Pure Love

LOVE Intro: A beautiful tale of honor and a pure love that cannot be. There's a man lying on a lounge chair on a beach in Moorea. He's well built, relatively good looking, face a little drawn from some hard years of indiscretion as a youth. His name is John, not after the biblical character but rather after a grandfather that he never met. Everyone calls him Bid, a nickname of dubious account from his youth. His arms are a collage of tattoos, each one documenting a pivotal period in his life in
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LOVE Intro: A beautiful tale of honor and a pure love that cannot be. There's a man lying on a lounge chair on a beach in Moorea. He's well built, relatively good looking, face a little drawn from some hard years of indiscretion as a youth. His name is John, not after the biblical character but rather after a grandfather that he never met. Everyone calls him Bid, a nickname of dubious account from his youth. His arms are a collage of tattoos, each one documenting a pivotal period in his life in one way or another. On his right wrist are the Chinese tri-grams for the elements arranged in a circle around the Tai Chi, the venerated sphere representing yin and yang, the light and dark side of everything. On his right shoulder is a spider web that wraps around his arm and down to his bicep, where it stops just above a pile of skulls behind some barbed wire. Inside of his left forearm is a tiger, next to three initials in gothic lettering that represent the neighborhood he grew up in. On his left Shoulder are two large Koi, one black and the other red, also wrapping down onto his bicep. On the inside of each bicep is a kanji character, one for “love” and the other for “honor”, and at the moment he wonders silently if ever the twain shall meet. From a distance he looks bored, but really he's extremely tired and sad. His closely cropped hair has a dusting of gray that you have to look closely to find. Sunglasses shield his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun, and hide his anguish from the people around him. Normally he would be totally self sufficient, solid as a rock. Years of hard work have calloused his hands, and long ago his familiarity to loss made his soul seem calloused as well. Only the love of a woman broke through that hardened exterior, and the loss of that woman broke his heart and left him wistful, wondering what he's done and where have the years gone. The sun rose slowly over the café at palazzo del sol. The morning shift is picking up the grounds, littered from the festivities of the previous night. At the edge of the slate-tiled dance floor a man is doing pushups, a hundred at a time, five sets, resting briefly between. Each set is separated by abdominal crunches of an equal number. The man is pretty fit, and he's already completed a five-mile run along the shorefront before the sun ever crested the mountain above him. The wait help works diligently sweeping and wiping, mopping and straightening, avoiding the area he's taken for his daily regimen. When he's through he stretches a bit and then sits down at one of the glass topped bamboo tables between the bar and the beach. He drinks a bottle of water and lets his muscles cool down, scrubbing his short sun bleached brown hair somewhat dry with a hotel towel. He thinks to himself that he doesn't know why he keeps on with the training, except that he is not yet ready to get fat, reminisce, and lament about his illnesses. He supposes that's reason enough, that and the fact that he likes to feel good, likes to look good, and wants to live forever. The last one's a tall order, but he feels he's done the best he can towards the first two. The wait-help brings him a paper and a pitcher of orange juice without being asked, and he thanks them and pours himself a glass, opens the paper and skims thoughtlessly, not really reading, just kind of scanning for anything interesting. He reads a paper here every morning, and the wait help assumes it's for current events, business, the stock market. In all actuality he skims the majority of it and reads only the comics and the classifieds diligently. The affairs of the world are the same day in and day out, he knows, and men will repeat their mistakes until the end of time. Basically the news is the same, only the names change from day to day. A woman and young girl approach out of the vast, vaulted lobby. The woman is beautiful, 33, with sandy blonde hair and a muscular build that is still shapely and feminine. The girl is small and delicate yet athletic, a perfect mix of the two parents, the other being the man at the opposite side of the palazzo reading the comics. The couple are briefly blinded by the bright sunlight and have to shield their eyes with their hands to scan the court in search of their husband and father. He looks up, laughing as he sees the two of them peering at him in tandem from across the court, his two women, sizes medium and small. He waves them over and pours two more glasses of juice from the carafe. The daughter adjusts her sunglasses and begins reading a book she's carried with her. “I was wondering where you two were. I thought you'd left me for the