So, after realizing that I was fighting an uphill battle to keep pace with this ever-expanding market, I have uploaded all of my books to Smashwords. Smashwords is a service that sells ebooks directly through its website, but, once accepted into the premium catalog, your titles will be distributed to all the major ebook sellers(Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Sony).

All four of my books have always been available on Amazon for the Kindle(and any iteration of the Kindle software for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Blackberry). But now you can also read my books on Barnes and Noble’s Nook (and any of its software alternatives).

Three of my titles are currently available on the iPad through the iBooks application, but for some reason In the Satchel, On the Train, Selling Dreams to Nancy has not been made added, yet. I’ll be sure to post an update when it is available.

Sony and Kobo options are coming very soon. I’ll update when these are made available as well.

I am also making samples available of all three pieces internally.

You can sample The Torch Bearers here.

Sample Clair de Lune.

Sample Inexplicably, Love.

“When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.”

—from the Stars song “Your Ex-Lover is Dead”

Friday Evening

The dread of attending a dinner party is usually enough to feed his nausea, but the perfume wafting from the bathroom certainly doesn’t help. He has never particularly liked her choice of perfume, but the sensitivity of the subject has only grown over time. If he had said something soon after they first met then he might have been able to get away with it—if it had been done tactfully—but there is no tact left. If he were to say something now, it would seem needlessly hurtful. She would know that he has always disliked her perfume, and would obviously wonder why he has spent all these years not saying anything about it. And, as always, she would blow it way out of proportion, accusing him of being disgusted by her perfume, even if he never said any such thing, though sometimes the proportion of perfume to any other smell in her immediate orbit does tend to disgust him. That’s not so much the perfume’s fault as much as the fault of the user’s gracelessness, which she has in droves.

No, that’s not fair.

See, this is what happens when she makes him wait. He gets frustrated with her, his mind starts whirring with this critical roll, and the evening is already off on the wrong foot.

He’s always ready early.

Charlotte is always ready late.

He hasn’t put his shoes on for precisely this reason. If he has them on and she comes out of the bathroom in any way unsatisfied with her appearance, it will be his fault, ‘See, you always rush me,’ she might say. Now, he keeps one defense available, ‘What? I don’t even have my shoes on, yet.’

The light from the bathroom opens into the bedroom. He starts shoving his feet into his shoes as she moves toward him.

“Zip me?”

“Yea, just let me get my shoes on,” he says, tying his shoes. He then stands to face her half-naked back, “You look beautiful,” he says, zipping up the back of her dress. And she does.

But, god, that perfume.

“Thank you,” she says and turns to him, “You don’t look so bad yourself, professor,” she says, grabbing the knot of his tie.

She walks to the closet and removes a pair of shoes, but the heels on the shoes are far too high for her to move comfortably in, and he knows he will have to hear her complain about them all evening, but, again, sensitivities are too high and prudence has precedence over honest suggestion at this point in their marriage.

“OK,” she says, slipping her feet into the shoes, “I guess I’m ready.”

Wallace grabs the keys from his pants’ pocket and waits for her to pass, pressing his hand against the small of her back, guiding her through the doorway.

They move quickly through the rest of the house to the garage, and as they enter the car, he waits for the rush of perfume as she eases into her seat, and as it catches him—a wave of chemistry run amok—he winces. This is one of the reasons—among many—that he hates going to dinner parties. The perfume, the lateness, and the too high heels are all early reminders of why she has a tendency to embarrass him. Sure, she is pretty, and she really looks great in that dress, a simple little black thing that just barely tickles the tops of her knees, which are decorated by black hose and balanced—barely—on those highest of high-heeled shoes. She wears her clothes with elegance, certainly, but, except for her make-up, she is clumsy in almost every other way. She has always, mercifully, been subtle when applying her make-up.

“Did you remember to lock the door?” she asks as they exit the driveway.

“Yes, of course,” he says dryly, but is finding it more and more difficult to hide his growing irritation with her. They live in a small, safe college town. Their neighborhood is filled with a mix of university faculty and graduate students, and the majority of the students are still out of town. So, who would break in? And why?

This is precisely the kind of thing that can embarrass him.

It is true, asking if he remembered to lock the door isn’t that big a deal, but it’s the kind of question that doesn’t need to be asked. They rarely use their front door. As far as he knows, they haven’t used it in weeks. They always enter and exit the house through the garage. So, why would she even ask him about the door? It’s a small thing, yes, but it fits a larger pattern. She doesn’t seem to put things together properly in her head. She speaks without forethought, and it often leads to embarrassing lulls in a previously free-flowing conversation.

She’s not dumb. In fact, when they first met as undergraduates, he was impressed with her mind. But a twenty year old mind needs to continue to grow and progress, and he has always secretly resented her for not trying harder to better herself. Charlotte’s readiness, her eagerness, really, to rest on her laurels has always been a great source of frustration for him.

“Do you think they’ll sit us with Shaun and Marie again?” Charlotte asks.

“I would imagine. They always group Shaun and I together because of the chronology of our disciplines.  You could probably set a historical timeline against the seating arrangements at any one of these things. The historical mind functions linearly like that, I guess, especially historians as anal as Dr. Crick.”

Shaun is Wallace’s colleague in the history department. He teaches post-Civil War to the second World War. Wallace teaches post-Word War II American history. He was brought in last year during a small departmental expansion that ultimately decreased Shaun’s course load. Shaun had previously been teaching classes that were really outside his field of study, teaching several post-WWII classes. At first, it was clear to Wallace that Shaun resented his arrival, but eventually, as the year progressed, Wallace became more secure that Shaun had learned to appreciate the lighter course load, and his wife, Marie, was especially grateful for the change.

