Lost in Hotels (38 page)

“Speak already, please Catherine. I need to understand!” he yells.

I want him to understand, even if I haven’t comprehended my own decisions. I want to know how he found out, what he said to Matt, and how this all happened. I feel at the expiration of life, and on this precipice, I was always aware I would come to the end of this road, but with a far steeper cliff than even I had feared as all that I know and love now lays in ruins. There is no point of lying anymore; this is the end as these boundless secrets weigh heavy on my mind and have become too difficult to keep.

“What do you want to know? Where do you want me to begin?”

“Start from the beginning and tell me everything; I want complete honesty or at least as close to it as you are morally capable,” he says.

With those words, my mind revisits that flight to Rio when I first saw him three rows in front of me on the plane. I watched him look at everyone else around him as some movie rolled on the screen, but he had no interest in allowing his incredible eyes to follow. I lingered behind him in the customs line and followed him to the coffee stand without saying a word or offering the least bit of notice. When you’re married, there are people you see all the time and your mind will follow sometimes for years. Certain ones linger in your cognizance, and you fantasize
what if
or being with them when under the touch of a scripted lover who no longer craves or connects with you or you to him. They are never more than a fantasy, they pass from your thoughts, and you’re thankful it was never more than a fantasy.

“Then why were you such a cold bitch to me at first in Rio?” he says with no more courteous regard for cursing or kindness.

“I could tell you were a guy who always got any girl you wanted, and I didn’t want to simply be one more, even if merely with my eyes.”

“Were you even attracted to me?” he asks.

“How could I not be attracted to you? Look at you; you’re quite possibly the most beautiful man I have ever seen.”

“But that’s all you felt?” he says with a hint of tenderness.

I think of our afternoon in Rio as the rain poured and the vibration of thunderstorms seemed to force us closer and closer together as if beckoned from God. The more I learned of him the more I waited for that distasteful comment or inappropriate sentence that would inevitably repel me. Yet, his words and intelligence only made him more endearing as the thoughts of my own life faded farther away, and the enticement of what could be lay before my hands and became too much to fight.

“And then you found a crack in my wall, which was your brilliant mind and charm and kindness that took me away from my average life and to that place you only get glimpses of when you first meet someone and then never again,” I plead.

“But why didn’t you tell me you were married? I would have probably still gone after you, but why allow yourself to become the most despicable kind of liar?”

His question is the very one I’ve asked myself for almost an entire year. I’ve agonized about what it was that didn’t allow me to simply tell him when we first started to embrace in the water off Rio or in my hotel room in Paris. This whole situation could have just been an inappropriate but forgivable fling and nothing more.

“I would have said and done anything to have just one more second with you. I didn’t want you to just be a passing thing; I wanted you to be forever,” I say in total vulnerability.

With those words, all my emotion manifests itself into a long and overdue breakdown. I lie two feet from him engulfed in tears and in full hysterics as he sits motionless watching with hands still in his lap. There is no sympathy or pity; there is only contempt and pain in those incredible eyes that now look at me as his heart’s assailant.

“What about the fact that you’re a fucking mother? I mean, who in the hell does that except women who drown their babies in a bathtub.”

“Heartless sluts do it, I guess. What do you want me to say? I love my son, but I’m still a woman. I still crave someone who desires and wants me, someone who lingers with his hands over dinner and does more than jerk off inside me for sex when I’m lucky. And then there’s the endless sleepless nights followed by twelve-hour workdays that aren’t the chummy PTA bake sale I was imagining.”

“PTA … what’s PTA?” he says in all his British-ness with a glimpse of his former playful self. Even just for a passing moment, all I want is to see the carefree and loving eyes of the man I so love emerge from this fog of contempt.

“It’s a parents program in the schools here; it’s awful.”

David disregards my comment, and the moment passes as if it didn’t even arrive, and with it the last time I might ever see the carefree spirit of his inner soul.

“And Paris, what about Paris?”

“What do you mean? What was I doing in Paris?” I ask.

“Yes, that felt far too coincidental seeing you in Paris. Did you know I used to date Kelly? Is that why you did the interview?”

“No, not at all,” I say as if offended. “The interview was entirely coincidental. But I moved the interview to Paris in hope of seeing you.”

“So you stalked me.”

“That’s a harsh word. I didn’t want to actually talk; I just wanted to see you once, just one more time.”

“So you could ruin my life?”

“So that I could see your face, breathe the same air, daydream about what could have been in another lifetime without realizing that I could trip and fall and lose myself in this fantasy. It was you who came to my room, after all.”

“You have no idea what you have done to my life,” he says with emotion that appears to run deep.

“David, I am so very sorry. I can only tell you that every moment and emotion and word was real and true.”

“I introduced you to my closest friends. I shared thoughts and plans with you that I have never shared with anyone. I was faithful to you even though we never even had the conversation, all the while you were getting it in both ends from me and your husband.”

“But you didn’t expect we would be happily ever after when we only saw each other every two months now, did you?”

“When people have real jobs they can’t spend every waking hour staring at each other in their musty one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.”

With David’s words, I realize the worst. He’s not only been to my home, but also inside, and he knows the exact details. I imagine the hurt that awaits me at home, my son in the midst of Christmas having lost his family and Mom to this unknown who turns up out of nowhere. I am at a loss of words for my treacherous behavior that leaves a battlefield of lost lives even beyond my comprehension.

“Did you sleep with more guys than just me?” he asks.

“You are the only man I have ever cheated with in my marriage or even while dating. I am not a cheater,” I say emphatically.

“Well, you certainly play the part well.”

