I Love How You Love Me

Chapter 1

Listless

I sat idly in front of the television. I flicked through the channels but they all seemed about the same. Crap! After half an hour of surfing I still had no idea what was even on. I clicked the remote once more and the TV blinked off.

It had been six long months since Connie had left me, and her departure had taken me totally by surprise. Thirty years had been a long time together, apparently too long. I hadn’t seen it coming.

It was me that had flirted a bit, wasn’t it? Not her, at least not that she’d shown. Connie was all business, at least I had thought so. She was a first grade teacher that was enveloped in her work, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. But she’d fooled me on this one, she’d certainly done that. I’d had no idea that there was some hidden corner in that practical little brain of hers that harbored a little monkey business.

The guy was good looking, I had to admit that, and the kids loved him too, at least the sixth grade kids that he taught did, and he also had money, an inheritance they said. Connie would like that. She had progressed into a bit of an elitist over the years. She had somehow learned to appreciate the nicer things in life—I would know. She would deny that of course, but she really did enjoy dangly, sparkly things, fine tasting foods, and vacations to exotic places.

I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I ran the water and leaned on the counter. I stared into the mirror with eyes of haze and a pit in my gut. It was that same old feeling that hadn’t yet gone away.

I studied my face, though I didn’t dare look too hard, at age fifty five I had a few miles on me. There was a rust spot here and there, and a weakened framework underneath. I was certainly no longer a muscle car. I smiled faintly. I couldn’t muster much more than that.

I stumbled into the bedroom and fell into bed. The sun had barely gone down, but I had been waiting for it to. I could hardly wait to go to sleep anymore, not just this night but every night. I loved to sleep, even though I barely could, but it was my escape and I needed it. There was little else in my life, at least anything meaningful. I mean, what else could there be? I closed my eyes and laid there like a corpse, and that seemed about right too, because I felt completely dead, both inside and out.

In the next room, the clock ticked, and ticked, and ticked….

Chapter 2

Saturday

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and I had a rare day of freedom, a sunny little morning all to myself. I set off down the road to take care of a few errands. My car rolled down the hill towards town. It was purring like a kitten.

At the bottom of the hill I entered a turn lane, but when the light turned green the guy in front of me just kind of sat there. He didn’t move and I didn’t know why. After a few seconds I honked my horn. I guess he had some kind of reason for sitting there, motionless, but I had things to do, and he wasn’t the only guy on the road! He still just sat there so I honked again, and he flashed some kind of a gesture with his hand. Finally, he stepped on the gas and turned on to the street. I pulled up alongside of him and we exchanged a few words. He flashed me another gesture as he turned down a side street, and then he was gone.

I was simmering. This clown had ticked me off. I drove slowly down the road, stewing in my juices, but then I turned back around and headed up the hill towards home. I felt guilty now and I felt stupid too. I always felt stupid after I lost my temper. Crap!

When I got home I went inside and rested on the couch. It was only ten o’clock in the morning but I felt tired…. It didn’t take much to make me weary nowadays, and I felt lonely too. Yes, it was a relentless little fact that I now lived alone, so why shouldn’t I feel lonesome? This loneliness thing was indisputable; it was a nagging and pestering little way of life that annoyed me incessantly. I lived completely alone, all by myself, all seven days of the week.

My should-have-been-happy little Saturday was quickly evaporating, and it made me angry. I hugged the pillow and tried to think about pleasant things, but it didn’t seem to work.

Crap! I slugged the pillow. Stupid Driver! I pounded the pillow again. The radio was playing in the next room, and that annoyed me too.

Crap!

Chapter 3

Phone Call

The ring of the phone startled me. I stumbled from the couch and picked it up.

Hello? I said.

Levi, ya big stud! Jack said loudly. My brother had a certain way of greeting me and there was no question in my mind that he was on the other end of the line.

What’s going on? he said, this time a little softer. It is, you know, Saturday. Ya got anything going?

No, not really, I said quietly. I felt almost embarrassed, like I didn’t have a life or something, but I guess there was a reason for that.

Levi, my brother said, his voice a little firmer now, you need to get on with your life. I know Connie blew you out of the water and everything, but you’ve got to move on! He waited for my answer but I didn’t give him one.

It’s a nice day out. Do you want to do a home town? he asked.

I, umh, can’t, I answered.

You can’t? You just told me you had nothing going on.

Again I didn’t answer. I didn’t have one to give, and even I was uncertain why.

Levi, just let me tell you one thing, Jack said. You can turn this into an opportunity. You’re only fifty five years old and you still have plenty of juice in you! Do you know how many good women there are out there? Lots of good women, attractive women, some with money, and some that are nice, really nice, and some of them are nice and have money too. There’s one out there for you right now—waiting. One that needs you, and one that wants you, and one that would be a perfect fit.

Again I didn’t answer. I felt…weighed down.

Okay, then ya big stud! Jack said loudly. I’ll catch ya later. We’ll do a home town some other time, and always remember, you’re a man and you have a job—you’re a catch!