Marie.

She is the reason—the real reason—why Wallace is so easily irritated by Charlotte’s most   benign transgressions. The immediacy of seeing Marie again has set him on edge. Marie has become a not so convenient pool for him to reflect against all of Charlotte’s inadequacies. Of course, Marie probably has her own inadequacies, but Wallace hasn’t caught a single one, and if he had, he would immediately let it go, forgetting it, wanting instead to keep a firm hold on her perfection.

“It looks like everyone beat us here,” Charlotte says.

‘Imagine that,’ he thinks. “Yea, well, we’re fashionably late, I guess,” he says as he parks the car.

The dean of the history department, Dr. Crick, lives in one of those sprawling suburban  subdivisions right on the edge of town. It is a relatively new place—an absurdly large home for just two people—and this is the first time Wallace has been here, but this is an annual occasion. For years the dean and his wife have held a dinner party for the faculty of the history department on the Friday before the fall semester.

Last year, the first such party for Wallace, he was the new guy. He remembers entering the party with a high level of confidence, and then meeting Marie and spending the rest of the party feeling as though he was shot full of holes, completely made vulnerable by the mere sight of her.

At the time, he wasn’t prepared for Shaun’s resentment at having to let some classes go for the new guy. It wasn’t as if Wallace was unprepared for interdepartmental friction. He just never expected it to happen so quickly, or with Shaun’s naked display of joy and ferocity in the process. He also didn’t expect any friction to sprout from so desperately wanting to win the attention of a colleague’s wife. So, whatever tension was there from Shaun felt doubled because of all the turmoil Wallace was projecting from his fantasies—no matter how tame.

When they approach the house Dr. Crick and his wife, Nancy, are waiting at the door to greet them.

“Wallace, I’m delighted to see you,” the dean says, with his usual abundance, sincere but comically cheerful.

“Yea, you, too!” Wallace says. He always finds himself speaking with exclamation points around Dr. Crick. The dean’s exuberance is the kind that forces itself on everyone around him, at least until everyone grows tired of it, which happens quickly.

“Charlotte, you look lovely.”

“Thank you.”

“Nancy, did you have a nice Summer?” Wallace asks Mrs. Crick, after leaning into kiss her cheek.

“Yes, it’s come and gone already, I suppose.”

Wallace nods as he scans the periphery for Marie.

“This is the the sitting room. There are drinks and hors d’oeuvres,” Nancy says, leading them with an experienced hostess’ wave of the arm through the entry way.

At first, all Wallace can see is her legs, crossed and elegant in black stockings. But as they cross the threshold, her whole body opens up into her face. She is smiling, and he sees her—all of her—for the first time since last spring. He can’t help but stutter a step, taken aback by her beauty, more beautiful than he remembers, more beautiful than ever in her little black dress.

Greetings are summarily exchanged, drinks are handed out, and it is all a nod, a ‘yes’, and a blur, until she rises from her seat and approaches Charlotte. He catches a whiff of her scent as she passes and it is as soft and subtle as her step. Charlotte walks with the heels of her feet and sounds like a clydesdale on a cobblestone street. Marie, on the other hand, must step with her toes, like a dancer moving across a stage. You can hardly hear her move, but when she does, she has the room’s undivided attention.

After she says a few things to Charlotte—indistinguishable exchanges—Wallace stands in the fog of his adoration, but is shaken by the sound of Shaun’s voice.

“How was your summer, Wallace? Did you and Charlotte make it to her parents’ summer house for some R&R?” he asks.

“Yea, we spent a couple weeks there. It was nice—a quiet break.”

“Boring,” Charlotte interjects. “It was so boring, and unbelievably quiet there at night. It got to be downright disturbing by the end.”

“Well, I got some good reading done at least,” Wallace says, trying hard not to visibly show how annoyed he is with Charlotte. Who just blurts out, ‘Boring’ like that? Is she fourteen years old?

“Are you ready for your new class?” Shaun asks.

“Yea, I just printed the syllabus today.”

“What new class?” Marie asks. She is looking at Wallace now and he can feel it, though he is consciously trying not to catch her gaze.

“I’m teaching a class that I’m calling, ‘The Technological Revolution.’”

“Oh, interesting,” she says, and it wasn’t a throw away comment. He could tell that she was genuinely interested.

“Yea, the class was filled the first day of registration. It was incredible,” Wallace says.

“Oh, they were just intrigued by its newness. It’ll probably thin out after the first week,” Shaun responds.

And so Shaun and Wallace are back to their familiar posture—tense.

Shaun takes a large gulp of his drink. Marie looks over at him as if to ask how much he he’s been drinking. He doesn’t notice her.

He doesn’t notice her.

Wallace’s first day on campus last August got off to a bad start. He had some trouble finding his way around and must have spent a good thirty minutes looking for the history building, Independence Hall, before he realized that he didn’t know the campus as well as he had previously thought. He thought he had given himself plenty of time before he left home, but now he had a class in less than twenty minutes, and he was starting to panic. Earlier on his tours of campus, he always had someone with him and he felt that he was learning where things were, but now that he was alone he realized he had lost his bearings.

“You lost?”

It was Marie. She looked quite different then she had at the fall party, wearing jeans and a tight, white t-shirt. She was radiant, as the summer light—the most golden of golds—was shining on her through the spaces in the rich foliage above. She was sitting at the roots of a giant oak, holding a book, waiting for him to respond.

“It’s Marie,” she said, rising, holding her hand out as a re-introduction. “We met at  Dr. Crick’s party.”

