Midsummer's Eve (4 page)

I drove
t
o the gas station, filled up the tank, and pulling back on the interstate, headed North ins
tead of South.
I was no longer feeling the drive to Georgia to visit my old college r
oommate. I just wanted to go home and
wallow in my misery in private.

Two

T
he next morning as
I dutifully
tried to work up the energy to
get dressed and
go to work, one question kept playing over and over in my mind. “What does
Adam
’s newest strumpet
see in him anyway?
”
I will be fifty in a few months, so my choices are limited at best. She, on th
e other hand
,
is young
,
and as painful as it is to admit
,
breathtakingly beautiful. Which leads
me to beg the question of what
a 35
-year-old bombshell could
pos
sibly w
ant with a
47-year-old playboy? Nope, no money in his bank account. That’s not it. It surely
isn’t the sex.
I’ll be honest
with you. I’m stumped. However
I’m guessing a substance abuse problem, mental health issue, or the girl is just dumb as a plow horse.
Then why am I so crazy
in love with
the man you ask? Try as I might I cannot answer that question. It’s a certifiable case of
love being
both
blind
and stupid
!

             
Oh well, what’s done is done. Dragging myself off the couch
,
I
padded into the kitchen for a cup of Maxwell House wit
h a healthy dose of Coffeemate Liquid French V
anil
la C
reamer. Screw the diet I struggle desperately to adhere to every single day of my life. I grabbed three
,
fresh Krispy
Kreme doughnuts from a box-- a
neighborhood Girl S
cout
had gone door to door yesterday selling them for some fundraiser -- and enjoyed them with my coffee. I couldn’t think of a living soul who really cared if my weight fluctuated by ten or fifty pounds, so why suffer needlessly?
Dang
, they were good
! I grabbed three more without feeling one iota of guilt. Seconds later
,
I was stuffed and feeling the
effects of a sugar high, so I went back to bed and crawled under the covers
,
wondering if maybe I was clinically depressed.

How do you cope when you learn
that
the man you love and plan to spend your twilight years in a rocker on the front porch clipping coupons from the Sunday edition of the
Charlotte Observer
is cheating on you? And has been for some time
,
evidently
. You don’
t. Or I don't. Oh
,
but some women do.

We all know at least one of these light-hearted vixens, blessed with the astounding ability to steer their shattered lives back on course and conti
nue joyously barhopping and man
hunting for their next
soul
mate. Apparently, I had misplaced my instruction manual on rapid recovery from gut wrenching betrayal.

A
s if
Adam
’s
being u
nfaithful wasn’
t torment enough my rapidly-
deflating ego had to be notified of the fact that he was cheating with an Asian wom
an. Here’
s the kicker! A philandering Asian seductress who app
eared to in her mid thirties
! Lord knows anyone who had the chance to witnes
s her st
unning beauty first hand
had then felt the driving compulsion to enlighten me.

Now I didn’
t just fall off the back of a cantaloupe truck
,
and I’m fully aware that when some men hit the dreaded midlife crisis
,
their fantasies tend to lean toward the occasional dallianc
e with a wrinkle free, young
, gh
etto booty bimbo. Nevertheless
,
I had deluded myself into thinking my man was different. He loved me! With a passion very rarely found in men! And would continue to do so until he drew his last breath! Whew boy! Talk about
your vast stupidity!

When I discovered the cold brutal facts about
Adam
’
s secret life
,
it had been comparable to drawing the Tower card in the Tarot deck. My blissful little world came crashing down with the intensity of on
e of the devastating hurricanes
that are happening way too frequently around this old world of ours.

I couldn’
t eat, sleep, or think about anything other than him. Day and night I issued telepathic messages toward the quiet phone willing it to ring. I kept praying that he would, in a rare moment of clarity, realize that I was the very reason for his mise
rable existence. That he couldn’
t possibly imagine living one day of his desolate life without me in it.

Trust me, his desolatio
n never skipped a beat. Instead
,
it was I who was forced to come to a sudden blinding realization that his head was too filled with thoughts of
her
to even allow a fleeting memory of me to squeeze into the already too small space. And Lord knows all illusions were shattered for real. With lightening speed! Into a billion pieces! The day I saw
her!

The date will go down in heartbreak infamy.
December 21, 2011
.

I had been
busily cleaning house that mo
rning and listening to Adele
belt out
Rolling in the Deep
, when the sudden urge hit to ride by
Adam
’s house. Just out of the blue. It was a feeling I found impossible to shake. I threw myself into scrubbing the kitchen floor, the bathtub, and the toilets, but it proved to be a powerful, unrelenting urge.

