Chapter 7 - A Woman Scorned.

I had a very hard time sitting through all my classes the next day. I had enlisted Daphne’s help to drive me and my canvas to school before she had to head off to work - it had been almost too large for the back of her car, but thankfully she drove one of those Hybrid-SUV type things that seemed to be bigger on the inside than they were on the outside, and we managed to wedge it in on the diagonal without damage - but after I’d turned that in to my Art & Architecture professor, I hadn’t had anything else I needed to do for several hours. I tried to study for one of my upcoming exams, but I found it difficult to concentrate. So, instead of just going through the motions on my schoolwork, I pulled out the file of old building records that my Mystery Man had given me and started to leaf through that.

For the most part it was pretty dry stuff. There were old invoices detailing expenditures for building maintenance, receipts for rents paid by long-lost tenants, and some odds and ends that I found even less relevant. It looked like old Donal - or maybe his predecessor, whoever it was who’d compiled these records - had been ridiculously thorough in keeping pretty much every shred of paperwork ever generated about the building, as evidenced by the dates on the bills, some of which went back to 1886. I got a bit of a thrill as I leafed through all this ephemera - it made me feel like I was somehow delving into the lives of these people who’d lived so long ago. It didn’t matter that the subject matter of the papers was tedious, even the boring payment receipts seemed to draw me into that forgotten world. The smell of the old, wrinkled paper was weirdly addictive, and I found myself sniffing it as I leafed through the mountain of paperwork spread out around me.

But, even while I was indulging my more romantic side by wading through all those old records, I was repeatedly interrupted by the nagging pull of modernity. Now, don’t get me wrong - I LOVE my technology. Most of the time I can’t bear to be without my phone. I have to have it on me at all times; if it’s not in my hand it’s in my pocket or lying next to me on whatever piece of furniture is closest. The one day it accidentally fell out of my jacket pocket when Daph was giving me a lift to school was, like, the longest day of my life. I felt so lost. I couldn’t even log into my regular apps on the school computers because I needed my phone for the two-factor authorization, so I just wandered around all day being grumpy and lashing out at anyone who tried to cheer me up. But just then, though, I really didn’t want to be bothered by the real world. I WANTED to revel in the past. To pretend for a short while that I was part of the city’s Victorian era. To imagine away all the hustle and bustle and stress of the present day. So I couldn’t help but groan every time my cell phone beeped or buzzed that morning. And it was even more annoying because I knew without even looking that all the messages, texts and calls were most likely from my personal stalker, Ethan. How obvious do I have to be to get my point across - I’m NOT interested, Buddy. Back off already.

Anyway, I eventually gave up and turned my phone off altogether in order to get some peace and quiet. I seriously thought about outright blocking Ethan’s number, but that would probably only embolden him to come track me down in person. This was starting to get ridiculous though. Maybe Daphne and I needed to brainstorm an effective Ethan Resistance Force Plan or something. Ghosting him obviously wasn’t working. Daphne would probably just order me to grow a pair already and tell him off, but . . . well, it might actually come to that if he kept up with this crap. But whatever.

So I immersed myself in the past and ignored both Ethan and my school work for most of the morning, only popping back into the present to go to my classes when needed. As soon as I was done with school, however, I was more than ready to be out of there. I quickly hopped on a bus and made my way back to the Triangle Building so that Egbert and I could finish going through the files together. So far nothing out of the ordinary had jumped out at me, but there was still lots left to look through and I was looking forward to having my man around to help me with the looking.

After stopping off at Crazy Mocha and grabbing my usual mocha along with a blueberry muffin - because lunch had been, like, hours earlier and I was bordering on hangry - I decided I’d try my man on something a little different today. I mean, he hadn’t even touched any of the lattes I’d brought him, so I figured I needed to get a little more creative. Rather than trying just another flavor of latte, though, I opted for a nice, smooth, flat white espresso. I figured what the hell, right? I was bound to wear him down eventually.

After talking to Daphne, The Psychology Maven, about it, Harry Egbert’s rejection of my coffee offerings made a lot more sense - she’d posited that my man was probably extremely germophobic, which explained the compulsive hand washing thing. This apparently went along with the OCD. Having someone else make a drink for him, especially if that drink was prepared out of his sight, was probably just too much for him to deal with. Daph recommended that I not give up, though. She said I should keep on bringing coffee drinks with me just as I had been, so as not to treat him any differently now that I knew what was up. According to Daph, the mere fact Egbert kept showing interest in the drinks, sniffing at them and even picking up the cup the way he had the day before, indicated that he was trying to get past his issues. And if he wasn’t giving up trying, neither was I.