help.” “We all can't get up before dawn to run around the palazzo. The sane need their sleep, I'm afraid.” She almost smiled but not quite, as she so often does these days. “I'm afraid you're going to give yourself a heart attack one day, running like you doand it will be so early that no one will notice until they find you lying by the roadside.” She takes a sip from her Juice and adjusts her glasses. “Either that or you'll be hit by a delivery truck while running in the dark.” The daughter withdraws from her book long enough to imply affectionately that daddy's a little crazy, waving a finger around the side of her head, then takes a sip of juice and withdraws under her sunhat to resume reading. “You wouldn't like me all fat and soft, laying about watching sports and drinking bad American beer, would you?” A rhetorical question; no one answers. The sun is now all of the way up and it's becoming uncomfortably warm even beneath the huge umbrella that covers the table. They finish their Orange juice and stand, walking together towards their cottage on the edge of the ocean. They always stay here at the Palazzo Del Sol for the first two weeks of every summer. Sometimes they extend it to three weeks if there's a vacancy. Mainly it's a nice way to get out of the house after a busy school year, a kind of summer vacation near home where they can still do their day to day business. The Palazzo is an exclusive resort with long sand beaches, sailing and snorkeling, some surfing on the outer reefs. There are two restaurants, a nightclub, a store, volleyball courts and a small coffee house by the ocean, plus a large lobby and hall where cocktails are served at 6:00 every evening, and all of this surrounded by 200 luxurious grass roofed cottages. Normally they wouldn't be able to afford the luxury except once in a long while, but they have a special deal with the resort where their construction company provides an emergency repair now and again, and in return he is allowed to use the facilities at a reduced rate. The manager, whose name is Iseah, is a good friend at this point and they sometimes work out together, either jogging or lifting weights at the gym, or even the occasional rounds of sparring. Iseah was a regional champion at kickboxing in his home-town of Wailuku, and still likes to put on the gloves and stay in tune, but only with friends. Bid likes to keep in tune also, mostly to realize a lifelong quest to be pretty much inured to any ridicule or assault, but also to keep that chip off of his shoulder, the one that caused him so much trouble as a youth. So he trained as much as time allowed, usually an hour and a half three days a week, at the arts of both Kickboxing and Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. As a child he always wanted to be the tough guy, but upon realizing each small step in his training he found that he wanted less and less to have any physical conflict at all, but instead became very steadfast in his refusal to be involved in street-fights or violent confrontations of any kind. The martial arts did that for him, giving him the self-assurance and confidence necessary to walk away, knowing that he would probably be the victor of the battle but there are no winners in a street-fight, not if you're honest with yourself. And so the martial arts taught him both how to fight and how not to, and he realized the dream in a kind of backwards avenue. An old Chinese sage once said that there are many paths to enlightenment, and Bid Walker certainly takes the odd course now and again to get to the pinnacle. Stepping from the shower he stands before the mirror, introspective, inspecting himself and seeing a roadmap of scars and lines, tattoos that each represent some pivotal time in his life. “Why do I keep on?” He asks himself, although he already knows the answer. “Because I can.” He pulls on a pair of trunks and a T-shirt and wanders out of the cottage, picking up his guitar on the way out. He sits on the front porch steps and begins strumming and finger picking, playing a song he wrote some time before when he wasn't feeling too keen on himself and didn't really know what to do. There are times like that, even for hard guys and toughs. The biggest, toughest guy can still cry when his dog dies, and they still can fall in love with a woman. Tough men who are hard as nails are reduced to pups when they've fallen in love. It's a magical thing, love, that can transform you into the happiest man in the world or break you like a dry twig. He began to pick out a rhythm, strumming between, and sang: I saw you just the other day Beautiful in the summer sun Had to let you walk away even though I gave you all of my love And I don't know why I've gotta sit here and cry but I've just gotta let you go His voice is coarse, and pretty monotone, but he writes the songs to accommodate that and it doesn't sound half bad. He never could sing that great, but when a song comes from your heart it doesn't seem to matter all that much: All I want is to hear your voice hold you close all through the night Hear you laugh and see you smile slow dance in the moonlight And when I look in your eyes and I wanna keep trying I know I've I just gotta let