For The Least Of These (19 page)

“It was just me being me,” she said, as though that should explain everything.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I said.

“Look, I knew Adam didn’t want me to hurt Rick, so I pretended that it was killing me to leave him and come back home. I’ve had to keep playing the part so Adam doesn’t figure it out. You didn’t really think I was crying over him, did you?”

Adam returned to the room, so I didn’t reply. I wasn’t completely sure I believed Alicia’s story, but now wasn’t the time to get into it.

“You have a nice place, Alicia,” Adam said. “Do you like living this close to your parents?”

“It’s not too bad. They allow me a little privacy. For instance, it’ll probably take them an hour or so to come over here and ask me who was visiting me.”

Adam laughed. “I think it is probably nice to be able to see them every day. I miss my mom and dad. I think I’m going to go visit them once I get Brandy home.”

The three of us talked politely for a few minutes, and then Adam told me that we should be on our way. Alicia stood in her doorway and watched until we drove away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her mother heading towards Alicia’s apartment, and I felt a smile on my lips.

“Where do your parents live?” I asked Adam.

“You mean you don’t know?” he said. “I’m hurt. I’ll bet you know where Rick’s mother lives.” Adam was kidding, of course. Or at least I hoped he was.

“I only know where she lives because it was such a big deal when Rick bought her a house in LA. I’ve never heard much about your family, just about your sister… Sorry, I don’t mean to keep bringing that up.”

“It’s fine, Brandy. I’ve made peace with it. I love Siobhan, and I want to talk about her. I would disrespect her if I didn’t. Anyway, my folks live in Cary, North Carolina. I have tried to keep my family out of the media. They don’t want or need the attention that Rick and I get.”

Adam opened my door for me to get inside the car. He was being nicer than he had been earlier. Not that he had ever been mean to me, but now it seemed different. I fought the urge to think that Adam was falling for me.
I had to be realistic. He had told me repeatedly that he wasn’t in love with me. I knew in my heart that he now considered me his friend and that alone explained his kindness.

I helped Adam navigate back to Highway 98. We headed west towards Lillian, Alabama. A few miles shy of the Lillian Bridge, I had Adam turn off to the right. We made a few more turns until we were approaching the house Terry and I shared.

Our house was actually a bungalow, although Terry always argued the point with me. As we pulled into the drive, I noticed that the light tan paint on the exterior of the house was fading due to the harsh salty wind blowing in from the bay. The shingles on the gabled roof were beige and in good shape. The bungalow was full of windows and there was a dormer on the roof that faced the main street. There was also a large porch on the front with a wooden swing hanging at one end of it. Terry’s plants were hanging out front and they were flourishing as usual. Looking towards the back of the house, Perdido Bay was slightly in view. I asked Adam to get out and come inside.

We walked into the front room which comprised our living room and dining room. Terry had done all of the arranging in this part of the house. We had a brown leather sofa and loveseat, two ebony and brass end tables with a coffee table to match, and a black entertainment center that housed Terry’s pride and joy: a 42-inch plasma television. The dining side of the room held our dinette table. It had a round glass top with a gold pedestal and there were four matching upholstered chairs. Other than this, the whole room was empty of furniture. The walls were white and practically bare. Terry had hung one of those “Dogs Playing Poker” pictures over the couch but that was about all. The floors were hardwood, and Terry kept them polished to glowing perfection. The windows wore only sheer white curtains over white bamboo roll-up blinds.

I told Adam to sit down on the couch and I offered him a beverage. He asked what I had and settled on a bottle of Dasani water. I got one for both of us and sat down beside him on the couch.

“I can tell this is a man’s house,” Adam said. “I don’t see anything that tells me you live here.”

“I think of this as Terry’s house and I’m just his roommate. I’ve decorated my room, if you want to see it.”

We stood up and I led him to the back of the house. We passed the kitchen which wasn’t decorated at all beyond the appliances. The cabinets were the same drab eggshell color they had been since I moved in with Terry. The doors to the hall bathroom and to Terry’s bedroom were closed. My room was open and inviting us to come inside.

“Wow,” Adam said as we stepped into my room. It was a stark contrast to the rest of the house. The walls were painted pale green. My bed, covered by a brightly colored handmade quilt, was in front of the double window on the back wall. The windows had matchstick bamboo roll-up blinds which were framed by a sheer pale blue scarf draped over a satin finish nickel curtain rod. On the right wall, I had a desk which held my Mac iBook and a printer. There was a Resident Evil poster above the desk. A bookshelf was also along this wall with all of my favorite authors: Douglas Adams, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Jane Austin, Philippa Carr, and more. The left wall had my dresser and the door that led into my closet. I had posters on this wall of Spiderman, Batman, and, of course, Rick. My dresser, along with my makeup and other personal things, held a stack of my favorite Rick Hartwood CD’s. The wall at the front of the room was home to my nineteen inch TV which was connected to an XBox. On the hardwood floor was a multicolored rag rug Alicia had made and given to me.

“So, you’re a gamer?” Adam asked.

