It Had Been Years Read online

  On the One train back up from Battery Park, most likely somewhere around 37th street, while the city was nearing dusk on a cool early summer day she got her first kiss, kind of. In actuality she gave her first kiss by leaning over toward Sam, Nadrea found hers lips gently touching the side of his face and ever so close to the edge of his mouth. As she pulled a way, heart pounding, flush with excitement, Sam turned and gently brushed his lips across hers, slowly and softly returning the favor and confirming his interest in her. That night he held her hand for the first time as they walked back from the station. What an adventure the day had been, she had traveled through the world in the lap of luxury but never even explored her own world, taken the subway so randomly, sat in a pizza parlor or wondered the streets of Yonkers aimlessly. Queens was decidedly working class and not all that she imagined a place with such a royal name to be. Life would not always be so nice, so simple, and so gentle to her, but this day was. It is the one day she thinks of most often when she is alone. She wonders what might have been, and fondly recalls her time with Sam.

  Sam’s father Billy at the end of that summer took his leave as doorman and moved to Philadelphia to take over his father’s janitorial supply company. The father and son moved to the end of the mainline in Philly and as the business grew had the American dream for themselves upon the return of the prodigal son.

  Nadrea went back to the shallow world of wealth and found others to keep the company of, but none of them could ever be Sam. Most were not gentle and honest, most were not kind and giving, no one would ever hold her hand as she walked off the train again. She simply wouldn’t allow it. That was something that she reserved for herself and her memories of that first kiss with Sam.

  In D.C. she took the metro everyday despite the fact that she never needed to and almost always and without fail she could be found closing her eyes and taking one slow deep breath before walking out on the platform and closing an empty had on itself. She was thinking of that day with Sam. Like most people with their first and second loves in a large and ambiguous pasts she wondered did her ever think of her. At least she could count on his remembering her, of that much she was sure.

  The Gentleman Corn Husker

  Robert was a native of the great state of Nebraska. As fate would have it, he didn’t literally grow up on a farm, but he was raised on several of them. One of six kids, he was the only son of a agriculture broker. His native land was mostly home to buffalos and Native Americans before it was descended on by European settlers. He loves his home state, not with the pride of a lawmaker or man of power, but with the pride of a native son who truly believes that it is the best place on earth to live. Lincoln and Omaha were far cries from the streets of the D.C. metro and ones on which he was far more comfortable.

  Only in Nebraska could one of the 20 largest cities, the word city is loosely used here, more of a town really with a population just under four thousand. A town where by 20 on average all but nine girls that age have moved away, some to other towns, or places like Omaha which offered the allusion of size but many of the comforts of home and a very daring few who went to places where they could truly be anonymous. At the same time the town’s population of women between seventy and one hundred was 476 women who had largely made their lives and raised their families here, a lot of widowed women would never find another to share their companionship with based on the fact that the men died young here, dropping off dramatically after the age of sixty. There were only two hundred men in the same age range of those women, and their grandchildren were leaving en masse especially the girls.

  He knew the corn business inside and out, he understood the cattle business but hated it. The smell, the cruelty, the deranged and maniacal series of gates used to herd cows through large filthy yards to the slaughter. Did they know? Could they tell? They had to smell the blood as they drew near, complaining in loud disturbed moo’s. Corn didn’t need to be killed. Had he actually grown up on a farm, he would have realized that animals were meat and we were meant to eat them. He would have raised capons and chicks, calves and lambs only to sell as food or butcher them and eat them himself. Had he actually grown up on a farm, he would have participated at 4-H events and attended Future Farmers of America Meetings and socials would have been a given.

  Fools who think food comes from supermarkets without blood sacrifice and surrendering their lives for our sustenance never lived on a farm, never suffered through a dry year or herd filled with disease that would put the family’s modest income in peril. These are the people he loves, that he serves, that he longs to get back to each time he arrives for session. He’d rather be sitting at the Main Street café in Lincoln, talking with the local farmers and worrying about how much rain they have or haven’t had. Fishermen always seem to tell fish tales about the one that got away. Farmers do much the same thing with rain, especially when it’s dry, embellishing an eighth of an inch here and quarter of an inch there. Sitting in a local place in the morning after the work had been started and the day had begun fueling their bodies for the long days in the fields that were to come, the endless puttering and hoping that entailed farming. They laughed, joked and spun tales to keep themselves entertained and amused during the unrelenting journey that is a life. All while farming to feed an ungrateful and presumptuous world; walking the delicate line of which farm bill would be passed when by mostly useless bureaucrats and what it meant to their lively hood. Farming was at first only for one’s subsistence, then for their towns and now is dominated by conglomerates that have all but swallowed the small family farm into its ranks, preying on bad years buying farms out of bankruptcy and taking away generations of memories. Sending those families to toil fulltime in other businesses that dot the landscape, giant retailers, home improvement super stores. It is the corporate equivalent of trading beads with the natives before sending them to reservations to keep the problems to a minimum and the trouble well off to the side. These are his friends, the people he tries hardest to please. The place he feels he belongs. Home is a far cry from the crime, failing schools and misery that is most often associated with the nation’s capital. Lincoln is a simpler place with mostly genuine people and enough size to blend in, but small enough to always have a friend around the corner.

