Love Thy Neighbor (5 page)

“
It's okay, he won't hurt
you—“

She snapped.

She shoved him and smacked him, in frustration. “
You get
away from me, you assholes! Why? Whhhy? Why do you do it? Why do all
you men treat us women like crap? What did we do to deserve this? Why
are you all jerks?!”

She fought, but he came forward anyway, gently grabbing her thrashing
limbs, lulling her with kind words and slow, easy movements.

“
You let go of me! You let go! Why are you here?! You don't
want me. You don't want me. All Ben wants is to hurt me. Is that why
you're here, too? Why doesn't anybody want meeee?!”

“
Shh. It's all right, Janna,
I'm sorry.”

He wrapped his arms around her, embraced her, squeezed her, and cried
with her. They cried together. They comforted each other. Without
doing anything sexual, they became as one.

Chapter 5

The cops were called, they came, and they escorted a dizzy, drunk Ben
to a patrol car outside. They took a quick statement from all three
parties. This kind of thing actually happened fairly often in
Denburg. Some cops considered it a very routine part of the job. It
was. Alcohol and stupid people don't mix, Sheriff Leonard often told
his deputies.

After the Calvary left, Janna and Baron sat on her living room
couch—in silence, for a while. The TV was still on—another
episode of The Golden Girls began—but had been muted.

“
Who was that creep?”

She dabbed her tears with a tissue. “My ex-boyfriend. Why I
called him, I don't know. Spare- of-the-moment type of thing. Big
mistake.”

“
On behalf of all men, I am
sorry.”

She managed a smile. “Thanks. I guess all the good men are
either taken or gay.”

“
Well, my gay friend in
Williamstown once said: 'All the good men are either married or
straight.'”

She laughed. Her nerves eased.

“
We're not all taken or gay,
Janna. I've just come off from a bad relationship. She left me for my
friend of twenty-some years.”

“
That sucks.”

“
Yeah. They disowned me, in a
way. Some puzzle pieces just don't fit together.”

She stared at him; he stared at the floor. His lips looked so
kissable.

“
And some puzzle pieces don't
fit in any puzzle,” Janna said. “They are meant to be
tossed in the garbage.”

“
That's not true. Everyone
deserves to be loved and cared for. The only pieces who don't fit are
that idiot that put his hands on you.”

She wiped away some snot. “What was her name?”

He looked at her. “Who? Oh. Rachel. I'd never been more sure of
anything in my life. I could see myself growing old with her, being
with her through all of life's twists and turns. I imagined what our
kids would look like, what we'd name them—not one detail went
unthought. High-school sweethearts we were. I don't know what
happened, what went wrong. I always ask myself what I did for her to
leave me. Could I have done something different to have made her
stay? Did she fall out of love with me?”

Janna understood this too well. “You ask yourself a thousand
questions and come up, not only with no answers, but only with more
questions.”

He smiled. “You know it.” He looked into Janna's eyes. “I
didn't mean to reject you. It had nothing to do with you. My heart's
still broken.”

“
I'm sorry, Baron. I do
understand. I didn't want to, but now I do. My heart's been broken
for years.”

“
Our hearts will repair,”
he said, more as a question than a comment. “We'll be okay
eventually, you know?”

She could detect his doubt, his insecurities bleeding through. “Yeah,
I guess we will.”

He wiped away tears of his own. He didn't think his heart would heal,
or that time healed all wounds. His Uncle Henry was tortured in
Vietnam and still felt pain from that war. The only thing time seemed
to do was hide the pain.

“
Janna, I'd like to be your
friend. I don't know anybody around here yet, and I get the feeling
you'd like the company, too.”

She smiled. It was one of the most-attractive and sincere smiles he'd
ever seen. “Yes, I'd like that. Very much.”

“
Maybe we can hang out
sometime tomorrow. I'm sure I'll see you out. I'm going to go home
and get some sleep. You look tired yourself.”

“
I am.” She was, but
would have traded a week's worth of sleepless nights to keep this
conversation going. “Have a goodnight.”

They stood up. She walked him to the door. “You have a good
night, too. Just remember, not all toads are princes, but they're not
all toads, either.”

