"A Foregone Confusion" by Nolah Reed. Published by Bookbaby, March 2013

Thanks for looking, appreciate any comments and suggestions..Nolah

FRIDAY

IT BEGINS

ALLISON

Allison Carlisle was sitting on her couch, red-eyed and crumb-dusted at five a.m. Friday morning. A half empty box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios was propped up in her lap. She’d been up all night glued to the Classic Movie Channel, munching through the trials of Dr. Zhivago and Lara, Rhett and Scarlett.

Instead of being caught up in the sweeping, epic sagas, she found herself becoming inordinately irritated by them. How could these people, so obviously meant to be together, allow themselves to be thrust apart by circumstances as trivial as the Russian Revolution and the American Civil War? It was downright annoying.

Personally, had she been Lara, she would have shot Yuri Zhivago at his engagement party and held on to the rich old man who was diddling her. It would have saved her a lot of heartache down the road.  As for Scarlett O’Hara? Well, she was one dumb, simpering twit. To let a randy, millionaire hunk like Rhett Butler sit on the back burner while she pined away for a married man as effeminate and penniless as Ashley Wilkes was too idiotic for words.

Though trying to empathize with the ill-fated heroines, it was proving impossible, even though she too had recently been thwarted in love. More accurately, she was about to be dumped, again. The name Brian Kale, MD would soon be added to a growing list of relationships that had inexplicably gone south. It wasn’t the first, second, or even third time she’d been sure that THIS WAS THE ONE, only to find out that, nope, it really wasn’t.

Not overly sentimental at the best of times, all she generally needed to crawl out of the rubble of another collapsed relationship was a twenty-four hour pity party accompanied by an intense carbohydrate binge.

It wasn’t working this time. Maybe it was her age, or the pattern she was beginning to see in the frequent reoccurrence of the same unhappy situation. Either way, the dusk to dawn soppy movies hadn’t helped a bit. Neither had a triple pepperoni pizza from Anna Maria’s at midnight or the half carton of Moose Tracks ice cream she’d eaten for breakfast at four a.m.

She hadn’t seen this one coming at all and would still be living a blissful delusion had she not found the letter on Brian’s desk the night before. It now sat smug and smirking on the coffee table in front of her.

Reading it hourly hadn’t changed any of the words, nor had they lost any of their sting by constant repetition. One more time couldn’t make it hurt any worse. It might finally hammer home the fact that what was happening was real. She picked it up again, unfolded the thick, creamy stationery and began to read.

“Dear Brian,”

I’ve done some preliminary inquiries about the wedding.

WEDDING?  WHAT WEDDING?

The Chapel on the Hill is free on June 27th at five for the ceremony and I’m sure, if I were to insist, the country club could accommodate us at seven for the reception. Evening weddings are much more elegant and so much more comfortable in the summer heat, don’t you think?  Of course you don’t have to agree, but Dr. Petersen and I would be delighted if you and Amanda would go along with our wishes on this.

AND WHO THE HELL IS AMANDA?

We were married “on the Hill” almost a thousand years ago. Happily, if you were to agree to this, history may repeat itself.

History was repeating itself, alright, Allison agreed, her history of always choosing the wrong man. That persistent poor judgment was the reason for her being single at thirty two, sitting alone in a rented apartment wearing frumpy, flannel pajamas dusted with pizza and cereal crumbs. 

I’ve jotted down some of our ideas for the announcement and enclosed a picture of AJ. It’s her debutante portrait. Isn’t she gorgeous?

Allison looked at the enclosed photo of Brian’s intended. Yes, she was gorgeous, silvery blonde and runway slender, a delicate waif of a girl, who looked like a raunchy f*** would snap her in two. Men went nuts for those helpless ones. Deep down in their treacherous hearts, they all wanted to be heroes, riding valiantly to the rescue of someone who needed saving about as much as a great white shark.

I’ve enclosed a brief bio on her and of course we’ll need something from you before we take it to the newspaper. Considering the short time line we’re working with, it would be wise to move on this as soon as possible.

“Pushy broad,” Allison sniped and turned her attention to the CV. The “brief bio” would cover the full society page. Amanda Jade Petersen, “AJ “to her friends, had gone to private school in Chapel Hill, then onto an elite finishing school in Switzerland before attending fashion design school in Paris. She’d returned to the US four weeks ago. Four weeks.

This is all happening so fast, Brian

NO S***!

That devious dirt bag Brian had never let on, never given her the slightest clue that he was even seeing someone else much less thinking of getting married. When was he planning on telling her?

While this is all certainly very romantic….

“WRONG!” Allison yelled, the word echoing around the small living room.  Brian was no romantic. He was calculating and pragmatic. Anyone who spent more than two minutes with him and possessed an IQ greater than a slug could figure that out.

