Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Memories of the Body Broken Review of Ambition Is Not a Dirty Word Review of The Blood of Flowers Review of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming Review of The Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry Creative Nonfiction My Boo Radley By Rebecca Ward A Walk in the Park By Madonna Dries Christensen Poetry Hearts and Diamonds By Andrena Zawinski It Was Then I Kissed Her By Andrena Zawinski In By Andrena Zawinski Death of Word By Tony Brown Fiction Being Caught Up With My Ego By David Landrum A Voice In My Head Screamed By J. A. Tyler About the Contributors © 2008, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Kenneth Weiss, Ed.D Policy Director - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Senior Editor - Patti Kurtz Editor - Elizabeth Murray Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit VolunteerMatch.

Being Caught Up With My Ego I Leave Behind a Beautiful Girl Who Eventually Becomes Rich and Famous By David Landrum I especially remember the night Sossity Chandler and I double-dated with a mutual friend, Cheryl Carter (the third time we had gone out). Cheryl, who was black, had a white boyfriend, so I guess you could say it was not just inter-racial dating, it was multi-racial dating (I am Japanese; I grew up over here but both of my parents are émigrés from Japan). We were in my BMW convertible. I was in the back seat with Sossity and I had let Cheryl drive. We pulled up to a 7-11 to pick up some beer when a couple of thugs with cropped hair sauntered toward us. They were beefy guys in sleeveless t-shirts, jean, and boots. Our town had seen a rise in skinhead activity of late; attacks on, and harassment of, minorities had increased. The two of them came right up to the side our car. I was not afraid to fight them. I am a body-builder, gymnast, and know martial arts. I could hold my own, even against two—but I also knew any incident with them could easily escalate into some worse. And they were like any other gang: they carried weapons and kept long records. My mouth got dry as one of them leaned on the side of my car. “Well,” he said, “what have we here?” He gave the four of us a long appraising look. “What are you guys? The United Nations of Fucking?” When he said this, I stood up in the back seat. “You guys got a problem with something?” I asked quietly. For a moment they could not answer. They had not expected a calm reply. But it did not take them long to recover. The taller one grinned. “We have a problem with you humping a white girl, Buddha-boy.” I opened my mouth to reply but just then the car jerked violently forward. I fell. Sossity caught me. By the time I got my bearings we were moving at a high rate of speed away from the 7-11. Cheryl had gunned my car and fled the scene. Sossity helped me get situated in the back seat. “What’s the idea?” I yelled when I had righted myself. “I thought we’d better get out of there. They might have had guns,” Cheryl said, still driving fast. I had let her drive my car that night because she told me she had always wanted to drive a BMW convertible. “Besides, there were more of them inside. Didn’t you see them?” I had not. I glanced over at Sossity. She grinned and then burst into laughter. “That was a pretty good back-flip you did,” she quipped. “I’m on the gymnastics team.” Cheryl was still gunning the car. I leaned up close to her ear. “Cheryl, slow down, for Christ’s sake. You probably already ruined the transmission popping the clutch like that and you’re stressing the engine and burning up gas. We’re safe now.” She glanced back at me and smiled. Cheryl Carter had light brown skin and diminutive features, and wore her hair in short dreadlocks. We managed to find some beer and went to my apartment to drink it. I lived off campus my senior year. Sossity would have been a junior but she dropped out of college to pursue her music career. At the time she still lived in West Lafayette. The night we saw the skinheads was also the first night we got it on. Cheryl and Tim went inside my apartment. Sossity and I stayed in the car and made out. I suggested the back seat but she said she wanted to go inside. When we entered, we could hear Cheryl and Tim. She moaned, he grunted, the bed creaked. We got on the couch and joined the symphony. Sossity and I dated but never got really close. There was always sex and we did a lot of things together, but we always kept a distance between us. Years later I talked to another guy Sossity dated, the guy she met after we drifted apart, and he said it was the same way with him. They never got close. A barrier always stood in the way. I think Sossity was so intent on making it as a musician she really did not want a serious relationship encumbering her. When she started playing a lot, we would sometimes not talk for weeks. When we did see each other we did not have much to say. Eventually, we went our ways. No split occurred. No moment came when we said, “It’s over.” We more or less forgot about each other. We saw each other again at Cheryl’s funeral. Cheryl was murdered, which is a story I won’t get into here. The day after her burial Sossity and I talked. I told her I worked for a software company in Chicago. Sossity said she had returned to her old home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was still trying to make it as a musician. “Any luck?” I asked. “I have an agent now,” she answered. “She landed a recording contract for me, so I’m hopeful. I’ve been playing for six years now. I’d better get something. I’m tired of living at the poverty level.” She looked over at me. “You’ll have to visit me some time.” “I have my own plane now,” I answered, surprised she wanted to see me at all. I learned to fly at Purdue, which operates an airport and flying school (Amelia Earhart taught at Purdue for a while); while we were dating back then I used to rent planes and take her for rides. “It’s a short hop over Lake Michigan,” I added. “Fly over