The guard rail parted in slow motion, cracked the windshield, and was gone. Betrayed, betrayed, and betrayed again, I should have known it would end this way. My stomach lifted, lurched as the sky spun away. Digital trees and riverbed took its place, then sky once more, the bridge receding, then the river again, hurtling closer. Rocks washed by sunlight dancing on water, dancing—
She had taught me to dance. Imagine me on the dance floor, learning to lead a girl. The distraction of her exquisite body against me would surely cause me to stumble and step on her toes. Classic mistake, maybe worth an embarrassed little laugh, but I didn’t ruin the waltz. A soft push in her back to signal a turn, I got it, I liked it. Yes, on our first date she taught me to dance. She also stayed over that night, and I thought that the third time would be the charm.
“Amarantha,” I repeated her name, and she smiled, an exotic flower with honey in her eyes, and auburn curls cascading over her shoulders. Her springtime fragrance, and smoky voice touched me somewhere deep inside. Frank, my online racing buddy had intended to introduce us at his party. That she and I had run into each other moments before, literally collided in the kitchen and begun to chat, he proclaimed an omen. Indeed, she gave me her number that night, and the next day we went to the zoo. At sunset she took me waltzing. The weekend after, we had dinner and watched a romantic comedy. We laughed, held hands, floated on clouds. She took me to her place that evening, and in the morning she fried tomatoes, and laid sunshine eggs beside toasted English muffins. No breakfast could have put a bigger smile on my lips or made me greater promises.
Fast forward.
Through the spiderweb windshield, blue sky became stony river again, and river turned into a receding sky. I cast back my mind to the incomprehensible disaster named Kira, my second wife, and my ensuing conviction never to risk reaching out again. Relying on myself alone, I had been safe, if not content. What madness then had possessed me to drop my guard after all that, and drop it so swiftly and easily, too? Why had I put all my chips on red hope again, when experience assured me that all I’d ever reap was black despair?
Amarantha took me to a winery with three of her friends crammed into the back of her Cooper Mini. That car alone could have ensured my love for her: British racing green, and a stripe over the hood. She drove assertively, a girl after my own heart. We laughed on the way there, and even more on the way back. What does a sardine sound like when squeezed into a can? Same as five people in a Mini. Yes, Amarantha wanted her friends’ opinion of me, sober as well as slightly drunk. I felt light that day, uninhibited, and happy, but most importantly, I felt myself. By Amarantha’s admission that night, I had passed muster with her friends.
Candlelight dinner at Deux Bougies the next evening. Don’t ask how I got a table on such short notice. I’d like to think that Georges, the owner, saw in my eyes what a table would mean to me. Time vanished when Amarantha told me how her little sister had drowned in the swimming pool at age nine, how it had torn at the fabric of the whole family, the pain, the blame, the guilt, and the shame. There were things she had done later to fill the void, things of which she was not proud. I understood now that it was sorrow that pulled subtly on her face, and I was touched that she trusted me to have admitted that much, so soon. Illusions of flawlessness were only the seeds of disappointment, I said, and confessed my fears to her across the serene sway of a pair of candle flames.
Did I know what love was, or did I mistake excitement and lust for the real thing? For the longest time I blamed my first wife Emily for the first divorce. After all, it had been she who slept with my best friend and ruined the marriage as well as the friendship. By the time that my second marriage to Kira lay in ruins, too, I understood that I had never really been in love with Emily. We had married, moved in together, bought a house, and done all the things that a young couple should, except that she had become a shadow in my life, a convenience rather than my focus. Sure, there had been the holiday at the coast, where I had taken a picture just as the big wave shot up from behind the rock on which she had stood; and there had been that skiing trip with my best friend and his twin sister; Emily and I had done things together, but we had never really talked, communicated without barriers, not before and not after dinner, not before nor after sex. When Kira, my second wife, danced naked about the house, spinning, laughing crazily, and covering the furniture with a thin spray of blood from her wrists, it hit me that I had no idea who I had married there, but was somehow living a grotesque replay of my failures with Emily. In both cases I had been unaware of the early signs of trouble. What was the point of trying for number three, when one and two had already been a disaster, when clearly, I had no idea what I was doing, and would only repeat the same mistakes?
“What if you weren’t the only one who let the relationship drift unguided,” asked Amarantha across the dancing flames. “It takes two to tango, you know?” With those words, her face lit up. “Did you ever tango?”
She knew the answer, of course, and leaned toward me until the two flames between us set her smile aglow. I leaned forward in response, eyes locked on her sweet gaze. Emphatically, she told me, “One minute of tango a day, and you will never, ever fall asleep on the job.”
As much as I had enjoyed our waltz, I could not see how dancing could keep a relationship alive. She must have seen the puzzlement growing on my face. She cocked her head and gave an amused little snort. “I’m signing us up for a tango class!”
Can you imagine me learning to lead a girl in the most intensely intimate experience this side of the bedroom door? The tango did not come easily to me, and truth be told, I probably made a terrible showing of it. Over the course of eight sessions, I came to understand that leading differs from dominating. My father had always dominated the family, loudly and with force; I had sworn never to do the same. Amarantha lifted that veil for me and woke in me an arduous desire not to shrink from myself as I had always done. Yes, one minute a day of focusing on each other as intensely as the tango demanded, and the fire and the passion would never die.
