Fortunes Told

Contents

Copyright Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Five

Chapter Ten

Chapter Thirteen

About the Author

Fortunes Told

by

Julie Stahl

All rights reserved

Copyright © January 2, 2010, Julie Stahl

Cover Art Copyright © 2010, Charlotte Holley

Gypsy Shadow Publishing

Lockhart, TX

www.gypsyshadow.com

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this eBook are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this eBook may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Gypsy Shadow Publishing.

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ISBN: 978-1-4524-3070-6

Published in the United States of America

First eBook Edition: April 5, 2010

Dedication

For my mother, who always believed I could do this.

One

"Now is the time to set your sights high and go for it."

As I approach the table with my cue stick, I ask myself which shot will set me up for another, rather than which shot I can make. This is a new way of thinking for me, a big picture perspective. Since I met Frank Mazzini I seem to have adopted this attitude not only toward my pool game, but my life in general.

I look over at Frank for reassurance, like I always do when I’m in a tight spot. He’s in a corner and seated, but even in the shadows his presence is gripping, his bold good looks irresistible. Though not a tall man, Frank is sturdy and vibrant, with broad shoulders, a strong Roman nose, and a wide, slightly furrowed forehead. He’s the swarthy, Italian type, and at almost fifty years old, he radiates a kind of confidence that one can only accumulate with age and experience, encompassing everything from sexuality to professional expertise.

He nods slightly, almost imperceptibly in my direction, as if to say, You know what to do, though we both know I don’t. I don’t have an intuitive understanding of the game the way Frank does. I chalk my stick and decide to wing it, my dilemma being the placement of the nine ball, in the way of the five just enough to make a nice, clean shot impossible.

Frank, a pharmacist by day, is the team coach tonight. As I point to the five ball then the pocket with my stick, I feel his light touch on my arm. Momentarily I’m distracted by a warm tingling sensation deep inside my navel.

You’ll want to put some right English on that, he says softly, and walks away. I do and make the shot, then two more before I scratch, giving my opponent a ball in hand.

Bad luck, Ava, Frank says sympathetically. In a matter of minutes the game is over. My opponent, a wizened, grizzly-looking fellow who managed to mention by way of introduction that he started playing pool on his 63rd birthday, easily sinks the eight ball. I drop onto a bar stool to watch the other members of my team play. I’ve only been playing league pool for about six weeks. A year ago I never would have pictured myself doing this.

The first time Frank and I played pool together, about a month after we started dating, Frank said, You’re a natural. He winked at me as he said it, an endearing trait that has grown on me since then.

I laughed; sure he was either being facetious or had confused me with the blonde bombshell in tight jeans and low-cut sweater at the table next to ours who had just sunk three balls in a row effortlessly. But Frank had thus far displayed no talent for sarcasm, and a quick glance in the mirror over the bar removed all but the merest likelihood of anyone mistaking Anna Nicole over there for me. He said it again the next time we played and while I didn’t necessarily believe him, I did believe he meant it. That’s one of the things I like best about Frank: he’s probably the most honest person I’ve ever met. This has its pitfalls, as you might expect. For instance, if I wear a dress that I think is the hottest thing on the rack and I’m feeling all sexy and glam when he comes to pick me up, then he casually remarks that the bust line is off-centered, or the fabric too clingy around my ass (thereby accentuating the whole side-of-a-barn impression I’m forever attempting to eliminate), the dress comes off and the next day is hanging back on the rack at the store. He means no harm and actually, he’s doing me a favor. I mean, who wants to be seen in public wearing some dress that doesn’t flatter you, or a pair of shoes that cause your legs to look like Elmer Fudd’s, or worse yet, Bugs Bunny’s?

Tonight I think how Frank has taught me everything I know about pool; that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. I imagine myself winning a BCA championship, making a speech to a cheering and adoring audience as I accept the trophy. I don’t deserve this, really. Frank is the one who knows how to play; I just do what I know he would tell me to. They would applaud my modesty and look admiringly over at Frank, as I do, and think what a good fit we must be.

