Garbage

Her mouth was open again. But she didn't know what to say. "Linda, I'm old enough to realize that there's more to life than sex. There's especially more to life than waiting around and begging for sex from a woman who doesn't enjoy doing it with me or tries to use it as a bargaining chip instead of as a way to express our feelings for each other."

She wanted to say something but the words wouldn't come out. "So don't worry about it," I continued. "Since having sex with you is no longer a priority, you no longer have any power over me. So where's the reason for me to drop that kind of cash on you?"

Knowing Linda as I did, mentioning the price of the bracelet that she'd wanted only served to assure her that I had indeed bought it. She would probably tear up the house trying to find it, but she wouldn't because it was no longer in the house.

I stepped past her and went out for my run. When I got back from my run, I made a call and tried to arrange a job for Dahlia with a friend of mine who was looking for an assistant. It didn't pay much but she was glad for the opportunity.

Linda and I settled into a very frosty existence over the next few weeks. I followed her when she took out the garbage a couple of times and caught her on my iPhone's video app. I figured that seeing her spread across the hood of Dino's car more than once would be more than sufficient evidence that out marriage was over. When I watched the second one I realized I'd need to film a third one because the second incident wouldn't help my case. It might actually hurt it. She was calling Dino Stanley. He didn't care what she called him and neither did I.

By the time that I got the third video, I knew that it was time for me to go. I'd moved all of the money out of all of my bank accounts. I'd found a new condo that was only two miles away and had bought all of the personal items I needed to make the place homey. I'd even had Dahlia over a couple of times. That was when she told me how much she enjoyed her new job. She also told me what her old job had been. My beautiful, young Dahlia had been a phone sex operator. Boy, did we have a conversation after that. Especially when I found out that Dahlia, who had seduced countless numbers of men over the phone and helped them get off, was a twenty two year old virgin.

That evening Linda got up to go and take out the garbage. As she grabbed the bag and told me, "I'm going to take out the trash," I smiled and said, "Bye."

"Jeezus Stanley," she said. "It's not like you care anyway."

"Linda, are you sure that you don't want me to take it out for you?" I asked.

"I can handle it Stanley," she said.

"Okay," I laughed. That was the last I saw of Linda for a long time.

When Linda got back to the condo that night, I was already gone. I did leave a few things in places where I knew that she'd find them. I left a bag from the jewelry store in the linen closet. The receipt for the bracelet was still in it.

Linda did try calling that night and for the next few days. I simply didn't answer her phone calls or take her messages. My daughter called me and I spoke to her, but told her that I would not discuss her mother or the situation between us. When I look back on it now, I think that was a mistake. Because when things really got ugly, my daughter had to pick a side in the war and she chose her mom over me. It hurt me more than anything else because we'd always been very close.

A few weeks later, when the first payment on the condo's equity loan was due, Linda found out that she was in deep shit. She had already discovered that I'd left her a whopping twenty four dollars in the bank. A dollar for every good year we'd had during our marriage. I wished that I could explain it to her but it would have to be one of those subtle little jokes that are lost when you tell it to someone else.

Linda tried to borrow some money from every friend she had. She even tried to borrow money from Dino only to find out that Dino had been fired. I was suing the company that owned the condo for the conduct of their employees. To keep everything quiet, they'd given me money to just go away. They'd also fired Dino.

When Linda went to Dino to try to borrow the money, she found out that he'd been fired but not why. Dino wasn't home when she went to his unit. Dino was in the hospital. Apparently several teen-aged boys who didn't live in our neighborhood had beaten the shit out of Dino. They'd broken both of his legs with a baseball bat and danced on his nuts while telling him that his dick didn't belong in married women.

Linda never discovered the extent of Dino's injuries; she was too busy trying to come up the money she needed to cover the loan payment. She ended up getting evicted. Linda kept trying to explain to the finance company that I was the loan holder. They explained to her that they had a contract that she'd signed taking over the loan and the condo. When she looked at the papers with a lawyer, he told her that she'd been a fool to sign them but that there was nothing they could do about it now. He begged her to file for a divorce and that way she could get part of our assets.