then,” she said. “I miss you, Jerry. I’ll trade you a song for a ride in your plane. Songs are about the only thing I have to give these days.” I told her it was a deal. As soon as I got back to Chicago I called her and asked when we could get together. We set a date. The weekend of our date was the same week Anna Rodzevich came to work for our company. Anna Rodzevich was one of the best software engineers in the world—and one of the most beautiful. When the announcement that we had hired her came, I found her web page and some articles about her. A prodigy, she started developing software in her native Russia at age twelve. By age seventeen she owned her own business in France. Then she relocated in the States. We landed her because she had relatives in Chicago and wanted to be near them. She would head up the section where I worked—CEO at only thirty. She looked like a cover-girl for Vogue or Cosmopolitan—a real Russian beauty: blonde, tall, leggy, with big eyes and full lips. Her photographs did not do her justice. When she came to work the first day in a white, short-skirted business suit I thought I was looking at a model coming down the runway at a Paris fashion show rather than getting a glimpse of my new boss. We hit it off well. Too well. What happened with Anna was my first male fantasy come true. It came true the day before I flew over to see Sossity. I worked late Friday night. She stuck her head in my office. “You’re working late, Jerry,” she said in her thick Russian accent. I smiled sheepishly. “Trying to impress the new boss,” I said. She laughed. She wore her usual type of outfit: stylish and sexy. She always wore dresses or skirts, never pants, and they amply showed off her marvelous legs. Her hair looked like it had just been styled by a beautician. She regarded me. “Well, the boss thinks you need to knock off and come with her for a drink.” I had no choice. I shut down and went with her to a bar. She drank White Russians, a thing we laughed about. I had a rum and coke, though I tried to keep my alcohol consumption to a minimum. Like many Asians, I don’t handle alcohol too well. I have a bad case of “Asian flush”: it does not take much booze for me to get a red face and experience rapid pulse, dizziness and nausea, and loss of balance. I sipped my drink slowly. “You remind me of a Tartar,” she said. “They are Russians descended from the invading Mongols. You have their eyes.” I smiled, not knowing how to respond. Our work organization is very politically correct. Everyone is careful to avoid even the slightest nuance of racism. Though Anna’s statement did not offend me in any way, it struck me as way beyond the limits of what was allowed at our office. I did not say anything, though. She kept looking at me. “You are a very pretty boy,” she said at last. Her statement had the same effect a third drink has on me. I got red-faced, sweaty, and agitated. She took me home to her palatial apartment where I spent the first of what would be many nights. Sleeping with her was a little surreal. That first time, though, I felt pretty macho. I had screwed my boss—the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. But I had not seen anything yet. This was only minor surrealism. Soon it would be full-blown Salvador Dali, complete with limp watches and burning giraffes. At the time, however, I could not have known what was store for me the next few months. In fact, as I lay beside her sleeping, snoring form and watched the sunrise through the windows of her penthouse, I congratulated myself and thought of my date tomorrow with Sossity Chandler. At breakfast she asked if I could come to her place again tonight. “I have a date,” I told her, bluntly. Her eyes flashed anger for a moment, but she smiled. “You can’t break it?” “I don’t want to.” “Even for your boss.” She patted my neck with her fingers. I caught a slight edge to her voice. Try as she might to maintain a tone of playfulness and flirting, I could detect the venom in her words. “She’s an old girlfriend,” I offered. “I promised I would take her out again.” She read more into what I said than she should have read. Obviously she thought this was some sort of acquiescence to her exclusive claim upon me—as if she had one. “Well, good. I’ll miss you. And I don’t want you fooling around with other women.” “Anna, I fool around with a lot of women.” “Not anymore,” she said, and she took a big bite of Muesli. At that point I dismissed this veiled threat. She was my boss, for sure, but if she fired me unjustly and I filed a complaint about her, her questionable conduct as a CEO would be known to all. We finished breakfast, went for a walk by the lakeshore under the shadow of the Lake Point Tower. Lake Michigan frothed blue and white under a sunny sky. Sailboats slid through the water. Gulls stormed over the shoreline, shrieking. I held her hand and walked with her for an hour and then we parted. I went back to my apartment and cleaned it up. My apartment is not sumptuous and not in the best section of Chicago, either. When I moved here, I left the BMW my parents bought me at their house and got a Honda that would not be such a target for thieves. My parents are well off. My dad is a CPA and works auditing books of some of the biggest corporations in America. My mom stayed at home when I and my two sisters were kids but when the empty nest came, she went back to school, got a teaching degree, and was immediately hired because she is a minority member. Now she teaches fourth grade in a well-heeled suburban district. I hate to ask them for money, though, and try to live off just what I make. My parents do pay for me to keep my plane in a hanger at a local airport. They think it’s cool that I can fly—and I come home a lot because it’s easier to fly from Chicago to Indianapolis than it is to drive. I got cleaned up and went looking for a present for Sossity. On a whim, and because I thought it would impress her, I called in a flight plan, flew down to Purdue, took a taxi to the Purdue shop