  The First Steps Toward Evil

  How often do you feel innocence shatter? She wondered as she watched him leave. Does it more often meander into the nether world? The Loss of innocence is often masked as an act of evil and evil itself is often masked by charm and charisma. After all, very few have followed a boring righteous man to the ends of the earth, but legions upon legions have followed a charming and charismatic psychopath into atrocities against mankind and almost certainly into the very depths of hell. Do we all walk a dark path toward evil or is evil in and of itself just another part of our existence? And are the people perceived as such just filling the need that our humanness requires? Our world is so very far from a utopia, most often people are trapped, not by their circumstances or others, but by themselves. They build the wall. They build the layers. They build the limitations. The external world does not place any limits upon us that with will and desire we could not break. It is the magnificent lure of darkness, of fear, and of power that leads all of us toward evil. That for which we lust most are we least likely to achieve. Solace was a lie we tell ourselves and true joy was found in the simplest of action, the most inconsequential moments, the most unmemorable but joyous events.

  The dark prince and the fair maiden, it was laughable concept for the weak minded idealists in her opinion since Nadrea had never seen herself as the fair maiden, she continued to muse while sipping away at her libation asking herself if history does not by its very nature innately perceive men as evil and women as purity and virtue. But why was it? Was it that men have always prized a woman’s innocence but a man’s darkness was also a means to his power and to provide for a woman and their offspring in an earlier time? Did no one think of a man’s sexual conquest with a whore as
demoralizing to himself as it was for his future mate and the woman who was exchanging her virtue for a measly remittance. Tittering on the edge of Victorian roles and traditional sexual politics were her first confused steps toward evil. Evil was not in a man’s eyes as many would think but it was in his actions. More often his subversive concealed actions and not his openly overt ones. Was it that he was trying to hide his true nature from others or was it that he performing acts that in some way will advance himself. Why was it never the dark princess and the fair prince in our minds? Why was it that a man should be pure and a woman impure? Was being male so reprehensible that only Satan could spawn a son but not a daughter? A prize of innocence and virtue? Was a woman’s innocence such a prize, because it could in theory only be taken once? Then again, if one was creative and his partner willing, innocence can fall a myriad of times. Time and time again in both love, and sex until were are only tiny pieces of one’s shattered self left. Was a woman’s innocence a prize because a man under those circumstances could not be compared to another for any of his short comings, physical or otherwise? Was it a pathetic attempt to placate his own ego in knowing that he was by far the most exquisite lover she had ever taken? His own physical inadequacies real or perceived cannot exist.

  When does innocence shatter? Does it shatter a little at a time? Piece by piece, until there is nothing left and one is left staring into the abyss that is their own pathetic existence. Wonder the path toward evil, bask in the glow that is power and achievement then sneak back in to the light. Otherwise, the evil deeds you must commit along the way will consume your soul, your thoughts and your actions. You will no longer be doing the evil deeds but you will have become them, and one cannot find the path back to the light if there is nothing but darkness, hopelessness and despair.

  Nadrea laughed to herself and finished yet another drink, she loved to watch innocence shatter, she had seen it all so many times before and her lover scattered back into the suburbs to his pretty blond wife and ridiculous kids, Nadrea would be just another secret he would have to keep. She liked to think that she was the only one of her kind hidden in the closet that was his mind, but reality dictated that was not the case, still she hoped in some way she had helped him take his first steps toward deceit, his first tryst with passion and desire outside of the confines of his love and his first true steps toward evil.

  The Morning After, Sunday morning

  Donna slowly started to wake up, and music danced through her loft’s sound system. It was a little heavy for early morning, not too early, but early after a late night. The words danced quietly through the stale wine scented air as the slumber drifted slowly from her eyes she realized the song was from the heavy metal god Rob Halford’s first post Judas Priest project, Fight. The final riffs faded and Bullshit Repellent by Wretching Red started to fill the air, her satellite radio was still on from the night before. She thought how ironic it was that the leader of one of the all time great metal bands was nothing more than a large scary Englishman who dressed for years with that gay biker sheik look was in fact gay, a look that half the boys in her high school, who were completely homophobic, tried desperately to emulate.

  “Morning,” came softly from the other side of the bed. Her head hurt, the buzz was still lingering in the distance. Stunned by another voice she turned in a panicked state trying to put last evening’s events together. Seemingly instantly after the greeting she felt a hand on her shoulder and could feel a man drawing nearer.

  Fuck, She thought as at the same time the same word escaped her lips.

  “What’s wrong?” the voice asked.

  She knew it, but couldn’t place it as she started to turn, brushing against this man’s thighs, Donna thought to herself how she hated these occasional but all too awkward mornings after a late night.

