Chapter 8

Angela's "guy" found John at work. He pretended to be a customer and, knowing that one of the divisions John supervised was outdoor furniture, went to that section of the store and asked to speak with a supervisor. When John approached, the man said, "Hey! I know you. You're John Bonneville, right?" When John, confused because he'd never seen the man in his life gave a tentative, "Yes?" the man extended the divorce papers and said, "You're served, John. Have a nice day."

John did not have a nice day.

When Claire got home he was in a rage. He'd been in a rage for a while, and had worked himself into a near frenzy.

"You bitch!" he screamed. "You can't divorce me!"

She said nothing, but unconsciously began moving into a position from which she could launch a side kick.

"I'm your fucking husband!" he raged. "I'm the man of the house! You're supposed to submit to me! It's in the fucking Bible!"

"I sort of doubt that God would be happy with you calling it the fucking Bible," said Claire, trying to keep her voice calm. "Why don't we sit down and talk about this like adults?"

His rage seemed to melt away completely. He stood up tall.

"There is nothing to talk about. You cannot divorce me. I forbid it! You stood up in front of a preacher and all our friends and vowed to love me until the day you die."

"I'm sure I did," said Claire. "But I'm also sure the term 'in sickness and in health' was involved, and that we both vowed to forsake all others. You broke those vows when you had sex with a hooker while I lay in a hospital bed trying to figure out who the hell I was!"

"You bitch," he hissed. "It was bad enough when you assaulted me. Now you want to publicly humiliate me with a divorce? You're not going to get away with this. I won't stand for it."

"John," she said, trying to calm him. "I don't remember what it was like when we met and got married, but it's pretty obvious we've lost that. All you do is sit in front of the TV all night. Based on what happened after the accident, I think it's pretty clear that you don't love me. Maybe you did once, but not any more. And I have to be honest with you. I don't feel anything for you at all. I'm sorry about that, but that's the way it is. We both need to move on. There are plenty of fish in the sea. You'll find somebody else."

"And I suppose you will too," he said, his voice nasty. "Like that fucking guy you run with all the time? I know about him. I saw you running with him while I was coming home one night. You been fucking him, Claire? You won't fuck me, but you'll rut with him like some kind of animal?"

"All we do is run," she said, controlling her urge to use that side kick.

"Yeah, sure you do," he sneered. "He's probably the one who put this fucking divorce idea in your head."

"He had nothing to do with that decision," said Claire. "It became obvious to me that we don't actually have a marriage. Why drag it out if it's dead?"

"You're lying. You're nothing but a whore. You fuck yourself with that rubber dick, and you fuck that mother fucker you run with. I know you do."

"Then you should be happy to divorce me," said Claire.

"Fuck you," he said. "Get out of my house!"

"It's not just your house," said Claire.

"It will be after the divorce," he sneered. "I'll leave you with nothing, you bitch."

"Actually," said Claire. "You can have the house. I don't want it. I don't want much, actually."

"Except to humiliate me in front of the whole town," he growled.

She thought about reminding him that people got divorced every day, and nobody castigated them for it, or assigned them status as being undesirable. Any humiliation that came from this divorce would be inside his head. Then she realized this discussion wasn't going to produce anything of benefit.

"You can sit down with me and work out an agreement, or we can do that in court," she said. "It's up to you."

She thought, for a moment, that he might have a stroke. His eyes bulged and his face got red. He didn't appear to be able to breathe. Spittle appeared at one corner of his mouth. He made noises, but they weren't speech. Finally he turned and staggered away.

She went into her bedroom and called Cindy.

"Hey," she said, when her friend answered. "Any chance I could crash at your place tonight?"

"What's wrong?"

"John got served with divorce papers today, and he's not taking it well."

"You didn't tell me you were doing that!" Cindy sounded almost hurt.

"I wasn't sure I was going to do it," said Claire, instead of reminding her friend it really wasn't any of her business. She was, after all, begging for a place to sleep.

"Come on over," said Cindy. "You're welcome to stay as long as you need. Danny won't mind."

"How do you know Danny won't mind?" asked Claire.

"Because I'm going to tell him not to," replied Cindy.

Claire took three sets of work clothes and, of course, her running gear. She threw in some casual clothes to wear around Cindy's house, and a pair of flannel pajamas she had found in the lower drawer of her dresser, but had not yet worn.

Cindy welcomed her effusively, and with empathy, obviously looking her over for any signs that John had gotten physical.

"I'm fine," said Claire. "He was just ranting and raving, and if I stayed there he'd probably keep ranting and raving. It will be quieter here."

"It would have been very quiet," said Cindy. "Tonight is date night. But we'll cancel that. You don't need to be alone at a time like this."

"That's ridiculous," said Claire. "Go ahead and go out. I'll just go for a run and then veg out on the couch. You always have a good book around." She wrinkled her brow. "How did I know that? Is that true?"

"We used to swap books all the time," said Cindy. "Looks like your memory is coming back, at least a little bit."

