Tara showed up today. I haven't set eyes on her in almost seven years. Not since the divorce hearing. She said she was there to apologize. I laughed and not in a nice way. She stood there in her thousand-dollar shoes, fresh from getting out of her hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes. She did look good, I have to say.
The years have been kinder to her than to me, but then she always did have the genes for it. I guess her decision was the right one for her. She's on the board of Mecano's now. She's done well for herself, so I guess dumping me for Peter Assfuck was the right move. It's certainly paid off for her, divorcing me and marrying the VP of sales. A fast track from running that small design room where she started, for sure.
She told me that her husband, that Peter Assfuck, had just done to her what she did to me – lined up a new replacement with prospects, younger and hotter than her, and he'd just gone for it and left her. He'd cleaned her out her financially and she said she now understood what she'd done to me. How I'd felt. How sorry she was. How she'd taken the love I'd given her for granted as her due, and that she just assumed she'd get it from anyone she chose to let. How she knew I'd never leave her or cheat on her, and how she knows now what a stupid choice she made. She knows it's too late now, but she has that need to make restitution. There must be something she can do. Can we at least be friends?
I'll give her the fact that she did look contrite, but honestly, I'm so fucking trodden on now, it's too little too late.
I just looked at her. Eventually she ran down. I tried to explain that it's nice for her that she now realizes, but it's all too fucking late for me. I've been through that particular path twice now and I've no desire to retread it again because she's come to this epiphany. I don't think she knew that Penny had left me, or the circumstances, but I've no doubt she'll find out all about it now she has a clue.
I tried to explain that it doesn't make my life one iota any better that she has a better understanding of how I felt when she left. No, she didn't leave. She shat all over me from a great height. Manny's favorite phrase. She fucked that guy for months before leaving me, 'testing him out' as she said at the time. 'Needed to be sure he could satisfy her sexually as well as professionally.'
What a bitch.
Yeah, still no real forgiveness here.
But then I look at my life since it all went down and I am forced to admit it's not been great. I didn't go out and write the great American novel, nor did I write great songs or become a powerhouse in business. I guess I'm either not creative enough or just too beaten from all the shit that's come my way. I think I have at least the right to claim that. I just tried to stay afloat and not lose it totally.
Anyway, I tried to point this out to her and she just looked at me and said, 'What can I do to make this up?' I told her, 'Not a damn thing.' And pointedly asked her to leave.
She did at least do that. And this time it didn't cost me anything, except for my dignity after crying for the next hour. I thought I was over this. Obviously not.
Thank god for Jim Beam.
*****
Tara Western sat in the chair in the conference room, stunned. What she had just heard had knocked the wind out her. It had been such a good day so far. A good week in fact. A tip she'd gotten from a friend in Silicon Valley about a small internet startup had gone through and become gold. Two years ago, she'd invested a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, gotten some investors stock and last week, the company had sold to Twitter for almost fifty six million dollars. Her hundred and fifty thousand dollars investment was returned almost thirty-fold, making her an even richer woman than she'd been.
She'd also discovered that the slutty bitch that Peter, her ex-husband, had left her for, had just suffered a miscarriage. Tara was real enough to understand that her smile when she heard that news was awful, but also a realist enough about herself to know that that was who she was. She'd never regretted anything she'd done in her life, with the exception of one thing, and she wasn't about to start feeling bad because she was happy that the bitch who'd marched into her marriage and taken the man she'd chosen had something bad happen to her. Fuck that. Life was too short.
When the call had come through from the front desk that an investigator was waiting to see her, she was overjoyed. Finally, someone from Pearsons Investigations had some news! She was annoyed they hadn't called first – she'd be taking that up with them later – but just glad that perhaps they'd found Joe.
She had swept into the conference room, where they'd put the investigator, and found a lithe young woman, with bound blond hair, and who was just taking a writing pad out of her bag, her iPhone already on the table in front of her. Tara thought you could tell a lot about a person by how they laid things out on an empty table. She thought that this investigator was obviously methodical, everything was squared away and even her bag vanished under the table when she was done, instead of on it, looking untidy.
The woman smiled at Tara and stood up and offered her hand. "Hi, I'm April Carlisle. I was hoping..."
Ruthlessly, Tara interrupted. She'd been waiting for this news for months, and she didn't want to beat around the bush.
"Did you find him? Tell me you found Joe. I've been paying you clowns for months now, and no one has gotten a sniff of him. All I need to know is where he is. So, I ask again, have you found him? That's all I want to know. If not, what the hell are you doing here?"
April closed her mouth, then said, "Just to confirm Mrs. Western, we are talking about Joe Sullivan, yes?"
Tara's eyes narrowed. "Yes, of course we...wait a minute. You aren't with Pearsons, are you?" she said. She stood up, leaning over the table, hands as knuckles pressing onto the lacquered wood.
"Um, no, not as such."
"What are you hear for?"
"Well, I am an investigator. I'm tracing Joe Sullivan, which is why I am here."
"What for?" replied Tara, suspiciously.
"I... I have some bad news Mrs. Western. If you were looking for Joe Sullivan, you can stop now. I'm sorry to inform you that Joe has passed away."
There was a stunned silence and Tara dropped back into her chair.
"He's...what? He's dead? He can't be dead. I haven't..." she mumbled.
April kept her silence. Better to wait until Tara asked more pointed questions. There was a minute or so of Tara staring off into the distance and mumbling words to herself. While she did so, April watched her.
She was a handsome woman – not yet past her prime, although definitely in the sunset years of it. She had the indefinable something of an older woman who takes care of herself, is extremely presentable, looks great but still has lines and some grey streaks in her hair. Yet she had something that made you ignore that, and only see the cheekbones and the eyes and the full mouth, rather than the laugh lines and the grey hairs.