He set up a meeting with Ollie and presented papers with their version of the property settlement. Linda hoped that I'd be at the meeting so we could talk. Ollie explained to them that I was in a drug and alcohol treatment facility. It was true. Ollie had checked me in personally. Only I was there for a week long seminar to learn to deal with the stress in my life.

Ollie told them that I'd lost most of our money due to gambling and bad investments. He had all of the papers we'd bought that showed it. It had cost me ten thousand dollars for letters demanding payment from several casinos but it was worth it. Ollie explained to Linda that she was doing the right thing because when the casinos came after me they'd be able to try to get the money from her as well if we were still legally married.

Her lawyer brought up my retirement plan. Ollie brought up the paper that Linda had signed that took her off of the plan. Linda knew then that she was fucked. She signed a no contest divorce agreement to avoid having to help me off my debts and in three months I'd be a free man.

Linda moved in with my daughter and her husband. That was how I lost my daughter. Amber really thought that I had simply gone crazy drinking and gambling and had simply run out on her mother for no good reason leaving her alone and destitute.

Linda was never quite the same after that. According to a few friends of ours who I kept in contact with, she sat at Amber's house and looked at all of our old photo albums constantly. She picked up a few more pounds and her life went on. I don't think she got over what happened and I'm sure that she never took any responsibility for it.

On the other hand, things were different for me. Though we'd never had the big confrontation that seems to drive so many stories about divorces, my life was fuller and more rewarding. I joined several volunteer groups and clubs. I had one group that was made up mostly of singles in their middle aged years who did nothing but travel. The group had a website and posted trips, destinations, costs and how much we saved by buying and booking the accommodations in bulk.

I also had my daily runs and work-outs. I had run several shorter races and won my age group in them. For now I seemed to be limiting myself to the 5K distance. I decided that maybe during the summer I'd try a 10K. But in the back of my mind I knew I wanted to run a marathon. It wasn't a case of if, or why, it was simply a matter of when.

My daily runs became more varied as well. I quickly learned that at my age I couldn't just go out and hammer it every day. My typical pattern became to spend the majority of my runs at an easy pace and do one or two harder days a week. Even what I did on those days varied. Some days I'd go to a track and do a traditional speed workout. Others I might substitute hill repeats for the intervals. Sundays, even though I didn't have a race in mind yet, became my long run day. I was very slowly building up my mileage.

Evenings were spent either lying around the condo watching TV or out just driving around exploring. I had a cleaning lady come in twice a week just to spruce the place up. She often cooked for me as well and there were a couple of times when she stayed over and ate with me.

She was a younger woman in her mid-thirties and she was also relatively attractive. We'd made those awkward eye contacts a couple of times and I was sure that there was the possibility of starting some type of relationship either purely sexual or possibly something else, but I never started anything.

The way I looked at it, if I started something up with someone that I didn't love just to avoid being lonely or being alone, then there would have been no point to getting rid of Linda.

Besides there is a very big difference between being lonely and being alone. I was alone, but I had more than enough people in my life to prevent me from being lonely. At this point in my life, I was alone by choice.

But it just seemed like everyone on the planet except for me thought that was either un-natural or simply the wrong choice. Everyone I met always had a friend that they wanted to hook me up with.

Over the months, Dahlia had become my best friend and chief defender. It had been her who put me back together when my daughter severed ties with me. Amber was still under the impression that I had simply walked out on her mother and left her penniless for no good reason. She also thought that I'd become a drunk and had a gambling addiction.

I had lunch with Dahlia two or three times a week and we often had dinners together as well. We went to movies and did other things that neither of us wanted to do alone. There was nothing romantic about it. Dahlia was a beautiful young woman but unlike in the stories on the internet, our nearly thirty year age gap just didn't lend itself to anything romantic. She was like the replacement for the daughter I'd lost. And I was the father figure she'd never had in her life.