So, there I was with my mocha in one hand and Egbert's flat white in the other (the shop was out of paperboard drink caddies that day, wouldn’t you know), with my muffin balancing precariously on top of my cup and Bill’s creamer on top of Egbert’s cup. I was hoping that, like the day before, I would be met halfway down the stairs by my big hairy Mystery Man, otherwise my juggling act was going to become ridiculous, but those hopes were quickly dashed when nobody came to let me in after I knocked at the door with my foot for a good minute and a half. With a sigh, I set all my goodies down on the sidewalk so I could do my burglar impression with the door. At least the cat came down to greet me as soon as I entered the lobby. I opened Bill’s creamer but didn’t even wait to see if he’d find it as I raced to the stairs and headed up as quickly as I could with two scorching drinks in my hand.

I made it up the five flights of stairs with only slightly singed fingers and knocked on the door to Egbert’s rooms, feeling myself bouncing from side to side as I eagerly waited for the door to open. It took a while, a lot longer than it usually did, surprisingly, and for a brief moment I panicked that something might have happened to him. But just as I was picturing what I’d do if some awful accident had befallen my man - because my mind was already going there despite the fact that it was a bit nuts to think Egbert would have somehow gotten himself into trouble in the safety of his own home, and, yeah, I’ve seen way too many bad horror movies, and I also have a mother who would constantly warn me about the dangers of everyday household objects, so I’m constitutionally and genetically inclined to always expect the worst, and that’s just my thing, you know, so deal with it, okay - the door was answered, and there he was in all of his mysteriously hairy glory.

“Hey,” I beamed, waving the coffee vaguely towards his nose - or as near as he’d allow me. “I didn’t bring you anything fancy this time, just a flat white, since it seems maybe you aren’t a flavored syrup kinda guy. What do you say?”

But he didn’t say anything, actually, and just stood there glaring at me, which was not the welcome I’d expected.

Suddenly the air felt thick, and I wondered what I had done to fuck up so badly. Had I accidentally touched him? Had I said something offensive? I was desperately running back over my greeting in my mind, wondering what I could have said or done, but I couldn’t think of anything that would cause him to react the way he was. What the actual fuck?

“You okay?” I asked nervously.

He didn’t answer. Instead he just turned around and walked away, leaving me standing in the doorway. I followed him inside and placed our drinks on the table. He did the whole, back turned to me while he ignored my presence thing again, and I felt like we’d lost significant ground. It did not escape my attention that he hadn’t tried the hair combing thing today either. In fact, he looked even more bedraggled than usual. This was NOT a good sign.

“Have I . . . Have I done something to upset you?” I asked, having no idea what I could have done between last night and now, but clearly something wasn’t right.

Egbert cleared his throat a good four or five times, and I watched in silence as he painstakingly straightened everything on the counter in front of him, moving things just millimeters until he felt comfortable with what he’d done.

“I brought the folder back with me. I thought maybe we could go through it together? I looked through it a bit today between classes but I haven’t reviewed everything properly.” I took out the file and put it on the table next to the waiting drinks, sitting down in my usual place on the sofa. “You wanna come join me over here, big guy?”

“I saw you at the bus stop,” was his nonsensical response.

“What?”

“At the bus stop,” he maintained cryptically.

“Huh?”

“The bus stop,” he repeated, getting even more agitated and running his hands through his hair, but all without turning to look at me still. “. . . that guy . . .” he added, rearranging the storage jars, coffee cups and the spare notepad sitting on the spotless tile surface yet again.

What was he talking about? What guy? And why would seeing me at the bus stop with some guy cause my Egbert to go off the deep end into the big, scary OCD pool of worry where he seemed to be drowning? It took me a good three or four minutes to figure it out, to be honest, because whatever he seemed to be referring to was something that hadn’t even made a blip in my own personal radar.

“Curls,” Egbert blurted out, pulling at his own, slightly wiry hair. “The one with the curly hair . . .”

It was only after Egbert started gesturing wildly at his own hair that I twigged as to what the hell he was talking about. “Ohhhhhh! You mean Ethan? The guy I ran into yesterday as I was leaving here?”

Egbert shrugged his shoulders and mumbled quietly. “How would I know what the little twerp was named?”

The resentment in Egbert’s tone still had me a little confused but at least I thought I understood who he meant now. He’d obviously been watching me as I left the evening before and seen me run into the ever-annoying Ethan. But why that would agitate my personal hermit so much, was still a little unclear.

“You didn’t say you had a boyfriend,” Egbert added, sounding so hurt and accusatory. “I should have known . . .”

“. . . Boyfriend? Ethan? Oh, fuck no! No, no, no, no, no,” I was almost as offended by the suggestion that I would have anything to do with Ethan as my man seemed to be. “Urgh! Definitely, not. He’s just this annoying guy who won’t leave me alone, actually. I made the mistake of hooking up with him once, like, a thousand years ago, and now he won’t go away. He’s not even my type.”

“He seemed to think he was your type,” Egbert insisted, still not turning around to look at me. “Or do you just let anyone grope you and kiss you . . .”