They hugged each other. She could smell his Giorgio Armani cologne.
He could smell her Euphoria perfume. They could also feel each
other's pain. Neither wanted to release the hug. It lasted for
minutes.

“
Well, see ya later, Janna.”
He let go, turned, and walked out the door. She closed it, locked it,
and went up to bed, where she fell fast asleep.

***

The next morning began with rain, then lightning, then noisy thunder.
A loud
BOOM
woke Janna at 11:24. She thought the world was
coming to an end until she realized just what it was. Thunderstorms
usually made her depression worse. Thunderstorms... nature's
equivalent of bad moods.

Her mood, however, had never been better. Last night, the worst and
the best had happened. Ben had abused her, and Baron had saved her.
She felt honored to have had such a handsome, down-to-earth man stick
up for her in her time of need. The guy could have easily ignored it,
could have let it go on without a second thought, but he didn't. He'd
barged in like her knight in shining armor and defeated the dragon
named Ben.

More. She wanted more, much more, than to be his friend. Being
friends wasn't enough. And if she had to wait, well, she could try,
but it wouldn't be easy by any means. Hanging out with him and being
unable to touch him, kiss him or hold him would be comparable to a
heroin addict chained to a wall just feet away from a motherload of
the good Colombian stuff and unable to reach it. What if a romantic
relationship never happened? What if he didn't feel the same way?
What if he thought she was a dog so hideous it could never be adopted
from a pound?

Only time would tell. Janna wished she could peer into his mind and
see what he actually thought of her. Not even commercial “psychics”
could do that.

***

Her afternoon passed uneventfully, boringly. More of the same ol'
same ol'. Baron didn't appear to be home, although he could have been
(but the lights were out and his sister's Honda was not there). Every
time she heard the sound of a car door slam shut, she ran to the
window. Every time she saw it wasn't him, she sat back down on the
couch and watched TV. Price is Right didn't interest her much today.
Nor did the news. Nor did anything on the Insignia. All she could
think about was him.

You're too damned needy, Janna... wherever he is, whatever he's
doing, I'm probably a million miles from his preoccupied thoughts, a
vague figure in the furthest corner of his mind. A new but
insignificant memory.

Life, of course, wasn't as easy as seeing someone, falling for them,
then spending the rest of your life with them, happily ever after.
That sort of lamebrain wish only happened to the characters in
romance novels and romantic movies. Real life? Try again. Falling in
love, these days, took too much work, too much dedication, and too
much trial and error. How anyone got married at all in the
twenty-first century—and stayed together happily—was a
miracle in itself.

But Janna wanted it to be like the movies, like it was in the old
days, when divorce and abuse were much less common. She wanted a
storybook romance.

One of the rarest things on the planet.

***

After Who Wants to be a Millionaire was over, she turned off the TV
and sat in silence with her thoughts. The room was dark, too, (the
shades were drawn and outside looked like doom) which made the
silence that much quieter and her thoughts that much bleaker.
What
am I gonna do for the rest of my life? What'll happen to me when my
aunt dies and I have no way to get grocery's? I can't live on food
stamps forever; or social security checks! If I never figure anything
out, I'm GOING to be stuck in this house, a hermit, a nobody, a loser
with nothing to show for herself but aspirations and goals that'll
never happen or come true. I need to see a therapist. I need to get
meds for this. I have to change. I don't know how to I need... I
got... I have to... I don't... I.... There's nothing that—

Boom, boom, boom,boom, boom!

The five hard knocks on the front door jarred her from her chaotic
whirlwind of thoughts.

She didn't care who it was... as long as it was someone who would
listen; or, even better: someone who could tell her how to fix her
gravid, growing collection of problems.

Ended up, it was Baron. He was standing on the welcome mat, dressed
in a Mountain Dew colored Nike windbreaker, blue jeans, and boots. He
pulled closed a wet umbrella.

“
Hello, Janna.”

“
Hey.”

“
Since we're neighbors now,
and friends, I figured I'd come over and have a cup of tea with you.”

“
Sure, come in.”

He set his umbrella down beside a lawn chair on the porch. Then he
wiped his boots on the mat and entered.

