LOVERMAN
by William Young
Copyright 2011 by William Young
I came to know Andrew Kissling because he had, during the course of the year he sat innocuously several cubicles down from me, stolen my girlfriend. To the best of my knowledge, he began his machinations of love during the company retreat, an annual event normally held on the shores of Lake Thalbord but this year having been moved to the green slopes of Mount Schii, a ski resort with Bavarian intentions and American sensibilities which had been searching for a summer identity, when I had suddenly fallen ill with a severe case of appendicitis. My appendix, and Erika, were both removed from my life, though Erika much more slowly and without anesthesia.
I should probably say that Andrew Kissling came to know me. He began dropping by my cubicle one day about two weeks after my appendix had been removed, inquiring about how I felt. He was, I thought then and still do, an unremarkable man: brown hair, brown eyes, a predilection toward uninspired dress and, so far as I knew then, an inability to converse on any topic not tax code related. He would have made the perfect spy: He was plain and unremarkable, able to blend into the background with the least effort. He was the type of person who could pass state secrets and never spend the money garnered through his illicit and treasonous dealings, never drawing attention to himself. Not, of course, that he owed me any loyalty. To him, assuredly, I was the man in the nearby cubicle who was dating the pick of the paralegal litter: Erika Montrose.
It wasn’t until five months after my surgery, just as my Christmas spirit was beginning to emerge from under the weight of corporate commercialism and I was finally coming around to the idea that I would, as in year’s past, gain some small amount of satisfaction by witnessing a smile on the face of a gift recipient (it was, I admit, December 17th at the time) when Erika unexpectedly showed up at my apartment. I had just gotten home from work and had, as yet, to remove my accountant’s habiliment when the familiar two tones sounded from the doorbell and I turned from the kitchen, leaving behind the slowly heating mug of water I had been pondering through the window on the front of the microwave. On the stoop stood Erika, shrouded against the cold in a full length parka and a scarf drawn high over her cheeks. The December cold plowed past her and into the foyer where it wrapped around my legs, standing my hairs momentarily on end.
“Come in,” I said, smiling happily at the unexpected visit. “I was just microwaving some water for tea; do you want some?”
She shook her head once, no, while quickly crossing over the threshold, her heels clicking on the parquet floor. I shut the door, December resisting momentarily with a mighty gale which forced some effort from me, and followed her into the living room. She pulled the scarf away from her face and drew the gloves from her hands as the heels of her shoes made small indentations on the Oriental rug with each step across the room. I entered only partway, waiting just past the arch so that I could hear the trill of the microwave when it announced that the water had been heated and I could then indulge myself in my daily post-work habit: orange-spice tea.
“Roger,” she said peremptorily, her voice matching the timbre of the gusts outside. “We need to talk.”
It was then the microwave sounded, a siren call I ignored as my limbs grew slack with anticipation. I had heard this tone of voice in a woman once before, when I was twenty-seven and desperately in love, and memories of that instant and the finality of its guillotine stroke replayed as a black-and-white movie flashback through my brain, complete with her voice over. I closed my eyes firmly for a second and licked my lips, praying that it would be something different, anything -- that she were going to force me to ask her for her hand, perhaps -- than a recurrence of that day six years ago. This was not to be the case, however. I could tell that from the fact she only unzipped the upper portion of her parka and stood, with an odd slack-armed certainty, in the corner opposite me.
“Okay,” I answered.
She came immediately to the point, wasting no time dallying with questions to which my answers could have affirmed or turned aside any doubt as to the correctness of her action. This particular moment, this treachery, if you will, was not without, however, some doubt on her part. As she moved her lips to begin forming the words which would, in a moment, return me to the shelf from which she had plucked me nearly two years earlier, tears began welling in her eyes. It was Christmastime, I thought, and she must certainly have known that this would wreck any sentimentality that had been forming in my heart and turn my holiday cheer into a chorus of “humbugs” a la Ebeneezer Scrooge.
“Roger,” she said, pausing slightly to draw in a short, quick breath. “I think we need to see other people.”
This choice of words made me want to say something humorous, as if I were an unwitting character in a situation comedy who requires several repetitions of something said before the implications sink in, but the pit that had suddenly opened beneath my stomach sucked into it all the emotions that had been unknowingly standing upon its trap door.
“Why? What did I do wrong?” I asked, nearly begging for some shred of a reason.
It was then that a tear, the only tear to be shed that night and the last tear to have fallen in my apartment, abandoned its tenuous grip on the lashes of her right eye and trailed quickly down her cheek, drawing along behind it a thin line of mascara.
“I just need to ... I just need to move on. It wasn’t anything you did. It’s just what I need to do,” Erika said, attempting to claim the onus for the end of our relationship while I cast about for reasons, events, differences that could have set us apart.
It was obvious to me that it was my fault, that if there were to be any blame placed it would have to fall squarely on me, since I had evidently proved incapable of keeping her and was apparently losing her for no reason whatsoever. I did not then, however, know I had been outmaneuvered by a fifth columnist.
“I don’t understand: If I did nothing wrong, then why is it better for you to see other people?” I inquired. “Can’t you at least give me some sort of reason?”
She couldn’t, and shook her head slightly while wiping the tears from her eyes into the folds of her scarf. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, her voice phlegmatic. “I should go now.”
I stood aside as she passed by me and walked to the door, neglecting to replace her scarf or zip up her parka, and I watched as she passed over the threshold and into the world outside. The door made a metallic click behind her when it shut. Perhaps I should have protested more, required some amount of explanation, but I have never been that sort of man when it comes to women.
I did not show up at work the next day, opting to use a day of sick leave so that I could recover from the half-bottle of Old Smuggler’s Scotch Whisky I had crawled into after Erika vanished from my apartment. I had considered drinking throughout the entire day, allowing my stubble to grow thick and my shirt go untucked while emptied pizza boxes spontaneously stacked themselves in the kitchen, but I found that after I had drunk a glass of orange juice I could not, in good faith, allow myself to wallow in self-pity in the way I had assumed men my age certainly did under such circumstances. Instead, I watched television, allowing myself only shows which were thirty minutes in length, and preferring sitcoms to the variety of nature and political shows available on the cable networks.
When the next day came and the sun cracked its yoke against the horizon, spreading orange light into the heavens and chasing away a night during which I had, though tempted frequently, avoided drinking the rest of the scotch (I only had it on hand for my father’s visits), I returned to work. It was only the fourth day of sick leave I had taken during my thirteen year tenure with Gable, Klein and Arondyke -- I had used vacation time during my appendix surgery recovery -- so my supervisor didn’t inquire as to how
I felt. Kissling, on the other hand, did come to my desk just after nine, a mug of steaming coffee held gingerly in his right hand, and asked if I had been sick the day before.
“Yeah, you could say I was a bit under the weather,” I replied. “It’ll take a while to get over, though.”
“You should make sure you drink a lot of fluids,” he offered and then moved his coffee mug slightly. “Not coffee, of course, but orange juice and stuff like that.”
I nodded. “I did drink a lot of fluids, but it really didn’t seem to help.”
He half shrugged and wished me well before walking away. Of course, I thought nothing of it at the time: The idea that he might have been checking in on how I was doing, for Erika’s sake, was something that developed many months later, after it was far too late to go back to the beginning.
That Friday was the company’s Christmas party, normally a night of restrained inebriation and reserved commentary about the size of the Christmas bonus. I had intended only to show up briefly, to make my presence known to those to whom it would have mattered to ensure, whenever the next round of salary raises and promotions