you go I try to tell you what you mean to me This true love is so hard to believe I want to hold you in my arms Keep you warm and protect you from harm but I know what's right I'm so heartbroken that I wanna die and I don't wanna let you go He continues strumming, humming and picking, deciding if that was an OK rendition. He plays this song nearly every time he picks up his guitar anymore- he's almost convinced himself that he's just trying to perfect it. Any more, though- it doesn't matter to him, he just plays and listens to the birds and watches the clouds go by and wonders whether there's even a point to any of it at all. The little girl, Serena, steps out of the cottage and gazes reflectively at her dad, wise beyond her years. They are one in the same, a lot of characteristic traits were handed down to her from him. “All you ever sing is the sad ones.” She teases him, half serious, half worried looking down at him from under her straw sun hat. “Do you know any happy ones?” He pauses a moment mid-song, and then tumbles right into the intro to a song that doesn't have any words at all, just some happy chords and notes that are light and fun. She sat down on the step next to him and resumed reading Harry Potter. “It's true you know.” His wife Kim is made up to go shopping. Stepping from the cool shade of the cottage to the porch she shields her face from the sun with her purse and continues walking. “You'd think by the sound of your songs that you've led the hardest life that's ever been.” She states flatly, continuing walking without pause, down the stairs and across the lawn towards the Lobby where she would catch a cab to town. Serena kisses her dad on the cheek and said “We're going shopping.” with a wink, trotting off after her moms receding figure. He sits there for a moment totally still, wondering about the years ahead and where the time has gone all in the blink of an eye. He awakes to the rhythmic drone of his cell phone, which is ringing on the table next to his head. He's on the beach, where he's dozing and barely starting to dream. He picks up the phone and presses the button to answer, but doesn't put it right to his ear for a second as he lets the grogginess leave his eyes. He takes a look at the number displayed on the tiny screen and then holds the phone to his ear. “ Good morning Beautiful.” He greets her quietly, as he's still kind of half dazed. “You sound like you were asleep- what time is it there?” Her voice is soft and sounds like music to him. He could sit for hours and just listen to that voice- in fact he has many times before done just that. “Ummm… I just dozed off for a second.” “Are you working- I mean, are you busy?” She is always careful about his time, even though he'd cancel anything to talk with her; she always is more conscious of his time and his business than he ever has been. It's an endearing quality, and he loves it because many times he's hung up on clients just to talk with her for a minute. “Un-uh. I'm lying on the beach amidst scantily clad French tourists.” He smiled when he said it, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “And you dozed off?” She was smiling too, now, because she knows him better than anyone. “I only have eyes for you, love- and you they are not.” He reaches for his glass of ice water, the ice nearly melted. “Besides, a man like me has to sleep sometimes.” She stops smiling now, because she knows he wakes up nights and lies awake, torturing himself with thoughts about she and he and lost loves and “what if's” and“never-evers”. She quickly changes the subject. “When are you coming home?” She likes to keep the conversation within her comfort zone, and what they have between them has been gone over one hundred fold and still there's no right answer, so now it's just a bond and a very, very close friendship, and really nothing needs to be said anymore. He gets her flowers on St. Valentines day and something nice on her birthday, they have lunch a couple times a month, talk pretty much daily. It was a hard lesson for him to learn to live with the situation. He's a man that is used to making things happen, and in this situation there was just no right answer, so he's had to learn to live without. “My flight leaves Thursday next week. I land in Honolulu at 6:45 am.” “Are Kim and Serena coming with you?” “No- they fly out the following Saturday- I just have some stuff to take care of Friday in Honolulu .” He hails a waiter heading for the bar with a wave and signals for a refill on his pitcher of ice water. “You could meet me at the airport. You know I'd love to have you for the weekend.” He's smiling now, at the offer as well as the thought of “having her” for the weekend, and what that could imply. “I don't really think that's possible.” She replies quietly. She'd love to as much as he would, and it maybe hurts a little for her to think about it. “You'll just have to make it on your own.” She has a wonderful voice, musical and soft, and it's one that he could listen to forever. “I know. That's what I do best, I guess. You're beautiful, you know that?” “ I'm not. I don't know what you see in me, honestly.” “ You're beautiful and smart, sharp as a tack, lovely midriff when