The buzz of the phone blared in my ear. I hung it up, put on my ball cap, and went out for a drive. I could do a home town by myself, and that’s exactly where I was going, to Salem, Utah, just forty minutes to the south of where I lived now. A home town, just so you know, was nothing more than driving the streets of the town we’d grown up in, reminiscing, talking about our childhoods and the people that we’d known. Many of them still lived there.

I needed to think and there was no better place to do that than Salem, Utah—all by myself.

Chapter 4

Women

It had been a good drive, and it had also been a long one. I’d ran into someone I knew at the park and had a good visit with him and his family, and then I went to the cemetery and paid my respects to mom and dad. It was after dark when I’d finally gotten home. The sun had been shining and my depression had left me. My spirits had lifted and my mind had become clear.

I had been listening to the oldies station on the radio while I’d been driving, and I’d heard an old Carpenters song: Goodbye to Love. It had hit me hard. I didn’t want to say goodbye to love, I wasn’t ready yet. I thought I did still have a little juice left in me, just like Jack had said. It wasn’t natural to go through life alone, especially the final part of it.

It hadn’t taken me long to realize that Jack had been right, in fact I’d known it for months, but knowing it and doing it were two different things. Would dating really be any different than it had been all those years ago? I wasn’t sure. How would I present myself? A clean one owner? Low mileage? Would these women dare to look under the hood? I smiled weakly. In reality I didn’t feel like I had all that much to offer. It seemed to me that when I was young the girls would glance at the bulge in my front pocket, but now that I was old they would be more interested in the bulge in my back pocket, and I was painfully aware that I was a little light in the wallet, especially since the divorce.

I had been married for thirty years and it had been a long time since I’d thought about ‘other women’, at least in any kind of a serious way. I mean, after all, I’d never thought that I’d need to again. Several names had come into my mind though as I was driving around and pondering.

Now I want you to know that I had not been a skirt chaser over the last many years, but I hadn’t been dead either. I had noticed, and spoken to, and even flirted a bit with a few women along the way, albeit harmlessly, I thought.

I have always admired women, and not just in a physical or intimate kind of a way, though I certainly don’t discount that either. Women are simply better than men—I have known that for a long time. I can only think of two areas where men have them beat. First, men have testosterone, so we’re naturally bigger and stronger, and that’s only obvious. It took me many years, however, to come to the conclusion that men are also better at making decisions than women, at least in the workplace that is. But women are still probably better than men at making decisions in the home. I guess that’s why they have to write up our honey-do lists, so we’ll know what the heck our priorities are. Women are simply better in most every way. It’s the women that are out jogging on a Saturday morning, and it’s the women that you’ll see out working in the yards.

Men are the Neanderthals. We move along slowly, dragging our clubs behind us, and we normally require some kind of power tool to help us get the work done, or some piece of heavy machinery traveling along beneath us to keep us moving along.

Women are the thoroughbreds: sleek, healthy, and refined. They’re in the race for the long haul. They just keep going and going and going, and then they come home from work and begin their second jobs.

We men are more like quarter horses. We will gallop along full speed, mindlessly fulfilling our immediate task, before flaming out in a breathless gust. We come home from work and flop on the couch, but if we are somehow able to unearth a little energy, we will usually run off to the golf course or some secretive little fishing stream.

Women are just so wonderful. I know that, but I also realize that most women don’t know it. They simply don’t realize their actual worth.

I have always been attracted to smaller women, for one obvious reason, I have always been a smaller guy. My mother had been a petite little five foot woman that enjoyed being the belle, hence, when I was in elementary school I was always that little tiny guy that was smaller than all of the girls.

All of a sudden my eyes felt tired. I clicked off the light and ambled off to bed. It was one o’clock in the morning and I needed to get a little rest. Tomorrow was Sunday and church started early.

Chapter 5

Scrutinizing the Congregation

The people in my local congregation were my friends. I had lived here almost twenty years and I knew them well. For the most part, since the divorce, they had treated me pretty much the same as they used to. Oh, some of the women avoided me now. It was like they didn’t know exactly what to say, or they were sometimes a little uncertain whether they should even speak to me. There were a few that treated me like I was poison now, like I was some forbidden fruit that they should stay completely away from, and they pretty much did. But most of them were still pretty good, and they treated me like they always had.

The men were my friends and they treated me about the same. They knew I was just the same old guy I had always been and they treated me like nothing had even happened. I was grateful for that.

Today I sat towards the back of the chapel and scanned the crowd. I studied the people a little more closely than I normally would have, and also with a bit more purpose. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, just clarification I think, a little more exactness as to who my neighbors really were, both as individuals and couples. Maybe I could learn from them and figure a few things out.

There was Harold and Ann, sitting on the second row with their eight children. I smiled. Harold and Ann were just such a complete couple. They were like bacon and eggs. It was hard to imagine one without the other.

And then there was Paul Reid, sitting to the side of me. He was a little older than me and he’d just done a stint in the hospital with an irregular heart beat. His wife had freaked out, but he’d taken it all in stride. Paul made me smile too. He was a genuine man with a positive outlook on life.