and bought her a couple of sweatshirts. I remember she had a black and gold one she used to wear a lot when we first dated. I also got her a logo cap and some sox. After calling her on my cell phone, I took off and flew over Indiana, landing at the Gerald Ford Airport in Grand Rapids. She was there to pick me up. Sossity looked great. I always thought she was one of the prettiest girls ever. She laughed when I complimented her. “I stay thin because I barely get enough to eat,” she joked. “I admire your tenacity,” I said, treading carefully. Career choices were a touchy subject with her. She did not like being told she should get a day-job or abandon her musical career for something more practical. “You’ve stuck with it a long time.” “Too long. How’s work?” I paused, wondering how much I should tell her. Sossity Chandler is completely liberated when it comes to relationships. I’ve dated girls who moped around after having sex—a few who cried afterwards, and I absolutely hate that. For Sossity, physical relationships were natural and she felt no remorse and no shame about them. To the contrary, she celebrated love and intimacy. If I told her about Anna, she would listen and probably have some good advice. “Some interesting situations have come up. I’ll tell you about them later.” We went out to eat. I took her to what she told me was the nicest restaurant in town. She dressed up and looked fabulous. Afterwards we went to an open mic and poetry slam. We drank. For some reason, I handle my liquor a little better when I’m around her, though she can drink four times as much as I can (and usually does). We went back to her place. We went to the bedroom. She lit a candle and we made love. We talked afterwards and I told her a little bit about Anna. She listened as I described what had gone on between us. “You’re in trouble,” she said. “You need to nip it in the bud.” “I’ll lose my job.” “Can’t you get her for sexual harassment?” I laughed. “Now that would look really good—a guy filing a sexual harassment claim against a girl.” I sighed. “Besides, when we work together I’m introduced to the world of a genius. I thought I knew things about programming. She lives in a different dimension than I do on that. I learn more about programming software in two hours with her than I learned in all my years of work and school.” “So you’re willing to let her into your bed if she lets you into her cyber-world?” “I suppose so.” “She’s a pervert.” “Not her.” “Mark my words, Jerry. Just what you’ve told me about her so far gives me the wrong hints. She’s coming on too fast and too strong. She’s already trying to control you.” “I think I can handle her.” “Wait until she ties you up.” I smiled. “That might be fun.” “It isn’t fun if you don’t want to. Believe me, I know from experience.” She told me to get her a bottle of water. After she had drunk about half of it she asked me why I had told her all this. “I wanted advice.” “I gave you the advice and you wouldn’t listen.” “I’m not a good listener.” In the morning we went flying. Michigan was rich with fall colors and we spent a couple of hours gasping at the trees down below, the carpet of red, yellow, purple, orange, the small lakes nestled like sapphires, the rivers emptying into the long, even course of the Lake (Michigan has the most even shore of any of the Great Lakes—I’ve flown over all of them). We landed on Beaver Island. It was there Sossity got the phone calls that changed things for her, and for us, forever. One was from her agent, Tonya Aaldair, telling her the CD they had cut had started to sell. Tonya said, in fact, it was selling well. She was getting calls from people who wanted to book Sossity. Someone from the Tonight Show had contacted her, though they had been tentative on any kind of definite offer to play. I stood beside her as she flipped her cell shut. She told me what her agent had said. “Wow. You excited?” “I won’t believe any of it until I’m actually playing on the Tonight Show and until I’m playing big venues. I’ve got my hopes up too often, Jerry, to let them get dashed again. Tonya knows that and wouldn’t call me like this unless she thought the trend was real—but I want to be skeptical for the sake of avoiding pain.” “You ready to head back?” She looked over at me. “Can we stay here tonight?” “Is there a place to stay?” We found a bed and breakfast that by a miracle (especially during color tour season) had a room available. Once inside, Sossity fell asleep. I went out for a walk and watched the sun set over the waters. It would be tight getting back to work. I would have to drop her off at the Gerald Ford Airport and then fly back to Chicago, but my hours were flexible and I could come in after noon. The sunset was beautiful. You could actually see the sun sink below the horizon. Stars gleamed in the sky. A waning gibbous moon loomed huge and yellow above the trees. I went back to the hotel room and we went to sleep. At about five a.m. she got another phone call. She answered groggily. As she listened, I saw her eyes go from bored to interested and then to alert. She sat up in bed, pulling the sheet around her. She began listening intensely. Since I had to get going, I went for a shower and got dressed. When I came back into the room, Sossity had put the phone down. She looked stunned. “Sossity, you look like God just called you on your cell,” I said. She looked over at me. “It wasn’t God, Jerry, but it might as well have been. It was Tonya again. She hasn’t slept. The phone has been ringing all night with people who want to promote me and sign me up for concerts. All our suppliers and radio outlets are clamoring for more. Tonya just signed a deal with”—here she named a major recording label—“for a distribution rights and Internet promotion. They bought out the contract for our demo CD, Jerry. ” “So you’ve made it big?” She looked straight at me, her eyes dreamy and astonished. “Jerry, they paid us eight million for the contract. I have eight million dollars.” I congratulated