That got me laughing, because it sooooo wasn’t how I’d seen that brief interchange. “Well, I’m always up for a good groping, you know . . .” I started to tease my man, relenting only when I saw the way my words caused his shoulders to tense up. “I’m just kidding, Eggy. Seriously. I don’t have ANY interest in Ethan. He was just a single pringle, if you know what I mean.”

“So he’s not your boyfriend?”

I walked over to the counter that Egbert was still busy reorganizing and stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder, resting my elbows on the edge of the countertop, close enough that we were almost, but not quite, touching. “Nope. He’s definitely not my boyfriend,” I assured him, and then without even thinking about it, I bumped his shoulder with mine.

My taller friend tensed up the instant our bodies touched, and for a moment I thought I’d fucked things up. Bumping shoulders like that was something Daph and I do all the time, so I hadn’t even really thought about it. But, after a moment, I heard him sigh and I could feel his body relax next to mine. That’s when the fidgeting he’d been doing up till then finally ceased altogether.

“I thought . . .” he started, only to have his words falter. But then it was like he got a second wind of courage and finished his thought. “I thought you might forget to come today after seeing you with that guy. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I saw him watching as you walked out of the building and he looked unhappy. Like he disapproved of you coming here, or some shit. So, I . . . I thought maybe he was your boyfriend and he might tell you not to come back today,” he confessed.

“Fuck that. Even if Ethan WAS my boyfriend - which he most certainly is NOT and never will be - I would never let him or anyone else tell me what to do or who to be friends with,” I rushed to reassure my poor, insecure Eggy. “I WANTED to come here today, Egbert. I couldn’t wait to get done with classes so I could come here and go through these records with you. Trust me, this building and its mysteries are far more interesting than anything else I’ve got on my schedule, so it’s not like it’s a hardship for me to come by or anything. Got it?”

It took my reclusive friend a second or two to internalize my words. Watching his face as he listened to what I was saying and then slowly came to accept that I was being truthful, was kind of revealing. This was a man who didn’t trust easily. It wasn’t just the OCD stuff, either. He didn’t trust anything; germs, people, or even words. I had no idea what was in his past that had caused him to be this way, but the result was that my man was very careful with confidences. And to see him finally accepting me and that I might WANT to spend time with him, something that I could tell he felt was definitely not a given, made me even more certain that I wanted to be right there, where I was at. If ever there was someone who needed a friend, it was my Eggy. He just took a little while to grow on you, you know? But once you got past that prickly exterior . . . well, I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure what I would find underneath all that, but I was intrigued enough to at least want to find out.

“Got it,” he echoed, getting so bold as to lean over and shoulder bump me back. “So, what did you find in there so far?”

“Well, I found that, back in 1892 it cost only $5 to have the roof patched and a whopping $55 to get new gas lamp fittings installed on the exterior of the building,” I answered him with a smile as I returned to the couch and undid the ties holding the binder of papers closed. “But other than that, not much. What I really wanted to find was something that would tell us who the mysterious ‘B’ was from that letter we found the other day.”

I started to rifle through the papers, speeding past the stuff I’d already scanned, and only slowing when I reached some new stuff. A little while later, Egbert joined me on the sofa, looking over my shoulder as I turned pages. He took out one of his wet wipes and applied it to the outside of the flat white cup I’d brought him, holding up the steamy goodness so he could inhale the rich coffee aroma. I smiled encouragingly at him but he still didn’t do anything more than sniff at the cup. My own mocha was long gone but I hadn’t yet finished stuffing my face with the blueberry muffin I’d purchased for my snack, and I was still starving, so I didn’t slow down even though I could see it was hard for him to be around me while I ate. He did his best to try and stop himself from moving away, even while I saw him cringe at every crumb that tumbled from my lips. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t thought through the muffin part of this visit all that well, huh?

“Sorry,” I mumbled once I’d finished my last mouthful. “I skipped breakfast this morning cuz I overslept and was almost late turning in my project and lunch didn’t quite fill the void,” I prattled on, hoping that would explain why I’d demolished my baked good in three huge bites.

He said nothing, but smiled softly as he settled more comfortably onto the seat cushion next to mine - still careful enough to ensure there was a reasonable distance between us - and resolutely ignored the crumbs I’d dropped on his carpet with a good grace.

Egbert sat playing with the hairs of his beard for a few minutes after that, studying me quietly. “You eat like you talk,” he suddenly blurted out of nowhere.

What did that even mean? “Huh?” I asked, feeling my nose scrunch up in confusion.

“I just mean . . . you’re very . . . enthusiastic, is all,” he explained, sounding shyly sincere, and then breaking into hesitant laughter over his observation.

I laughed along with him because what he’d said was so fricken true and something my close friends had always teased me about. Hell, Daphne still says I’m bouncier than Tigger on steroids. “I guess I’m easily excited,” I grinned happily.