I methodically continued my scanning of the congregation, directing my vision from one member to another and from one couple to the next. I felt warm inside. I had always been an admirer of people and these people were all so good: living their lives, raising their children, tending to their grandchildren, and helping out their neighbors, most of the time in quiet little ways.

There was Jeanne Hathaway sitting a few rows in front of me. She had never married and still lived with her eighty-something year old parents. Her mother brooded over her like an old hen, guarding her and protecting her from society at large, one person at a time, and that seemed to be part of the problem. Janet worked in a library and she was pathologically shy. At fifty years old she was reasonably attractive but she was as tall as I was, probably a little taller, and that wasn’t good, at least not for me. At five foot eight I certainly didn’t tower over anyone.

Janet was not my type, that was just the way it was, but I hadn’t really considered her in the first place. I wasn’t her type either. I just somehow knew.

I thought about a lot of people that morning, and came to very few conclusions, other than the fact that I admired each and every one of them, both for the things that I knew they had accomplished, as well as for the deeds that I sometimes only imagined that they did.

Chapter 6

Lunch

Monday had come again, just like it always does and I was back at work. Most days I went to lunch by myself. Occasionally I would buddy up with a teammate, but most of the time our schedules didn’t match up, so I was accustomed to going alone.

I was in Wendy’s on this particular day and it was busy. I glanced behind me and saw a woman standing at the end of the line. She hardly registered in my mind, but a few moments later I looked back again, and this time our eyes met. They met just briefly, but we seemed to take notice of each other just a bit, and she was alone. I took my sandwich back to a small circular table towards the rear corner where I began to eat. A few minutes later this same little woman came back and nestled down at the table right behind me. Was it intentional? I didn’t know. I had never been good at reading the mind of a woman.

She seemed about the right age. She was the kind of woman who could be forty, fifty, or maybe even a well kept fifty five. Whatever the age, she’d noticeably taken care of herself.

After a minute or two I turned around and struck up a conversation with her.

I pointed at her salad, Are you eating that because you have to, or because you want to? I asked. She smiled

This is a treat for me, she said. I’ve been on a diet for the last three months. I’ve lost twelve pounds so far, just two more to go.

But you don’t look heavy at all, I muttered. I’ll bet you looked good before you started. She smiled again and shrugged.

You’re like those girls that jog down the streets, I said. It’s always the trim ones that are running.

There’s a reason for that, she said.

I guess, I answered.

These help, she said. She held up a little white pill between her fingers.

A silver bullet? I asked.

Very much so, she answered. I…sell them sometimes. I gazed at her, mulling over what I should say.

Multilevel? I asked. She nodded.

If you give me your phone number I’ll call you sometime, she said quietly. We can go to lunch and talk.

I…better not, I answered. Anything multilevel made me nervous, somehow.

We talked a little more about most nothing at all.

It was nice to meet you, she finally said. She smiled again as she rose up from her table and walked slowly away.

You too, I murmured, and then she was gone. I wandered out and got in my car. I started it up and headed back for work. It took me about five minutes to realize that maybe this woman had an ulterior motive, something much more evocative than a little white pill.

Man! I hissed. I hit my hand on the steering wheel. I’m so thickheaded I muttered to myself. How many more chances like that will I get? I tried not to think about her the rest of the day, but I had a hard time doing so.

Chapter 7

Another Phone Call

I was tending Rickie for the weekend. Rickie was my twelve year old granddaughter, and she was what her mother called a preteen. I guess that was right, because she often acted like she was twelve going on eighteen. I had asked her recently what she wanted for her next birthday, and she’d said she wanted two things. First, she wanted to go to the new department store and get some jewelry. The other thing she wanted to do was to have a party at Build-a-Bear. Yup, that pretty well summed up Rickie, one foot stuck in elementary school and the other entering the college years.

Rickie was my granddaughter and we had helped raise her since she was born. Her dad, my son, had passed away at age twenty three, after a six year battle with drugs. Rickie was just three years old at the time. I’d devoted my life to her for the last nine years, and I had no regrets, but now she was getting older and only came to see me occasionally. I was always glad to see her when she did come, though. Tonight, Rickie had brought a friend with her, and having them visit gave my life a little flavor. It was getting late, and they were upstairs now. I had no idea what they were up to, but I wasn’t overly concerned. Rickie was a good kid and I trusted her most of the time.

Suddenly the phone rang. I let it ring several times before I got up to answer it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to anybody at nine thirty on a Friday night. I got there just in time to find my sister on the other end.

Levi, it’s Suzanne, she said, with that slightly detached demeanor of hers.

What’s up? I asked.

"Levi, do you know who the ‘Jersey Boys’ are, she asked quietly.

Yes, I said. They play in Vegas sometimes. Why?

They’re coming to Salt Lake City in June, she said. I have an extra ticket. Would you like to come?

I would love to see the Jersey Boys, I answered, but….

Don’t worry about it, she said. "Remember, I’ve got three season tickets, and I’m inviting you along on this one. I kind of knew that you liked Frankie Valli, and I also kind of figured