The air almost tasted of dust. It was dry and hot, a nice change from the normal July day where the humidity chokes your lungs, but still unpleasant. I could feel the sweat running down my back where it was starting to darken the back of my blouse. Even under my thin skirt my panties were like a sweat band around my waist.
I hadn't even made it to the street yet and I had another 20 minutes to walk home. My brain was distracted by the weather but more distracted by the fact that I'd broken up with my boyfriend of 10 years just the week before. He still didn't have all of his stuff out of our apartment. I missed him and hated him at the same time.
He had been lying to me, of that I was sure. I didn't know why but knew that something felt wrong for a long time. It had been ten years and I hardly knew any of his friends. I'd never met his family.
We got into a number of fights about it over the years. He said they lived pretty far away. Neither one of us had much money and visiting them would have been difficult, but certainly not impossible. I found out they lived about 15 minutes away from where he worked. They lived in-between where we lived and where he worked.
So on this hot and dusty day I walked down the street, people pushed past and my brain was on auto-pilot, weaving around people suddenly stopping, slowing down when I caught up with someone and there wasn't space to go around.
Work was completely forgotten. If someone had asked me what I had been doing all day it would have taken me some time to come up with an answer. I was dreading going back to that empty apartment where everything I saw reminded me of him. Where I'd have to make dinner for myself with no one to share it with. I hated cooking anyway. I would cook, I was determined not to go without or just to have something crappy to fill me up. I didn't have enough money now to go out to eat often.
We would still see if I had the resolve to follow through when I got home.
As I walked under the green and white sign of the Starbucks a voice jolted me out of my reverie. It had said my name. I looked to my right at the person who had said it.
He was an older man, his large throat pushed against the collar of his shirt. He was balding, his hair receding from the front and wispy on top, the sides were grey blending down from the dark hair above them. Moisture was all over his pale skin, or what I could see of it, he seemed meticulously shaved. He must have been hot, he was wearing a suit and tie. It was the same suit and tie he was wearing when I met him at work earlier that day.
It took me a moment to recognize him. I just stared, confused, for probably a solid ten seconds.
He repeated my name and I shook my head and said "Hello, Mr. . . " the name took a moment or two to come to me, "Jefferson."
He said, "You look hot."
He said, "Come in here and let me buy you a drink."
Normally this wouldn't work on me, especially not with potentially creepy old guys who are twice my age but that day it did. It was maybe the heat or the procrastination from not wanting to go home.
I said "sure," softly, probably inaudibly, but he got my meaning when I changed direction and he yanked open the door.
We waited in line and made some small talk, business related small talk.
The reason we had met earlier was that he was interested in putting an advertisement in the publication that I worked for. I did the initial meeting with clients and went over the ad specs before sending them to the art and copy departments if they needed to go there. I also went over the specifics of cost and duration. Mr. Jefferson had not committed to an ad that day, it would have been unusual if he had, but he seemed keen.
The barista brutally screwed up the spelling of my name, I noticed as I picked up my cup and we headed over to a table that seemed taken. It had a pile of papers on it and a folder and there was a bag on the seat. The bag was his, the papers were his, the folder was his.
He pulled my chair out for me and scooted it in. Now this was really feeling like some sort of creepy date, which was odd because he hadn't seemed creepy at all earlier.
There was a silence after he moved the bag to the floor and sat down. He broke it first.
"I understand that you recently broke up with your boyfriend?"
Shit. This was some kind of major creeper. How did he know that?
"I think . . . I might feel better taking this drink to go," I said and started to stand up.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that didn't come over the way I intended."
"Look," he said, "I'm married." He showed his gold ring.
"Happily so, I'm not here to talk to you about anything like that, please sit down."
I sat.
I looked at the papers on the table. They were photographs of lots of old stuff, people mostly. I'm not a historian but it looked like Civil War stuff and World War II.
"I don't know how to put this gently so I'm just going to show you something," he said.
He spun one of the photographs around. It was a shot of some people loading a train.
"This is a propaganda photo from World War II. These men are loading a train, obviously. The photo was used in a war bonds campaign."
I glanced at the picture and looked back up at him. If anything he was more sweaty than he was outside. He must have been pretty nervous as the place was heavily air conditioned. I wasn't sitting against the back of the seat because the wet spot on the back of my blouse felt uncomfortably cold.
He tapped a finger on the photo and as his gaze met mine he looked down. I followed and looked at where his finger was tapping. The guy in the picture was my boyfriend.
I grabbed the picture from under his hand and looked closely. The resemblance was uncanny.
He slid another picture forward. This looked like it was from a party, the girls were dressed like flappers and there this person was again.
Another picture slid forward, this one was a Civil War camp scene with everyone looking serious. There he was again.
I couldn't see the last picture so clearly because my eyes were welling with tears.
"He never took you to meet his parents, did he?" Mr. Jefferson asked, inquisitively but compassionately.
"No," I blubbered, tears now in full flow down my cheeks.
"You've seen pictures though, yes?"
"Yes."
"The old woman in the pictures, he told you that was his mother?"
Almost inaudibly "Yes."
Now there was a silence as Mr. Jefferson regarded me again. A huge blob of snot dropped out of my nose and onto my skirt. I still hadn't sobbed. Some people had noticed and I could see them look away out of the blurred peripheral vision. I just looked at the pictures.
"She wasn't his mother," he said.
"stop." I squeaked.
"She was his daughter."
I fled. The tables, the bar, the line, the doors, all just a blur to me. I knocked an iced coffee from someone's hand as I ran. I didn't care. I ran as far as I could when I got outside. I got to a quite street, a residential street and fell to my knees sobbing.
What the hell was that?
It took me another 30 minutes to get myself back to my apartment. My knees hurt when I got home. I looked down and they were skinned where I had fallen. Blood had dried on my shins.
I got myself together. This had to be some sick idea of a prank. I was going to his parents house that night. I texted a friend and asked if I could borrow her car. She hesitated but then said yes.
I drove out there. I drove out there to an empty house. I know they had been there. I saw them there. I saw him there. I went and spied on him. I followed him. I didn't have a car. I borrowed one to do it. That is how I knew he had been lying when he said I couldn't meet his parents, that his parents were far away.
The house was completely empty. I went and stared in the windows at the vacant rooms. I looked, nose pressed against the glass in every window on the first floor. All gone. The "For Sale" sign was up and there was no one there.
I got back in touch with Mr. Jefferson a week later, after I had calmed down. He said he was part of a small internet group that followed my boyfriend. He thinks he is at least 200 years old now, although they have some evidence that puts him around more than 400 years ago. I don't know. I don't know that the pictures are proof. They look exactly like him. He was older than me when we first started dating, but in five years people thought we were the same age and never stopped thinking that. He didn't seem to age the whole time we were together. He had no scars. None. I'd seen him injure himself, playing sports, cutting himself with a knife a few times, but there were never any scars.
I don't know what to think now. He is gone. It has been six months and I'm facing a lonely Christmas and ten years of my life are gone. Does it matter to him that ten years of his life are gone too? If they are right, probably not. Our time together would be like a spring zephyr to him, like the flavor in a piece of Bazooka Joe bubble gum.
My life was a wreck now. Was it even a wrinkle to his?
Submitted December 24, 2016 at 05:32PM by therealamygerberbaby http://ift.tt/2i6ePC4
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