“I guess you might call me that. I’m a lot of things. I like playing games, but I also like to read – and I watch a lot of movies.”

Adam was still taking everything in. He seemed interested in learning all of the things that I enjoyed. I realized that he didn’t really know me at all. And I knew less about him than he did about me. I was beginning to understand why he wasn’t in love with me and why I couldn’t possibly be in love with him. I still believed that love was possible, but it was going to take longer than a weekend.

After he had finished checking out my book collection, we went back into the living room. “So,” Adam began, “do you want me to take you to look for a car? Or were you planning on checking the papers for individual sellers?”

“You don’t have to take me. I probably should make a few calls first. My dad usually knows someone with a car for sale. If not, he can take me to look at the car lots. He’s really good at negotiating.

Adam seemed a little surprised. “Well, I guess this is goodbye then,” he said. He hesitated for a moment. I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t trying to stop him from leaving. “It was a…really interesting weekend, Brandy. I hope everything works out for you. And I’m glad I met you.”

We were walking to the door. Adam was about to be gone forever. I didn’t want him to leave, but I felt that asking him to stay would make things worse. “I’m glad we met, too. You are a really wonderful guy, Adam. I’m thankful I got to know that. I’m thankful for everything you’ve done for me and all that you’ve told me. I’ve changed in the couple of days I’ve known you
– for the better, I think. I hope I’ll see you again someday.”

“I do know where you live,” he said, and he gave me his wonderful smile one more time.

“Goodbye, Adam.” I knew there were tears in my eyes, but I couldn’t stop them.

Adam took me by the arm, and before I knew what was happening, he was kissing me. Then he was gone
– without another word. I watched his car turn at the corner and soon it was out of sight. I was sobbing uncontrollably by this time, and I didn’t care. I’d never met anyone like Adam, and losing him was devastating. Even more shocking was the fact that I had let him leave. I didn’t even have his phone number or anything. What had I been thinking?

When I finally got my emotions in check, I called my parents and told them what had happened over the weekend. My dad assured me that he’d have a car for me by the end of the week. My mom offered to cook me dinner, but I told her I just wanted to stay at home and rest.

I put away the things that I’d brought back from Biloxi – everything except the Bible Adam had given me. I sat down on my bed and turned to a verse Adam had bookmarked in the New Testament. It was John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I tried to concentrate on the meaning of the verse, but I was having trouble focusing. I was about to put the bookmark back in place when I noticed that Adam had jotted down some additional verses for me to look up: 1 John 4:9-10. It took me a few minutes to locate 1 John, but then I read the verses out loud, “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” I still wasn’t sure if I understood everything I was reading, but I was interested in reading more.

I went back to the book of John and began reading from the first chapter. I found myself reading verses several times trying to comprehend the meaning of every verse. I finished reading chapter four by the time Terry got home. When I heard his car in the drive, I reluctantly put the Bible aside and went to the living room. At some point, I would have to explain to Terry that I had decided that we couldn’t be roommates anymore, but I would save that for another day.

Terry knew something was wrong. Why else would I be home at four in the afternoon? And my car was not in the driveway. He also sensed that I was sad about something. I told him about Alicia’s and my trip to Biloxi, but I left out the part about meeting Adam and Rick. I told him what had happened to Sam, and he assumed that I was sad over the loss of my car. I was a little melancholy over Sam, but mostly I was just sad and ashamed about the way I had behaved the whole weekend.

After we talked, Terry decided to go pick us up something for dinner. He brought back a large order of
lumpia and cashew chicken from a Filipino restaurant that I loved. He’d also stopped off and rented a DVD for us to watch. It was the collector’s edition of “Gone with the Wind”, my favorite movie.

Terry fixed us each a plate and then he popped the movie in the DVD player. He didn’t normally watch what he called “girlie movies”, but he sat through all three plus hours without complaining once. While
I watched Scarlett spend her life loving and dreaming about a man who would never love her and then learning too late that she had alienated the one man that did love her and that she truly loved, I couldn’t help but think of my own folly with Adam. As Scarlett stood at the end of the movie – weeping after Rhett has left her – and says, “…And I'll think of some way to get him back. After all...tomorrow is another day,” I decided that all of my tomorrows would be spent trying to get Adam back.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done was walk away and leave Brandy. Of course, I never should have kissed her
– that just added to the confusion of our relationship. The last thing I wanted to do was give her false hope, but I found – and keep finding over and over again – that I have strong feelings for Brandy. If we had only met under different circumstances, maybe I wouldn’t have had to leave. But Brandy had so many conflicted feelings during our short acquaintance that I wasn’t about to complicate her life even more by starting up a romance. And of course, there was the thing about Rick. I still can’t be sure Brandy is over him. I had to protect myself, too. So I left her standing there with tears in her eyes, but I didn’t let her see the ones in my eyes.

After leaving Brandy’s house, I drove back towards Biloxi, although I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I thought I could sort out my feelings in the place where I met her. I spent a lot of time in prayer as I made the journey, but I still didn’t figure anything out. Mostly I prayed for Brandy. More than anything else, I wanted her to accept Jesus and understand what He did for us. If she could, eventually, everything else in her life would fall into place.