No response I can give will quell his relentless barrage. I simply stare in contrite silence and hope some glimpse of the person I was to him before all of this, emerges with my blunt truthfulness and full culpability.

“Why did you invite me to Africa? And why did you ask me to fly you to my home when you knew it meant so much to me? My friends are all I have, my parents are fucking dead, and you take advantage of my deepest vulnerabilities.”

“David, I love you. I wanted nothing more than to be with you.”

“And live the good life sucking it up with all my friends and playing the posh girlfriend while her own family lives in squalor.”

“I can’t take much more of this, David, I really can’t.” Hearing what he thinks of my home wounds my soul beyond repair.

“You most certainly will until I am done. You have made me suffer, and now it’s your turn to face your actions,” he pauses. “Was Matt that bad of a guy? Did he beat you or ever let you down as a man?”

Talking about Matt stings, as if a parallel universe I never wanted to admit existed or discuss is forced down my throat. There’s no other way to escape this moment other than to allow a clear, unfiltered line from my heart through my words.

“Matt and I met at a time in my life when I was one of the last women I knew who was still single. I was worried and scared that the life I had imagined I would have was no longer going to be an option if I didn’t settle down soon with someone, maybe anyone.”

Men don’t know the agony of a woman at thirty-seven and still without a child, a man, or hope of one explainable in a single sentence that justifies she is still dreaming of having a family like everyone else. I’d meet men who wanted to date women who weren’t so old that the conversation of marriage or children came up on the second date. They wanted women they could have fun with and then breakup with without having to feel guilty they left her just short of the gate where the ring, the baby, and the life were almost, and yet may never be again. Then I met Matt, who loved and accepted me, and my age was never an issue. He was my last exit to have that life, and I no longer felt in a position to say, “Not this guy.”

“Or the alternative version is that you were too weak to leave or make it work when you could gallivant and meet another fool to take care of you,” he says.

“No one takes care of me, if I haven’t already made that clear. I work very hard and provide for my family regardless of how you might choose to believe. Then you came along and were like this prince who would allow me to be the woman in the relationship. You phoned when you said you would, you’d plan dinners, and special moments. You were always a step ahead of what my wildest dreams could expect. Then there was this passion, this incredible sex that made everything else in my life feel second. There was only you, David.”

“And this is what I get; this is what I get when I give the very best of myself,” he says as if speaking to the universe and me.

“David, you bear no fault in this situation. If anything, you were too perfect and made me willing to risk everything at the mere idea of seeing you just one more time.”

“I came to New York—” he begins and then stops.

“You came to New York, why?” I ask after a few moments. His eyes begin to glass over, but not so much that a tear emerges.

“Nothing,” he says.

“No, please, tell me.”

Suddenly he stands and removes his tie and jacket, which he throws across the desk. There’s urgency to his movement, as my mind wonders if Matt is soon to appear or some other surprise that even my mind cannot fathom in all this hellish chaos.

“So Catherine, I need a second. I’m going to head out for a while and you can leave, stay, or really do whatever you want. I can’t really think about you anymore; it’s just all too much for me.”

“David, sit, please,” I say rising next to him. I grab his hand, but he rips it away from me.

He doesn’t say a word as he picks up his files from the floor and stuffs them into a briefcase that he leaves on a chair next to the table before exiting the room with a slam of the door. I want to chase after him; I don’t want to lose him, but I also realize his mood is unpredictable, and I’m unsure of what would unfold in the hallway or lobby. I stand for a moment and take in the room. Suddenly, it feels like a prison cell for a thief who’s forced to sit with her stolen treasures. David’s clothes and leather duffel bag sit on the floor in the next room with my own luggage that seems like the criminal’s forfeited weapon that someone will eventually use as evidence.

My mind flees outside the hotel walls that foretell my new reality. The hope of David returning to me is better than anywhere I could run away to right now. In all the turmoil, I hadn’t even grasped that these are possibly the last few moments I will ever have with him. I wonder if I should go, but I believe if he really wanted me to leave, he would have said it outright. He wanted the conversation, and his absence was because he needed to regroup for a moment and not because he was done with me.

An hour turns to two. My stomach churns, and I venture from the couch to wander the room that feels a bit more comfortable with the passing of time. He thinks me a thief and a liar, which makes me uncomfortable to touch his shirts in the closet or the toiletries he’s laid on a washcloth in the bathroom with its black veiny marble and translucent bulb chandelier that dangles above the distraught face of a broken woman who looks back from the mirror. I can’t help but pick up the fragrance bottle that reminds me of him condensed in a single whiff, which dries my eyes before sending me into tears all over again. I look in the mirror at the outfit I wore to see him, dreaming as I put it on that the next time it was removed he would be ripping it off—a moment that will never be or likely ever be again.

Two hours turn to three as I return to the couch somewhat calmer and the anxiety of being exposed a fraud now ingrained within. Everybody now knows everything, and I’m left with only the ashes and not the fear of the fire. I consider turning on my cell phone, but know the message that is to come from Matt and the second wave of this battle that I will be forced to inevitably fight, but right now feel too weak to face. The unmade bed and his used pillows beckon my face and touch. I crave nothing but to roll up into a ball in the bed where he once lay and allow all this to fade away.

The 1:00 a.m. rouge of the room indicts my inner thoughts like a guilty harlot as some of the lights in the outside skyline begin to turn off, and I wonder if David might not come back at all with almost four hours gone. Will he be mad I’m still here, or simply kick me out in the middle of the night to walk along Park Avenue, as I deserve, my bag in tow as Christmas lights taunt in aggressive flicker?