you wear that green top with the waistline, cute and well put together, gorgeous smile, sexy- all woman. Other than that, I don't know. Couldn't tell you.” He loves to let her know that he loves her. If he can't be with her, he can still make sure she's taken care of. It never hurts to tell a girl what she really is to you, and she's the world to him. “How's it feel to be loved?” He loves to ask her this just to hear the dead silence while she worries about how to answer without leaving her comfort zone. Today must be one of those magical days, because she gives him a surprise answer. “You tell me.” She almost whispers, in a voice that would turn the strongest, toughest man into a pup. A silence hung in the air for two long seconds, as much his own silence as anyone's as he didn't really know where to go with this. She laughs softly into the phone, enjoying the brief reversal of roles. “It feels better than I could ever put into words.” He finally responds. “I don't think I could ever tire of loving you.” It was the truth, and it flowed easily from him to her, as naturally as anything ever was. She didn't respond in kind, but that's just how it is. He knows how she feels, and he knows that she's very private and on the right day sometimes she lets him know how she feels, and the rest of the time he just trusts and lets her be. “I've got to get back to work. I have a ton of stuff to do before I leave. Are you Ok?” This is how it always ends, her making sure he's all Okay, he trying to keep her on the line a little longer, just to hear her voice and to love her a little bit longer. “Yeah, I'm Okay. I wish you were here with me, but I do alright.” He exhaled a long breath and tried to toughen up a little. “Will I hear from you tomorrow?” “I promise.” She replied in that voice again. “I miss you too. Now say goodbye and hang up the phone.” “Bye.” He replied, and then quickly “Love you.” But she had already hung up the phone. He set his phone back on the glass table next to his watch and wallet, and he leaned back into the chaise, recalling that day so long ago when he finally got up the nerve to tell her how he really felt about her. The weeks that followed were weeks of confusion and anguish as he experienced so many emotions that he felt were, in this instance, contrary to his values and beliefs. He had been married since he was 22, to his wife who he met when he was just 17. In hindsight, the marriage seemed to be one of obligation as well as a way for him to anchor himself to something constant. At 17 and even still at 22, he was painfully aware of the regular deaths of the crew he had run with since childhood, each one after another from violence, drugs, alcohol- anything extreme. They had run close to the margin, living an extreme lifestyle that was at most times outside of the law. After a few good friends had gone he knew that only if he changed his lifestyle dramatically would he stay above ground himself. So he got married, worked a regular job as a carpenter, and stayed clear of trouble and his bad old ways. Soon he was running the jobs, supervising, and not five years after he began he owned his own company, and twelve years after that he was still running that company, building homes and holding things together with gut instinct and determination. Then along came Serena. After the birth of his only child he was ecstatic. He loved her more than anything, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Named after a close friend of his mother, she was an even mixture of all of the good things from both parents. She had her mother's brains and good looks, her father's athletic ability and outgoing nature, but she was reserved like her mother, cautious where caution was prudent, yet able to make friends and hold her own in conversations with people of all ages. She was a wonderful child with a magical quality: she brought out a side of him he didn't know was in him, and together they played and laughed as she grew and he grew along with her. Sometimes he had to wonder who was raising who. At the same time his wife, succumbing to the stress of the business, the burden of raising a child and holding together a household, began to withdraw more and more into herself. He would try to make everything OK but most times there was just nothing he could do that would make her happy. She had always been a little bit antisocial and shy, and he had always been that buffer between she and the outside world. At parties he would talk and she would just enjoy the luxury of not having to. But more and more there was a certain tenderness missing from their relationship, and it soon grew into a chasm between them. It became more work just to keep going than to fix the ills between them, and eventually they grew apart. A fiercely independent man, he felt virtually cut off at the knees the day it dawned on him that over the last ten years his wife had grown tired of him, and he began to feel that she only kept him around to reap the benefits of the stolid security he provided. He had always kept on steadily on the face of adversity, and he did so now for the sake of his daughter and because he didn't have it in him to break the hearts of those around