her but she seemed not to hear me. She dressed. We packed up, jumped in my plane, and headed back to her home. She sat gazing into the blue sky of that sunny fall morning. All at once she turned to me and squealed, “Jerry, I have eight million dollars. No more wondering where my rent money or my next meal is coming from. I can actually pay Tonya a decent wage! I’ve got more money than my parents who have done nothing for the last seven years but tell me I’m wasting my life trying to be a musician. I’m fucking rich, Jerry! I’m going to be a superstar!” And then she screamed in wild celebration and pounded on me with her fists. I laughed. “Quit that or you’ll make me crash the plane and never enjoy your money or new-found success. You’ll be famous like Buddy Holly or Rick Nelson.” She acted giddy like this all the way back. I landed at Grand Rapids, kissed her good-bye, and watched her walk (I think she actually skipped some of the way) toward the parking lot. Her new-found success endured, as I’m sure you know. After all those years of struggle and poverty, she burst on the public scene like a fireworks display. Her CD sold in the multiple millions. I started hearing her songs every time I turned on the radio. She appeared on every popular TV show that featured music and musicians, organized a band and began touring, rode a wave of popularity that has never diminished. That I was present with her when she found this out is a memory that I cherish but one that also causes me pain because we split up only a few weeks after all this good luck befell her. I flew back that day, put my plane in the hanger, and got to work a little after noon. Anna was waiting for me. I could tell she was not happy. “Why are you late for work?” she asked, her voice low, teeth clenched. We were in front o the whole secretarial staff so she could not yell at me or vent the anger that seethed beneath her gaze. “Late? I keep my own hours. I’ll work tonight to get my projects done.” Then I added, “Am I now on the same level as the hourly employees?” She glanced at the secretaries, who had noticed our little confrontation. They only gave furtive glances but you could bet they were all taking it in with great interest. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said, and walked off. I returned to my office and checked my e-mail. I had one from Sossity telling me that her manager was overwhelmed with phones calls. Her website had collapsed from more than a million hits and she wondered if I would build her a new one that would stand up to the demands of her new-found popularity. And she said I was sweet and she had had a wonderful time with me on Beaver Island. Anna stormed into my office. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. She was getting on my nerves by now. “I’m reading my goddamned e-mail,” I answered, annoyed at her snooping. She loomed over me. I thought she might unload now. Then she appeared to think better of it. The angry look left her face. She tried to look pleasant. “How was your weekend?” she asked. “It was fine. I had a great time. Sossity and I went to Beaver Island out in Lake Michigan.” “Sossity. That’s a funny name.” “You’re going to hear it a lot.” “Is she that blonde girl who plays Blake’s now and then?” Blake’s was a local bar. Sossity had played there several times. “She’s played there, yes.” “I heard her once. I remember her name because that night I asked her if she would sing ‘Sossity, You’re a Woman.’ She told me to go to hell.” I fought back a smile. I was slightly amazed that Anna knew her, but people say we’re only five degrees removed from everyone else in the world. I wondered if this was synchronicity or bad fortune. “She’s a very pretty girl,” she said. “That’s true, Anna.” “And she’s your squeeze.” I did not like her saying this but decided against a retort. “She’s my squeeze.” “Is she better than me?” Her question shocked me so much it took me a minute to get myself together and answer her. “I don’t really do a rating system on the women I know,” I answered, trying to keep my voice even. “Questions like that are not the right ones to ask. It’s like asking whether Shakespeare or Sophocles is the better playwright. It’s unanswerable.” “Am I Shakespeare or Sophocles?” “You’re Chekov,” I said. This sounded a little glib so I added, “No, you’re Akmatovah.” She looked surprised I would know a contemporary Russian woman poet whose first name was also Anna. She actually smiled. “You’re funny.” He voice still had its edge. “Lots of people tell me that. I don’t know if it’s bad or good.” “It’s good,” she said. “We’ll talk later, Jerry. Get your work done.” She turned and went out of my office. I might have reacted more to her little rant; I might have worried more about what was in store for me. I could tell she was not finished with me but I was too excited about what had happened for Sossity and about the chance to build a web page for her to worry or to stew about anything. I called her. She was almost hysterically happy. I told her I would construct a web page for her tonight. “I’ll have to do it on my time, but this will be a labor of love,” I said. “When can we see each other?” “I’ll call you,” she said. A silence came and then I heard her laugh. “I’m sorry, Jerry. That came out wrong. I mean, I feel like a one-legged girl in an ass-kicking contest. I’ve got a billion things to do. But we’ll get together. As soon as I can.” “Let me take you out to dinner to celebrate—when you’re able, of course.” “You’ve got a date. I have to go, Jerry. Thanks so much. I really need that site up as soon as you can get it up.” “Tonight.” Elated at the prospect of seeing Sossity again, I finished reading my e-mail. Impish satisfaction filled me now. If Anna wanted to ream me out about sloughing on the job, she would have trouble. I had developed programs for several businesses the last few months and their recommendations had netted me twice as many requests for development. I would need staff to handle all the demands for my