My Red Loves

I went to Elena’s apartment when I got to Barcelona. She had lived next door to a friend in Santa Monica, but moved to Spain to teach English and sent me her address because she knew I’d be coming to Europe that spring. It was a big apartment; she was sharing it with a group of other teachers. Some of their friends were visiting too, so we all went out to dinner, got drunk on red wine, told jokes and ate rabbit. When we went back to the apartment, I rolled out my sleeping bag on the floor of her bedroom, we said goodnight and shut the lights.

I woke up the next morning when the sun shone through her red lace curtains.

“Sleep well?” she asked me.

“Yeah, you?” I was still drowsy, but I saw she had been awake for a while; her eyes were wide open.

“OK. The floor must not be comfortable, though. Too bad my bed is so small.”

I thought for a moment.

“I’m not all that big. Neither are you. I could fit.”

I took off my T-shirt and my jockey shorts, went to her bed and pulled her red blanket down. I climbed in and wrapped my arms around her. She wriggled out of her red sweatshirt, we kissed and then made love all morning.

Two years before:

Hannah walked up to me on the quad. I was about to go home after my 11 o’clock class; it was my last one of the day.

“Hey, could you give me a ride? I don’t have my car today and it’s a long, long bus trip.”

We walked to the parking lot and hopped into my red Fiat sedan.

“Got any pot?” she asked. “I’d sure love get stoned.”

“At home. But I live in the opposite direction. Do you have time?”

“Sure, I don’t have to be at work until five.”

At my place, we sat on my bed, fired up my red bong and got stoned while we listened to a Ralph Towner record, airy improvised classical-style guitar over a jazzy bass and drums. She took off her red platforms and lay down. On the wall above my bed there was an art nouveau advertisement showing Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Medea. She had just slain her son, who was sprawled at her feet, and her eyes were wide open in horror. The tip of her dagger was red with blood.

“Wow,” Hannah said. “Check that out.”

“I know.”

“But come here and look at it from this angle.”

I lay down next to her. She rolled over a little, closer to me. She was wearing a red paisley halter dress. I pushed aside her long dark hair, caressed her shoulder and told her she was so beautiful. Her bare back was inches from my lips.
I thought for a moment.

I touched my lips to her shoulder and untied the knot at the nape of her neck. The top of her dress slipped off when I pulled it down, then I ran my fingertips across her breasts. She spun around and slipped her mouth onto mine. In a minute we were naked and I was licking her. When we were done with that, I pulled myself up, propped her ankles on my shoulders and we reached another round of ecstasy. Then she used those gorgeous red lips to finish me off.

The month before:

Kiana was walking across the lawn on the north side of the campus, the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We waved to each other and she came to sit down next to me on the freshly cut grass.

“Have a look at this,” I said, handing her an article I had just finished for the college newspaper. She started reading. I didn’t want to be staring at her, I didn’t want to be gauging her reaction to each line, I wanted her to tell me what she thought when she had finished. So I looked away from her, toward a redwood sculpture by the promenade. It was a warm day, not too hot, and a perfect light breeze blew over us. And then a strange thing happened.

I felt something I’d never felt before. Electricity in the air, an invisible red current enveloping us both. It was almost frightening. I looked up at her and she was staring at me with a fierce intensity. And I knew it wasn’t because of anything I’d written.

I thought for a moment.

Then I reached over, pulled her neck toward me, and kissed her like I’d never kissed anyone before. We were deep in some other place, some red world, for what could’ve been hours but was probably not even a minute.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We walked back to the red Fiat and I sped to her house. We slid each others’ clothes off and jumped into bed.

I kissed her from the top of her head down to the red polish on her toenails. And for the rest of the afternoon I pleasured her in all the ways a man can pleasure a woman and she pleasured me in all the ways a woman can pleasure a man.