By the time we get back to Frank’s place we’re both exhausted. I fall asleep instantly and awaken toward dawn from a bizarre dream where I keep phoning Frank but he doesn’t answer. I want to believe he’s deathly ill, or lying paralyzed in a hospital bed as a result of road rage―someone else’s, naturally―but the nagging thought that he simply doesn’t want to talk to me keeps rearing its ugly head. Meanwhile, I’m being pursued myself; well, stalked would be more accurate, by Donald Trump. The man keeps hounding me, telling me to forget about Frank, that he’s nobody and can never give me the kind of life I deserve. He’s relentless and finally I agree to go out with him. On our first date he proposes, presenting me with an enormous, dazzling diamond that I’m sure I’d be afraid to ever even wear for fear of damaging the tendons in my ring finger. Courageously, I slip it on and hold my hand out in front of me, admiring the grandeur of the thing. Trump, on bended knee, is waiting for my reply, gazing adoringly up at me and holding his breath. I should feel lucky, I tell myself, and I open my mouth to say okay, Sure, I’ll marry you, Donny, but no words come out and all I can think about is Frank. Finally, on the brink of passing out, my suitor gasps for air, and when he can manage to speak again, asks me, Why, Ava? Why do you love this man so much?

At once, I find words. I tell him about the time I went to New Zealand for a month, before Frank and I made the leap from friends to lovers, and he had graciously agreed to check on my aging cat while I was away. I’d asked him to come by twice weekly and re-fill Scrap’s food and water bowls, yet he came by every day―this man whom I found out afterwards is allergic to cats―to feed, water and even hold my neurotic, confused feline, napping, he confessed, for an hour one day in my grandmother’s rocker with Scrap curled up on his lap.

I tell Trump how Frank taught me to play pool, how he saw in me a talent much like the one in himself and groomed it without fear of being outshone. I recount the time I confided to Frank that I’d had a child at twenty-two and given her up for adoption, and how he didn’t ask me, How could you? or Aren’t you going to try and find her? He went on hammering nails into the bookshelves he was building for me and said simply, Life is bittersweet, isn’t it. A statement devoid of judgment and what-ifs, with no expectation of details or even a reply. I reveal that Frank believes in reincarnation, and when he disclosed his convictions to his Good Catholic Mother who had raised him to know better, she threatened to disown him if he didn’t renounce his sacrilege. He wouldn’t. She didn’t. Damn, he said. I tried.

I explain to Trump about the hours Frank and I regularly spend talking before and after we make love, and how he grabs me and pulls me to him when he comes, as if trying to absorb me into him. How he cradles me in his arms afterwards, like I’m some precious, fleeting moment that he fears will soon dissolve. I love him, I say to Donald Trump, because with him, I believe. If he wants to know what it is I believe in, he doesn’t ask, and I don’t offer. I can’t begin to find words to describe this feeling, which is so unlike any I’ve known before.

I wake up with my heart pounding and hear Frank snoring softly beside me. Restlessly, painfully, I fall back asleep.

****

Once a month on Sunday I meet my best friend Trudy for lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant, The Happy Panda. We bring each other up-to-date with the latest happenings in our lives (details mandatory) and how we feel about them. We typically refrain from offering advice, but no matter what’s going on, or what we think about the other’s behavior, reactions or choices, we give each other complete, unconditional support and affirmation. If Trudy robbed a bank, it would be my job to say, Whatever it is you plan to spend the money on, I’m sure it’s worthwhile and there wasn’t any other way to get it. If I murdered someone, she would respond similarly with, I’m sure he deserved it, or, What else could you do under the circumstances?

This is sometimes referred to as the best friend’s code of honor, and has less to do with what we really think of the other person than it does with our desire to keep the friendship intact. We all need a best friend, and even if she isn’t perfect, by God, she will be when we’re together eating Moo Goo Gai Pan the third Sunday of the month, no matter how many misgivings or how much of our tongues we have to suck down with our tea. It’s a mutually uplifting counseling session where we take turns being therapist and patient, for the incredibly low price of the daily special plus tip, with guaranteed positive, albeit short-lived, results in the form of improved self-esteem.