One night while we were having dinner, it started. "Stanley, do you ever get lonely?" she asked me.

"Nope, never," I said. "My life is so full that I never have time to be lonely. Plus when I want to go out and do something there's this wonderful young woman who goes to movies and dinners with me."

"Is she pretty?" she asked.

"Pretty does nothing to even begin to describe her," I said. "She's probably one of the most beautiful young women on the planet. She's more like my daughter than the real one is or ever was."

Her smile lit up the restaurant. "Stanley, do you trust her?" she asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Well, good because she's been thinking lately and she thinks that she has someone in mind for you."

"Honey, please don't start that..." I began. "I don't need that from you too. I'm just not ready for that yet. I just got out of a thirty year long relationship that near the end was draining the life out of me. I had to get free to keep my self-respect. I just want to be happy being me for a while, okay?"

"Well, when you're ready, you let me know," she said.

A couple of days after that talk it happened. I was running in the park. It was one of my easy pace days and the sun was shining. I knew every step of the path in that park because I'd run there nearly every morning since just before my split with Linda. Over the months that followed that park had become almost a part of my home. I knew which trees I could hide under if we got a sudden sprinkling and even the perfect places to run my intervals if I was too lazy to drive to the track.

It wasn't like she was out of place, because in actuality it looked like my park was her place. She was that at home there from the first time I saw her. She was one of those women who simply defy age. She was slim, but not overly so. Older women who are very thin have a tendency to look unhealthy or even skeletal. They look like they could break a hip just by standing up.

This woman could have been anywhere from her early forties to her early sixties but she just had that healthy glow. Her smile to everyone she passed was addictive. Her body was incredible. Her legs were long and thin and she still had a nice butt. That is a rarity on women past forty. The majority of them either have a big giant fat ass that drips cellulite or no ass at all. Hers, though not big, was still very well shaped and very proportionate. It was, in a word, perfect for her body. Her breasts, again, while not large were very inviting. There was just enough of them to be interesting, but not enough to have to ever worry about them sagging.

She had a heart shaped face that seemed oddly familiar to me thought I'd never seen her before in my entire life. Every lap I did of the park made her more interesting to me. Her workout was as eclectic as she was. She seemed to do whatever pleased her. Where I ran constantly around the park building up a good sweat and maintaining my fitness, she seemed to just do whatever pleased her. The first lap I ran, she was running and while not as fast as I ran, she had a decent stride and kept a nice pace. The next time I saw her, she was stopped in a grouping of flowers and seemed to be involved in smelling each one to see if they smelled the same.

The next time I saw her she was jogging slowly with another woman and they were engaged in an animated conversation. The next time, she was actually power walking and had an armful of the flowers from the edge of the small pond in the park. It was that lap that nearly killed me. That was the lap where she turned her head just a bit and smiled at me. I know that at 54 I'm too young to have senior moments but when she turned that smile on me, I lost track of time and space. I've never felt like that before. Not even one time in my over half a century of existence has any event done that to me.

I ran off the path that I know so well I can run it in the dark with my eyes closed and right into a tree. Several of the people in the area were visibly and audibly laughing at me. I got up and started running again and a quick glance over my shoulder rewarded me with a sight that I still carry in memory. I simply loved the sight of her with one hand over her mouth to cover her obvious surprise. But the joy written in those eyes ruined me for life.

She was maddening. There were so many things about her that simply made no sense. Her hair wasn't very short, or very long, but it had so much flare and life to it. It was like a page boy hair style that she'd allowed to grow until it just barely rested on her shoulders. And it wasn't exactly gray hair, it was a silvery white. Why the hell didn't she color it? Linda had started dying her hair from the very first gray hair she found.

If this woman had died her hair she could have easily passed for late thirties. But it was as if she was proud of her years. Her face didn't have a single wrinkle on it and her skin was very smooth. And it wasn't just her face or her body, everything about her simply defied categorization. Even her work-out, if you could call it that. Again, I like most of the people in the park did one thing. I came out and ran. I did specific activities that were geared towards improving my fitness in certain areas like stamina or speed or strength.