services. I had the secretaries respond positively to all the requests and put them to work on contracts. If they all came through, we would net about two million. “Doesn’t look like Natasha Fatale was happy with you this morning,” Cindy Ku, one of the secretaries, commented. She was a pretty Chinese-American girl I had lunched with once or twice. I laughed and glanced back at Anna’s office. “Don’t let her hear you say that.” “I won’t. But every time I talk to her I expect her to outline her latest plan to get Moose and Squirrel.” She perfectly imitated the accent of the voice on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I laughed, put my palms up in a gesture of non-committal, and went back to my office. I worked the rest of the day. Anna did not come in or bother me but she caught me at the door as I was getting up to go out. “I’ll see you at Blake’s in an hour.” I looked at her. As always she had dressed in high style and looked beautiful. She stood with her hands on her hips. I decided I might have to negotiate. “I’ve got something I need to do tonight, Anna, and it’s important. But I will have a drink with you.” She looked steadily at me, as if pondering what to say. Then she spoke: “Okay, a drink. I’ll see you there.” I went home and started constructing the web page right away. I thought briefly of simply not showing up. I smiled, wondering if the lovely Anna Rodzevich had ever been stood up. It might enhance her social skills, I thought, to be dumped for once in her life. But she had my cell and my address and I did not want disturb the dragon. After working on the website awhile I took a taxi to Blake’s. She already had a table for us. I ordered a Manhattan. She sipped a masculine-looking whisky and soda. I decided on a strong drink since I would only be having one with her and I thought drinking something heavy would give me a better negotiating posture. I glanced toward the stage. “No music tonight,” she said. “Only Wednesdays and weekends, the bartender told me. Did you ever see this girl play here?” “I usually went to her concerts. I knew her in college.” “I was with a group of friends from Russia. I shouted at her to sing that song because her name was in the title. She ignored me and finally told me to go to hell—in front of everybody, and everybody laughed. Then she said she would do a song for me. She asked my named and said ‘This next song is dedicated to Anna Rodzevich. She sang a song called ‘Look at that stupid girl.’” I managed not to laugh but could not suppress a grin. That actual title is “Stupid Girl,” by the Rolling Stones. Sossity loves the Rolling Stones and does covers of their songs all the time. “You think it’s funny?” she asked, leveling her eyes at me. “I’m sorry, Anna.” I still could not let go of my grin. “But don’t try to heckle Sossity Chandler. You’ll never come out the winner.” She tapped her glass with her long, red fingernails. It made a sharp pinging sound. She had strong fingers. “She had no right to embarrass me in public like that.” I told her about Sossity—all about her. It was a stupid thing to do, I realize, but I spent the next half hour or so or so talking about her. I told about how we knew each other at Purdue, how she had dropped out, her struggles, and now how she had made it big. The more I talked the more the liquor went to my head and the louder and the more enthusiastic I got. Anna listened patiently. After I finished, she spoke. “You are quite taken with her,” she observed. When she said this, I realized what I had been doing. The “Asian flush” hit me hard then. I got red and sweaty and disoriented. I did not know what to say. She observed me. “Let’s go to my place.” I could not answer but eventually stammered out that I could not go, I had a lot to do, I needed to get back to my apartment. “You want to keep your job?” “Don’t threaten to fire me. If you get rid of me, I’ll file a claim against you. I just brought in two million dollars in sales. You can’t fire me because of a personal vendetta, Anna, so don’t try it.” This sounds decisive. I delivered it, however, in a squeaky, stammering voice. The alcohol and her intimidating presence disoriented me to the point that I sounded more like someone whistling in the dark than stating an ultimatum. She only smiled. “Like I said, you’re funny. And I wouldn’t fire you like that. You will do something, Jerry, sooner or later. Your sales will lag, you’ll make a mistake that costs us money—you will do any number of things to give me a pretext for firing you. I just need to bide my time. And you mentioned the sales you made. You’re a good writer. You can be a hundred times better. I can teach you and I plan to. In a few years you can start your own company. But for now stick with me.” I said nothing. She sipped her drink. “And,” she said, “I heard little Miss Cynthia Ku compare me to Natasha Fatale. I don’t like that, Jerry. She really has the hots for you and was just trying to be cute and impress you, but I think she has to go.” I was stunned. “How did you hear?” “Walls have ears. If you cooperate with me, though, I will overlook her insult.” “Cooperate?” My temples were pounding with a headache by now. “Come to my place. What is it you have to do tonight that’s so important?” If I had not been disoriented by liquor I could have come up with a plausible lie. Instead I told her I had to make a web page for Sossity. She frowned. “It’s going to take a lot to get that girl out of your blood.” I said nothing. By now I was completely under the effect of the booze and of Anna’s ferocious personality. I imagine you have heard the anecdote about the frog in the kettle. I became the frog. By slow degrees Anna induced me to participate in things that now seem unreal. As a respectable family man, I can hardly believe I did the things we did. But she lured me into them as a spider slowly, carefully encases a large insect in its sticky webbing, never making sudden movements lest it lurch and get away. The first night I dribbled a bit of hot wax on her back. I thought it thoroughly silly and the two of us laughed about it. And then just one swat with a riding crop. We treated it as a joke. Soon, the joke was on me but I didn’t realize as much. This sort of thing escalated for six months until I finally saw what was going on, what I had become, and I shrank back in horror from my very image. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I spent the next couple of nights with Anna and then dragged into work, swamped with projects, weary, hung over, groggy from lack of sleep. I got an e-mail: Jerry—sorry, I had to get the site up. Tonya got someone else to do it but thanks for the offer. Are you okay? Got to run—will be running for the foreseeable future. Sossity. She left a link to the website. Whoever she hired did a good job. I think I might have done a little better but I let the opportunity slip by. Over the next months I lost contact with Sossity. I got one or two apologetic e-mails from her and then no word at all as the demands of her career took over her life. Between working during the day and spending nights with Anna I did not have much of a life myself. When you get into unreality it becomes an insane norm. As things get darker you forget about light. As the world around you goes frigid you cannot remember what it is to be warm. So it was with me. During the day I wrote software. Under Anna’s tutelage I began to see angles I had never dreamed existed. Our business increased vastly. Soon I had two people working for me. Nights I spent with her. The turning point came when I took a day off to get my bearings. I actually slept most of the day but took some time to walk the paths around Michigan Avenue and the lakeshore. The proverbial Chicago wind blew off the water. Storms of gulls screamed overhead. I saw young couples with children, old couples who had lived their lives together. The bleak, dismal life of which I had somehow become a captive rolled through my heart in a sludge of memory. I am not prudish or religious but there are things that any human being knows are not what either God or nature meant us to do. I sat on a stone jetty by the lake and watched for two hours, then got up and went home. I fell asleep again. I woke up at about 8:00 at night, hungry (I had not eaten in a couple of days); I cleaned up and went to a bar. I found a table, ordered food, and looked up to see someone waving at me. I could not make out who it was in the dark room but waved back. The figure got up and walked toward me. It was Cynthia Ku. I smiled. She looked so good. Cynthia Ku was small, though strong (she taught gymnastics on weekends) and beautiful. Tonight she had on a red minidress, big ear-rings, and hair tied up with a red ribbon—she looked a lot flashier than she did in the office. I invited her to sit down. She was out with some girlfriends. I bought her a drink. “So how are you?” she asked. “Okay, I suppose.” “You don’t look so good. You’ve lost a lot of weight.” “I’m tired,” I said. She paused then asked, “You like dating Anna?” I wondered how much I should say. I know how office gossip goes. I also suspected the people at work knew much more about what went on between Anna and me than I would like them to know. Cynthia watched me through my silence. “I’m getting weary of seeing her all the time. She’s very demanding.” I glanced over. Once more I was struck with what a pretty girl Cynthia was—and she looked so good in the outfit she had on, hair tied back, dark eyes reflecting the dim lights of the room. “You and I ought to go out sometime, Cynthia.” “What do you think Natasha Fatale would do if she found out?” “Quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of her. Come on. Let’s dance.” We danced three numbers. I had genuine fun for the first time in months. Cindy was an excellent dancer and she looked so good I couldn’t help smiling at her the whole time. Happily tired, we left the dance floor and sat back down. My supper had arrived. “What are you smiling at?” she grinned. “You think I’m funny?” “I can’t stop looking at you—you’re so damned pretty.” Cindy’s face lit up. Unlike many women, she knew how to take a compliment. I hate women who blush and get flustered when you compliment them and then start making self-deprecating jokes. That is one of my pet peeves. I leaned over and kissed her. She was startled, but after a moment of tenseness, she relaxed and let me kiss her. She put her hands on my shoulders. We kissed for a good two minutes. When we pulled apart, everyone around us was smiling. One guy gave us thumbs up. Cynthia pointed at my plate. “You’d better eat,” she said. “Your food will get cold.” I had the waiter bring her silverware and we shared the food I had ordered. We sat close. I ate with appetite. After a while, one of her friends came over and told her they were leaving. I thought about offering to take her home but decided not to. I kissed her good night and said we would get together and do something soon. I went home, put on some music, and lay down. I looked around my place (I call it an apartment but actually it’s a townhouse, one-half of a brownstone). I relaxed and dozed. My cell phone woke me up. It was Anna. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Dozing.” “I want you to come over.” I paused. Everything I had realized from the last two days forced me to a point. I had to confront her or give in. I could sense her presence on the other end of the line. “Not tonight,” I said. She swore and demanded I come over. The ugly tone of her voice made me recall her threat against Cynthia. This suffused me with anger. “I said not tonight.” No doubt she caught the edge on my voice. “You’d better do what I say.” “Anna, I’ll do what I want to do. I need a night off from you. I’m tired and what you always want me to do is too much work. So I’ll see you later.” I clicked off, got up, and started to rummage through the refrigerator. I was still hungry. I made myself a grilled ham and cheese. As I put the dishes from my snack into the dishwasher, I heard a loud knock at my door. I paused. It came again, more insistent. I went over to the door, which was chained, and opened it a crack. Outside stood a guy who looked like he might be head bouncer in a Hell’s Angel bar. I asked what he wanted. “Open the fucking door,” he said in a Russian accent. I started to push it closed but he slammed both hands against it, breaking the pull chain, and burst into the room. Mistake. My years of training in martial arts clicked in. I did a throw-down and, as he hit the floor, pulled his right arm joint out of the socket. This is a dangerous and life-threatening move to use on someone. My sensei told me only to use in extreme cases. This was about as extreme as things got. When I did the snap he bellowed like a bull and fainted. I patted his pockets. He had a gun and a swing-blade. I wrapped them in a handkerchief, thought a minute, and then felt around till I found his cell phone. I checked the directory. Sure enough, her name sat right at the top of his list. After pondering, I fished out his wallet, glanced at his driver’s license, and then took all the money out of it—probably seven-hundred dollars in fifties. I threw the money in a kitchen drawer and replaced the billfold in his pants pocket. By now a couple of my neighbors who had heard the ruckus appeared. One of them called the cops. Another brought a hunting rifle and held it on my assailant. He regained consciousness but was in so much pain he cried. It’s quite gratifying to see a three-hundred-pound thug who thought he was going to beat the hell out of you on the ground blubbering like a baby. The cops got there within ten minutes. They called an ambulance and got him to the emergency room. They questioned me, took a statement and left. Though the authorities were later tight-lipped about it, some people I know who had access to the process told me he was a small-time thug who had connections with a couple of Eastern European gangs in town. Once they had left and I had thanked my neighbors for their help and assured them I was okay, I called Anna on her friend’s cell. She answered in Russia. “You made a mistake, Anna,” I said. “A very stupid mistake.” After a moment of stunned silence, she hung up. I called again. No answer. I got her voice mail. “Anna, you’d better call me. I’ve got your buddy Dimtri Stasov’s cell-phone with your number in the directory. You’ve got five minutes.” Two minutes later it rang. “Hello, Anna,” I said in a mock-cheerful voice. A dead, tense silence followed. Finally she spoke. “What do you want?” “I’m leaving. I want a good severance packet and a letter of recommendation from you. Otherwise, the cops get this phone and they get the whole story.” I could hear her breathing. She was weighing the possibilities. “Dimitri will probably be deported for this. And the same thing just might happen to you. And the local press will go ape-shit over a scandalous story about a CEO and software genius who is into bondage and hires gang members to go after her ex-boyfriend because he doesn’t want to come over and give her a good beating. Am I making myself perfectly clear?” “Yes, Jerry,” she said, her voice cold. “It’s clear.” “And don’t send the Chechen mafia after me. If I think you’ve made one move like that, you’re finished. I’ve embedded an accusation in my computer and it will release in twenty-four hours unless I cancel it. I also have some photographs of you that you don’t want anyone to see. I got them off your cell phone a couple of nights after I screwed you and you were laying there snoring like the Russian hog that you are. Mess with me, and they go on the internet with free access for everyone.” I lied about the embedded accusation—though I planned to set it up right after I got off the phone with her. But I did have pictures from her cell phone (you don’t want to know). She would set up cameras to film her sexual escapades and then stored selected stills on her cell phone—for recreational viewing, I suppose, when she got bored at work; or maybe for self-stimulation when she went to the ladies room. Undoubtedly she had whole files like this and would not want anyone with a search warrant snooping around her place or going through her cyber-files. I marvel now that I decided to copy them. Maybe even back then I sensed I might use them for insurance some day, though when I recorded them I was not exactly sure why I did so. “So,” I went on, “let’s make peace. Announce tomorrow that I’m leaving to start my own company. I’ll come in the afternoon to empty my office. I’m taking Cynthia Ku with me as my chief administrator. The same goes for her as for me, and even more so: if you even look at her wrong or do anything to hurt or frighten her, I swear by Sakyamuni the Blesséd One I’ll have your hide. Arrange the severance package tonight. It had better be good.” I snapped the phone shut. Rudeness is foreign to my culture but there are times when it is appropriate. I called my parents and told them I was starting my own company. I put the release-message in my e-mail. And I checked my files to see what I had on Anna. To my delight, I had more than I thought and some that would sink her like the Titanic if they were ever made public. I made several copies and saved them in different places on my network. I wanted to call Sossity but hesitated. Sleep was impossible so I sat in a chair by my front window and waited for morning. I realized as dawn came up over the brownstones of my neighborhood that once again I had let our relationship die. She would not be able to see me anymore. Even if I called, she could not answer. She was on tour. And now it was not right anymore. I could not quite fit it all together but something had happened. My life had entered a new phase. As I watched the sun come up, I knew Sossity would not be a part of it except as a friend. I got up out of the chair, took a shower, and went to bed, but still could not sleep. It was 6:40. I waited until seven o’clock and called