“Right. No, I know. I’m sorry. I’ve only been to campus a few times, and it is my first time trying to find my way around on my own, and I know the history building is here somewhere, but…”

“You’ve found it,” she smiled, “follow me. I’m actually on my way to your office,” she said, causing Wallace to do a double take.

“You’re on your way to my office?”

“Yea,” she said, having seen his surprise, “No one told you?”

“No one told me what?”

“You and Shaun are sharing an office—temporarily. The renovations on the new offices are woefully behind schedule.”

“Is that such a great idea? Shaun and I didn’t seem to hit it off very well the other night.”

“No, Shaun has a bad habit of not hitting if off with people.”

“He’s not happy with me being here, is he?”

“No, but he has been swamped for the past five years. All he did was complain about his course load. Now, with you here, he will have less classes, more time for research, and more personal time, and he’s still complaining.

“Shaun is very territorial,” she continued, “and, you know, I’m yet to meet an academic who isn’t competitive with their colleagues.”

“Right.”

“He’ll be over it in a week or two, I’m sure,” she said, as they walked into Independence Hall. “So, are you nervous about the first day of classes?”

“Yea, I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t taught these classes before. I have. But it’s always strange coming to a new school. You never quite know what to expect. Still, though, once I’m in  the classroom, and there’s nothing between me and the students but the material, then I know I’ll feel right at home.”

“Good,” she said, looking at him, smiling. “Here we are. This is it.”

As they stand at the threshold of Wallace’s new office, Shaun turns to look at them.

“Wallace, it looks like you’re in my office temporarily.”

“That’s what I hear,” Wallace said.

Shaun looks at Marie strangely, and Wallace know she’s going to have to explain how it was that they walked in together. It’s not hard to interpret the glare of an intensely jealous man.

“Just move these boxes…,” Shaun began to say, pointing at some boxes that were piled up on Wallace’s desk.

“Shaun. How rude,” Marie said, moving into the office. “I’ll help you with these boxes, Wallace.”

“Marie,” Shaun said, abruptly, clearly irritated.

“It’s alright,” Wallace said, entering the office behind her, realizing quickly that this office was going to be cramped for two people but was downright intimate with three. “It’s no problem. I can get these out of the way,” he said, laying his briefcase flat on top of one of the boxes. He was standing right next to Marie and when he turned away from the desk they were face to face, attached by a thin tuft of air floating between them. They were suddenly stuck in the muck of one of those surprised stares, a stare that one doesn’t expect but is pleasantly happy to hold tight to, and it was then, in that startled second of a stare, that he knew he’d love her.

“Let’s go, Marie,” Shaun said, leaving the office.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed to Wallace as she followed Shaun out the door.

Wallace just stood there, alone in his new office, wondering what it was that just happened between he and Marie.

The dinner party has moved to the tour portion of the evening. Mrs. Crick is showing everyone around their new, sprawling Victorian throwback with her arms gliding here and there like some game show hostess, and the tour is made all the more dull by the Cricks’ insane attention to detail. They ramble on and on about this portrait painting, this daguerrotype, this antique Victorian trinket.

“My heels are killing me,” Charlotte says as she grabs Wallace’s arm to hang on for a second of relief. He checks his watch. It took just under an hour for her to whine about her shoes. That may be a personal record.

Marie is walking just ahead of them, and Wallace is hypnotically following each swing of her hips. He certainly hasn’t made much of an attempt to suppress his staring, though he is sure the indiscretion has gone unnoticed.

Marie turns to Charlotte and Wallace and raises her eyebrows, clearly expressing her frustration with what already seems like a never-ending tour.

“This is the upstairs bathroom. You can see from the décor that our last visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum was…”

Wallace is waiting for Nancy Crick to stop talking and move on down the hall so that he can take full advantage of the first bathroom of the tour. When she finishes talking about the Victorian style hardware of the sink, she finally begins to move the group down the seemingly endless hallway.

Wallace turns to Charlotte,  “You go ahead. I have to use the bathroom.”

“But what about…?”

“I’ll just be a second. I’ll catch up,” he says, ducking into the bathroom. He takes a minute to just stand there, looking at himself in the mirror, staring into his own eyes, ‘Get yourself together. Do something about it. Say something.’ He knows that he has to say something—even if obliquely—to her, something to give her even the faintest idea of his attraction.

At the end of the spring semester last year he had decided that he would have to say something to her before the summer break. He couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing her until the fall. A whole summer without Marie? The thought alone was agonizing.

So, he stayed up most the night, every night for almost a week, trying to think of the perfect words to use, imagining each possible exchange, writing mental monologues, rehearsing each conceivable scene in his imagination.

By the morning of the last day of the semester he had too many opening lines, more plans of attack, then he knew what to do with. He knew that this day would have to be the day to confront her, but he didn’t know what would come out of his mouth when he spoke. Still, he couldn’t allow silence to be the sacrifice for perfection. There was no time for making it perfect, no time for getting it right, only time for getting it done.

He would tell her that not a moment goes by when he isn’t thinking about her, that she is always in the periphery of his thoughts—no matter what he is doing. That he often hangs around campus all day some days in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of her. That he often feigns interest in what Shaun is doing, finding reasons to visit Shaun’s office, just to erase a degree of their separation, to see her as often as possible without raising the specter of suspicion, but now he was done worrying about raising suspicions. He didn’t care who knew anymore.

But when he got to campus—a spring in his step, his back straight with bravado, the late  May sun warming his face—he saw Shaun walking toward him in the parking lot.

“Wallace. Today’s the day,” Shaun said, smiling at him.

“So, you’re done then?”

