Chapter Nineteen
Julie could not remember a worse day in her life. Even the divorce had been easier to handle. Two years ago she had marched through the long spring days leading up to the dissolution of her marriage with her head held high. She had done nothing wrong; Danny had been the one at fault, his immaturity finally catching up with him. Plus, during that whole stretch of time she, cultivated hope for her future and thoughts of a new life — a fresh start out on the West Coast with no chains on her there, no husband, no kids to care for, and no more five-month winters. She passed the time daydreaming about how she might craft her new existence. She would go back to college and finally earn the degree that was denied her when she got pregnant with Daniel. She would become a career woman.
But none of that seemed important to her any longer. In fact, hardly anything mattered at all. She just wanted to crawl into a corner and die. Her mind kept replaying the horrid scene in the hotel room. Over and over she would relive the moment when her entire world had spun out of control. And who could be blamed but herself? She had been so reckless and naive.
Thank God, Trace had proved to be a true friend. And Remy too, for that matter. At least she had the two of them.
After crying her eyes out in the hotel suite bathroom, she managed to gather her wits long enough to go out and collect her clothes. Mike was standing in the bedroom doorway still dressed in his white robe, one hand on his hip and the other conducting animated supplication. He tried to get her to talk, told her she was overreacting. She ignored him. And fortunately, he did not attempt to arrest her physically. She quickly escaped his nerve-jangling gaze, locking herself in the bathroom again. She got dressed, rinsed out her eyes, and applied some makeup. Then she walked out the door, wishing she never had to see his face again, but realizing that he was still her boss, and she had no idea what to do about that.
She called Trace from a lobby telephone and told her she was stranded at the Diplomat in Thousand Oaks, that there was no way she would be getting into a car with Mike again, and was there anything Trace could do to help? It was nine-thirty, and the rain had only just begun to let up, but after thinking a moment, Trace told her to sit tight. She would call Remy. Come hell or high water (both of which had arrived already, of course), they would be there to pick her up.
They got to her a little after midnight. Remy drove his Suburban, four-wheeling it all the way up from Costa Mesa, passing through standing water, and detouring around the deeper washouts along the route.
When Julie saw them come through the revolving door, she leapt off the lobby couch and into Tracy’s arms, tears spontaneously erupting again and streaming down her cheeks. Then the three of them hopped into the front seat of Remy’s truck and headed back down the coast. On the way she told them what had happened, leaving out some of the parts where she had led Mike on a little too overtly and shared his passionate feelings to the point of wanting him to do everything possible with her — short of physical union, that is.
“I told you he was trouble,” Trace reminded her.
“Tracy, give her a break, will you? She’s been through an ordeal.”
“I know that, Rem. But the guy’s bad news, pure and simple.” She swung her head around and barked again at Julie, “I hope you’re going to have him charged with rape.”
“I don’t know, Trace. I’d rather not have to relive any of this if you want to know the truth.”
“Well, at least file a suit for sexual harassment against him then. He and his kind need to be slapped down, hard!”
But the real truth about how Julie felt was simply this: She was far from certain that she could make any charges at all stick against Mike. And, she certainly did not want to have to defend her own honor in a court of law, starting off as the presumed victim but remaining so only until some slick trial lawyer — the best of which Mike could easily afford — managed to turn the tables on her under cross examination. That would be like pouring salt into her already deep and jagged wound. No, there would not be any pressing of charges; she just wanted to walk away from the whole tangled and tawdry affair — but how?
Slowly but surely, Remy got them back home, picking his way along the freeway system and surface streets, many of which had been a yard deep in rushing water and torrents of mud six hours previous. Owing to the lateness of the hour and Tracy’s early starting time at work, they agreed to drop Julie at her house and all get some sleep before the sun came up. Trace promised to look in on her woe-begotten friend later in the afternoon, when all her sales calls were done, and she was free for the weekend.
By morning, after tossing and turning in her bed for the remainder of the night, Julie had sunk even lower than the state she occupied when her friends met her at the Diplomat. She could not bring herself to see or talk to anyone. Unable to cope, she first called into work, claiming she was taking a personal day. Then she force-fed herself a bagel and washed it down with some coffee. She decided to clean the house and did so with more thoroughness than she ever had before. She tried to get into her college reading but could not keep her mind on the subjects. Finally, at about four o’clock, she put on some jogging clothes, pulled her car into a metered public lot nearby and went out running, hoping that when Tracy came, she would not find her home. In a way it was cruel, but Trace would have to understand. She needed to be alone.