"I don't know whether that's a good thing or not anymore," sighed Claire. "From what I've learned about Old Claire, I'm not sure I want to go back to being her."

"You can be anybody you like," said Cindy.

"Thanks, but John doesn't agree with you."

"So ... what happened?"

Claire gave her a brief account of John's behavior, and somehow found herself confiding in her friend what the grounds for divorce were, and what she wanted out of the whole process. She felt like she was spilling her guts, but Cindy's attentive, caring attitude invited sharing on a deeply intimate level. Once again Claire recognized the qualities that had made this woman her best friend in her previous life.

In the end it was Danny who insisted that Date Night go on as planned.

"She said she's fine," he said. "I believe her. And you can check on her like a mother hen when you get home. Now, let's go or we'll miss our reservations."

Claire wanted to smile as Cindy capitulated to her husband, something that was so different than her former attitude on the phone.

It wasn't until they had been gone for twenty minutes that Claire realized Chad was probably expecting her to run with him that night.

He claimed he'd given her his phone number, but when she looked for anything she might have used to write it down on, she found nothing. And she'd always met him at school, so she had no idea where he lived. In any case, she didn't feel like running. She felt drained. She knew that was because of the fight with John. It hadn't been a physical fight, but she felt like it.

She wandered around Cindy's house, just looking at things. She was pretty sure she'd been there before, but nothing looked familiar. She stopped at a credenza which was covered with framed photographs. Some of them were of individuals, mostly children, from babies up to about age ten. She assumed those were nieces and nephews. There were many more pictures of Cindy and Danny. In about half of them, both partners in the marriage were present. There was the obligatory wedding photo, in which Cindy looked like a princess, and Danny her prince. Others had been taken at places the couple had visited. In most of them they were wearing hiking gear and there was some magnificent vista behind them. Another was obviously taken at a Halloween costume party. Cindy was dressed as Wonder Woman and Danny as Captain America, with a garbage can lid as his shield. Others were of either Cindy or Danny individually, probably taken by the other. Cindy on a zip line, her hair flowing behind her. Danny perched on the tip of a rugged crag, looking sunburned and incredibly manly. Cindy sitting in the midst of a group of children, reading them a book. Was that at a school? Library? In another Danny was bent over some wood working project, amidst a cloud of sawdust being kicked up by an electric sander in his hands.

Claire stepped back and viewed the multitude of documented memories as a whole. She thought back to her house. There were no pictures of her and John at all. She didn't even know if any existed. Were they packed away in a box somewhere? Or had they never been taken? The only pictures Claire could think of in her house were framed art prints, and there were probably only two or three of them.

Apparently, she and John hadn't lived life, at least not in the sense that Cindy and Danny had. Or, if they had gone out and done things together, they hadn't been motivated to document it.

She couldn't blame John for all of that. Old Claire hadn't taken any pictures of John doing whatever it was that John did when he wasn't at work or watching TV. Whatever either of them had done, individually or together, it apparently wasn't something worth remembering later.

She took another step back. For the first time, she thought that maybe her amnesia wasn't such a bad thing after all.

She was suddenly restless. She didn't want to stay here, cooped up in this place. She felt like an imp, who had crept into Heaven and didn't belong there. She looked at her watch. 5:15. Chad had probably figured out she wasn't going to show. Had he run anyway? Was he out there right now, loping along without her? She examined the sudden tightness in her stomach. She didn't like the idea of Chad running without her. But that was crazy! She barely knew the man. They weren't even friends! Not really. True, she knew bits and pieces of information about him, things he had told her while they ran, but she'd never sat down with him and talked like friends talk.

There were, of course, her lurid fantasies involving the man, but those had nothing to do with his real personality ... the real Chad.

So why on Earth did she feel possessive about him?

She stood, imagining Chad standing next to John, comparing the two of them. John lost out on every point. Nothing appealed to her about John more than it did about Chad. Some rational part of her brain popped Danny into her mind picture. That made things more complicated, but only in terms of comparing Chad with Danny. John's image faded to the consistency of a ghost.

She suddenly felt guilty for feeling nothing whatsoever for her husband. That emotion was followed immediately by cataloging what she could remember feeling some kind of passion for. It didn't seem like there were very many.

Running. Seeing a multitude of numbers on a sheet of paper and knowing they were right. Being with Cindy. Howard's cheerful, welcoming smile at work. The satisfaction of making that damn speed bag work.

Those were her initial thoughts, but they were followed by impressions that seemed less positive.

That perfect kick that had knocked John out. The feeling of aggressive destructiveness as she worked out with her fists and feet on the big, hanging bag. Hearing the slap of her foot against the kicking dummy, and watching it lean with the force of her kick.

Using her dildo.

She shook her head. John had deserved that kick. And wasn't it natural to feel some kind of aggression during a violent workout?

And why did she feel bad about using that artificial penis? There was nothing wrong with that. It was simply a way to achieve sexual release when one had no man around to help with that. At least no man other than John. And she felt no sexual desire of any kind for John.

