Yet the whole time, I felt something was missing. Not missing in the sense of what the relationship offered me, missing in the sense that she wasn’t telling me something. Like she was married, or maybe she was a man (that would suck). This undiscussed
thing
made me feel I couldn’t completely trust her.
This knowledge, that something wasn’t quite right, made me lose sleep. Eventually, after a few months of our online dating, she still hadn’t told me the one thing she was holding back, but I knew that
one thing
existed. I could tell by the words she chose, and the extra pause before answering questions. She came across as reserved, cautious, careful: there were times when she was evasive.
I’d had no intention of getting involved in an online romance - I’m a writer, and at the beginning I was simply collecting information for a short story. I used to be the guy who wondered about the social skills of people who met others online. Why couldn’t they meet the old-fashioned way? I wanted to get some insight into the chatroom fad.
I had no idea I’d fall in love.
But now she’s dead.
Andrea had been a blessing. She opened areas of my heart that I didn’t even know I had. Writers are loners; we sit by ourselves and develop our craft. I had no idea how alone I was until I met Andrea.
I read in the newspaper about a murder the police had responded to on the other side of the city. I saw the name of the deceased. It was Andrea. Next of kin had been notified. Her boyfriend was in custody. (I finally found out the information she was hiding from me. She had an abusive boyfriend). According to witnesses, her boyfriend had a history of abuse, and she had been in the process of leaving the relationship. Hence her chats with me. I was supposed to be her way out. I became someone she was excited about again. She once told me, I was her savior.
I was devastated.
The last email I received from Andrea confirmed a meeting place. It would have been the first time we were to meet in person. Neither one of us had ever sent a photo; we’d used descriptions in our correspondence, but never pictures.
We had agreed to show up at the coffee shop and try to find each other. A sly smile, a nervous twitch in the stomach, shuffling of the feet, and then a warm hello. Both of us were super-nervous about meeting the other.
Out of respect to the dead girl I was, and still am, in love with, I decided to go to our prearranged meeting place anyway.
There I was, sitting with the coffee I had just ordered. It tasted like dishwater and had a peculiar smell to it. I held it in my hands and glanced through the large window to my left. Cars whizzed by. I wiped a tear off my cheek. I think it was the loneliest I’d ever been. I sat there and whispered a silent prayer for Andrea.
How could the world be so cruel?
The door chime made me turn. A woman walked in, scarves wrapped around her neck and lower face. Something about the woman held my attention. The first scarf came away and our eyes locked. I could see how bruised up her face was, purple splotches surrounded by yellowing areas.
For a heartbeat, I wondered if this was Andrea.
Wouldn’t that be something
?
Back from the dead.
Another scarf came away. More bruising around the neck. For some reason she was watching me as much as I was watching her. I looked back out at the cars on the street. My coffee was getting cold but I didn’t care. It tasted like shit anyway.
When I turned back, the woman was about to sit in the booth across from me. I leaned away, startled.
“Can I help you? Do I know you?” I asked, feeling a little befuddled.
She smiled and I felt my heart flutter.
“I saw you when I died,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say. I knew it couldn’t be Andrea. She was dead. So who was this woman? No one knew why I was there, so it couldn’t be a joke. I wasn’t being punked, either. I had read the obituaries and knew Andrea was dead.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Andrea.”
I was more stymied than shocked. “But that’s not possible. How could it be?” I tilted my head and really stared at her. Could I be talking to the dead? I immediately dismissed that idea. I’m not into new age religion. I’ve never seen a ghost.
“My death wasn’t permanent. It’s what they call a Near Death Experience.”
She went on to explain how she died. I sat in rapt fascination, my stomach clenching, my hands twitching. The writer in me wanted to jot everything down, but I resisted, lest it be construed as rude.
She said that her vital signs had ceased. When she woke, she found that a blanket - which rose and fell to the soft rhythmic caress of her breathing - had been placed over her body.
“I saw you,” she said again.
I wasn’t ready to talk much yet, so all I said was, “When?”
“When I died. I saw you writing on a laptop. You looked at peace, relaxed as you typed.”
I didn’t know what to say. I usually have words at my disposal, but she had rendered me speechless.
“I saw something else,” she said.
I waited to see if she’d reveal this other tidbit, still not finding more than one word replies in my mouth.
“I saw you save me.”
So cryptic.
“Save you?” I found my voice. It came from a place of confusion.
How could I save her?
“Yes, save me. And I love you for it Max.”
She leaned forward and made to kiss me. I let her. After all, this
was
Andrea, the woman of my dreams, the woman I had fallen in love with, back from the dead, talking about how
I
saved her.
How the hell did I pull that feat off
?
The least I could do was accept a kiss, even though I felt lost. I was stunned and completely flabbergasted that Andrea wasn’t dead. Questions raced through my mind:
how come she hadn’t emailed me in the last week? What if I hadn’t come to the coffee shop? Could there be even more secrets?
Our lips parted as the door to the coffee shop banged open, the door chime almost ripping off. I jumped at the sound of the door, me being a bundle of nerves and all, and turned to see a tall man enter. He looked angry, eyes wild, breathing rapidly.
