Dark Kisses III of IV
Black Magic Woman
Copyright @ calibeachgirl and Jim Crowell
All rights reserved, 2011
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Chapter 6: Yesterday's a memory...
Carolyn wandered around David's house, familiarizing herself with where everything was. She stood in the hallway for a long while, looking at his medals and then going on the internet to look them up. In all their time together, he had never mentioned his time in the Air Force except in passing. She tried to imagine him in his fighter plane, zooming through the skies high above the earth.
She stopped for lunch, making a ham sandwich and then went back to her explorations. And then, her heart came to a stop as she opened her daughter's closet and found the ancient bag she recognized in her mother's house so many, many years ago.
Trembling, now on her knees, she pulled the bag out and opened it, afraid of what she knew she would find. The old book, more sheaves of musty parchment than anything else, lay there and the smell of primeval power rose into the air, causing her to sneeze as the dust settled around her.
She opened the pages, turning them one by one until she found Kendra's last visitation, marked by the yellow ribbon she always wore in her hair. Carolyn slowly read the incantation and tears formed and began to flow down her now dusty face.
It was all a lie... her love... his love... none of it real, only the result of her own mother's black magic spells and her daughter's interference. The yellowed parchments fell to the floor, scattering across the rug as she wept.
She wiped her face with her fingers, gathered up the almost faded spells, carefully put them into the bag, got her keys and drove to her mother's house.
When the old woman opened the door, she guessed what had happened and when she saw the old carpetbag, she knew. Carolyn's mother stepped back as her daughter angrily stormed into the house and stood in the middle of the living room.
"Take it back!" she screamed, "take it back to the way it was!"
The woman looked at her daughter. "I can't. It's forever, ma chère fille. It cannot be undone. Kendra..."
"Damn Kendra and damn you. Make this go away."
"Je suis désolé, ma chère, s'il vous plait, sit down. I must think."
"Mère, make this go away... I don't care how you do it, just do it. You have ruined my life. My love is built on a lie. What have you done to us?"
"Kendra wanted you to be happy, chère, that's all."
"But, now I know."
"Yes, now you know. Does it matter? Is he not everything you want? Is life so bad with him?"
"But, now I know and it will never be the same, again. I will always know. I would rather die than live this lie."
"Sit. I must think. I will make you some tea."
The air in the room shimmered and turned grey and nebulous and thick and Carolyn had trouble breathing; there was a tightness in her heart and her soul felt something burning and leaving and an emptiness and then everything went black and she fell to the floor...
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Chapter 7: Memories... I must think of a new life
The dull roar of the vacuum filled the house as Carolyn went from one room to the next, leaving a tell-tale track on the rug until she came to Christy's office. Entering the room, she was once again reminded of who he was and what he had done. Even now, she was overwhelmed by what he continued to do.
The room was what he was.
Along two walls were floor to ceiling bookshelves containing books and technical journals about satellites and their design, modern military aircraft and the shuttle. Another wall was nothing but windows facing to the south, bringing in warmth during the winter, chilly even for Southern California. The last wall had a twelve-foot long computer counter he made from cabinets from Home Depot and above the computers were framed shuttle mission patches and color photographs of the space station and two of the satellites he had helped build as they orbited the earth. He even had a piece of Skylab.
She looked at his three computers, a far cry from the new laptop he had given her children to use for schoolwork. They had quad cores, Nvidia's quadro line of graphic cards and eight gigabytes of RAM. Sometimes he had all three working at once as he designed the next generation of satellites and the hum of their cooling fans could be heard in the hallway when he had the door open. Carolyn checked the lock on the room's closet. Inside, there was a safe that held his two-terabyte external drives when he was at home. Satisfied, she turned back to the room.
Carolyn lifted her duster and started at one end of the bookshelves and worked her way to the other. She noticed a new book and pulled it out. "Western Pacific Diesels, Passenger and Freight, Vol. II" was still shrink-wrapped. She was surprised. The book was the first indication that his interests had broadened past aerospace. He had taught her that word: 'aerospace'.
She put it back and finished dusting the books and then the framed patches and photographs. Taking the special cloth he had given her, she wiped down the computer flatscreens and then closed the door.
Carolyn walked down the hallway to his bedroom and turned the vacuum back on, running it across the carpet and under his bed. She hit a pair of shoes, got on her knees, pulled them out and put them into the closet. She smiled, imagining what his wife would think... if he had a wife. She couldn't understand why he was still single. From everything she knew about him, he was prime husband material. Why was he still single? She knew he wasn't gay; over the last two years she had seen his occasional girlfriends but she had also seen him sit quietly in his office, just staring out the window like he was missing something in his life... something or someone.
She walked back into the hallway and dusted Christy's military awards hanging on the wall, wondering if he would ever tell her the story behind them as she carefully dusted. Probably not... her employer was a private man and kept to himself.
Occasionally, though, he stayed out all night, returning the next day, his clothes smelling of perfume. Either the woman changed her perfume or he was dating several women, although not regularly. She shook her head. What he did was his own business, she knew but, for some reason, it bothered her... it depressed her. Every time she looked at him, she felt there should be something there, like when you see something out of the corner of your eye but when you turn, it's gone and you wonder what it was.
She looked at her watch. He would be home soon and she needed to start dinner. He had given her free reign to cook what she wished and while she wanted to give him the healthiest meal possible, she also wanted him to enjoy the food. Tonight, there would be grilled salmon with dill sauce, baked potatoes, a small salad and homemade peach cobbler. The way to a man's heart...
Carolyn remembered the day he offered her the position. They had met at Islands in Manhattan Beach for lunch. She ordered the fish taco and he the Greek salad. "Are you honest?" he asked, smiling, "because if you aren't, that's a deal breaker."
She was taken aback, never expecting such a question.
"Yes, sir, my mother brought me up to follow the Good Book."
"Can you cook?"
"Yes, sir, I can, very well, mainly southern and Louisiana French."
"That sounds interesting. How soon can you start? The position is live-in."
"Oh, I didn't know. The agency didn't mention that."
"Will that be a problem? Husband at home?"
"Uh, no, sir, I'm a widow but I have two teenagers."
Their food arrived and he asked for another iced tea.