She ran for well over an hour, putting foot over foot, through sodden sand on the deserted beach, past some costly destruction in the harbor and throughout the commercial district where shopkeepers were busy cleaning up the remnants of the storm. She continued running until she was completely used up. But before she reached total exhaustion, while on the crest of her runner’s high, buoyed up like a surfer on a wave, something Remy said on the trip back last night presented itself to her afresh, echoing through the caverns of her mind.
He had been talking about the Northridge, and how, when it hit four years ago, it shook the earth along a previously unknown fault line. No one had foreseen or predicted this disaster; the seismologists were caught unawares, their models having failed them miserably. The quake just happened — naturally, unavoidably, and far beyond the limits of anyone’s control. To relieve its own bottled-up internal pressure, the over-stressed earth spawned a tremor twelve miles beneath the San Fernando Valley surface. The consequent shaking quickly spread upward and outward across the sleepy suburbs until, in a moment of time, over seventy people had died and 24,000 buildings had been damaged. Before the newspapers were all delivered that morning, billions of dollars worth of destruction had been wrought in the Valley.
Remy said there were fault lines like this everywhere and that they ran up and down the coast, even in places where scientists did not suspect — as the Northridge so painfully illustrated. And suddenly, as she trotted along a quite street on the peninsula that had been under siege from the elements a mere twenty-four hours ago, Julie saw herself in the same sort of way — her very own heart and soul etched top to bottom with fault lines, and her life a virtual pressure cooker, capable of exploding at any moment. And it did exactly that last night, leaving her to kick along a trail of death and destruction strewn with fragments of the people and things she had once held dear to her heart.
But just like the victims of the Northridge, Julie, upon returning from her run, vowed to sweep out the debris and reconstruct everything anew — with one notable imperative. She would not allow Mike Tattersall to work his seductive magic on her again, nor would she fall for any man like him. She was finished looking for a high class, big shot, wealthy husband. There was no longer room for anyone in her life more sophisticated than she, herself. She only wondered why learning something so simple had to be so painful, especially when it was something Tracy seemed to know inherently, like how to breathe or which way to put on your brassiere.
The instrument panel digital read 11:35 when Danny got back into his car and headed for the Detroit Metro Airport. Perhaps he was cutting it a little close, but he felt certain the Saturday morning freeway traffic would be light. The trip to the airport should not take him more than about forty minutes.
While Valerie’s car was warming up, they embraced in the parking lot. Danny kissed her one last time. Then she climbed behind the wheel of her Cavalier and drove off for home, waving good-bye.
Valerie. He said the name over and over to himself. In two weeks she had wormed her way into his heart so deep that he considered her closer than family. She had literally become his closest friend. Still, it was a mystery to him how or why this relationship had taken hold, except to say that he had changed significantly over the past two weeks. He no longer fit into the life or relationships that had defined him previously. And apparently, in his coming unstuck from the old Danny, he somehow gravitated to her. Clearly, their lives had become knit together in a unique and special way.
Driving along the cold hard concrete of I-75 with its frozen verges dusted in white from an overnight snow shower, he could still feel her warmth. And sensing that she was still here with him, he allowed his mind to wander back through the morning they had spent together.
She wanted to make breakfast — pancakes for them both and sausages for him. He needed to pack. So, while she prepared the food, still dressed in her makeshift nightshirt with a pair of his old sweatpants and thick winter socks to keep warm, he busied himself folding shirts and counting out underwear for the trip.
They ate together in the dining room, Valerie’s choice. She claimed it was her favorite room in the house, and besides, she had never lived in a house with an actual dining room. Over coffee they talked and lingered, neither of them wanting the morning to end. Somewhat sheepishly, she admitted being embarrassed over getting drunk and climbing into bed with him last night. It was not exactly right to have done that, she said, and it certainly was not normal behavior for her. She just needed to feel loved and accepted. And he had met that need, to her delight and satisfaction. Thanks to him, her birthday had been special.
