Chapter 27: 1996-1997

It was a nice day; I was off; it was late afternoon, and I was about to get the surprise of my life, well sort of. Yes, I would be surprising myself, and, my ex-wife who decided to drop by my place.

“Valerie!”

“Yes, can I come in?” I nodded.

“Uh, okay, have a seat.” She took a seat at the dinette table. It reoccurred to me that she did kinda know the place I was living at now. Thirty years gone we’d lived in the same building, but upstairs in apartment 305. My now place was on the first floor; well, I was a gimp and climbing the stairs twice or more times a day would for sure have been a problem.

“Herb and I have butted into your business—I mean regarding the lady, Wilma,” said Valerie, without preamble.

The squish of my forehead wrinkles told the tale for her I was sure. “Big surprise,” I said, more or less sarcastically.

“Mister, you’ve got to let us help you. And, no I don’t know how, not yet, but I will, we will, Herb and me; And yes, Jillian is in on this too. And please, I am not trying to rub your nose in anything, okay? Please.” I shrugged my submission.

A woman, I guessed was what she was referring to.

“No woman will want me now. I’m near sixty and bitter, though less so than I used to be, with nothing to recommend me. But go ahead. Who knows maybe you can do better than me.” Her eyes got big, and she was nodding in semi-disbelief.

Okay, that was my surprise for her: my willingness to let them help me. Oh, and it was also my surprise to myself as well! I couldn’t believe that I was okaying their interference in my personal life.

“But no more nonsense about Jillian being willing to recognize my daddyhood. I’m not a fool, and I don’t appreciate being treated like one. If it’s a real thing, I’ll know down the line. If not, well, then not.”

She did seem to relax at my less than enthusiastic willingness to let them try to help me. Truth was, her sincerity and her outing herself amused me. She let my comment per Jillian’s sincerity drop for the moment.

“Good. I will be getting back to you in a day or two. But, in the meantime, lunch, now?”

“At the Lone Star?” She got my message: I had not forgotten the last time we’d met up at the LS.

“No, the Blue Star.”

“I guess,” I said.

“But Chase, Jillian is on the up and up when she told you what she told you, really.”

I shrugged but said nothing else relating to Jillian.

“Okay, but you gotta drive. I just don’t have the energy today,” I said.

And we did eat, and at the Blue Star, and considering everything, I felt okay. I did finally press her about why Jillian hadn’t been coming by over these last months, that since announcing my singular daddyhood. She said she didn’t know why, but she’d be talking to Jillian and posited that I would no doubt be getting a visit sooner rather than later. I figured that to be the case especially after she got the word that I would be willing to let her mom and dad help me out.

Lunch over and cocktails downed, we talked a while longer. Then, she took me home.

She saw her husband sitting by the window in the library. “I just got back from visiting Chase. He’s down, but there is a major change, maybe,” she said, coming in and plopping down in the nearest chair. “Oh, and I outed us about talking to Wilma, and surprise, surprise, he appreciated me doing so; well, being honest with him.”

“Oh,” said Herb, perking up.

“Yes, he is still down about the Wilma thing, but there’s an upside,” she said.

“Okay, make me feel better,” said Herb.

“He’s willing for us to help him find another woman. The man is lonely, and it’s making him willing to do whatever he has to do, no matter how humiliating for him, to become unlonely,” said Valerie. “That must have been the worst for him in prison; I mean the worst.”

“Yes, I would guess so. Well okay, I’m, we’re, going to try. And you say he really is okay with it. I mean us trying.”

“That’s what he said. He also said he didn’t expect us to succeed, or words to that effect; and he knows it’ll be mostly you.” The man was nodding.

“He’s wrong about that. I am going to succeed. Oh yes I am.”

“But on the downside...”

“Downside?”

“He does not believe that Jillian is being honest with him. He hasn’t seen her in months, and no longer trusts her that was clear to me.

“Oh boy!”

“So, William, you and I are going to manufacture a break for the man. And surprise, he’s onboard. You’ll have my full backing and all of the resources you are going to need,” he said.

“Okay, but manufacture...?”

“Well, yes, sort of. Reinhard will be trying to ID a suitable candidate in Perryville as a possible, and suitable, significant other for Chase. Then it will be up to you to take over and deal with the lady and the prison bureaucracy. And Will, be up front with whoever Rein identifies. Prison clearly changes inmates, if she is at all recalcitrant about hooking up with Chase, or looking to be a problem otherwise, we will need to be looking for someone else.”

“Resources?” he said.

“Yes, I will be tapping the new lieutenant governor in this effort. He has the ear of the big man. I will be making—donations—which will have no limit. I don’t care if it’s a hundred million.”

“Boy oh boy, we really are going all in on this one. Well, at least the man himself is onboard this time; that’s a plus,” he said. “And he doesn’t know the lengths to which you are willing to go?”

“No, just that I, we, will be making the effort,” said Herb.

It was Monday the 16th of September ‘96. It was 5:00 p.m. I’d had the day shift, and now I was off. My ex-wife was waiting for me, my loving ex-wife.

“I had been about to begin my walk up the street to my place a mile off. I did have a car, but I almost always walked to work and home after work as well, gimp though I was. But maybe not today. She was waiting for me in the parking lot just outside; the afternoon was quite warm. She was leaning against the side of her car.

“Give you a ride?” she said.

“My place is just a little way up the road,” I said. “I always walk.”

“Hopefully not today. I need to talk to you. Please,” she said. I shrugged, well, it was warm out; it was still technically summer.

I got in and she drove us toward the Blue Star, again—I gave her a look.

“We really need to talk a while,” she said. She parked. The ride had taken us but five short minutes, or maybe it was six or seven.

She’d evidently secured a booth, a private booth—and yes, the Blue Star did have private booths—in advance, that is, before she’d accosted me. She’d definitely planned ahead.

It was 5:15. The place wasn’t busy yet. It would be soon, but not yet

Drinks appeared without us having ordered. But of course, if she’d planned ahead, as certainly did seem to be the case; well then, that made sense. Double JDs was the order of the day. Yep, she’d done the ordering. Thirty years gone JD had been our mutual drink of choice.

“Clearly you’ve got something very serious on your agenda,” I said. “I mean doubles?”

“Yes, very. And you need to let me have my way,” she said.

“Oh I do, do I?” I said.