“Yep. Just wrapped up my last final.”

“Where are you off to now?”

“I’m off to meet Marie at her parents’ place in Virginia, and then were going down to Hilton Head for a much needed break.”

“Marie’s in Virginia?”

“Yea, she left Wednesday,” he said, and the casualness of the comment could hardly match the impact of its punch. “Are you and Charlotte getting away this summer?”

Wallace didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. He was sick inside, sunk and nauseous.

“Wallace?”

“Sorry, what?”

“What are you and Charlotte doing this summer?”

“Oh, sorry,” Wallace said, trying hard to suppress his anguish, “We’ll probably be in town for a little while. I still have to teach that New Deal course for you, but after that we might spend a few weeks at Charlotte’s parents’ summer place.”

“That sounds good,” Shaun said, approaching Wallace, holding out his hand, “Well, have a great summer.”

“I will.”

As he watched Shaun walk away, he watched all his hope for the summer disappear.

And the summer was three long months full of wanting, waiting.

Marie is standing in the hall, looking at one of the Crick’s many portrait paintings. She is the only one left from the tour. Everyone else has moved on to another part of the house, leaving Wallace alone with Marie. This is the first time they have been alone together like this for months now, and he has been waiting for this moment since the spring.

She turns toward him, sees him, smiles. “Wallace.”

“Marie?”

“I wanted to ask you something,” she says, softly, almost as if she is sharing a secret. His heart is racing as she steps closer, “I hope I’m not being too forward, but…,”

Now his mouth is dry, and he is hyper-conscious of his facial expression, desperately trying to hold away any ecstatic expressions or out-of-character contortions that might resemble an abundance of joy. His aim is for a face full of deadpan.

Only a moment passes, and yet he travels—with secrets of eyes, silences of stares—every inch of her body, and compiles small portraits, building them into panoramas of her beauty. To him, she is the picture of perfection, the apex of his life’s sexual attraction. She fits so perfectly into the shape of physical beauty that fills the mold of his ideal woman, and he didn’t even know the shape until she shared it with him. And even though she is perfect physically, she also exudes a clarity of intellect, a mindfulness of her surroundings, a self-awareness that he has found lacking in Charlotte.

“…I was wondering if I could sit in on your new class.”

“Yea, sure,” he says, trying hard not to reveal his elation. “Absolutely. I’d love to have you.”

“You won’t even know I’m there. I’ll hide in the back.”

“Oh, no. Don’t do that. It will be nice to see a familiar face.”

“I appreciate that. Thanks,” she says, looking down now, almost shyly, dragging the toe of her shoe back and forth across the hardwood floor. “I’ll get in touch with you in the next couple of days for the details.”

“Perfect,” he says.

There is another quiet moment passing, and though the exchange hadn’t quite gone the way he had imagined it might, the prospects are even better—a semester with Marie. It was almost as close to what he had been dreaming up all summer long.

And now there is this strange, long—getting longer—silence between them.

“What do you think of this place?” he asks, looking up and down the Cricks’ seemingly endless hallway. She is staring him in the eyes now, and he wonders if her heart is racing the way his is racing. He so badly wants to touch her, put his arms around her body. He instinctively moves his hand toward her, but retreats, places it back into his pants’ pocket.

“Oh. It is… Well… It suits them,” she says.

“It does, doesn’t it.”

They start down the hallway together. Wallace is moving slowly so as to prolong this private space they share before they have to rejoin the group, report back to their respective camps, become almost strangers again. It is hard for Wallace to know if she is moving slowly because she wants to spend more time near him, like he is with her, or if she is just trying to get out of the remainder of the Cricks’ tour.

“Did you have a good summer?” he asks.

“Yea, it was alright,” she says, shrugging her shoulders, “You?”

“No, it was terrible.”

“That’s too bad,” she says, looking at him with interested eyes. “Why? Anything happen?”

“Nothing happened. That’s the problem. I suppose I had hoped for something different, something more,” he says, turning to her, “Maybe I expect too much.”

“Yea, I’m the same way. I thought getting away would be a good thing, just what I needed, but Shaun…,” she says, stopping in mid-sentence. “There they are.”

The rest of the group is just ahead, and the dean’s voice has shattered their private bubble. Wallace desperately wants to say something to her but feels all the insecurities of a fourteen-year-old boy asking a girl out for the first time, not wanting to ruin this new and uncertain future that she has just given him, thankful for the upcoming weeks of watching her during lectures, which will clearly grow into further daydreams and endless late night obsessions, fantasies that keep his days moving, movies of memories to put him to sleep at night.

He smiles to himself, and looks to her one last time as they seamlessly absorb back into the group. She smiles back.

The pent up energy in him, the sheer joy, feels about to scream out, but he suppresses it, coughs to control the certainty of his own happy laughter.

“What took you so long?” Charlotte asks.

Buy the book.

The rain has stopped, and its dreary rhythm, that comfortable chaos of white noise, eases away and leaves Frankie quietly alone in her apartment.

She is staring at the call box, waiting for that beautifully awful buzz that announces an arrival. It has been weeks since she has heard that sound and expected a visitor other then someone dropping off take-out. She has been waiting on that buzz for the better part of ten minutes, sitting on the arm of the couch, staring at the box, trying to place her attention on something other than her crying, but she just can’t stop.

Stop thinking about it. Refocus.

It is a clean box, not really a box at all, but a rounded white rectangular object that rests on the wall by her door. The box represents a level of sterility that you might expect to see in a hospital or a government building, and there is no question that it does not fit the décor of the rest of Frankie’s apartment. Her apartment suggests a more colorful person, though Frankie feels as though it expresses a level of color that she does not match, or doesn’t allow herself to match.