At any rate, my insight showed no sign of budging an inch until it had gained control of my entire thought process. So I gave in to the premonition and nervously hopped in my
Jeep. O
h, you can believe I prayed a most fervent prayer during the
five
-
minute ride
to his
house
that he would be alone. As my
luck would have it,
it proved to be one of those iffy requests that God sometimes chooses
to give considerable debate to
because the absolute love of my life wasn't alone. Nope! There was a vehicle parked beside of his. An ol
der model red
SUV of some sort with most of its paint having peeled away years ago and with the additional selling feature of
having
a missing rear bumper.

Now
I realize that some folk’
s circumstances are simply beyond their control, especially in this economy, and I pray that God delivers a special blessing to each and every one of them. But come on! The vehicle had a sheet of cardboard from a Charmin bathroom tissue box substituting for the passenger door window! Other than being tacky as all hell, what on earth did the driver do at crossroads?

Oh well. This leads me to say one thing about
Adam
, which may or may not be construed as a compliment
. Class or no class, there wasn’
t a
willing female alive who couldn’
t appear beneath him.

Even if it was another woman
,
the thought of her riding around in such a hideous vehicle gave me some slight satisfaction. My rationalization was that if her car was a rusty antiquated relic
without a semblance of cuteness - quite ugly actually-
then she probably was as well.

I know. Trust me, I know. I should probably t
ake a few minutes to schedule that
appointment
with a
therapist
as my frequently incompetent mind, compared to that of the average middle
-
aged female, sometimes takes solitary flight into the hinterland.

On the other hand, it would seem that
Adam
had alrea
dy made his appointment
with the driver of the aforementioned hideous vehicle. I knew it was another woman. I felt it in the pit of my shattered soul. I knew it as well as I knew my suddenly trembling body would require the drawing of another shaky breath, that the sun would rise and set tomorrow, and that the Republicans and Democrats would promise to run this country in a bi-partisan fashion and fail miserably.

Against my better judgment, because admittedly my volatile temper has an extremely short fuse when it concerns the
other woman
, I pulled into his driveway and proceeded to pound on the front door. His bedroom is the first door to the right when you enter his house. So even standing outside the door, I heard his feet
hit the floor with a heavy thud
from the general vicinity of his bedroom. This most definitely was not a promising sign. It pretty much confirmed my su
spicions that his visitor was not
of the male persuasion. 

In all honesty, I think I would rather catch him in a heated bump and grind with another man. For some reason, I think it would hurt less. My admittedly warped sense of reasoning assures me that a fling with a man would be just a passing phase with
Adam
, whereas if he had a thrust session with another woman there would be some dreaded degree of emotion involved.

Actually, I can’t even convince myself of that either, since my best friend is a transgendered female and I know how deeply she loves.
I’ll tell you all about her later.

I heard
Adam
take a few cautious steps and then pause as if weighing his limited options. He has a large bay w
indow in the front of his house
so he had already seen my Jeep parked in his driveway, I was sure. Now he just had to figure out what to d
o with me, since his infinitesimal brain
had probably already issued the severe thunderstorm warning that I wouldn't be in a particularly jovial frame of mind. 

Summoning his courage, as
Adam
would never be accused of having nerves of granite, I heard his heavy footfalls land on the opposite side of the door. But did he open it? Oh! Hell no!

The chicken shit weasel chose to insult me, most egregiously, by going into his bathroom and raising a window beside the door. Did he honestly believe that I would remain on one side of the scree
n, while he and his paramour re
enacted scenes from
Memoirs of a Geisha
on the other?

“
Hey,
Eve
.”
He peeked
through the wire mesh and tried
to form a weak lopsided smile as
he pretended that all hell wasn’
t about to break loose.

The
man should issue a daily prayer of gratitude toward the inventor of window screens.

His attempt at a smile failed while all his blood seemed to drain from his upper region and into his bright red boxers. Rather romantic boxers with little white hearts randomly scattered throughout the silky material. It crossed my mind that he had never modeled this particular pair of lovey-dovey underwear for me.

As I peered through the screen, I noticed that his sa
ndy brown
thinning hair was tousled and the bags under his eyes were pronounced. This wa
s a good indicator that he hadn’
t been awake long.

At 5’
9
”
,
Adam
was only a few inches taller than me with the most adorable little boy face and the clearest blue eyes, reminiscent of Jeff Hunter in
King of Kings
. He is charming, witty, and without fail, the life of the numerous parties he so loves to attend. His penchant for revelry stems from the fact that he can get blitzed, forget that he is fast becoming a middle
-
aged man, and therefore not have to behave like one.

Adam
was your typical nocturnal bad boy. And as bad as I hate to admit it, as he had no doubt been cavorting under th
e covers with his latest tramp
seconds earlier, I loved him with every ounce of my troubled soul.

“
Who is she,
Adam
?”
I was
trying
hard
to steady my breathing and control the raging impulse to do a somersault through the window screen landing in a handstand on his head. This could not be happening! Was I really such a colossal fool? “And
don’
t even give me that ‘
she is just a friend
’
crap
!”