She seemingly flitted from one activity to the next in ways that defied conventional wisdom, but their effectiveness could not be debated. It was as if her entire plan was designed to train not just her body but her soul. She sat in clumps of flowers or ran around with children as the mood struck her. And she rewarded everyone around her with those incredible smiles. I was sure that it would be worth it to run into a tree again on my next lap if she'd give me another one. My run was technically over but I decided to run an extra lap or two just to get another glimpse of her. Unfortunately, when I got back around she was nowhere to be found.

I had lunch with Dahlia that day and couldn't contain myself. "What's got you so happy?" she asked.

"Dahlia, I saw the most beautiful woman that I've ever seen, except for you in the park today," I said.

Dahlia's eyes narrowed slightly. "No you didn't," she said icily. "Didn't you tell me less than a month ago that you weren't ready to meet anyone?"

"Well...yeah," I said. "Dahlia, I didn't meet her either. I just saw her. She was just...I don't know, special. I'll probably never see her again. I didn't actually even talk to her."

"So you run into some chickie in the park and now all of a sudden your salmon are ready to swim upstream," she said angrily.

"Honey..." I said, trying to prevent the situation from getting any worse.

"Don't Honey me, Stanley," she said. "I have plans for you."

"What?" I said.

"Stanley, I love you," she said. My heart started pounding. "I want you in MY life. I want you to settle down and have a life with someone who'll love you the way you deserve to be loved."

This was a nightmare. Dahlia was beautiful but she was far too young for me. This was my life, not one of those stories where some old guy discovers some woman who's way too young for him and they end up getting married and living happily ever after because he's kind to her. When you read those stories do you ever wonder what the fuck they have in common other than love?

Shit, I love my car but I'm not going to marry it. What do couples like that talk about? Let's see, the fifty something guy probably remembers Van Halen from when they were good. The twenty something girl, probably thinks of Britney Spears as oldies music and doesn't know that Madonna really isn't British. What the hell do they have in common? And what will they do in a few years when he can't get around much anymore and she is hot to trot?

Then we get into divorce story part two, the second generation. That one starts out like I got out of a relationship with a cheating bitch. Then I met my one true love and we grew apart until she became a cheating bitch too. No thanks, not for me.

"Dahlia, Honey," I said. "I love you too. But I love you like a daughter. You're just too young for me."

Dahlia screwed up her gorgeous heart shaped face and her head went down. Her long, rich hair covered her face and when she looked back up she burst out laughing. She laughed for about five minutes straight and then looked back at me with tears running down her cheeks. It was a real blow to my ego.

"Of course I am Stanley," she said smiling. "I want you to meet my grandmother. She's a few years older than you are. But it's part of my fiendish plan to make the two most important people in my life happy. And you know what? I feel the same way about you that you do about me. That's why I really want things to work out between you and my grandmother, because that way you could actually be a part of my family. But you're already a part of my heart."

Her kind words went a long way towards soothing my bruised ego. I told her that just because I'd been attracted to one woman it didn't mean I was ready to get into something just yet. But when I was ready to start dating I'd let her know.

"Stanley," she said. "Until then you and I will still be going out on our dates though, right?"

She smiled at me and it reminded me of something, but I couldn't think of what. I just nodded and smiled back at her.

Over the next few weeks, Dahlia brought up her grandmother constantly and I continued to put her off. I just got this picture in my mind of some jolly fat old woman with a heart of gold. If you can imagine Mrs. Claus in your mind, you get the picture. She was probably as sweet as the day is long and about as sexy as a fucking teddy bear. I figured that with Dahlia being in her early twenties, her mom was probably in her early to mid-forties, which clocked granny in her mid-sixties to possibly her early seventies. Even if the Mrs. Claus analogy was wrong, there was simply no way. I mean shit, Betty White is sexy as all get out in her own way, but there was no way I was ready for that yet. I needed to find a way to break it to Dahlia gently.