Cynthia. I told her not to go to work and said I would meet her for breakfast in twenty minutes. I’ll bring this to a conclusion now. Anna did not try anything more. I never saw her again. She wrote up a generous severance package and drafted a laudatory letter of recommendation for me. She did the same for Cynthia. She even contacted the clients negotiating with me on contracts and suggested they do business with my new company. Consequently, I had plenty of business the same day I started up. It has never lagged. My firm is one of the primary software agencies in the world now. I make sure I never cross paths with Anna at conferences and technology fairs. She apparently does the same with me. I married Cynthia just three months after the night I saw her in the bar. My parents were not happy at first. The Chinese and Japanese do not think a lot of each other; and she is a Christian. But her beauty and charm disarmed them. I told them I had to live my own life and they could not expect me to live up to their expectations. In Japan children were expected to live up to the desires of their parents, but the culture of the United States had different views. They agreed. In fact, I was surprised at how readily they dropped their claim on supervising my future. Maybe Americanization had touched them a little more than I imagined. Cynthia got pregnant soon after we married, and any reservations my mom and dad had about her evaporated as they anticipated becoming grandparents. Sossity surprised me by showing up at my wedding. She was on tour and could not even stay for the reception dinner but wished us well and said she had a concert scheduled in Chicago in February. We could get together then. A few months later I was showing Cynthia pictures of Sossity and me. One of them I took on the beach at Beaver Island. I remembered those days—the last time we were intimate, the last time we really talked and were together in a relationship. At dinner up there the first night we got on the subject of what we thought was the saddest song we knew. Mine was “Never a Day Goes By” by Wood. She thought for a while. “Mine are oldies,” she said. “One is ‘If You Could Read My Mind,’ by Gordon Lightfoot. That is sad. But the one that consistently makes me cry is ‘Birds’ by Neil Young.” I mention this because she sang that song at the concert. Sossity sent us tickets but Cynthia was in her ninth month and did not want to sit that long. She sent me off with a humorous warning not to rekindle old flames. I told her not a chance. Sossity and I met backstage before the concert. She had a table set up and food catered in. She looked thin and a little tired but happy. We had a lot to talk about and chattered for the first twenty minutes or so then slowed down to eat before our food got cold. “Your wife is a doll,” she said. “Were your parents upset that she’s Chinese?” I had told her a little bit about the friction between our two peoples and how my parents had wanted me to marry a white girl. “I told them she was the woman I loved,” I answered, “and I needed to set the direction of my life. Saying that took all the courage I could muster. Then when I said it they said, ‘Jerry, that’s very true.’ And that was the end of it.” She laughed. “You took control of your life, Jerry, that’s what you need to do. With us—I don’t think it would ever have worked out. We’re too alike. We let people control us, we live up to other peoples’ expectations. Or at least we did. I really think you are a sweet man, and I loved when we were together. Now I think we both see that charting our own courses took us apart. You love someone for what they are. When they change, you can’t love them anymore, whether the change is for the worse or the better. In your case, it was for the better.” “I hope we’ll stay friends.” “You are more than a friend to me, Jerry. There isn’t a word for what you and I share, and I won’t try to make one up. I will love you all my life. Yes, we’ll relate. It will be a different way.” “It will be beautiful.” I did kiss her good-bye despite what I had promised my wife. But our relationship had entered a different plane, as she said. I left and went down into the audience. I had given Cynthia’s ticket to a friend of mine. We enjoyed the show together. When Sossity came to the solo, unplugged part of her concert, she said she wanted to dedicate a song to Jerry Watanabe, an old friend. She strummed chords, the lights went down, and she sang: Lover, there will be another one who'll hover over you beneath the sun tomorrow see the things that never come today When you see me fly away without you shadow on the things you know feathers fall around you and show you the way to go it's over, it's over. Nestled in your wings my little one this special morning brings another sun tomorrow see the things that never come today Then the chorus again. I sat there and cried. Some things follow logical patterns and some things do not. Sossity was singing about the two of us, but also about Cheryl, our friend who had died so young. And also about the sadness, the sometimes unutterable pain, of our lives, but the hope that endures in the fact that at times we do love, we do give, and we do make the proper choices, not the wrong ones. She cried too. I could not see it when she sang the song, but the next day I came across an item on the internet news: a close-up shot of her with big, glistening tears on her cheeks. When I read the caption, Sossity Chandler sheds tears during Neil Young song, I wanted to put my fist through the computer screen and wanted to find the correspondent who had written that banal tag line and pull his arm out of joint like I had for Anna’s hired thug. Of course I did neither. I had a family now and responsibilities. Sossity had gone her way, I mine. But she had given voice to what would have otherwise been inexpressible. That is her talent. That is the direction her life should take. The realization of this enabled me to let go of her. *Previously appeared in The Cynic.