But this morning she wanted to be sure he understood her feelings. She told him how she hoped that he would not think less of her for what she had done. He did understand and told her as much, saying that he appreciated her being so open and honest with him.
Watching her clear away dishes, he sipped his coffee and reflected on the night before. He finally came to grips with something that had been troubling him for days — how, up until then, at least, he had been acting out of a very shallow understanding of his role in their relationship, but at the same time going on instinct, taking one step at a time. He tried to understand what was developing between them, calling it friendship for lack of a better designation, but still, he could not completely categorize the feelings he had for her. Every time they were together and she looked into his eyes, he found himself getting weak knees and a queasy stomach. It was an inner sensation akin to love. Yet, at the same time, he felt the utmost respect for her, such that he would not, indeed could not, view her as he might view any other female, as an object of sexual desire. Sometime last night however his feelings began sorting themselves out, fitting together in his mind like the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and the resulting picture of the two of them suddenly became recognizable.
In this picture he viewed her partly as he would a prized possession, one of incredible value to him, though he knew he could not posses her, nor would he wish to. And yet, he was ever-so-thankful that she had entered his life when she did, at a time when he had been living his life at the margins, near the point of drowning in loneliness and his own dogged stupidity, seemingly unable to free himself from the undertow of his shortcomings. But then, she happened by, appearing so innocent at first, but in time revealing the depth of wisdom she possessed. She quickly became the prescription for his unhappiness and near-terminal adolescence. Befriending him, she also lifted him out of his pitiful state, such that two weeks with her in his life had seemed more like two years. And in that brief span of time, he had become unflinchingly certain of her character and absolutely convinced of her predestined connection to him. His only concern having been that the feelings between them might not be exactly mutual, and therefore, ultimately and perhaps soon, he would wake up to find her gone. But there was no doubt in his mind that she had been the catalyst for change in his life. And whether she stuck around or not, he owed her a debt of gratitude for helping him see his life — past, present, and future — in an entirely new light.
Earlier this morning, when she had taken her seat next to him in the dining room for breakfast, his mind flashed back to the moment when she landed smack in the middle of his world like a meteor — so unexpected and yet so blindingly real — and he thought about how far he had come since then. It made him smile.
“What is so funny?” she had asked him.
“Nothing’s funny. I’m just happy, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“Because we met, and because you’re now a part of my life.”
He was no longer concerned that she might soon be gone, primarily because he recognized the power he had within himself to keep her close to him, to develop an indestructible bond between the two of them. Though, as recently as yesterday, her birthday, he had found himself sitting at work wishing and hoping that she might somehow indicate to him her true feelings, perhaps let him know how much he meant to her, that there was mutual admiration on her part, and maybe even a former hole in her heart which he, by being there for her, had somehow filled.
Then they had their evening and their night together, and today his answer had come. His wish had come true. It was now clear as crystal to him that they had become united in care and compassion for one another. Friends certainly, but more than just friends; they shared a place in each other’s hearts.
He would miss her, and she, him. She said so herself. But he would only be away for a week, and he promised to call her at work on Tuesday morning at ten. It would be seven A.M. out on the coast, and he would be getting ready for “day two” of the recruiting seminar. By then, he would have lots to tell her and she could anticipate a full run-down on how things were going with his quest to make up with Julie.
Valerie wished him “God-speed” and the “very best of good fortune” in his attempt to win back his wife. But she made him promise that, if things did end up working out with Julie, he would not forget her or walk out on their friendship, and this was a promise he gladly made because he could no more forget Valerie Robinson than he could his own name. She was truly in his heart forever, and he told her so for the second time. And, as a gesture of his love for her, before they got on the road for Troy, he gave her a key to his house and told her that she was welcome anytime. It was her house too, he said.
Before retiring Friday night, Julie called her friend Tracy and apologized for missing her earlier visit. She had been out running, trying to clear her head, she said, and it was the truth. But she figured that Tracy had to be miffed as a result of not finding her home, especially since she had explicitly told Julie she would be coming by after work. To make amends, Julie suggested that Trace stop by for breakfast in the morning. She promised to whip together a crumb cake from an old recipe she had, one that had always been her daughter’s favorite.
