Chapter 4: Day Two: 7AM

I am a gym rat.

Spending time stretching, lifting weights, pumping out miles on the elliptical and climbing monuments on the stair master, sightseeing Lululemon six or seven days a week is what I do. Exercise helps me stay centered and on track. Rid my mind of the unwanted baggage of the day and the space sort my thoughts. My metabolism also demands I go to the gym. Without it my daily ration of food would resemble Gandhi’s during a hunger strike.

All that ended with Covid. My gym closed. Even if had been open I doubt I would have gone. Working out wearing a mask is not as much fun as it sounds. Consequently, to help me maintain a modicum of sanity, I had become a walker. First, around the cobbled streets and hilly jungle lanes of Brazil and more recently around the hills and trails adjacent to our home in New Jersey. The latter always accompanied by Fenway, my caramel colored, fleece coated Australian Cobberdog.

To help settle my mind after my struggles with the ghosts of Covid last night and this morning, I have stopped by the front desk to see if they have a trail map for the property. I They do. Valeria from Moldova (it says so on her name tag) the very friendly front desk clerk goes and fetches one for me. While I wait, I notice a large carved dark wood panel behind the front desk. It depicts a Polynesian woman with an exceptionally large head featuring an oversized smiling mouth, flaring nostrils, eyes that are series of concentric arcs, furrowed brow and hair depicted as waves. I am intrigued when Valeria returns with my map. I ask what the image depicts.

They must get this question a lot because instead of answering me she hands me a card. It says:

“The wood panel is of the ancient Hawaiian Goddess Pahulu. Her brand of sorcery was known to have been practiced through dreams. In King David’s book he says that in ancient times she ruled Lanai, Molokai, and Maui before Pele in the days when Kane and Kanaloa came to Hawaii. Molokai was supposed to be the strongest center of her sorcery and legend has it that all of Molokai’s sorcerers are descended from her.

“There is much to be learned about Pahulu through stories from Native Hawaiians, but for now, leave it up to Pahulu to meet you in your dreams and tell you about her sorcery!”

I thanked her for kindnesses and after studying the map I decided on a five-mile round trip hike through the jungle to what the make indicates is a tiny beach. To start I make my way towards the golf course where the mapped hiking route begins. The wood carving behind the front desk has intrigued me. How clever the ancient Hawaiians were. The god of dreams a sorceress. Are all dreams that come true magical? And dreams that don’t come true cursed. But what about the nightmare we have been living this past year? Life without dimension with characters who rivaled those of our worst nightmares. Was that Pahulu’s sorcery or just our bad choices?

I reach the trail head. It is, at least for now, easy. A paved path that begins a gentle descent towards a dense growth of trees. I think of my dad and the hikes he used to take us on as children. He said it was so we would appreciate nature, but his real motive was to get us out of Mom’s hair. He used to ask Levi and I to sing to him a song we had learned at our day camp, Camp Riverbend. “The Happy Wanderer. “

I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.

Chorus:
Val-deri, Val-dera,
Val-deri,
Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-deri,Val-dera.
My knapsack on my back

My parents’ attic is full of ghosts.

Or so I think when shortly after my mother death I enter the attic of my parent’ house where they have lived for over a half century. We have decided as a family to sell the place we call home as none of us have the money or the resources required to keep it. As I live the closest, have no family present as Nadine is still in Brazil, and have little better to do as my work has been killed by Covid, I have been volunteered to organize and pack the home. I do much of this alone. Not that my sister and brother-in- law have not put in their hours. They have. But as working in a mask is a challenge and a bother we have chosen to work on different “shifts.” My brother has not come at all but has made it clear he wants his share of whatever treasures the house contains.

The attic is a sea of sealed boxes, ancient steamer trunks and luggage from the by days gone by. When travelers had a good leather suitcase, and you didn’t mind the weight because there was always a porter around to assist you with your baggage. I know before I start that this is going to be an intense genealogical expedition. Both of my parents were only children which means any family photo, ephemera, of keep sake passed to them. There has been no division between other children or relatives. Second, my mother was raised in a New York City apartment where every inch of space was scrutinized for use. If you kept it, it had value to you. Finally, Mom by training was a librarian and had a family diagnosed case of ADHD. Everything had to be catalogued and put in its place so she could feel comfortable.