  At least she was in her own place, “Wait that could be worse, if he’s a nut he knows where I live.” In the few seconds of outright panic the voice asked “Coffee? Venti Mocha hot or cold? I’ll go get it.”

  As she finished her turn it was her gentleman Corn Husker, he had never spent the night before, she had never asked him to and he never had offered or asked if he could. Their liaisons were not hidden encounters in D.C. hotels all too familiar with the men and women whose secrets they did their best to keep. They were both markedly available. The only awkwardness came because they were crossing party lines. He was a boring conservative and she was party lawyer for the other slightly less overtly warlike side. It was worse than a stranger, at first she couldn’t remember and felt unsure, uncomfortable and dirty. What had happened? What had been said? It was not often and had been years since she felt dirty, she was no longer a poor little country whore on her knees behind the bleachers after the football game in the back woods of some god forsaken place. The trashy little sorority girl at the lower end of the state college system fucking every fraternity boy and jock that she thought might fill whatever gap, whatever seemed to be missing. She was in control now. It was always her choice, she knew the rules and chose more carefully. He stretched in a cat like manner, staining against his own limits tensing his legs and lower back, twisting his waist to try to get some level of flexibility in to his body. Donna tried not to move, laying there lifelessly. In the mean time, he found his way to the edge of the bed. He walked shamelessly and naked through her loft to the bathroom.

  She thought, The freak is already brushing his teeth. Then he moved to the living room, stopped to find his gym bag by the door. He slipped into a pair of worn out Levi’s, a faded red t-shirt, sandals and that damn hat with the red N on it. He grabbed his wallet, phone and sun glasses and left with a, “I’ll be back. Hot or cold?”

  “Surprise me.” she answered. And with that he left snatching her keys from the table and headed out the door like it was something he had done it a million times before.

  She sat up slowly allowing the sensations of a long night out catch up with her brain, the buzz had faded and her body hurt, her breasts were tender and her nipples were beyond sore and she could tell without speaking that her throat was raw. She started to put the pieces together of the night before, but not too quickly her head was pounding. The first give away as to why, the three empty wine bottles she could see from bed.

  The Husker Takes a Walk

  As Robert exited Donnas’ building, he fumbled to find a place for his phone and her keys as his wallet was already in place. He stepped out into the bright light and sticky heat of the day his shades already covering his bright blue eyes. He loved the sun, but most often had to wear shades to avoid getting headaches. His stride more shuffling and uncalculated dragging his lean 6’2” physique down a bright city street when his phone rings.

  “Where are you?” the voice asked.

  “Are you my mother? I didn’t realize it was your turn to watch me, Christy.”

  “It’s not, but when you don’t show up people start asking questions.”

  He laughed, “When I don’t show up? For what, brunch? So there’ll be an uneaten order of poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and the questions they’re asking? Did he get a life? Is he stuck in a corn field somewhere?”

  Christy meant well, she chased him from meeting to meeting and event to event for a living, typically Sundays were a late morning brunch in the DuPont Circle at the Tabard Inn with her and some other friends. He was if nothing if not typically predictable it was always poached eggs, homemade bacon, grilled cabbage and a heart stopping good hollandaise sauce.

  “Went to a club and then to a party.” he stated not offering a lot of detail.

  “Oh, there wasn’t anything formal on your calendar.”

  She knew his every commitment, his every move and almost every thought.

  “It was a date, not a function.” he answered after a long pause.

  “Oh, did you have fun?” what else could she say without intruding, sure she wanted to know who and when and where, just in case it came up, but she could tell he wasn’t in the mood
to share those details yet. Yet she believed to be the key word.

  “So where are you now?” He laughed out loud he knew that not knowing about his date was absolutely killing her. “I’m off to feed my addictions. You really should be able to order your coffee in advance and then have it delivered in the morning.”

  “It’s not fucking morning!” she yelled into the phone.

  “Jealous are we?” he ask tauntingly.

  On the other end of the phone was silence… not a word, a whisper or a gasp. Pure cold unadulterated silence. He waited for her wrath, her fury her jealousy and in truth her professional and personal concern to come through. It didn’t, after 15 seconds or so he slowly moved the phone away from his ear to find his battery had died. On the other end Christy was yelling obscenities so vulgar that even the oldest sailor would have learned a few new words. Upon which he ordered a little java and began his stroll back.

  Daddy takes a drive

  There had always been pressure, there had always been expectations, but nothing new ever came of them. Nardrea’s life has for all intent and purpose been an aimless crusade after lost cause after aimless crusade. It was about the social interaction, her social needs, her reckless abandon. Money had never been her issue, it wasn’t even a passing byline in the list of day to day things that concerned her. In her perfectly twisted little realm, nothing more mattered than the proper ratio and temperature of her next drink, who could she bully into her way of thinking at the next contract negation. Ok, bully might be the wrong word. Manipulate or coerce were certainly not any more flattering, more accurate perhaps, but certainly not more flattering.