Something I Started?

By Dan Mulhollen

It was just after 7pm and I had just finished supper. I heard someone walk onto my porch and ring the doorbell. I was surprised to see Sonia, a tall, former medical person, of some sort (RN? LPN? NP? A&P?), under whose care I’d been in a few years back. With her was a very tall, shaven-headed man of about 40 holding a familiar-looking paperback.

“Did you write this?” he asked anger in his voice. He turned the book, showing me the cover and title. I immediately recognized it as something I had written fifteen years earlier, and after countless revisions, considered the self-published document one of my better works.

“I don’t suppose you want an autograph,” I joked, hoping to lighten the mood.

He stopped himself from smiling. “Sonia is my wife,” he stated, his anger returned. “This book put all sorts of ideas in her head.”

Ideas? I wondered, pondering the several worrisome ideas that book might put in a young woman’s head.

“Look, I was unsure about things,” Sonia said, shaking her head. “The whole marriage thing was a biggie. Roslyn was having issues with her husband.” Roslyn, incidentally, was Sonia’s replacement at the Sphere Westside Clinic. “We both read this about the Princess adventures and started considering that possibility.”

I closed my eyes, trying to hide my own smile. “And so you…”

“It was good as a one-time thing.”

“One-tine,” I replied, an odd satisfaction in my voice.

“How do I know that?” the tall, balding man, apparently her husband, asked. “How do I know you’re not…”

“I’m not,” Sonia said cutting him off. “Even in the afterglow ... er ... aftermath I was worried about you finding out and how you’d take it.” She grimaced, suggesting she was not 100% pleased with that answer.

“And here,” he said, his voice shaking, “I thought I was marrying this good Catholic girl.”

“Woman,” she remarked as a reminder. “And I am still that. Even good Catholics can have kinks, you know?.”

He scowled.

“Come on,” she said, cheerfully. “Remember two years ago on that path between the high school and the river?”

“Where you stripped off your clothes straight out of the car, no signs of discomfort or shame.”

“I knew the path would be empty — Summer Solstice before 6am. What a way to greet the summer, as the sun rose.”

“Uhh …” he said followed by a long silence. Pondering complex issues apparently did not come naturally to him. At last, he shook his head and smiled. “That was pretty great.”

“And when we were dating. How many nudies did I send you?”

“You don’t know how tempting that was not to show every guy at work.”

“I trusted you,” she said, smiling. “And I need you to trust me when I say that Roslyn was a one-time thing.”

He looked at his wife, looked at me, and considered all the adventures that might not have happened had she and I never met.

He started to laugh and handed me the book. “About that autograph…”

Twenty four hours later there was another visitor, Roslyn this time. She wore a tan hoodie with a Clinic logo and cream-colored leggings. “I suppose you’re partially to blame,” she waved her hand, exposing a naked ring finger. “Sonia’s husband was always willing to talk things out. Mine was quick to jump to wrong conclusions and acting on them.”

“I’m sorry,” all I could say.

“I still occasionally see Sonia at work. Yeah, the interior design thing fell through for her. We talk a lot about her husband and my ex. I’m surprised you never picked up on that — how often he’d call me at work. He was sure I was having sex with every guy in my care.

“I did notice how he seemed to call at odd times.”

“He insisted I give him a print-out of my schedule. I’m sure he made a mental note to call when I was with you.”

“I suppose,” I said with a chuckle, “I should be flattered. A guy twice your age posing a threat.”

“You could be 110 and having machines keeping you alive and he’d be suspicious.”

“I’m sure the clinic offers relationship counseling,” I offered, remembering seeing a well-worn copy of “Anger Management for Dummies” sitting on a counselor’s bookshelf.

“Sonia was just something a little beyond his ability to comprehend. The divorce proceedings put my emotions through the wringer. You know, it was my fault we moved here from back east.”

“Didn’t his company move here?”

“Don’t let facts get in the way of a nice harangue. I shouldn’t have taken the job with the clinic. They should never have given me your assignment. Sonia shouldn’t have wanted to go into home remodeling. Sonia shouldn’t have gotten ideas reading your novel. Do you see a pattern here?”

“Always blaming others for his mistakes.”

“But you are,” she said, sounding like a parent scolding a child, “a bad influence.”

I smiled, noticing the sway to her breasts.

“I miss those days,” she said. “Going out for coffee. Going to that butcher shop and getting the stuff for your weird sandwich preferences. Head cheese and hard salami? Really?”

“You always stopping my flirtation by reminding me you have a husband.”

“Had,” she said and laughed. “A lot to catch up on.”