him. But he had to ask himself what he had done wrong- why had it turned out the way it did? Hadn't he always made everything work? Hadn't he kept the wolves from the door? What more could she want, He had asked himself, and before he could form the words upon his lips, he already knew the answer. She didn't want to grow with him, she wanted him to share in her unhappiness, to be an accessory, a confidant within the stress and unhappiness that she fabricated for herself out of her own fears and paranoia. He tried again and again to get her to change, but after years of this to no avail he accepted if not defeat, at least a resignation that she wasn't willing to change, and that he would have to persevere or walk away. He stuck it out, for the sake of his beautiful daughter, now 10, and out of his own stubborn determination. Again and again when things came to an even keel, she could be counted on to fabricate some new crisis. And he knew it wasn't her fault, she didn't enjoy it, and she couldn't help it. But with every new challenge he took on and overcame, she would find some new one to throw his way to see if he still came up with that grim determination that had become a source of jealousy. It was just a reality that he had to live with, and he chose to and that was that. His life wasn't terrible. It was just that his life wasn't what he had foreseen years earlier, and he had become accustomed to making things happen, to striving for his goals and achieving them, and this was one demon he had never been able to conquer. His feeling had always been that life is too short, and sharing in this self-imposed misery wasn't a luxury he wanted to provide. So he kept on and worked at it, but things were never what they should have been, and maybe he should have left but he never did. And so it went that he met someone else. They knew each other for years, and he had seen how special she was, how gorgeous and fun she had been, and he had told himself that he could handle this, that he could be just friends with someone like that. And he believed it. Then a day came when it dawned on him that he was head over heels in love with her, and that shocked him and scared him He wondered at what he was thinking, and if he was going to screw everything up and if she even saw anything in him. He held out for a week, just becoming more restless and confused, They had always kept in touch, and had the odd lunch together now and again, but now despite his denial he was realizing that he felt a magnetism between them that was way beyond that between “just friends”. And so, after much agonizing and deliberation, he finally decided he had to talk to her about it before he drove himself mad. And he did. And she listened. And…. “You know I've never danced- at least not since I was 14.” “Do you like to dance?” She held her coffee in front of her, her elbows on the tabletop. “Yeah, I think I do. I don't really know.” He drew a long breath. “I think I'd like to slow dance to Coltrane ballads, just holding you all night. I think I'd like that.” He looked up then, into her eyes, and wondered if his smile looked like he was wincing. She stood up then, setting the coffee cup on the table, took the step over to beside where he sat and took his hand. He stood, and they fell together softly, and just held each other, no music, barely a discernable movement, and just soaked each other up. “Hmm.” He smells the gardenia in her hair, and he holds her close, “I love you, you know?” She rests her head on his shoulder. “I know.” That was two years back, and there was a lot of talk between then and now, and it took a lot of getting used to on his part. First he was frantic, thinking, my god, what have I done? Then he was depressed at the whole hopelessness of the situation, he going home to his family, she to hers. Eventually, though, he came to some realizations, the first being that in some situations there are no right answers. He was used to applying himself diligently to whatever problems arose and conquering them, but in this case there were just too many innocent bystanders, and so the two of them decided that they would be the closest friends, and have the most beautiful friendship the worlds has ever seen. It was a heartbreaking situation for both of them, as they were totally in love yet both were committed to doing the honorable thing and honoring their commitments as best they could. And so it came to pass that they would talk on the phone, and have lunch, and see each other whenever they could, but that was all it could be. They just filled the voids for each other that were yet unfulfilled, and if she was sad, he was sad also. And when he was down, she was down. On her birthday there was always something delivered to her office- on valentines too, especially on valentines. But the whole thing left him an introspective man, and although he tried to resume his life as it was before it was never quite the same for him- he just couldn't stop knowing the feelings that he knew, and so he just did his best and continued on, holding it all together. Packing his bags and humming Miles Davis' “I fall in love too easily” he doesn't really pay attention to what he's doing, just fold and