Obsession

Obsession  -  A Twin Menage Romance

Prologue

When I was too young to know any better, I was convinced my mom was a world famous explorer. She’d disappear for days at a time and then return home brandishing exotic gifts I couldn’t believe existed, telling tales of impossible things from places I couldn’t even pronounce. I would proudly show the presents that she brought home to visiting guests as though they were nothing else in the world like them, and like me they’d look upon them with reverential awe. Golden waving cats that kept the time, miniature temples made of glistening green stone, feathers of a million different fluorescent colors, globes of glass with delicate snowflakes trapped inside that with a flick of the wrist could turn into blizzards. Every single item I treasured, and every single bedtime story attached to their provenance, acted out in Oscar worthy performances by my ever doting mom on her return, an adventure I pictured myself being part of too.

I wanted to be like her when I was old enough to turn dreams into reality, but the reality of those dreams took a different form when I was old enough to realize how the world actually worked.

I’m not sure which came first. I have a memory of holding the golden, waving, timekeeping cat in one hand, while the other felt raised, uniform letters under the base, I hadn’t noticed before. They read ‘Made in China’, and it made me begin to question the validity of the story my mother had attributed to its origin.

This was around the same time that snow globes, identical to my own, were beginning to appear in stores around Christmas time. Not too long after, a friend of mine who had also gone on his own adventure to a different part of a world I knew now more intimately than before, had brought back with him a beetle frozen in time in a solid cube of glass almost exactly the same as the one my mom had brought me years before.

Slowly, I began to realize that the world I had been presented with as being true, was nothing like the one that existed beyond my overactive imagination.

And then Dad left, and I was old enough then to know two things for certain. It wasn’t an adventure of his own he was going on, and wherever he was going he wasn’t going to come back in a hurry.

r />   Mom carried on travelling the globe - after she came to terms with what had happened - and she carried on bringing me souvenirs from the places that she went to, but I never looked at them again in the same way. She’d still give me the stories as well, but either they were shorter, or I understood the passing of time better, or she just didn’t have the same energy as before, because that spark she once had in her eyes didn’t shine quite as brightly as it once used to. I guess the spark of believability had gone from my eyes too.

I was eight then, old enough to realize my parents were getting a divorce, old enough to realize that my mom was an air hostess and not a superhero, old enough to realize the gifts she brought home she’d buy in airport shops not find in caves or wrestle from hooded bandits, and old enough to know that the real world was never as good as the one you could make up to replace it.

I suppose that’s when it all started for me, the obsessions, the doubts, the wild, unbridled imagination, the real world. I wouldn’t have any of that without her.

From time to time, I wish I was that young girl again, looking at junk as though it were ancient treasure, because for a woman like me, sometimes the brutal truths in this world can be way too much to cope with.

Part One

Chapter One

It takes me about forty minutes to park the car, which for me, isn’t actually too bad. I pass several empty spaces that would be perfectly adequate for the size of the car but aren’t at all right for me. Finding the right space is important, because it’ll save time later. I’m not an unconfident driver, nor a particularly messy parker, I’m just particular about the way things need to be.

Most people don’t think about stuff like this, but I can’t not think about it. It’s probably why I’m single. When people find out I have a process for leaving the house, that I have an obsession for things that come in doubles, that I like to put on my clothes in a particular order and pretty much every other one of my million and one other idiosyncrasies, they tend to give me a fairly wide berth. I’m used to it now, so it doesn’t bother me like it used to, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling lonely from time to time. Imagination can only get you so far, after all.

I check the lock on the car door three times, and then check all the other locks on all the other doors, including the trunk, even though I know the car has central locking. They are, of course, all locked. They always are, but it doesn’t stop me from checking.

It’s worse when I’m alone, worse when I’m nervous, worse still when I’ve got something on my mind, and this time, amongst the usual work/boyfriend/life going nowhere crap, it’s my globe-trotting, dangerously single mother, who may just be about to change her status.

I make it into the place without turning back, take a moment to scan the room for Alice, and then find a seat at the bar when I can’t find her.

It doesn’t take long for the bartender to spring into action and sidle over, his perfectly coiffured moustache overgreased and out of place on an otherwise young looking face.

“What can I get’cha?” he says, in what feels like a made up accent. I imagine a backstory for him, much like I do for everyone else I meet, assigning him a treasure hunting task and giving him purpose beyond his perfunctory role here, in the blink of an eye.

“Two glasses of water”, I say. “Each one with two pieces of ice.”

“Two glasses of water, two pieces of ice?” he repeats back to me, placing his hands on the counter and twisting one side of his face up like a comedy strongman as though he doesn’t entirely approve of my weird order. Only in my eyes he’s not a strongman, he’s a card shark from New Mexico, on the lookout for a centuries old solid gold Chinese idol smuggled to the States during the great expansion.

I have the urge to ask him if he’s seen it yet, or say something unusual that makes it clear I’m onto him. Instead, I just change my mind entirely, “you know what”, I say, “I’ll just wait until my friend gets here.”

“Okay”, he says with a shrug, his mind already onto the next customer waiting for his body to catch it up. “Just let me know when you are ready.”