The year before:

It was our last year of high school. Mike’s parents were out of town, so he was having a party, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. I was driving home from my job at the record store, and at the last second, I turned my red Karmann Ghia onto Red Rock Avenue, parked and went in to Mike’s red-tile roof house. The party had been going on for some time. Couples had already formed and had taken some of the bedrooms. Cary grabbed my hand and said she wanted to talk to me.
She lived around the corner from me. She was petite, with long dark hair, and she was very, very pretty.

“OK,” I said.

“Alone,” she answered, in a red hot tone.

That meant finding a bedroom, going in with her and doing more than just talking.

I thought for a moment.

I took her by the hand, went upstairs and checked the maid’s room; it was available so we went in. Before I could even make an attempt at the pretense of “talking,” she had me on the bed and unbuttoned my pants. I unzipped the back of her red dress and pulled it up over her shoulders, then unhooked the clasp of her red bra and pulled her red panties down to her ankles. We rolled around the red bed, kissing and caressing, then kissing and caressing some more. It was a cool December night, so I pulled off the red bed cover, we got between the red sheets and had at each other until we couldn’t anymore. By the time we were done, everyone else had gone home. When we came out of the bedroom, we were able to find our way out was because Mike had left a red night-light glowing in the hallway.

Thirty years later:

Those are four of my red loves. I have more, but those were the ones I picked for this story. I call them my red loves because they never happened. Each time that I thought for a moment, I didn’t act. So those experiences that I could have had were stricken from my life, the way an editor deletes sentences with a red pencil. Why?

That night I got to Barcelona was Elena’s birthday, she was a beautiful, kind and smart woman and I would’ve easily fallen in love with her, but she was 40 and I was 20, so where would that have led? Of course I still wonder how great it would’ve been to climb under that red blanket with her.

Hannah was fun and sexy. But she’d been dating Lee, a classmate. “We broke up,” she assured me that afternoon on my bed. “It’s over.” But Becky had told me the same thing a year before: that she had broken up with her boyfriend, my friend Will, so it was OK for us to make love. And we did. But I saw Becky and Will together a few days later. “Oh shit,” I’d said to myself. “I had sex with somebody else’s girlfriend.” So how could I be sure Hannah had really finished with Lee? He told me later that it was true – they had broken up. Of course I still wonder how great it would’ve been to take off that red paisley halter dress and feel her body spasm with ecstasy in climax after climax as I held her in my arms.

Kiana and I had known each other for years. She was pretty and had an exquisite body, which she normally didn’t show off. But one day I had gone to her house to pick her up to take her to a play that I had to review for the college paper, and she’d just gotten out of the pool and was wearing a red macramé bikini. So I could see she was slender but perfectly curved. If I’d have kissed her on the lawn that afternoon and made love to her, would we have gone from being friends to something more? I wasn’t sure I was ready for a girlfriend. Later, I asked her about that electricity I felt. “I looked up and your hair was glowing in the sun and you were just so beautiful, sitting there cross-legged in your red pants, I was just, I was just – you looked so good.” Ah, how great it would’ve been if I’d reached over and kissed her and taken her home and made love to her.

Cary had been dating a friend of mine, Russell. She suspected he’d been cheating on her with his old girlfriend so she asked Rick, an old friend, to take her to my house and see if I would tell her the truth. Which I did, thinking that it was in confidence, that she’d just break up with him and leave me out of it. But she told Russ what I’d said, he called me, and I had to go over to his house and apologize. I saw Russ and Cary together in front of her house the next week. I wasn’t happy that they’d dragged me into their false drama. There was no way I was going to go to bed with Cary. Still, she was very, very pretty and I just loved it that she let me know she wanted me – or more precisely, that I could have her if I wanted her. Of course I still wonder how great it would’ve been to take her up to a room at Mike’s house, get her naked, pull her on top of me and watch her riding me.
But each time I thought for a moment, I asked myself: What happens after? And I thought that it wouldn’t work out well. So I didn’t do what would’ve been so exquisite. Once, twice, these three times, four times, more times; more times than I can count.

But not all the time. Because I had other loves, too, that were not red loves. Those were the ones I thought would work out. And they didn’t work out, either. So maybe I was wrong, and maybe any one of the red loves, the ones I wrote about here or the ones I didn’t, would’ve worked out better than the other ones, the ones that happened.