stack, tuck some socks in here, Jockey shorts there, his mind is a million miles away. Serena walks in gracefully and plops onto the bed beside his luggage. “How's the super-model?” He asks her, as she has just returned from her final class at an eight week modeling school. She requested going there as she has dreams of being a Super-model/actress/veterinarian/architect/ pop singer. He actually put a computer aided drafting program from his office computer on her personal computer, and at ten she's become quite a designer. She's a sharp one, Serena is. “Modeling school was cool. Some of the girls couldn't walk right.” “But you did OK, I assume?” “Yeah, it was easy.” She layed back on the bed, placing her head on the pillows. “How come you have to leave today. Cant you stay and leave with us?” She didn't like flying any more than he did, and it always felt better if they flew together. The Christmas before their plane had overshot the runway at Papaette, Tahiti , and they'd had to use the life vests and the slide. After that flying has always been a little different, but when you live on an Island in the middle of the Pacific, you're sort of stuck with air travel. “Cause I've got a meeting on Oahu Tomorrow, and I've got to get back to work.” He zipped his valise shut and buckled the buckles, set his carry on on top of that and asked “Where's momma?” The young girl looked up, surprised, and said “She went to get a massage- didn't she tell you?” This was standard for her, disappearing thirty minutes before he was supposed to leave, and Serena there alone. He quickly picked up his luggage. “Let's go see if we can find her, and I'll drop this off at the cab stand on the way by.” They exited the cottage and walked side by side across the lawn, taking a shortcut to the lobby. The two, father and daughter, similar faces, similar demeanors, he walking with short strides to help her keep up, she taking long strides to try and match her dads. In the dim light of the evening they were a serious pair, but they belonged together and indeed were a matched set. Disembarking at Honolulu was always an ordeal. The flight was uneventful, but the landing was bumpy from the inevitable trade winds that buffet the islands at certain times of the year. The heat was oppressive, but he was used to that. The tourists were wandering around lost like blind water buffalo, stopping in the midst of the commuter crowd and causing chaos in the flow of foot traffic. He saw an opening in the crowd in front of him and capitalized on it, striding through the gap and past the pasty tourists, milling and circling in confusion. He had come home early specifically to meet with some clients in Honolulu , but at the last minute had a change of heart and called them to postpone the meeting to two weeks later on the Big Island . He didn't really want to spend the weekend in Honolulu , and he headed instead to the inter-island terminal for the brief flight home. As he walked she again came to the forefront of his mind, just her gorgeous auburn hair, all tousled in a sort of a mane. Her eyes, her mouth, her beautiful skin, her delicate feminine gestures that often times made him feel so coarse. She was a special woman, that he was sure. The heartbreaking truth was that she would most likely never be his, nor he hers. “But that's life, then, isn't it?” He thought to himself grimly, as he pulled his phone from his pocket and speed dialed her number. “Hello.” She answered on the third ring. “Hello Beautiful.” He growled, “ I'm arriving at Keahole airport in about an hour- any chance we could get together?” “Ummmm…what time is it now?” She asked rhetorically. “I've got some people coming in to sign some documents at two- I can meet you at three thirty?” “Yeah, that'd be good. I missed you, you know that?” “You'd better have.” She replied playfully. “I missed you too.” “What are you wearing?” He asked, “Knock-out office lady outfit?” “No- Jeans and a top, regular old casual stuff.” She replied, “I didn't know anyone was coming in today.” “That green top that shows off your midriff?” He grinned . “Yes, but you cant see my stomach when I wear this shirt. That's your dirty mind at work.” “Un-huh.” Still grinning. “I'd better let you go before you get fired.” “I could only be so lucky.” She sounded stressed. “I've been swamped, but there's no one in the office right now. We can talk.” “Okay- will you tell me what you think?” “About what?” She asked quietly. “About us, about the whole situation, what do you feel about me?” He grinned again, kind of wistfully this time. He knew the answer already. “I don't want to talk about that." She said quietly, and he knew she didn't want to go there because it hurt too much to say it and not be able to do anything about it, and so he stopped smiling and left it alone. “I know that- I was just teasing. I'm sorry.” He drew another long breath as he stood before the vast bank of plate glass that faced the airstrip, looking off at the dingy gray concrete-scape of the airport. “So I'll see you in Kona around three-thirty.” He paused, considering everything he wants to say to her. “ I do love you, you know. Can't help it. Couldn't stop it if I tried.” He paused again and