Not Quite After Lisette: A Short Story - Part 1

I decided to send her a card on her birthday.

For me, it was an act of courage. The act of phoning instead seemed easy enough, but I knew I wasn't up to the challenge emotionally. No matter how I imagined the conversation beforehand, I expected a bad outcome. She might try to be polite initially, might even inquire about my feelings for a change, but I dreaded her delivering a lecture before it was all done. Her professional training was of absolutely no use to her when matters came down to her personal life, but she didn't know this about herself yet. Upon taking an immediate dislike to someone at a party, she'd turn to me and confide, "Character disorder." The combination of sarcasm and professionalism in such a gorgeous creature was baffling, but that was Lisette. The fact that I can't help picturing her in a pair of black fishnet stockings bent over a leather ottoman keeps me from being totally objective about her, I suppose.

I overcame the temptation to pick a card with some coy double meaning, a game she often played that I find particularly hateful. She was biting the Big Four Oh this time, so I had plenty of humorous choices to reject. (I knew she was sensitive on the subject because she had said absolutely nothing about it to me  –  no sarcasm, no hints, no leading questions.) The sheer mental energy I spent on my selection was a good measure of how complicated my feelings for her had become. Looking at the relationship from something like her professional viewpoint, I'd say I had a neurotic fixation, as if we were acquaintances catching the faint scent of a chemistry between us, each sniffing the other, not even daring to date yet. Instead, she moved out, our community is dissolved, and I don't like her anymore. But, I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't love her. I'm like a tree with its bark grown around a strand of barbed wire, so interpenetrated that extraction is not possible without a lot of destructive cutting. I don't have any idea how we are supposed to continue, but I acknowledge that we must, at least long enough to be sure Andy is okay with all of it. For my part, I didn't know what I wanted, after Lisette. For her part, she wanted to be away from me but took great delight in trying to control my life at a distance. I was afraid she could do it.

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