I didn’t start out writing this story. It was just going to be about Elena, about what would’ve happened if I’d climbed into bed with her that morning in Barcelona. But then I decided I’d add Hannah and Kiana and I’d write about what it would’ve been like to make love to them. I had grabbed a redeye on my way home from work and was staying up all night to try to get my red story started. I was wearing my red sweats and I was looking at the toy cat on top of my computer. He’s holding a red ball in his mouth, with a red bow tie and two red hearts on his paws.

Then Cary found me on Facebook. “Do you remember me?” she asked. “I think I remember you.” She’s living in another country, on the other side of the world. She opened a chat window on my page and told me what was going on in her life.
“I’m married, but unhappy. I think I’m getting divorced. I’d really like to come back to the states. Do you think I could find a job there?” Hmm, bad timing, I told her. Layoffs everywhere. She might as well have been saying “Save me.” But I couldn’t: I have long hours at work and an hour commute each way. I don’t have time to save anyone. And I wouldn’t: She didn’t really remember me, she was just looking for some man to help her get out of a bad marriage. But I do love you, Cary, in my red love way, love that could have been but never was. And so now you’re in my red story, too.

Self Repair

Yeah, me too, I love it that the company has its own gym and we can pop in like this before we go home. We’re lucky. But even with all the hours that I spend working out here, I can’t get this weight off. I’ve still got the same butt and thighs. … No, come on, not “me too,” you look great … Thanks, but I want to lose 20 pounds, to get back to where I was when I was young, and no matter what I do … I know, but still … And all the other women our age around here, they’ve had “some work done,” too, huh? You know, the facelifts, the Botox … Oh, come on, you don’t need it, but I do, even though I’m not sure it would help …

Because with me, it’s different, with what happened to my face. … Well, this side is paralyzed … That’s nice, but come on, everybody notices … Really? You mean that? … That’s great… Of course, I still notice every time I look in the mirror, even after all these years… I thought everybody would, but, hey, great … No, not a disease, I know what you’re thinking of, Bell’s Palsy, where half your face gets paralyzed … That’s not what happened to me … You don’t know? I thought everybody knew! You’ve worked here, what, two years now? … Wow, I thought someone would’ve told you. I guess people don’t talk about it as much anymore.

It was ten years ago. Almost eleven years, now. I had my own software company. My brother was working as an aerospace engineer when I was in high school and he told me to get a college degree in computer science. It was hard. Harder than I thought. That was before a lot of people were doing it. But I did it.

Then I worked at a small company for a year. It was going nowhere, but I met my husband there – you’ve seen him, he comes to pick me up at work sometimes. We got married and started our own company.

I was doing the R&D. We were looking for what they used to call the “killer app” – you know, something like VisiCalc. Software that could change the way people worked, something everybody would need to do their job. We were working on a bunch of things, programs that everybody uses today, computerized troubleshooting and self-repair. We were really close to finishing a self-repair program. That was the goal, a product like that. They’re common today. But not back then.

Meanwhile, we were doing consulting for about a dozen clients. My husband was running that part of the business. He was installing their computer systems. Freight companies, small newspapers and magazines, a lot of companies with a hundred or so employees that needed to get their accounting systems off the ledger books and onto computers. We were growing twenty percent, thirty percent a year. We were making serious money. Things were great.

I had two assistants, two gals, interns from the college where I’d studied. We were working late one night, we were all getting tired, so I told them to go home. We had an office out in the suburbs. They didn’t want to leave me alone. But it was a low-crime area, everybody always said it was the safest city west of the Mississippi – FBI statistics – so I wasn’t worried. I didn’t lock the door when the other girls left.

About ten minutes later, this guy came in. I knew right away. A vibe. They say a chill goes up your spine, but I’d never felt that until then. It’s true. A chill does go up your spine.

“We’re closed,” I said.

“I don’t care if you’re closed,” he said. “I’m here to kill you.”