She breaks down again, and she turns away from the box as if it were watching her and she didn’t want it to see her crying. Then she turns back to it, slowly, almost as if she were waiting for it to comfort her somehow.

Come on. Come on.

She stands up to go to the bathroom, to check her eyes, her make-up.

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

She stops in her tracks, turns, and immediately pushes herself toward the box, making obvious attempts to straighten her voice out. She practices, “Yes?” Again. “Yes?” Does she sound like she has been crying?

Buzz!

“Yes?”

“It’s Johnny,” a voice says, stained with crackling static.

“Come on up,” she says with a forced air of normalcy, although she thought she could hear that nasally weeping sound coming from her throat. She hits the button on the box to buzz him in. She cracks the door open and runs to the bathroom. Her eyes are red, and clearly show that she has been crying. She is too old to hide the emotional signs of crying that she could more easily hide in her twenties. She runs some water into the cups of her hands and rushes it over her face and eyes.

Make-up be damned, she thinks. It’s more important that he not think you’re an emotional wreck. She looks at her reflection in the mirror, even if you are.

There is a sheepish knock at the door, “Hello? Frankie?”

“Come on in. I’ll be out in a minute,” she yells from the bathroom. She hears the creaking sound of the door opening.

I wonder what he thinks of the apartment. I should have been out there to gauge his reaction.

When she walks out of the bathroom and into the living room, Johnny is standing by the door. He is wet, dripping wet.

“God, Johnny. You’re soaked.”

“Yea, I guess I am. Sorry. I think I’m raining on your floor.”

“Let me get you a towel.” Frankie heads for the bathroom, where she grabs two large towels, sneaks another peek into the mirror—Horrible! How could you possibly look any worse? — and rushes the towels out to Johnny.

“Don’t you own an umbrella?”

“Sure I do, but it wasn’t raining when I left, but when I came up from the subway it was pouring.”

“That past pretty quick, though. Why didn’t you wait?”

“I didn’t want to be late,” he says and smiles at her. His wet hair is slicked back from the rain and he looks nice, even wet his dark suit sits perfectly on his thin frame. He cleans up better than she expected.

“You can have a seat,” Frankie says as she moves by him into her kitchen area.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to get your furniture wet.”

“Don’t worry about it. Would you like something to drink, some wine, or—wine?”

“No, thanks. I don’t drink.”

He doesn’t drink. Oh God. Is he religious? Will he be put off if I drink? “Would you mind if I have a drink?”

“No, please do.”

What did he mean by that, ‘Please do’? Does he want to get me drunk?

She pours herself a glass of white wine, her third since after the phone call. Why did he have to call tonight of all nights? Stop. Just Stop. I’m not going to think about it now. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

I wonder if she’s a drinker or just being courteous. Maybe she doesn’t drink often. Maybe it’s just a behavior of occasion. Maybe she is nervous. God, I hope she isn’t a big drinker. Drinkers are always hiding from something. Were her eyes puffy when I came it? Was she crying? What is she hiding from?

Johnny felt good before he came up, confident. Now, all of a sudden, he feels fidgety. His foot is tapping the floor softly with that evidence of nervousness that he always tries to conceal through movement.

As Frankie moves from her kitchen to the living room, Johnny is sitting on the arm of the couch, as if he were waiting for her. He smiles again. It is a great smile, a unique smile. He has one crooked tooth that you can’t help but notice but there is no question that it adds character. He would be too normal looking without that tooth. His face is just starting to age. You can see a couple smile lines, maybe some crow’s feet developing, but he’s got a strong head of dark hair, and outside of a few acne scars, nothing really to complain about.

“You look beautiful, Frankie.”

“Thanks,” she says, and she smiles for the first time, a big smile, as if his smile’s bigness was contagious, and for a moment she has forgotten her sadness. She is happy standing there starting her date with Johnny.

Johnny, however, is worried. He is certain now that she has been crying. He can hear it in her voice.

Why has she been crying? Does she not want to do this? He thought he sensed a mutual attraction at work. He was sure of it. Maybe he misjudged her attention as attraction. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that he has been a poor judge of character.

Frankie really does look beautiful, though. She is wearing a cute, black dress, and it fits her figure perfectly. She is curvy—some might say overweight, but only slightly. Johnny prefers to think of her as curvy, and he wouldn’t take her any other way. However, he notices that she has been walking around in her stocking feet and there are no shoes in sight. He hates to rush her, but he thought he remembered telling her that he had made reservations.

“Do you have the time?” He holds up his arm, exposing his wrist, “Sorry, I never wear a watch.”

“Yea, there’s a clock on the wall behind you.”

Johnny turns, and then quickly stands up. “Wow. We really should go if we’re going to make our reservation.”

Frankie just stands there, leaning up against the wall of the entry way in between her kitchen and living room. She is clearly unhurried, the wine glass comfortably dangling from her hand.

“Johnny, I’m sorry, but do you think we might just stay in. I know you made plans and everything, and I was ready to go, but something came up earlier and I am just not feeling much like facing the city tonight.”

“What did you have in mind?” This is not going well. She has no idea how lucky I was to get that reservation. God, I was really looking forward to this, too.

“I don’t know really. I hadn’t planned to stay in.” She kind of exposes her body with her hands to show him that she had dressed for an evening out. “Obviously I was prepared to go out. I know it seems like I’m being dramatic…”

“No, it’s fine. Not a big deal. We’ll stay in.” Johnny is in defense mode now. He is clearly upset about this unexpected change, but is trying hard to smile through the discomfort.