***

Janna's kitchen was closet-small, cramped further by the portable
dishwasher and the built-in island. The evenly-placed pendant lights
bathed the room in soft, pleasing illumination. There were only two
windows—over the sink and behind the table—and both being
pelted by thick, heavy drops rain. Counters were neither cluttered
nor clean; they were just untidy: a few crumbs here, a few dirty
dishes there... None of it bothered Baron. If anything, he felt
comfortable here.

He and Janna sat on stools at the island, drinking sweet tea from
coffee mugs. Her mug was white and had a peace sign on it; his mug
was blue and had small hearts around it. The beverage was smooth,
sugary and good.

“So, which'ya wanna talk about?” was the first thing to
seep out of her mouth. She said it in the following manner:
Why do
you wanna talk to me?

“
Have you lived here all your
life?”

She chuckled sardonically. “Oh yes. Born here, been here for 31
years, and will probably die here.”

“
You say that like Denburg's a
prison. If you don't like it here, can't you move?”

“
Would if I could, but I
can't.”

He swallowed a glob of tea. “You know what they say: Can't
never could do anything. What's keeping you? Don't you have any
goals? Dreams? Desires?”

Too many to count,
she thought.

“
Yes, yes, and yes.”

“
Yeah? Like what? Let me ask
you this: what do you want out of life? More than anything else?”

The question made her brain stumble, almost stop. She fought through
it, the fighter that she was—
yeah, right I am
—and
responded: “I want to meet somebody who will love me, who I can
love, and be happy with. That's number one. Two, I want kids. A
family. Three: a career in graphic arts. Four: to be healed. Well, I
guess fourth should be first, because unless I'm healed, none of
those other things will happen.”

He looked quizzically at her. “Heal? Oh my, you don't have—“

“
No, no, nothing
life-threatening. It started in high school. When I woke up to go,
I'd get real shaky. I often threw up after breakfast. The bus ride
there, my nerves jingled like sleigh bells. The whole afternoon was
worse than a root canal, filled with anxiety and fear. But when I got
home from school, all those feelings just... were gone. Parents had
me checked out. I had several different tests done. They ruled out
anything serious. Yet, nobody knew what it was. Then, when I blacked
out at a concert—there's like a half an hour of my life I still
can't recall—someone mentioned—I don't know who, but the
name stuck—I had had a panic attack. After that, I had some
'mental' evaluations done. Found out that I have a panic disorder.
Social anxiety. When I'm around a lot of people I don't know, I get
very shaky and nervous. Haven't had a full-blown panic attack for a
while, but I can feel it coming on sometimes, like last night.”

Baron was silent. He looked into his cup of tea, either uninterested
or indifferent.

That's what it looked like to her.

“
Are you seeing anybody for
that? A therapist?”

“
Not for a long time.”

He drank the rest of his tea. “So, you don't work? You don't
leave the house?”

“
No, and only once in a while.
I have my good days and my bad. Sometimes my anxiety doesn't bother
me, other times it does. Just depends, I guess—where I am,
where I go, who I go with.”

“
You never got the chance to
go to college for graphic design? That sounds like it'd be good for
you.”

“
A lot of things I'm not doing
now would be good for me. I did go to the Art Institute for about
three months before... my panic disorder acted up. I've also had many
bad relationships that made my anxiety worse. Lots of guys like last
night. You're not getting this, are you, Baron?” She held eye
contact with him. “You think I'm just a loser who doesn't
deserve anything the world has to offer.”

He grinned. “You can't read my thoughts, Janna.” His eyes
met hers. “Those guys who hurt you—sometimes circumstance
puts the wrong people in our past repeatedly. It's not your fault.
No, I don't think you are a 'loser,' I think you just need a push in
the right direction by the right person. You need somebody to tell
you it's okay. It is. I can't relate to the 'panic' thing, because
I've always been an outgoing, social person. That's just my
personality.” He stopped to catch his breath. And though she
couldn't relate to him being outgoing or social, she felt a spark
burn within her. It started in her core and then spread out to every
possible direction, engulfing her. Igniting her. She had not felt a
connection with a man in nine long years. Here was one with whom she
liked, and he was her exact opposite, in terms of personality. None
of that made any difference.