Naturally, we both come equipped with chocolate. If one of us is having a bad day, the other one hands over her chocolate bar at the end of the meal. I haven’t yet found anything quite like a mouthful of Lindt Bittersweet to soothe a troubled heart. I’ve been eating a lot of Lindt lately.

The problem is this: Although we’ve been dating for almost six months, Frank, thus far, has not uttered aloud, I love you. Even when I say it to him. I don’t know if it’s because he doesn’t love me, or because he finds the words too risky. You know, like he fears he’ll expose too much of himself, become too vulnerable if he reveals the depth of his feelings. Which I don’t really understand, because whether you admit to loving someone or not doesn’t change the fact that you do, and that’s where the real vulnerability awaits, it seems to me.

The fact is, I don’t have a lot of experience at romantic love, either giving it or receiving it. Before Frank, my only serious relationship was with my college sweetheart, Bruce, whom I assumed I would marry and spend the rest of my life with. We started dating in the fall of my junior year. He was the second man I’d ever slept with, and he was everything I’d been brought up to believe I should want in a man: intelligent, ambitious, hard-working, family oriented. And rich to boot. He was very close to his parents, both lawyers, and almost from the beginning of our relationship, spoke knowingly of how much his parents, in particular his mother, would adore me. Indeed, I got the impression that they couldn’t wait to meet me.

Yet, throughout the duration of our relationship, which lasted one month shy of two years, I never met them. I typically flew home over the winter holiday to spend Chanukah with my mother, who would otherwise be alone since my parents' divorce just after I graduated high school. Had I stayed in town, Bruce had me believe he would have taken me home with him, and at the time I accepted that as a given. A couple of times we made definitive plans to drive to Portland to visit them, but both times our visit was canceled; once by Bruce, who suddenly remembered a test he had to cram for, and the other time by his father, who supposedly received a last minute invitation requesting he and his wife spend the weekend with a colleague of such prestige and reputation that to refuse would have been political suicide. Bruce’s father had set his sights on a second, judicial career.

By our senior year, Bruce was making frequent references to our future together and though he didn’t propose, I took it for granted that he would after we had graduated and he had secured his acceptance into the law school of his choice. Then, shortly before graduation, I discovered I was pregnant. Not only was I pregnant, I was well into my second trimester. My periods had not ceased as I learned in high school sex-ed class to expect; my only clue as to my condition was mysterious weight gain and what I referred to as periodic abdominal distress, which I suppose was actually the fetus moving, but I put down to a spastic colon, diagnosed in high school. Had I been a freshman living in the dorms, I might have written these symptoms off to bad cafeteria food. As it was, I was living off-campus in a house with three other women, two of whom were vegetarians, and we took turns cooking for each other. When I wasn’t at class, studying, working at my part-time job as a veterinary technician or with Bruce, I was sleeping. Who had time to eat? So with a sense of unease I made my way to the doctor who, by way of a urine sample followed by a blood test, ascertained the surprising news.

When I told Bruce, he surprised me by seeming pleased at first. I still hadn’t figured out how I felt about the whole thing. It was so unexpected, after all, and I hadn’t yet had any of those pangs for motherhood that most women experience at some point, somewhere between the ages of twenty and forty-five. I didn’t think you could force that sort of thing, or if you did, that you’d be likely to pull it off effectively. But Bruce surprised me: he swallowed hard and said something about this changing things, but that being alright, and then made a vague reference to his parents, something about them not being ready to be grandparents. Then he laughed. Fuck them, he said. It’s our life, right?

Within twenty-four hours, however, his position had changed dramatically. You’ve got to get an abortion, he insisted.

I looked at him skeptically. Do you realize how far along I am? I don’t think they even perform abortions at this stage, do they? Besides, I added, we can handle this. I had spent the previous night convincing myself that this would, in spite of my fears, be a blessing in disguise, one of those curve balls life throws you that winds up being among your most treasured memories.

We’re not exactly teenagers, I told him. We’ll both have college degrees by the time the baby is born… My words trailed away as I saw the look of utter grief and despair that transformed his otherwise strong, confident face. He was shaking his head. I can’t do it, Ava, he whispered.