Come on, Johnny. Calm down. This isn’t a big deal. So you’ll stay in. That’s a good thing. Right? “I meant, what did you have in mind for dinner?” Johnny asks.

“Oh,” Frankie now moves into the kitchen, Johnny casually follows her. It is a small kitchen—typical of other apartments Johnny has seen on the Upper East Side. Space is tight, but as she navigates through, looking into the cabinets, he can see from the contents and the natural ordering of things that she‘s not much of a cook, but she is neat at least. It is a clean kitchen. She squeezes by him to get to the fridge and he catches a whiff of her perfume as she moves by him. It is not overpowering, but it is unfailingly feminine and it suits her perfectly.

“You’re perfume is nice. It suits you. I like it.” She turns to look at him, half-thinking he is being sarcastic. He is serious, and his face is so real to her.

How can he seem that real on a first date? She can hardly help but show her joy at his goodness, his seeming purity. He seems like a genuinely good guy.

Don’t get your hopes up, Frankie.

“Thanks,” she says.

She has exposed the entrails of her fridge. It is not a pretty sight and the smell from inside quickly obliterates any traces of grace that had been floating in the air from her perfume.

She turns away from the fridge, “What do you think about take-out? It’s not fine dining, but it’s better than anything I have at the moment.”

“Take-out sounds great.” Johnny says, relieved she is not going to try and wrestle some old atrocity from the mouth of that fridge.

“Chinese alright?”

“Sounds fine.”

“Gourmet Wok, alright?”

“Sure, anywhere’s fine. You probably know this corner of the East Side better than I would. So, whatever you think.”

“They’re fast, and their Szechwan dumplings are great.”

“Frankie?”

“Yes,” she looks up at Johnny, he is staring at her and his face is serious. She is holding the phone, “What?”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He waits a beat, but it is clear he is in mid-thought, “Cause I want to do this. I want to be here. With you. Tonight.”

“Yea, why do you…?”

“You were crying earlier… Before I got here.”

Wow! He is forward.

She pauses, openly startled, “I was, but it had nothing to do with you.”

“I hope you can tell me about it. Some time. You know, when you’re ready.” He has a way of talking that starts and stops. “I’d like for you to feel like…,” You get the feeling that he speaks his thoughts quick and in shorts bursts, like a pulse of words, “Well, you can tell me. No matter what it is.”

Frankie dials the number, but she feels a cry climbing up her throat again and she knows she can’t stifle it. “Johnny. Shit! Shit! Shit! Why did you have to bring it up? Shit!” She is crying. She leans her head down into the phone.

God, he is going to think I’m a basket case. I think I’m a basket case. I am a basket case.

“Just tell me about it, Frankie. It will make you feel better.” He stands up from the couch and walks over to her. “I promise. Really.”

“I can’t. Not now,” she says, and tries to wipe her eyes with the backs of her hands, Johnny hands her a handkerchief. She laughs.

“What?”

“You carry a hankie.”

“I do.”

“I haven’t seen one of these since my grandfather died.” She wipes her eyes with Johnny’s hankie and smiles appreciatively at him. He places the hankie back in his pocket.

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem.”

“What do you want?”

“What?”

“Chinese? What do you want?”

“Oh, get me the General Tso’s.” He goes to sit back on the couch as Frankie calls the restaurant, “and grab some of those dumplings, too,” he says. Frankie nods, and he notices that there is a sudden breeze in the casualness of their exchange, which is almost startling when you consider her emotional outburst. Still, though, there is an ease in the air that comes with comfort. And how is it that he came to be comfortable with her in the course of the last several minutes? Perhaps, it is her vulnerability, or perhaps it is something larger, more out of reach from understanding. He watches her talk on the phone and all his earlier inclinations about her at the office, all his silent attraction is only magnified by watching her now, steadying herself on one foot, the heel of her left foot resting above the right foot’s ankle, like a knowing dancer. She tilts her head into the phone and turns slightly away from his stare.

You will be the death of me. I swear to god, he thinks.

Why is he staring at me? I’ll bet my eyes are all puffy again. Oh God. I always look so much older after I cry. Why did he have to say anything? Now, he’s made everything so awkward.

“OK, thanks,” she says, and hangs up the phone. She walks back toward the couch, “They say 30 minutes but it will probably be here in 15.” She sits down close to Johnny, but not too close.

“That was weird,” she says.

“What?”

“Déjà vu,” Oh god, why did I say that? There’s another reason for him to think your crazy.

“Me, too.”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No I’m not.”

She gets up and walks back toward the kitchen. Johnny follows.

“I swear I just had it too. Right when you sat down. I had that dizzy feeling in my head like someone had edited a scene from a dream I’d had and placed it over top that moment where you sat down beside me. Right then. I had it too.”

“Really?”

“I’ve never shared a déjà vu with someone.”

“I don’t even know if I’ve heard of anyone sharing a déjà vu with someone.”

“It’s fate,” he says.

“Oh, come on. It was interesting. I’ll give you that, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Why not?”

“Because fate seems like something you can say with the benefit of hindsight, like, ‘Remember that time when we both had that déjà vu and now that we’ve been married for ten years it seems that it was fated.’”

“Why wait to say it? Why does fate need to be confirmed through future experience?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like a corny way to place something that just happened in a more grandiose light. I’m not even sure it was that big of a deal.”

“That seems awfully cynical to me.”

“Well, it seems cynical to me that you would try to make a single moment that could have been a small, sweet, shared experience and have to make it into something bigger then it is.” You’re being too aggressive. Why are you being so aggressive?

