My Deja Vu Lover (3 page)

  
They had their degrees from the U and they were both in jobs they hated, stuck in cubicles squinting into computers all day.

  
“So what did they expect with history majors? Get into something practical.”

  
Yes, sure, we’d been through this a dozen times. Reminding him I was a trust fund baby and could squeak by if I stuck with a shared apartment and pizza wouldn’t shut him up.

  
So I said the thing that always worked. “I love you, Macbeth.”

  
He said, “Sure, April, I love you, too,” but he didn’t look at me. Instead he stood up and walked out, pausing at the door to say, “I need to pick up Cyd. We’re going out to some new Italian place she’s heard about. Want to come with us?”

  
“No. I’m okay. Honest. Tom will be along soon.”

  
Macbeth nodded and left, pushing in the lock button on the door before he closed it. The knob rattled from the other side when he turned it to make sure he had locked me in safely. After his car pulled away from the curb, I got up and switched off the overhead light, then returned to the window to stare out at the darkening sky above the moving shadows of the vine leaves.

  
Could have told him to turn out the light when he left. Cyd would have done that. Not me. I’d spent my life avoiding confrontations, doing things my own way when no one was watching.

  
Once in a while I’d tried to defend myself, explain why I wanted something, and I either stumbled over crappy explanations, or screamed things I couldn’t take back, or dissolved into tears.
 
So I quit bothering and kept my thoughts to myself.

  
While I played with my thoughts, weaving them mentally through the vine maple like threads, I saw Tom hurrying along the sidewalk, his tall frame bent against the nonexistent wind. His head was lowered as though he could only move forward by butting his way through the mist. A forelock of dark wavy hair fell across his eyes. His trench coat flapped around his long legs.

  
I banged on the window glass and waved but being Tom and lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t hear me.

  
After I let him in he trailed me to the kitchen, his hands on my shoulders, and we stared together at the interior of
 
the fridge.

  
“We could do eggs,” I said.

  
“How about eggs benedict?”

  
“We don’t have ham. Or muffins.”

  
“It’s the hollandaise that counts. We can use toast.” He turned me to face him and wound his arms around me. He was tall and thin and average looking until you looked up into his eyes. Tom had thick black eyelashes out to there and his eyes were this lovely shade of dark brown, sparkling and teasing and full of promises he never remembered he’d made. Oh yes, I knew the boy well.

  
“Your coat’s wet.”

  
“Not inside,” he said, and opened it to wrap me up, pressing me against the rough wool of
 
his sweater. Right off I knew he’d split up with his latest girlfriend. He nuzzled my neck until I giggled.

  
“We’ll never get supper done this way.” I pushed away from him because I wasn’t about to be a consolation prize.

  
Despite the lack of ingredients, Tom, who was a fair cook, put together a hot meal while I, who wasn’t, turned off the TV and turned on the stereo and poured the wine.
                 

  
We sat on the floor in the front room, stretched out among the pillows and bolsters we had dragged off the couch. Light from the kitchen doorway threw a patterned strip up one wall and across the ceiling of the entry hall, giving us all the light we needed. I could feel Tom watching me more than I could see him, his dark eyes shadows in his narrow face.
            

  
“What’s the problem, April?”

  
“A couple of job interviews, no job.”

  
“Sorry, lovey. Wish I could help.”

  
“What about you?” I asked, because I knew he hated his job. “Thought of something else to do?”

  
“Been thinking about going back to the U. God, I still owe on my student loan. But I need a master’s.”

  
That was Macbeth’s chant, that Cyd and Tom needed to get degrees in business or computer science. “What can you do with a master’s? Besides teach high school that is.”

  
“Teenagers? Right. Forget that plan.”

  
“I’d rather panhandle than go back to school,” I said.

  
“We could get married,” Tom said. He said that regularly between girlfriends.

  
“What’s-her-name left you, huh?”

  
He laughed. “Yeah. Something about me living with my folks. A turnoff, I guess.”

  
Tom lived with his parents and I lived on a very small trust fund set up by a grandmother. Real shortage of Macbeth ambition in there somewhere. Also, maybe you have to love something in order to be committed to it and I didn’t have a definition of love. Nothing and no one had ever happened to me that I could separate from the rest of my life and identify as love.

  
Having the sort of prettiness that attracts males, I’ve had guys following me since grade school, had sex for the first time when I was in high school and since then had several lovers except that they weren’t. I enjoyed sex but even at seventeen and not very worldly, I knew I didn’t love the guy.