The attic lacked air conditioning, and, in the summer, it could do double duty as a sauna. As I could not work there my method was to take each box, steamer trunk, etc and bring it down to my parents’ adjacent and air-conditioned bedroom. There I could work through the collections without the danger of becoming one of those grizzly discoveries you read about on the internet. The first box I chose was an unlabeled cardboard bankers’ box that I selected because it seemed unlikely to contain emotional bombshells and it was closest to the entry. I was wrong. It contained every letter, report and note that my brother and I sent from Camp Forest Grove during the two summers we spent there when we were pre-teens. Included in this treasure chest was a note I sent to her that read:

“Dear Mom

When I left for camp, you promised to write to me every day. Yesterday, at mail call, I did not get a letter from you.

What is wrong? “

It brought back in a flash every bit of mother love I had ever felt in my life and breaks me down into heaving silent tears. My mother, in her final years, had often been difficult, demanding, and a constant draw on my time and emotions. There were times when it got to be too much for me and I had responded by being less than kind, cranky and snarky. More than once, to my everlasting chagrin, harsh words had been exchanged. Now, what I wanted more than anything, was one of her hugs and to apologize to her for any unkind, uncaring, less than loving thing that I had ever said or done to her.

As I begin to recover from my emotional breakdown the phone rings. It is Conor. I do not want to speak with him. He is an emotional vampire these days. That is not a judgement. Were I in his position I would be too. But at this moment my emotional reserves are running on fumes. How could I explain to my buddy why it was that I was emotional basket case when I had not even told him that mom had died.

I am back at Conor’s and Delilah’s place in Manhattan Beach. This is a new apartment. They have upgraded. They are now in an even nicer, larger apartment, closer to the beach. As Conor told the story, when he had rented the previous apartment, the landlord failed to disclose that the building next door was going through a down to the studs renovation that was expected to last over a year. The construction sounds along with a boisterous build crew made working and living in their apartment impossible. Conor had managed to convince his landlord, after threatening a lawsuit, to release them from their lease. And as he told me “The new place is more expensive, but we are closer to the beach, and we have better downstairs neighbors.”

It turns out that the downstairs neighbors were three members from the world champion USA women’s soccer team. Delilah had adopted them, without their permission, as in loco parentis.  According to her, she helped them cope with being away from home and provided the motherly advice they desperately needed. According to Con she was doing this to avoid finding a job or doing anything useful. And, when I meet the young women, it became apparent to me that they thought of her as just another hanger on albeit a useful one who helped them get errands done.

For Conor they represented something far different.

He had always been attracted to tall, strong, athletic women. His first real love, and the woman I always thought he should have stayed with, Shoshana Dukes, had been a tall, willowy blonde. She possessed a quirky sense of humor and had played goalie on our state champion’s women soccer team. I think that even though it was a high school romance it would have lasted except for Conor’s penchant of putting his penis into other woman’s vaginas. It had destroyed every one of his relationships until he met Delilah. He had by his own admission two problems with sex. The first was getting women to play “slap and tickle” with was a game he was good at. You know the expression “He could charm the pants off of you.” That described Conor perfectly. And you know how operant conditioning paradigms work. If you want to continue a behavior, you reward it. Can you think of a better reward than an orgasm? I can’t. The second problem was an over-the-top libido. I like sex. A lot. But I did not need to have sex every day. He did. He had told me on more than one occasion that if he did not have sex every day, he didn’t feel good. It made him edgy and mean.

I never asked how Delilah put an end to his fucking around. Assuming, naively, that he had stopped stepping out. I just thought that she too had a similar sex drive which she all but confirmed one day when she emerged from the bedroom one afternoon when Conor had been a particular pain in the ass and said ““I just gave him a blowjob. That should put him a better mood.” To say the least, and double entendre intended, I could not believe what was coming out of her mouth, but it made me assume that she had her ways of soothing the monkey on his crotch.