Johnny sits down on the arm of the couch again. Frankie is in the kitchen, still in Johnny’s view. She is gathering up some napkins and some silverware. “You know, I‘ve always had this theory, just a personal theory, mind you, that all of my déjà vu’s or big coincidences are a message that I am on the right path. And we just had, both of us, a déjà vu and a coincidence. It’s synchronicity.”

“What?”

“It’s a term, a Carl Jung term, meaning something like an important coincidence.”

“Message from whom?”

“What?”

“You said it was a message that you were on the right path, a message from whom?” Please don’t say God. Please don’t say God.

“That I’m not so sure about, I guess.”

“Let’s just drop it. It was a nice moment. I don’t see any reason to apply some deeper meaning to it.”

“Fair enough.” Johnny walks over to the window and looks out. Her apartment does not have the greatest view of the city. “This is a nice apartment. Great location.”

“Yea, it’s pretty great. My only complaint is that there’s no escape from the city.” As she says this a siren is heard. “Right on cue.”

“The moon is beautiful tonight, Frankie, big and cloudy white. You should come see this.” Frankie comes into the living room from the kitchen and stands next to Johnny. He is leaning into the window, looking up.

“Where? I can’t see it.”

“You have to get closer.” She leans in, and they are close enough to feel the other’s warmth, and again he smells her perfume. He closes his eyes for a minute, just to soak in the moment and then he looks over and sees her neck, and elegantly longish neck, her hair lying softly around it. He has an inclination to wipe the hair away with deliberate fingers, but thinks better of the impulse.

Later. Later. God, she is a wonder, though.

“You know, I’ve lived in this building for 12 years, and I swear I’ve never seen the moon.”

“Maybe, I brought it with me.”

She stops, and looks over at Johnny. They are so close that the thought of a kiss is inherent in their closeness. Johnny confirms that it is too early for it and so he turns back to the moon.

“I’ve been hiding it, saving it for you.”

“I’m amazed that you let yourself say things like that.”

“I’m amazed that sometimes I believe the things I say.” As he eases away from the window he looks at her leaning into the glass, looking out at his moon, “The moonlight suits you. You really do look beautiful tonight. I am happy to be here with you. Really. It’s nice. Me. You. And the moon.”

She turns to look at him. Is he for real? Who says that? “No one would ever doubt that you were a poet.”

Buy the book.

M… swirls the bourbon around his glass just to hear the ice sing. The bartender reacts to the song the way a bartender should, moving toward the empty glass with a half-cocked bottle in his hand.

M… nods as the bartender tilts to a pour.

“More ice?”

“Please,” M… says.

The bar has been mostly vacant since M… arrived hours earlier. These hotel restaurants are often empty at this time of day. He looks up at the clock, stares at it for a second. He feels as though he has been drinking for hours and yet the clock mocks him with slowness. A series of stuttering seconds barely pass. Time slows. His drinking has not.

This is a fairly upscale restaurant for a hotel, and the restaurant portion is sporadically decorated with people. M… turns toward the chatter, opens his ears to the voice of the din. He hears a plate drop in the kitchen, turns quickly toward the noise, and the subtle whiplash of the turn reminds him of how heavy bourbon makes his head.

His phone, placed ceremoniously on the bar, vibrates and ignites with light. M… lets it go a little longer than he should. He briefly considers not taking the call at all, but the problem with cell phones is that they leave few excuses. No more, ‘I was out of the room for a second,’ or, ‘I was at the conference.’ Cell phones tether you to their violation, leave privacy somewhere in the distant past.

M… picks up the phone. It is her.

“How are you?” M… as husband asks, and then listens with his husband face, serious and considerate.

“(inaudible hum).”

“No, the meeting let out early,” he says. His mouth twists a little, thinking he could have skipped the call, and just have said the meting went long and he had turned his phone off.

“(inaudible).”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sometimes I wonder why they pay me for this every year,” he says. Then he listens.

“(inaudible).” His brow is furiously concentrated on her words.

“No, I told you. I’ve talked to them about it. I’ve even showed them how it would work. They’re all cavemen, deaf to the shifting technology.  You’d think they’d be open to saving money, but…” he stops, interrupted.

“(inaudible).”

“Yes, a little.” Stopped.

“(inaudible).”

“Bourbon.” Stopped.

“(inaudible).”

“Yes. OK.” Stops. Waits.

“(inaudible).”

“Hi. Honey.” M… as daddy says.

“(inaudible).”

“Daddy misses you.” Stops.

“(inaudible).”

“Yea?”

“(inaudible).”

“Yea?”

“(inaudible).”

“OK. Daddy loves you.”

“(inaudible).”

“OK. Yes. Can daddy talk to mommy again?”

“(inaudible.)”

“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“(inaudible.)”

“Yea, I miss you, too.”

“(inaudible.)”

“I promise. I’ll stop after this one and get some dinner.”

“(inaudible.)”

“OK. I’ll be in tomorrow around lunch time.”

“(inaudible.)”

“Love you, too.”

He shuts the phone and sets it back on the bar, strokes the smooth bar top with his hand, looks at his bourbon, grabs it and takes a long drink, walks briskly to the bottom of the glass.

M… looks to the bartender, “Could I see a menu, please?”

The bartender hands him a menu, and M… stares at the cover, realizing that he doesn’t feel much like eating.

He surveys the restaurant behind him.

There is a woman sitting alone on the other side of the room. She is tapping her long, slender fingers against a small, black purse on her table. She seems to be waiting for someone, impatiently. She is beautiful, wearing a black dress that comes up about mid-thigh in her seated position, her legs sheathed in charcoal gossamer, twisting her ankles on the axis of the heel of the shoe that is grounded, the other leg is crossed and peeking out from the shadow of the table.