Imagine my shock when three weeks later, almost to the day, I took off early on a Friday afternoon, and with a dozen roses in hand walked up to her building, only to see her in the street outside, in the arms of another man. Their faces separated just as my eyes fell upon them. She wrapped herself around his waist, and he enfolded her in his arms. It was not just any man, oh no, it was the ghost of my nightmares past.
For a long, stunned moment I blinked at a replay of the end of my first marriage, and realized that I knew Amarantha no more than I had known Emily or Kira. My life was haunted, cursed: The man who now held Amarantha was none other than my erstwhile best friend who had stolen my Emily. There was no question that Amarantha knew him and knew him well. Had he come to ruin me all over again? I should have seen this coming. Love was not to be my lot. Never bet on red, it’s only the darkness that will ever win. The fool I was, he turned away.
What became of the roses, I do not know. I bit down on the pain with clenched teeth, forced it deep down where it might struggle on its own for a time in that swamp of old hurts and cold regrets. It was not yet a marriage, so it was not a divorce, though it hurt like the worst of them. I had to escape the immediacy of the crime, even if it was only for a while. Get drunk, and drive fast and hard, with every ounce of my focus bent on the task, and that task alone. As it turned out, not even that was enough.
When the blue sky turned away, and the river rolled into view once more, it was too close for the sky to make another visit. I tensed as the rocks and water rushed up, tensed as if the crash were real, but I could not tear my eyes from the coming impact. Faintly over the whine and sputter of the engine, came Mozart’s Alla Turca. I yanked off my headset, turned away from the computer monitor, and glared at the phone on the corner of my desk.
Amarantha, said the display, but how could I answer her, what would she say, and what point in listening to her spell out the bitter truth? I’m sorry, he dances better than you. No, it was best to delete such a message without even listening to it. Let her say what she would, and just walk away. But was that not what I had always done, most recently with Kira, ignored the odd claims of being chosen, and her peculiar compulsion to rearrange the house in the months before she fell through that black hole in her mind and despite all my sleepless nights trying to coax her back, never came out again? Broken and without hope, I had finally shrunk from her disintegrated faculties, turned away, and fled; I could not say that I had ever finished those fights, so why did I cling to the same strategy now?
Mozart played on, but soon the Turkish Dance would stop. I wanted it to go on. Amarantha, it meant unfading, forever; my need and desire, we had tangoed, and for the first time in my life I had learned to lead by taking charge, and not merely to be led and be lost, or like my father, dominate and no more. If I shied from it now, there would never be a number four, it would end here, and the dance would be over. The thought repulsed and frightened me. I could not let these feelings die; I must not walk away. My fingers shook, but just before the music died, I answered her call.
“Hi,” she said as I lifted the phone to my ear. She sounded hesitant, a little breathless. Yes, bad news.
“Hi,” I replied.
I had intended to say, “I wanted to give you roses, and take you out for Thai food,” but more than that one syllable, my tight throat would not allow. Coward!
She sighed on the other end and seemed to choose her words with caution. “There’s someone here who you should meet.”
I had not expected her to admit to having met someone new, not so soon. What did she expect from me, approval? She had girl friends for that, and how had I gone so suddenly from lover to friend? Would I sound petulant if I asked her why I should? No, I had led her in a tango, I needed a new road, a way to show backbone, strength, and leadership. I sat up straight and took a deep breath. I managed to put on a smile and inject a note of curiosity into my voice. “Is she cute?”
“That depends,” she said, laughing softly, “I found out today that you two know each other.”
I said nothing. What cruel game was she playing, teasing me about my failings and old pain? Were they looking for the perfect moment to drive the knife in, and give it a twist? Would it be weakness or strength to hang up on her before it came to that?
She gave a sigh before she went on, “You used to be best friends until he and your wife had an affair. Would you believe that he’s my ex-husband?”
Ex-husband, was I dreaming? All these years I had been certain that he and Emily had married, their ruinous affair more than a mere indulgence of lust. He had stolen my Emily, then married Amarantha, instead, only to divorce her again? How had it come to this? What twisted roads had fate laid out for me? Wary of what I might be missing, I kept my voice as even as possible. “How long were you married?”
“Almost three years. We’ve been divorced for two, and we haven’t spoken since.” Her voice took on a dark and ponderous note. “He came to apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
“He cheated on me, but he’s finally working on his problem in therapy. When I told him about you, he said that he had something important to tell you.”
I shook my head. It was enough to know that he would not be stealing Amarantha from me. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
Silence.
“I can’t, please understand.”
“He’s not asking you to forgive him, he just wants to tell you that he’s sorry.”
Sorry? Had my former best friend struggled with the weight of that affair, and paid a price as well? The selfsame weight began to slip from my shoulders, a tension that I had never noticed before. I came to my feet, went to the front door, and threw it wide to let in warm breezes and the sight of an intense indigo sky. Gone was the river, gone were the rocks; and the weight of my past was fading, too. If it had not been for that affair, I would not have met Amarantha, and so I was done with running, once and for all. A smile came to me and sat on my soul.
I said, “Tell him that I will see him.”