I have to say, your engagement came somewhat of a surprise….

TELL ME ABOUT IT

And while I’m not quite sure I understand the reasons for your haste, if the two of you are determined to go through with this wedding, I think we need to get together as a family and start making some concrete plans for the ceremony. I’ve made reservations for brunch on Sunday at La Residence at noon, our treat. We can do some brainstorming and get to know each other a little better. Won’t that be fun?

“Oh, sure,” Allison said, “a regular yuk fest.”

  I’ll see you there.

Sincerely,

Vanessa Petersen

Allison threw the letter back down onto the coffee table in disgust. Disgust was the latest in the tornado of emotions she’d been whirling through in the last few hours. Over the course of the evening, her feelings had spun around and twisted from mind numbing shock, to full out denial, to humiliation and mostly lately, searing hot anger. None of it truly mattered since nothing apparently was going to change the fact. Brian was getting married, in less than six weeks, to Amanda Jade Petersen; the daughter of a socially prominent physician, a woman whose name he had not so much as mentioned.

From the sound of it, his well heeled future in-laws had no idea that “Dear Brian” was a two faced scumbag, not to mention a bald faced liar and cheat. They obviously were not aware that the joy of the impending nuptials to their perfection of a daughter had not been enough for their prospective son-in-law to put an end his affair with his nurse practioner, namely, herself. If made public, the carnal details of the aforementioned affair would surely cause the genteel, letter-writing Mrs. Dr. Petersen III to have an instantaneous stroke.

Even Allison could admit that what she and Brian did together in the exam rooms of his office between patients, at lunch and after hours challenged the term “making love”. Their sexual encounters could not be misconstrued as tender interludes. They were more like Olympic endurance trials.

Allison stood up, scattering an assortment of crumbs all over the carpet, went to the window, opened the sliding doors to the balcony and stepped outside. The sun was rising over the canopy of trees and rooftops of the higher priced condos bordering Franklin Street. Students were already wending their way toward campus for early classes. By twilight, that same street would be bustling with exuberant young people strolling hand-in-hand toward their favorite restaurants and nightclubs.

Going out together in public was something she and Brian never did. He wanted to keep their relationship under the radar because of their close working association.  She, moron that she was turning out to be, went along with it. The clandestine nature of the affair was an additional turn on, making the sex even more urgent. She hadn’t known that the sex was all there was going to be. H had certainly intimated differently, on many occasions. Granted, those occasions were generally when they both had their pants around their ankles, engaged in some furious one on one. They were two of a kind, he’d said, a team, his words drawing her in, leading her on, and all the while knowing he never had the least intention of taking the relationship any farther. And now she knew why. She was just something to occupy his time while he was waiting for his trophy wife to appear. And she had, in the persona of one Amanda Jade Petersen.

Her alarm was going off in her un-slept- in bedroom. Time to stay up and go to work. Allison came back into the house and closed the patio door behind her, hurrying down the hall to silence the noise. She’d contemplated calling in a FuckYou to her previous paramour and present employer, but decided against it. If she did, it would be tantamount to admitting she’d pilfered Mrs.Vanessa P’s letter from Brian’s desk. Also, it was Friday before the Memorial Day weekend and they were booked solid with patients. Brian might deserve to fry in Hell, but they didn’t. There were still charts to prepare before the office opened and people counting on her, she had to show up. How was she going to face Brian, knowing what she now did and maintain any degree of equanimity? That was the question. All she wanted to do at the moment was unman the black-hearted bastard with the dullest, rustiest object at hand. Slowly.

She trudged down the hall into the bathroom, showered quickly, threw on some fresh scrubs and pulled her hair up into a messy bun. No point in putting on make-up. No cosmetic on the planet could eradicate the dark circles and puffy eyes left over from a sleepless and weepy night. She slipped into her work clogs, put on her lab coat, searching the deep pockets for her car keys, coming up keyless on one side and drawing up a foil sample pack of pills from the other. WTF?

Then she remembered. A tasty new drug rep by the name of Dan Thornton had dropped by the office yesterday, touting his company’s new product; a feel good, all natural supplement that was supposed to cure pretty much anything that ailed you. She’d accepted a stack of samples and promised to talk to Brian about giving it a trial with their patients. It was her go-to phrase to end sales calls and it generally worked like a charm. Wilier than most, he had managed to slip this additional one in her pocket.

Two of them were missing from the peel pack. Had she taken them? If so, she didn’t remember doing it.

What the hell, they hadn’t killed her, so why not take a couple more?  If Veritas could make her feel any better right now Dan had a winner on his hands, since there hadn’t been a time in her life when she felt worse.  She punched two of them out into her hand and dry swallowed them on the way out the door.