I get that weird look so often, most of the time I don’t even bother ordering. It’s easier just to wait until I’ve got company than have to try and explain why it’s always two drinks instead of one, why the two glasses have to both contain the same amount of ice if they contain any at all, and why it has to be two halves of the very same slice of lemon that decorate the edge. Again, just one of the million and one idiosyncrasies that are best left unexplained, I’m more than happy to carbon date to my father’s constant infidelities whenever my mother went away for work, and perhaps her own infidelities because of it. It’s probably the reason I find men difficult to trust.

Actually, considering both of my parents lied to me for such a long time growing up, I feel like I’ve turned out pretty well, slight case of obsessive compulsive disorder, lack of real career development, and high boyfriend standards aside.

I sit nervously at the bar waiting for Alice, trying to avoid all eye contact with anyone who might see me on my own and take advantage of it. I’m not here to hook up or look for love despite Alice’s insistence I should be doing just that at every opportunity. I’m here because I need her as a sounding board, and because I’m freaking out that I might be getting a new dad. A boyfriend is the last thing I want right now, especially after the tragic unravelling of my last semi-serious relationship with Casper the neurotic Danish painter.

For now, I’m totally one hundred percent out of the game, and I couldn’t be happier. I promise. Totally content with my weird obsessions, my erotic artwork and my enormous utility bills. Happy to watch my mother come home time and time again with stories of holiday flings and romantic encounters with exotic dark skinned men from far flung destinations, and the inevitable coupling up of colleagues and friends as each of us gets older and less inclined to go out and search for it.

There was one point where I thought Casper might have been the right man for me, but he was really only half of what I needed and to be fair, I was probably twice as much as he could handle. Our decision to call it off was amicable and necessary. Casper took his paints out of the apartment, we cancelled our upcoming weekend and I haven’t seen him since.

Alice’s arrival jolts me out of the painful reverie.

“I thought you’d be at least an hour parking the car”, she says, hopping into the empty bar stool next to me. “Sorry”, she adds. “I’d have got here earlier.”

Alice is my best friend and the only person aside from my mom who really understands me. We’ve known each other for longer than I’ve known my mom wasn’t a treasure hunter, which makes her special and unique. She was the first person I showed my dodo feather to, and the only person in this entire world I show my naughty pictures to. Casper didn’t even get that privilege.

“Forty minutes”, I say proudly. “I didn’t even go back to check, well not after checking the first time, but that’s just par for the course, everyone does that.”

“You’re improving”, Alice says proudly.

“It’s better than it’s been for a while”, I agree.

Alice motions to the bartender and a moment later he’s in front of us, hands on the counter, moustache twitching, eyeballs moving from Alice to me and back again.

“What’ll it be?” he says this time, again in the same ridiculous accent that makes me think of the sarsaparilla drinking narrator from The Big Lebowski.

“Two glasses of water, two cubes of ice in each glass, a slice of lemon sliced in half and placed on the rim of the glass and I’ll have a bourbon please, but none of the cheap shit that you usually serve in here”, Alice says without pausing for a breath while I nod enthusiastically alongside her.

The barman contemplates her for a moment, glances at me briefly and then turns his head to the shelf behind him as though looking for a special bottle of whiskey.

“Sparkling or still?” he says when he turns back to us,

the merest hint of a smile at the corner of his lips.

“Tap”, I say meekly, “two straws in each.”

“And make sure it’s the same lemon slice cut equally in half”, Alice adds.

Thank you I mouth to her.

“Did I miss anything?” she asks.

“Just the same amount of water in each glass, but it doesn’t matter that much. I can handle it if it’s not quite exact.”

“Same amount of water in each glass”, Alice calls over to him before he’s finished.

I watch him check the levels up against the lights, adjusting each one until they are both as perfect as he can get them, before placing them down in front of me, so equal in every way under scrutiny, there could be a mirror in front of one of them. A moment later, he sets down Alice’s over-priced, top shelf bourbon.

I’m impressed. I can tell Alice is impressed too because she’s smiling up at him in the way she smiles up at people she likes.

“Thank you”, she says, and drops her card and a generous tip on the counter.

I turn the glasses and then realign them so they are alongside each other. It’s a side to side obsession right now, but it’s not always been like that. There was a while at college when I had to have one in front of the other with all four straws touching otherwise I’d get migraines. At the moment I’m less interested in the straws being in contact as I am maintaining the same level in each glass. I’m not sure which is easier.

“He’s not your type”, I say, reading her mind.

“Everyone’s my type at the moment”, Alice says. “I’m less picky than I used to be.”

“Dating not working out then?”

“All the good men are taken”, Alice says wistfully. “It seems like your mom’s having better luck than us both.”

“I told you I’m not looking”, I confirm.

“You never stop looking”, Alice says. “And I know you better than you know yourself. You just haven’t found the right man yet.”

“I’m not exactly the ideal companion.”

“Believe me, there are plenty of people that are weirder than you. We get all sorts of people into the florists, and you must see a metric ton of weirdos in the shop. There’s someone out there for everyone. Maybe more than one.”