And he came toward me and I knew if I didn’t get away I’d be dead. So I tried to run around my desk to the sliding glass door to get out on the balcony and jump over the side. Fourth floor. That’s how scared I was. It was worth a chance. But I didn’t make it.

He hit me on the side of the head while I was trying to get to the balcony. Maybe with his fist, maybe he had a club or something. Then he grabbed me by my hair, from behind, and he cut my throat. Here, see? Then he must’ve hit me again, because that’s all I remember.

Then he raped me. Oh gee, you’re turning white. No, no, no, it’s OK, I don’t remember that part. They told me that later. They told me he took off my pants and he raped me. They think he got turned on by doing violent stuff. Or that what he wanted was sex with dead people. …. No, I didn’t even know it happened. I have no memory of it, none at all. And it was so long ago. Don’t cry.

My husband was out of town, he called home, called the office. After two hours, it was getting late, he couldn’t find me, so he called my brother, and my brother went to the office and found me there. The ambulance came. I had lost almost all my blood. As soon as they got me to the hospital, I flatlined. No pulse. No nothing. For four minutes. Gone. They thought I was dead. They were doing chest compressions and they got a pulse again.

I was in a coma for two months. They induced the coma so I could heal. After that, it took me, oh, something like three months to learn to walk again, and six months to learn to talk again. It was slow progress. It was a year or more before I got back to normal again. Well, I never got back to normal completely. Never got back like before. This side of my face is still paralyzed. But after a year, I could do most stuff.

We lost everything. The company, the house. My husband had to take care of me full time. Even with insurance, and insurance was better in those days, there were extra things I needed that weren’t covered. But I got better. Almost all better. That’s the important thing. Right?

No, they never caught him. Everybody asks that. The detectives worked really hard on the case. They had me look at thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of mug shots over the years. They thought that he’d get arrested eventually for beating up some woman somewhere and his mug shot would make its way into the books. But no, I never saw anyone.

The four minutes? That’s funny, nobody asks about that. Everybody asks if they caught the guy; nobody asks about the four minutes. I don’t know; I don’t remember. But here’s what they told me: When they brought me back to life, I started sobbing and crying, and they thought it was because I was in pain, but I guess not, I guess it was something else. Because they told me I said:

“Why did you bring me back? It was good there! It was BEAUTIFUL there!”

… Yeah, that is something to think about, isn’t it? But I swear I don’t remember. I wish I did.
Uh huh, it was great that my husband took care of me. I have a great husband. He always said it didn’t bother him, what happened to me. But we had money then. I wonder if he hired a private detective, found the guy and had him killed. The first few years, I was bitter, so angry that it happened to me, that I lost so much. And my husband was always really Zen about it. A little too Zen, sometimes, if you ask me.

The statute of limitations ran out a long time ago. One of the detectives made a joke about it. He said: “Maybe we can pop the statute by saying he killed you. There’s no statute on murder. And you were dead.” … Yeah, quite a sense of humor. I guess you’d need one, dealing with cases like mine all day. Otherwise you’d go insane, right?

… No, we couldn’t start another company, we fell behind in the technology. We couldn’t put in the hours. And by then we knew that even if we’d finished our self-repair program or made some other killer app, Microsoft would’ve reverse-engineered it, then put it in Windows and driven us out of business. That happened to some people I went to school with who started their own company the same time I did. Ruined them. They called me and told me all about it. … Hah, right, that’s exactly what I said, too. After what I’d been through, I heard that story and I said to myself: Big deal.

You just do the treadmill? And that works, that keeps you trim like that? We’re about the same age, and you look so much younger. So you don’t do the other machines, that chair you bend over in? Have you tried that? That’s supposed to tone up the butt and the abs. I’ve tried. Half an hour, forty-five minutes. Nothing. … Yeah, I know it’d be worse if I didn’t work out. But still, I’d like to see some results. I’d like to get my body back looking it did when I was young. … I know, we all do, everybody does. But I want to really, really badly. I really want to get back to the way I was when I was young. That’s why I work out so much. It’s so important to me. You understand.