  
“How can you do that, have affairs with guys you know you don’t love?” Cyd once asked me.

  
“I love the guy I’m with,” I had told her, “when I’m with him, and isn’t that a song?
 
Thing is, even then, I know in my head I could have as much fun with any of a half dozen other guys I know.”

  
To Tom I said, “So, lover, how would marriage solve our financial problems?”

  
“It wouldn’t,” he said and managed to knock over his glass of wine while reaching for me. “But it would make poverty more fun.”

  
“Uh huh. You could cook for me,” I said over my shoulder as I headed for the bathroom to grab a large towel. “And I could clean up after you,” I added as I knelt and mopped up the wine from the carpet. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I’m going to have to pass on your offer.”

  
“Okay. I’ll ask again next week.”

  
He would, too, he would still be around next week caring about me and so would Cyd and Macbeth. I could count on them which was why I adored them.

  
“Tom, do you believe in premonitions?”

  
“The first time I saw you I knew you were the woman I would marry.”

  
“Not that kind of premonition. Listen, be serious.”
 
Kneeling beside him, where he had stretched out on the carpet, I put my face close to his so I could see his expression in the dim light. He didn’t try to grab me, just lifted his face enough to kiss me. I socked his arm.

  
“Stop, be serious.”

  
“I’m always serious when I kiss.”

  
“I’ve got to tell you something. Cyd thinks I imagined it. I didn’t.”

   
The scene was sharp, the palm trees, the brilliant sky, the shimmering heat, the wheel beneath my sweating hands, the oncoming car. I described it to Tom, quickly at first, afraid that like Cyd, he would think it was a memory of something I’d once seen.

  
He surpassed me by saying, “Describe the car we were in.”

 
 
“I’m not good at cars. Gray, I think, or maybe light blue, and lots of chrome, the fenders were chrome and it had wide strips around the front of the hood, and oh, there wasn’t any roof.”

  
“A convertible?”

  
“I guess so.”

  
“Do you know anyone who owns a gray convertible?”

  
“No, and I’ve never seen a car like it except, wait, I know, on PBS. That’s it, those Masterpiece Theater shows. Only those are in England and they don’t have palm trees.”

  
“You’ve lost me,” Tom said.

  
Leaning against him, I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the car. “You know those shows on TV that are set at some English country estate and the women wear thin little dresses, the kind Cyd looks for at vintage clothing stores, and everyone talks fast and drinks nonstop?”

 
 
“Mysteries? Dramas? Which series?”

  
“I can’t remember names, oh, they take place between the World Wars and everybody is very rich.”

  
“The twenties or thirties?”

  
“You’re the history major. Yes, I guess so.”

  
“All right. Now describe Cyd and Macbeth to me.”
 
He ran a fingertip down my nose and then across my lower lip.

  
I swatted his hand away.

  
“I can’t think when you do that.” But as I concentrated on the scene, I saw them all again, not a vision but a memory. “Cyd. She was sitting in the middle and staring right at me. You were all in a row, all three in front.”

  
“A bench seat that went all the way across the car. Was Cyd wearing the same style glasses?”

  
“No. No! She wasn’t wearing glasses. And her hair, it
 
was cut short and pressed tight to her head. In some ways she didn’t look like Cyd at all, her face was rounder, but I knew she was Cyd.”

  
“And me and Macbeth?”

  
“I couldn’t see you too well. You had one hand in front of your face, like you were trying to keep the sun out of your eyes. You were both wearing white shirts. And ties.”

  
“Macbeth, yes. Me, no,” Tom said.

  
“It was you and both of you had very short hair.”

  
“Like an army cut, straight across?”

  
“No, but your hair was either cut or combed close to your head, slicked back, I think maybe.”

  
“And the car you were driving? Describe the dashboard. What about the hood? Was it a convertible, too?”

  
“I can’t remember and it doesn’t matter, Tommy! What matters is that I killed us all, all of us, you, me, Macbeth, Cyd! It was so real. What if I saw something that is going to happen?”

  
“You’re describing the past, lovey. So whatever it is, it’s over.”

  
“Or we’re all on our way to a costume party. People renovate those old cars and make them look like new.”

  
I felt the tears rising and I hated that, hated going out of control. He touched my cheek, must have felt tears, because he pulled me down into his arms and stroked my hair and kissed me.

  
Then he piled pillows around me, building a wall of velvet and corduroy, saying, “That’s your barricade against the world.”