She doesn’t look like she knows she’s beautiful.

Why would anyone keep her waiting?

She looks up and catches him looking. He has been staring too long. He turns away, looks again at the menu, feeling hungrier now.

M… looks up and down the menu, holds the entrees’ names in his mouth, pushes and pulls at the description of the fish, weighs the pros and cons of the steak, but all this makes him nauseous. He places the menu back down on the bar and when the bartender asks what he would like, M… taps his empty glass of bourbon, “Just another drink, please,” he says as he rises for the bathroom.

As he enters the bathroom the floral antiseptic stench reminds him of his bathroom at home. His wife is a clean person–so organized. As he stands at the urinal, a rush of dizziness hits his head, and he staggers back a step.

Maybe I should have gotten something to eat.

M… approaches the sink and stares at himself in the mirror. He still looks relatively young, and yet since his daughter’s birth he has felt older than his years, as if youth had slipped away suddenly without the benefit of a slower fade.

Water rushes over his hands and as it warms he throws some over his face.

M… exits the bathroom and stops for an instant once he sees that she, the woman who was sitting across the room in the black dress, has now taken the empty stool by his waiting glass of bourbon.

He very deliberately approaches the bar, feeling suddenly more drunk than before. He sits down at the stool and counts the awkward moments that go by. Then he watches her count the moments through the mirror they both face on the opposite side of the bar.

W… moves suddenly, crossing her left leg over her right, toward M…, and her ankle catches his leg. His pants leg is up a bit and he can feel her, the thinnest layer of nylon–only a whisper–separates them from a touch.

She doesn’t move her ankle.

He doesn’t want her to.

“Are you hear for the conference?” she asks, deliberately unveiling her voice.

“Yea, you?” he says, wiping away the webs from the drink.

“Unfortunately.” They both laugh the way people laugh at a joke that is neither funny or really a joke.

“Yea, I’ve been coming here for years and it gets worse every year. I don’t bother going to any of the talks or tutorials anymore. I think I’m even going to skip the keynote tonight.”

“Living on the wild side, eh?”

“I think just being at a business conference inherently negates a wild side.”

“I don’t know about that. Your sitting at a hotel bar in the middle of the afternoon chasing the bottom of a bottle of bourbon while talking to a strange woman, and you have a ring on your finger.”

“I do.”

“My ankle is resting on your leg and you haven’t said anything. You haven’t moved it away.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” he says, smiling. She is looking at him, serious. She’s not one to play games, at least not right now, “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t move my leg away because I didn’t want to move it away.”

W… smiles now, turns the glare of her stare away from his, rubs the glass that holds her drink with her slender fingers, suddenly shy. M… wants to reach out and touch her arm–her naked arm–and just the thought of it stands the hair up on the back of his neck, and he shivers a little as he sends away another rush of bourbon, an attempt to shake away the sparks. They don’t shake.

“You’re wearing a ring, too.”

“I am?”

“I think that’s what that diamond if on your finger.”

“Oh, that,” she says, looking at the ring, “Yea, I guess were both probably doing something…well…”

“Yea.”

“….”

They sit in the uncertainty, waiting for the quiet to break.

“Were you waiting for someone earlier?” he asks. She looks at him, “I didn’t think so,” he says.

“….”

“….”

“So, what now?” she asks.

“Why’d you come over here?”

“I was lonely. I wanted some company.”

“Well, you’ve got some. No harm in that.”

“Would your wife buy that?”

He just smiles, tight. No response is necessary. So, he changes the subject, “Do you find yourself lonely often?”

“No, I didn’t know I was lonely until I saw you over here looking at me. You were looking at me?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought you were a nice thing to look at.”

“A nice thing, huh?”

“I was looking, wondering if you know how beautiful you are.”

“I do. Sometimes.”

“Now?”

“Five minutes ago? No. Now? Yes.”

“Maybe, I’ve had too much to drink but I think you are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

“There’s that thing again.”

“Yea, you’re defining undefined categories for me. All I’m left with is things.”

She smiles, leans her head to one side, and a bell goes off in his head that tells him he’ll love this woman….

Buy at Amazon.

I have a new project to publish, and the plan was to publish the book on the Kindle. However, I am pretty excited about the prospects of the rumored Apple Tablet. The belief is that this new device will offer an e-reader in its software (among many other features), and that Apple will open the platform up to authors just as they did for developers on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

So, for right now, I am going to hold off on publishing anything until I here what is going on with Apple. The rumor mill is saying that we should all know something by January 27.

That being said, I’m sure I’ll still end up making the book available on the Kindle, and I would expect something to be ready by the middle of February.

My second novel Haven is available on the Amazon Kindle. There isn’t a dead tree version of this novel. This is the first book that I have published exclusively in the e-book format. So, if you have a Kindle, the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPod Touch, or the Kindle software that you can download free for your PC (currently unavailable on the Mac OSX), then you can try a free sample of the novel right now. If you like it, buy it.

My first collection of poems Such Deliberate Loveliness: Collected Love Poems 1997-2006 is available on the Amazon Kindle. So, if you have a Kindle, the Kindle app on your iPhone/iPod Touch, or the Kindle software that you can download free for your PC (currently unavailable on the Mac OSX), then you can try a free sample of the poems right now. If you like what you read, buy the entire collection.

My first novel In the Satchel, On the Train, Selling Dreams to Nancy is available on the Amazon Kindle. So, if you have a Kindle, the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPod Touch, or the Kindle software that you can download free for your PC (currently unavailable on the Mac OSX), then you can try a free sample of the novel right now. If you like it, buy it.