was ready to listen to her! Madison skidded to a stop on the hardwood kitchen floor and hoped to see Daniel. Instead, Madison found the pantry door ajar. She did a quick inspection and just as she noticed that some food was gone from the pantry, the cabin door slammed. Daniel had avoided her again.