One of the features of the new apartment was a shared firepit. It sat in a small, recessed area between the front of the building and the street. Around it was a circle of Adirondack type chairs that had a view of “The Strand,” a walking path that paralleled the beach. It was a natural place for the tenants to gather, unwind from the day with a glass of wine or a cocktail and of course look for the green flash. My first evening staying with them Conor and Delilah insisted that we sit at the firepit and enjoy a cocktail and as Delilah put it meet the “girls.” Even though I had been a seller, constantly introducing myself to people throughout my business life, I tend to be reticent, just shy of shy, in my personal life. And this situation, joining a group of world class athletes, unwinding from their day made me the new kid at school who is asked to sit at the cool kid’s table. I was uncomfortable to say the least, but they were lovely young women. Poised, articulate, and no doubt skilled at making people feel at ease in their presence they made me feel as if I belonged in their “circle.”

Del had developed a deep relationship with these future gold medalists. She was the one who asked them about their training, inquired about their significant others, and even volunteered to run some errands for them to help alleviate the time crunch training was placing on them. When they began talking about an upcoming trip for a tournament in Europe, Del shared that she and Con had lived in Europe for “many years” and began to tell them in detail all the things the young ladies should be aware of. I could hear Con’s eyes roll from where I was sitting. One of his pet peeves with his wife was she always brought up their time living in Europe almost as much and as often as a person who attended Harvard name drops that institution into a conversation. Con considered their time in England past the statute of limitations of conversations. They had not been there for almost a quarter century. It no longer defined him and could not understand why she felt like she needed to speak out about it all the time.

Con’s eyes were not the only ones to roll. As I looked across the firepit I could see that these three women, who undoubtedly traveled the globe far more extensively than Del, share a glance with each other. No doubt they had heard this conversation before and because they were nice young woman did not have the kindness required to Del that they had heard this all before. I also noticed something else. One of the young women, Alison, a willowy, blonde center full back, exchanged a glance with Con. I had seen that sort of glance before. You hung around Con enough in his single days and you were sure to. Usually, it was with a woman he had made love to and for whatever reason was not public knowledge. The look suggested intimacy. Perhaps not sexually but certainly emotionally and while I had long since ceded my role as Con’s moral guiderail, I found it disturbing. He did not have women friends. He had fuck buddies. Was he having an affair with this woman young enough to be his daughter? I didn’t know what to think. My inner frat boy, the most testosterone-soaked elements of my brain wanted to say “Bravo! Well done. But the truer part of me, my inner boy scout, who believed in his marriage vows and knew the destruction infidelity wrought wanted to shake him and say “Dude, what are you doing?”

After dinner, he and I had returned to the firepit to sip a couple of ounces of Blanton’s Bourbon, stare at the flames and talk. At that time of year, March, it gets chilly, and I can remember how grateful I was for the fire and the bourbon and for the full moon that was casting its rays on the Pacific. Con and I talked all the time, but we were also comfortable enough with each other not to say anything. Sometimes silence says more than words. We had been quiet for some time, enjoying the bourbon, the moon, and the fire when I asked, “What is going on with you with that Alison girl.”

Conor answered with feigned innocence. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She is just a neighbor.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“No. Seriously, she and I are friends. Sometimes she comes out here and we talk but that is about it.”

“Listen, buddy. I don’t care if your friends, friends with benefits, or rip each other’s clothes off every time Del turns her back. Ain’t none of my business. But if I can see something other people can as well, then one day it will bite you on the ass and it will cause you more trouble than you can imagine.”

“I am telling you it is nothing more than a friendship.”

I let it drop. I had said what a friend should say and beyond that it was none of my business. I had long since gotten past the point of judging other people’s relationships or making sanctimonious moral judgements about what they do. We all manage relationships differently. Consider Nadine and me. What people see is two people who spend much of their time apart. You can practically hear the judgement when people hear of how we manage our marriage. Long distance relationships don’t work. Doesn’t it concern you that you spend so much time apart? They don’t see the value in the time we spend communicating every day through emails, Skypes, and texts and as we see it communication that most married people don’t have. But at the end of the day what other people think doesn’t matter. Their judgement is only valuable to them because our relationship works for us.