waited for the response that never comes. “Do you hate it?” “No. I could never hate it. I just don't want to talk about it right now, okay?” Her voice is so small over the phone, so feminine and he pictures her small, feminine frame and he wants to wrap his arms around her and hold her and he needs so badly to carry her off, to steal her away and keep her for his own forever. But that never can happen, he knows- he just can't give up hope, it's not in his nature. "You know I'd love to tell the world how I feel about you." "You are a liability, Mr. Walker." She replied, half kidding. " You'll get yourself in trouble someday." "I suppose that's what I do best." After hanging up he looks across the tarmac at the gray haze of Honolulu- the windows of the inter-Island terminal makes it look even more bleak than it really is, and being travel weary he feels a little bleak himself. Sitting in one of the worn cushioned seats of the terminal he thinks back to a bleak day two years earlier. He had been working on the jobsite when she pulled up to the curb and jumped out of the car, obviously agitated. “What's the deal with your cell phone bill? There's over sixty calls to this number.” She holds out the stack of papers in a bunch, in such a way that he can't see anything. He doesn't look up at the papers anyway, but instead looks her in the eye and asks, “So what's the problem?” “Who is it?” His relaxed nature takes a little of the wind out of her sails, but she still wants a fight. “It's Beth.” He resumes fiddling with a broken tool he's trying to repair. “I don't see what the problem is.” “ Why are you talking to her every day, sometimes twice and three times a day? Am I being stupid? Is there something going on that I need to know about?” “No. There's nothing you need to know about.” He looks up at her with that winsome look that should tell her everything she needs to know- that it's too late, the race is already run. The damage has been done. He's long past worrying. She doesn't read any of this, either on purpose or just out of the habit of denial. “I can't see any reason why you need to talk to her every day. You don't even talk to me that much during the work day. There are some calls on there for over an hour.” Exasperated, he stands up straight and faces her, setting his work down on the bench before him. “Listen- you're not getting it. Who I talk to and when I talk to them are decisions I make on my own. If you spent half the time worrying about our relationship that you are about this phone bill, we wouldn't be having this conversation.” He immediately regretted letting her get a rise out of him, but continued if just to clarify the matter. “ If you want to know who I'm talking to and when, you're just going to have to pay better attention.” “ So that's it- I'm just shit out of luck? You have whatever you have going on the side, and I'm just supposed to just deal with it?” He saw this getting ugly, so he just looked up and replied calmly, “How long did you think you could treat me like some kind of live in, in a weird platonic relationship where I'm just a great income and a shoulder to cry on? I mean, you did know that sooner or later that I'd lose interest or get frustrated. No man can last that long.” He looked into her eyes and sighed, tired of the whole ordeal already. “ I was in love with you once, but you were a girl who was in love with me. Now you're a woman with a lot of distractions and I don't seem to be one of them. I've hung in there and made thing's work, but we're like old friends, not lovers. You know that and I know that. I'll continue to support my family but I'm not willing to be part of your self destructive habits that don't do anything but destroy you and hurt those around you. That's just not what I'm about, and I'm not willing to become that.” He looked back at the hardware on the bench. She turned her back on him and stalked to the car, slamming the door violently as she got in, and spun her tires until she got purchase on the pavement. He was left standing in a vacuum, only a cloud of dust from her departure and the dead silence let on that anything had happened at all. There was a time when he was really in love with her. He was young, and he didn't really know what love was, but nonetheless he did his best to assimilate, and he took care of her and made sure she had everything he could provide. Little by little he just learned to keep on. “It'd be fun to have a real pile of money.” He stated in a matter of fact tone. They were sipping coffee at a book store, alone back in the corner, just talking about nothing and looking at all of the titles. “I'd make a good itinerant millionaire. I'd just read books and work out, play my guitar and mess around.” She smiled at the thought and replied without looking at him, “Hmmmm… That'd be fun.” He looked up at her from where he was sitting on the step-stool. She was browsing through the books, one by one, touching each one with her delicate fingers as she read the title on the binding. “If I had a million dollars would you run away with me then?” He grinned up at her and took a sip of his coffee. At this she looked up and into his eyes. “Of course.” She replied in a soft