She decided that this feeling of shame relating to the dildo was some residual thing from Old Claire's life. Maybe she had been raised to believe that sex toys were bad, or unnatural, or whatever. But she certainly didn't feel that way now. A dildo was just a thing. A means to an end. A tool.

Her body relaxed and she turned to pick up her purse.

Removing her keys from it, she prepared to leave the house. She didn't want to lock everything up tight, because she might get back before Cindy and Danny did. But she didn't want to leave the front door open either. As a compromise, she locked it and then left through the back door, which led into a fenced patio with a small swimming pool beyond. Happily, the gate wasn't locked, and she went through it and around the house to where her car was parked on the street.

Five minutes later she was driving aimlessly around town, with no destination in mind.

Eventually she realized she was driving along one of the routes she and Chad sometimes ran on.

She was sure she was being silly. He might have just gone home, when she didn't show up to run. He was probably sitting on his couch right now, drinking a beer, watching whatever men like him watched on TV.

She didn't like the image of him sitting, watching TV. That was too much like John. Her imagination moved Chad to the kitchen, where he was spooning dabs of batter onto a baking sheet, making cookies. The beer was sitting on the counter, not far from him. She wondered briefly why her imagination insisted there be a beer. She didn't like beer. Did she? She stopped thinking about Chad and thought about Beer. No image formed in her mind. No taste was dredged up from her lost memories.

A horn blared and she jerked back to an awareness of what was going on around her. She had strayed across the line, encroaching into the oncoming traffic lane. She jerked the wheel to the right and took her foot off the accelerator as she realized she was also speeding. Her eyes darted to the rear view mirror, expecting to see the flashing lights of the police cruiser that was going to pull her over. But there was nothing.

She needed something to take her mind off of life in general. A movie. That would be the ticket. She could submerge herself in someone else's imagination.

But where was the theater? She knew she'd seen it. They'd run past it one time. But she couldn't remember where that was.

It had to be in the mall. Right? Wasn't that where theaters were? She wondered why she assumed that. Was that Old Claire's knowledge?

This was driving her mad. She needed that movie, to distract her. It didn't even matter what kind of movie it would be.

She turned left, just to be doing something to move her plan forward. Even if left was wrong, at least she was trying to get there.

The Mall. She would go to the mall. There! A firm decision had been made!

The Mall was off to her right somewhere. If she'd gone straight back there instead of turning left, she'd have probably ended up at the Mall.

She jerked the wheel to the right and sped around the corner.

And came within inches of running Chad Morgan down ... just like she'd been run down a little more than a month earlier.

Anti-lock brakes are supposed to keep the wheels from locking up. But that can be overcome with enough speed and a panic reaction that makes one stomp on the brake pedal as if trying to bend the metal it's composed of.

There was the screeching sound of tires on pavement and the car lurched to a stop close enough to Chad that his instinctive movement to put his hands out in front of him landed them on the hood of her car. It became eerily silent for a few seconds, and then Chad started yelling at the insane driver who had almost killed him.

That lasted ten or so seconds until, through the windshield, he recognized Claire. His voice cut off suddenly. He walked around to her side of the car and stared through the window at her. She was clearly shaken. He knocked on the window with his knuckle and waited until she jerked, searched for the button, and finally found it. The window slid down smoothly.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said, faintly. "More to the point, are you okay?"

"Not a scratch," he said, mildly. "Do you always drive like that? If so, maybe you should just run everywhere you go."

She leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was ... agitated."

"What about?"

"Actually ... you," she said, looking up at him.

He smiled. "Well how about that? I don't think I've ever inspired a girl to go on a murderous rampage in her car before."

"I wasn't on a rampage," she said, and heard some sulking in her voice. She didn't like that and actually, literally, shook it off. "I was just having trouble making a decision and then I did and I think it made me a little anxious to get on with things."

"Did this decision have anything to do with me?" he asked.

"Don't flatter yourself," she said. "I decided to go see a movie."

"Oh." He stood there for a few seconds. "Does the movie have anything to do with me?"

She smiled. She liked this man who she didn't know very well. She didn't understand why she liked him so much, but her attraction was none the less genuine. And his interest was so obvious that she couldn't help but feel flattered by it.

"In a way," she said, but left it at that.

"Am I allowed to know? I mean, after all, you almost did to me what somebody did to you a while back. It seems to have changed your life somewhat. If my life is going to change I'd like to know about it."

She didn't know if his life was going to change or not. Not in so far as she was concerned, anyway. Her own life was in tatters. She hoped that didn't rub off on him. She needed to get a grip and calm down.

"How far into your run are you?" she asked.

The abrupt change of subject didn't appear to faze him. He looked around and she could tell he was locating where he was. She knew that sometimes running caused one's mind to lose some contact with the real world around him.

"Five miles, give or take," he said.

"Is that enough of a workout that you'd accept a ride?"

"If you mean with you, then yes. I have a feeling it would be safer in the car with you," he said. His lips didn't smile, but she could hear a smile in his voice. Despite his words, she felt something tug inside her abdomen.