As agreed, Tracy showed up at nine o’clock. By then, Julie had the cake out of the oven and a pot of fresh coffee brewed. They spent the morning together talking mainly about what had taken place on Thursday, first of the storm and the ensuing floods which were now being blamed for over a half-billion dollars in damage. And then, of Julie’s sexual encounter with Mike and what she was going to do about it now that she had taken some time to consider her options. This, of course, was the very conversation that Julie knew would occur and the reason why she had avoided her friend on Friday afternoon. Verbalizing the details of her affair with Mike was going to be extremely painful for her, though she knew she could not keep it all bottled up inside either. Naturally, with a friend like Tracy, she did not have to.
Over breakfast, Trace told her how she had phoned an attorney friend of hers yesterday — a former boyfriend named Alan Grant — and asked him for advice, having first described Julie’s situation to him. Based upon the facts as Tracy related them, Alan agreed that Julie had an excellent case for sexual harassment, and there might even be the basis for a criminal case for rape. Upon hearing this, Julie pinched together her lips.
Tracy went on, “So, why don’t you call him up. His name’s Alan Grant. He can help you Jul, really.”
“I can’t call him.”
“Why not?”
“Because you told him all that. It’s embarrassing.”
“Come on, Julie. You can’t just let Mike get away with what he did to you. The law is on your side. Justice can be yours here.”
Julie thought about the irony in this: Tracy giving her a lecture on justice and the law.
“I don’t know, Trace. I just want it all to be over.”
“Well, I would want that too if I were in your shoes. But at least get some money for your trouble.”
“And how am I going to do that?”
“Let me give you some advice...”
Though Julie had no other job prospects at the moment, in no way could she go back to work at SunBurst. She did not even want to see Mike again, let alone work for him. Maybe she felt this way because of her own culpability in the matter, a possibility she suspected to be at least partly true, though she resisted acknowledging it. Or perhaps she was running away because, over the past two days, she had developed an impenetrable and unyielding hatred of Mike Tattersall for forcing himself on her after she begged him to stop. In either case, she was through at SunBurst — her so-called “career” and “promotion” be damned. She would start anew by getting her resume together this afternoon, then combing tomorrow’s HELP WANTED ads, and first thing Monday, she’d be off looking for another job. And Mike could burn in hell.
Now, with the benefit of Tracy’s encouragement and some time to think about what to do, she pulled out her computer and began writing a venomous letter to Mike Tattersall. She would demand the equivalent of two years’ salary, just as Alan Grant had suggested when she spoke with him — or else she would press charges. She did not need Alan to write such a letter. After all, she was the injured party. No one could say what needed to be said any better than she could. Of course she had no real plans to carry out the threat of litigation. She was still mortified at the mere thought of having to face Mike in court. But she would make the threat sound convincing nonetheless. Surely Mike had to know that her case was winnable in this day and age when men, more highly exalted than he, have been snared by their own uncontrollable passions, and especially when the objects of such passions are their organizational subordinates. Mike screwed up royally, and now he was going to have to pay to keep her from publicly denouncing him, discrediting his name, and wrecking his business prospects from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. She would come down on him like another massive storm off the Pacific, or so she would make it seem, anyway.
Another thing occurred to her as well. On the scale of violations, what Mike did to her was even worse than Danny’s philandering, at least according to her present way of thinking. Danny had betrayed her, certainly. But the two of them had been slowly drifting apart for years, and she had done very little to pull their marriage back together. Looking back on it now, she could see that his unfaithfulness was predictable and might even have been prevented. She had just been too self-absorbed at the time to see their marriage problems with any objective clarity. Nevertheless, there were all those years with Danny when he had proved his love for her, provided dutifully for her, and given her two wonderful children. Such love and dedication could make up for a multitude of sins.
Mike’s transgression was of another stripe altogether. He had deliberately taken advantage of her, overpowered, violated, and hurt her more deeply than she had ever been hurt before, even considering her parents’ divorce and the displacement of her home to Michigan at the tender age of fourteen. This situation was unprecedented. The damage Mike had done was irreparable; his sin, unpardonable.
She spent two hours writing the letter, taking breaks only to get coffee and use the toilet. Then, satisfied with what she had written and convinced that it should elicit the desired result, she saved the file and started to work on her resume. That was when she heard the doorbell.