voice, “If I could run away with you, I'd do it for a dollar- I'd do it for nothing, if I could.” “Really?” He stood up, smiling, surprised that she had volunteered anything like that. Of course he was really pleased that she felt this way, but he knew it almost certainly would never happen, not because she didn't love him but because she loved her children so much. That was a reality he could understand. He stepped over to her side and took her small hand in his, just for a couple seconds, and gave it a squeeze. She resumed looking at books, he resumed looking at her. They were, for the moment, happy and comfortable together. Waiting at the Keahole airport he amused himself reading magazines at the newsstand in the inter-island arrivals terminal. Kim and Serena were supposed to arrive at 11:15, but had slipped onto an earlier flight by upgrading to first class. They were due to land within ten minutes, so he busied himself looking at magazines and avoided the packs of travel weary tourists that milled about aimless and lost in every Hawaiian Airport . “My doctor told me I'm reticent.” She looks at the ground and I wonder how anyone could ever be so beautiful. “Not really my doctor,” She's quick to correct. “The doctor they made me go see. I didn't really tell him anything, and so he said I was reticent. Do you know what that means?” She looks up at me inquisitively, and I nod yes, that I understand. She smiles a sad little smile and leans back in her chair. “It means that you're a tough nut to crack. A tough cookie.” I can't help but to smile at the irony of this frail, feminine beauty and that last statement. “You don't look much like a tough cookie.” Leaning towards me across the table she looks into my eyes seriously and smiles, “Oh, but I can be. You just don't know me.” She pauses, fiddling with the ring on her left hand. “If you knew me better you'd understand. I just internalize everything. If I tell you anything important I agonize over it for a long time prior, and I worry about it for weeks after. That's just the way I am- I cant help it.” “Well it's no wonder I've been so upside down and backwards, what with me feeling the way I do about you, having the feelings I do for you, and you just being tight lipped about the whole thing and how you feel about it.” I say this gently, as I don't want it to sound harsh, I'm only trying to explain why I'm such a basket-case myself. “If you told me how you feel maybe it would help make things better.” She looks away, at the sky, the trees, the traffic passing in front of the café we're sitting in. “Maybe it could make things harder, too, though.” She looks up at me and into my eyes intently. “I love you- you know that. But I know in my heart that there's just no way it can ever work with us. You have your family, and I'd never want to be the one that comes between you and your family. I have two beautiful children which I adore, and I cant put them through all of that. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you something to make it better, but I've made up my mind.” She reaches across the table and takes my rough hand in hers, all small and soft and delicate. “I know it seems so important to you now, but in time you'll look back and be happy you did the right thing. You're a sweet man, and a handsome man, and an honorable one too. That's one of the things I love so much about you, is your strength, and you just wouldn't be you without that. For now you just have to trust and wait, and know that there's a special place in my heart that belongs to you and that's where we have to leave it.” Looking into her eyes I see the hurt and the warmth, and I just love her more for it. “Ummm… at this point I'm afraid I'll look back twenty years from now and regret that I was foolish enough to let you go.” I pause, taking a breath that keeps the lump out of my throat a little. “I adore you; you're everything I've ever wanted. I feel the mutual attraction- the magnetism between us, and it's like a magical thing I've never felt before in my life- it makes me feel fantastic.” She reaches across the table and touches my cheek softly. “But that's OK. That's a good thing. But that's all we get to have, and we just have to live with that.” Her voice quivers just a little as she says this and it pains me terribly to know I've made her sad. I take a long moment to hold it together and then exhale. “I know. I've known from the beginning. But I've always got this optimism that everything will somehow magically work out. I'm a hopeless romantic and a stubborn Irishman. I really do love you, and it just seems like a terrible tragedy to walk away from that.” “I love you too, Bid Walker.” Visibly worried about me, she furrows her brow a bit. I figure I'd better finish this up before I break down, and so I stand up and put on a game-face. “Well, don't worry about me. I'll make out. I wish you'd change your mind. You know where to find me if you do.” I smile weakly at her and hope it doesn't look too wistful. She stands up and comes around the table to where I am, taking me in her arms, and I wrap my arms around her. “I'm sorry for what I've put you through.” I whispered. “I'm not sorry at all.” She whispered back.