He stared at us. I stared back. He wore a black leather jacket and some kind of biker pants. A black goatee clung to his chin and a long tattoo of a scythe circled and dropped down along his neck. He looked mean. He looked angry. But most of all, the violence on his face made my bowels feel loose.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed that this man didn’t look like a paying customer. The guy behind the counter stepped back and put his hand on the phone. Maybe it was the clenched fists, or the red face, or maybe the low moan the man emitted that made the coffee shop worker hold the receiver in his hand. I noticed he started dialing when the man screamed Andrea’s name.
The angry man stormed over to our table and looked down at me. I thought for a quick second that he was going to wind up and punch me. I was surprised that my underwear didn’t need to be changed yet.
“Colin, you’re not supposed to be here. I have a restraining order,” Andrea said, her voice weak. “Please, Colin, just leave before something bad happens.”
He turned to face her. “Fuck you, you
fucking
whore. How dare you fake your own death? Thought you could get away from me? Well, I’ve got news for you.” He jabbed a thumb my way. “Who’s the asshole? He better be a long-lost brother or giving you a job interview.”
The angry - Colin-the-abusive-boyfriend - was shouting now. I was more scared than I’d ever been, or than I’d care to admit. I’m a writer. I write these things. I don’t act them out. As Michael said:
I’m a lover, not a fighter.
“Get up. Now. We’re leaving.” He reached for Andrea’s arm but missed. She’d pulled back far enough to avoid his grasp.
A red and blue flashing light registered in my peripheral vision.
Good, the coffee shop guy
had
called the police.
The biker saw it too. He turned around and shouted in a deep guttural grunt, “I’ll be back to deal with you,” as he pointed at the clerk.
He leaned down and reached out far enough to get Andrea. With a display of massive strength, he pulled her out of the booth and into a standing position. She squealed and tried to wriggle out of his hand clamp.
I had no idea what I was doing. I look back and try to reason why I would do it in the first place. Rationally, I know why; but on every other level of my being, I remain puzzled.
My foot swung out. I grabbed the edge of his jeans and gave him a sharp tug, which caught him off balance. He fell backwards over my outstretched leg, his hands releasing Andrea as he flailed his arms on his way to the floor.
I grabbed my coffee, still somewhat warm on the outside of the cup, and flung it in his face.
He roared like a bear, shook his face to clear his vision, and jumped back to his feet like his name was Jack and someone had wound his little box.
The cop car stopped out front. I would be dead in four seconds. They would arrive in ten. So much for balls.
Andrea had moved away from him. She stood by the bathroom doors, wiping at her tears.
I didn’t see his fist. I
couldn’t
see it coming. A blur of movement, a subtle shift in position, and then what felt like a large rock broke my cheekbone. My head flew back and banged the wall behind me.
Fight-or-flight alarms flooded my system, with “flight” winning by the time I slipped out of the booth chair and landed on my ass on the floor under the table.
Andrea screamed. Her voice, even in peril, reminded me why I was here. Why she was here. In that moment, I realized that I hated to do the right thing, but I had no other choice.
My face felt like someone had set burning coals in my cheek. The pain was so intense that everything went woozy for a second.
What pulled me out was the broken ankle.
Andrea’s boyfriend couldn’t bend down and yank me out fast enough, so he jumped up and landed all two hundred and twenty pounds of biker muscle on my right foot, snapping a couple of the twenty-six bones I have in there.
My scream rose higher than Andrea’s, I’m embarrassed to admit.
I have never experienced that much pain in my life. A crazy thought ran through my mind. Women experience more pain then this when giving birth. I’m sure I can handle it and still fight my opponent, even though my shorts were soiled now with urine.
I pulled my feet in under the table to avoid further damage. I wanted to turn around. I couldn’t fight sitting the way I was.
Fight? How am I supposed to fight? Fuck!
“Get out here!” the bully shouted.
With my good foot, I thrust off the wall and slid out from under the table. I remember hearing Andrea gasp at the sight of my face. My eye was covered in blood and I felt part of my mouth being pulled down as the firmness of the cheek had been relaxed now that it was broken.
Both my hands clamped onto his ankles. I twisted his left foot out and back while doing the opposite to the right foot. It worked. The biker lost his balance and fell hard on his back.
Before he had a chance to recover, I crawled up and drove my right fist into his groin.
It was all I could think to do. He wailed and grabbed for his privates. Under any other circumstance I would never do that in a fight, but this guy deserved it. You don’t hit a woman. Ever. If you have, then you don’t have balls. Since it felt like this guy still did, I took it upon myself to check their size with my knuckles.
The fight lasted all of ten seconds, although to me, it felt a lot longer.
Where the hell were the police? I thought they were right outside.
I crawled up further, and then got a little assistance. The biker released his scrotum and grabbed my shoulders to pull me face to face.
That was a mistake.
With my left hand I reached up, grabbed his index finger, and pulled it back with everything in my soul. My broken foot screamed, my cheek wailed in agony, and Andrea cried behind me. That was enough inspiration for me to try to rip the guy’s finger right off.
He released me in a feeble attempt to get me off his finger.
Another mistake.
My right hand dropped hard and fast, my thumb jabbing with the force of a hammer head, into his left eye.
Now he was screaming. His bellow was amazing. Quite something to hear. It made my pains decrease a little. For a moment, amid the chaos, I actually felt good, my anger fueled by pain, my triumph fueled by his.
When he tried to dislodge my thumb, I renewed my assault on his finger.