When I arrived in Biloxi, I thought about checking back into the Richland, but I drove by and kept heading west. I passed by the Coliseum and I remembered the concert. It made me start wondering about Alicia and Rick. Something was going on that Alicia wasn’t telling Brandy or me, but I couldn’t guess what it might be. Rick might be more forthcoming, but I really didn’t want to talk to him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a sign pointing out the Rest Inn. I remembered that Fisher Perry stayed there, and I began to see red. I couldn’t get past the idea that Fisher wanted to hurt Brandy, and I felt he would have if he had found her last night instead of her car. I imagined that he had been released from jail by now, and the thought angered me even more. I should have kept driving, but my emotions got the better of me. I had passed the street that led to the Rest Inn, so I made a U-turn and went back.

I slowly drove past the rundown motel and wondered whatever possessed Brandy and Alicia to register at such a place. The outer walls desperately needed fresh paint; I couldn’t even make out the color it was so faded. The doors all appeared to have been painted red at one time, but now they looked a dull pink. The roof was in disrepair, and I imagined that it leaked in several places whenever there was even minimal rainfall. There were two vehicles parked in front of the Rest Inn, a red Corvette parked down by the office and a blue pickup truck parked at the end farthest from the office. I was sure the pickup belonged to Fisher Perry, but I decided to stop in at the office first.

A loud bell jangled as I opened the door into the ramshackled office.
The furniture seemed to have come straight out of the ‘60’s: a cow patterned Naugahyde sofa and matching chairs, a blue Formica topped coffee table with vintage coffee stains, and a pink lamp that was reminiscent of the bottle where Barbara Eden resided in “I Dream of Jeannie.” Across the back of the room was a counter with the same Formica top as the coffee table. It held a registration book, piles and piles of disheveled papers, old paper coffee cups from various fast food restaurants, and a sprinkling of tools and hardware scattered over the top of everything else. The desk clerk arrived from a backroom just as I approached the counter. Dressed in white tennis shorts and a bright blue polo shirt, the gentleman appeared to be of Indian descent. His hair was jet black curls that circled his dark face and gave him an almost angelic appearance. He looked me up and down with his black eyes, and when he finally spoke, he had a thick Punjabi accent, “May I help you, sir?”

At this point, I wasn’t sure why I had stopped in the office. This man would probably never give me any information about Perry, and he would probably warn Perry that I was asking about him. Still, I took a chance. “I’m looking for a guy name Perry, Fisher Perry.” Before I finished the sentence, an idea formulated in my brain, so I continued, “I’m here to speak with him about an insurance claim on his vehicle. He gave this as his address, but he failed to give the room number.”

Apparently, this was the correct approach to take. “Oh, yes, sir. Mr. Perry is staying in room nine. Is he expecting you? He and I are good friends, and he hasn’t mentioned this to me.” Thanks to the clerk’s heavy accent, I had to make a concerted effort to understand what he was saying.

I was already starting to feel guilty for lying, but I couldn’t back out yet. “No, I was just hoping to catch him. I tried to call his cell phone earlier but he didn’t answer.”

“Fisher, I mean, Mr. Perry, likes to sleep late. He probably didn’t hear when you rang him. I can call him for you now, if you like.” The clerk was smiling at me like we were old friends, and again I felt a twinge of guilt.

“That’s okay. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see me. Is that his truck?” I pointed towards the blue pickup.

“Yes, and he was very upset when it was vandalized.”

So, Perry probably had made an insurance claim on his truck if he felt that Brandy had “vandalized” it.

The clerk continued, “You’d better go see him now. He likes to go have lunch around this time. You wouldn’t want to miss him.”

I hesitated because I thought the clerk would call Perry as soon as I walked outside, but I didn’t really have a choice. If I stayed in the office any longer, the clerk would get suspicious and definitely call Perry
– or the police. As I thanked the clerk and turned to leave, the clerk began speaking so rapidly that I couldn’t easily discern what he was saying. He was gesticulating towards the door, and I soon realized that he was attempting to tell me that Perry was walking out of his room and towards his truck. I picked up the pace and rushed outside, calling to Perry as I exited the office. Perry stopped and gave me a quizzical stare as I all but ran to where he was standing.

I had never laid eyes on this guy before, and it was clear he didn’t recognize me either. I had wanted Perry to look like the swine I had imagined with greasy hair, small deceitful eyes, two or three day old beard stubble, and shabby, filthy clothes. He completely surprised me by having none of these characteristics. Instead, Perry was clean shaven, his hair and clothes were clean, and he had bright eyes that showed not a hint of his criminal heart. “Do I know you?” he asked, his tone implying suspicion.

“I’m here to discuss the damage you received to your truck. Do you think we could step inside?” This time I wasn’t completely lying. The damage to his truck had everything to do with what he’d done to Brandy.

Perry immediately loosened up. “Sure, come on in.”

We started towards his room, and I began to put together a plan that would help bring about justice for what Perry had done to Brandy. Once we were inside the room, I carefully pulled the door shut and locked it securely…