The question, more for my own files than for anyone else’s, was, did I believe him? He had a history of running a flirtation right up to the edge of where an infidelity would occur and then running away.

We had been in Riga for the wedding of a mutual friend who was marrying a Latvian woman. We were not traveling solo. Con was accompanied by his fiancé Deliliah, and I had brought along my girlfriend Eliza. The night before the wedding the men took out the groom for one final night on the town. No city could be better suited for a bachelor party. For years, Riga had been a place where Russian soldiers from neighboring Soviet bloc countries had flocked to “entertain” themselves. It had a reputation of having the best strip clubs in the world. Our goal for the evening was to conduct an unscientific but thorough study of these clubs to determine whether Riga’s reputation was well earned. At the first club we went to, the bride’s brother stood up and gave a little speech. First, this night would never be mentioned again so that anything that happened or was said would be “vanish into the mists of amnesia and vodka.” And, to aide in our forgetfulness we were each given a half liter flask of vodka that we were instructed to drink “like Russian soldiers.”

At the time I was working for Rolling Stone Magazine as its associate publisher. My habit was to carry my business cards with me because who knew whom you were going to meet. (Axel Foley, Rolling Stone Magazine) As chance would have it that evening Prince was giving a midnight concert at the local stadium. Why midnight I never quite figured out. Our bachelor party had started at around 7pm and by the time 10pm rolled around we were so drunk that standing required intense concentration. It was then that Con had spied two particularly gorgeous women standing at the bar and decided that we needed to talk to them. When I protested, suggesting that they may be paid professionals, he insisted they were not and told me I needed to be his wingman. He introduced himself as an American concert promoter and that I was the publisher of Rolling Stone magazine and offered to buy the women a drink. They accepted and two drinks later, and I am not sure how it happened, we were walking out the door with these women headed to the Prince concert. Conor had convinced these comely young professional women my business card could gain us entrance. But first we would be stopping at our new friends’ apartment for a little pre-game and by pregame, I mean we would be employing these women in their chosen profession.

I did not want any part of this and told Con as much as we were leaving the club. He told me, in his best “Con man” tone not to worry. That he had no intention of going through with things he was just having a little fun and following his lead. We found a taxi right outside the club and proceeded to the young women’s apartment. Con asked the young women to climb out of the cab while we paid the fare. The minute, they stepped out he slammed the car door shut and yelled at the drive “Brauc, Brauc” or drive, drive in Latvian. I can remember looking back at the young woman looking at us in the fleeing cab in utter bewilderment. Somehow, we managed to convey to the driver to take us to a McDonalds near our hotel where we proceeded to choke down Big Tasty with Cheese, milk shakes and fries while laughing so hard at our exploits that Con, who like me was so drunk we thought we were sober, kept falling out of the booth.

I don’t remember the walk back to our hotel. I do remember doing a face plant into my pillow and falling into one of those fitful drunk sleeps where you are either too hot or too cold and no matter how much water you drink you can’t quench your thirst. I was awakened the next morning by Eliza accompanied by a furious Delilah. The wedding for which we had flown 4,000 miles to attend was due to begin shortly and not only did I need to get my ass out of bed to get ready but needed to convince Con to get his ass out of bed as well. He was telling D that he wouldn’t get up until I got up. I managed to extricate myself from bed and my tongue from the roof of my mouth and padded over to Con’s room in boxers. Con had not gotten his clothes from the night before and was laying on top of the bed fully dressed with his mouth agape and emitting loud belly snores. I shook him awake and said “Con, c’mon move your butt. We gotta go to a wedding.” When he opened his eyes and saw me, we exchanged a glance that brought back all the previous night’s exploits. Both of us began to chuckle, which grew into laughs and then guffaws leaving both Eliza and Del bewildered as to the source of our mirth.

As I lay in bed that night, waiting for sleep to come I wondered, was Con just being Con and pulling a “Riga”  on this young woman or was it something more. Should I push him on it or let him come to me and discuss if he felt the need? Was it my responsibility to him as a friend to let him know the hard lessons I had learned from infidelity, or do I let him choose his own path and seek my advice should he want it? I fell asleep without deciding.