It felt SO good to be like this with him, almost teasing each other, you know? It felt right. And did I mention that, when he smiled, his eyes glittered a brighter shade of green? It was very distracting, actually, and I almost forgot the file of paper I had been leafing through as the pretence for my visit, until one of the pages fell out of my hands and lazily drifted down to land on the floor under the table and brought me back to reality. I picked up the errant scrap of paper and added it to the others I’d already pulled out of the file, which was lying open on the coffee table in front of us. Then I focused my attention on my work and started to sort things into piles so as to try and make sense of it all.

“I only very briefly went through some of these, this morning.” I explained. “So far it's all been pretty boring, but we still have about a bazillion pages to look through. Maybe we’ll find something other than a receipt,” I laughed. “You wanna go through these?” I asked, holding out a bunch of papers towards him, then watching as his eyes darted from my hand back up to my face.

“I, uh,” Egbert cleared his throat again - a habit I’d come to recognize was something he did when he felt uncomfortable or put on the spot. “It’s not that I don’t want to . . .” Once again his eyes met mine and I could tell he was struggling to say what it was that he needed to say. “I want to. I really want to.” He started frantically rubbing his palms up and down his legs. “It’s just . . .”

“I know,” I said, hoping my acknowledgment would give him the courage he needed to finish what he was saying.

He nodded. “I have this thing . . . Obsessive Compulsive Disorder . . .”

“I thought so,” I smiled as I said it, so he’d know I was okay with what he’d just revealed, and from the gigantic sigh he breathed it was obvious it was a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. “My roommate, Daphne, is studying to be a doctor, so she knows all about this stuff and when I asked her about it, she explained a little about what it means. I didn’t realize OCD was such a common thing until she told me about it, though.”

“A doctor, huh? Well, at least she didn’t just come right out and tell you that I was crazy. It wouldn’t be the first time someone said that to me,”

I shook my head. “Who’s the asshole that would say something like that to you?”

“My grandfather . . .” Mystery Man answered with a bite of contempt for the man he referenced. “He used to give me shit about how ‘finicky’ I was. Called me a ‘sissy boy’ even. Little did he know that wasn’t the only reason for calling me a sissy.” He chuckled quietly to himself over whatever memory he was looking at inside his head and then gave me a very flirty sideways glance to prove his point.

“Personally, I LOVE sissy boys. Of course, I’m the biggest sissy boy of all time, so I’m biased,” I grinned back at him. “Messy but sissy.”

My Eggy seemed reassured by the fact that I wasn’t making a big deal out of the OCD thing and he seemed to relax even more. I liked that. Underneath that twitchy exterior, I thought I could see glimpses of someone who was smart, honest, and kind - someone that I would love to get to know better. I liked the sparks of flirtiness that sometimes made it through his more standoffish exterior. And, in a strange way, I found him to be incredibly brave, which is probably an odd thing to say about somebody who was afraid of germs and touching and probably hadn’t been outside this building in a decade, but the way he was facing up to that reality with me, almost a stranger, was pretty fucking brave, if you asked me. It was like there was this entirely different person inside him that was just dying to get out - a person that was incredibly attractive in so many ways - and if he could only get past the obstacle of his phobias, then he could let that person shine. So, of course, a die-hard romantic like me wouldn’t be able to resist the pull of a man like that. It was like I simply HAD to find the answer, the solution, the way to draw him out so I could finally see the real man he was hiding behind that bushy beard and forbidding exterior. I couldn’t help myself. I was just a total sucker for that kind of draw, you know. And fuck you if you think I’m pathetic for actually being all empathic and caring, because I don’t plan to change any time soon.

“So, what have you got there?” Eggy asked, pointing with his untasted cup of coffee to the piles I was organizing, redirecting my attention back to my work, thankfully, before all my grinning and romanticizing got totally out of hand.

“I was just trying to organize things a little,” I explained. “I’m putting maintenance and repair receipts over here, rental receipts here, and other stuff in this pile. And, within each pile, I’ll organize them into date order with the oldest stuff on the bottom . . .”

So we spent about the next twenty minutes or so pulling all the documents out of the file and organizing them. Eggy suggested a couple of sub-piles to make things a little clearer, which I went along with. We didn’t come across anything earth shattering, though, until we’d pulled pretty much everything out of the leather binder. Then, just before I was ready to toss the empty folio aside, I noticed that there was an extra little pocket in the back cover. It didn’t look like there was anything in there, but just to be sure, I poked my hand inside and, low and behold, I found an old, timeworn, battered-looking envelope hiding back there.

“What have we here?” I pondered as I turned the envelope over in my hands and noted the name ‘Jay’ written on the face in an elegant cursive script.

Eggy was already leaning towards me, squinting a little as he tried to see better, when I pulled out the flap from where it had been tucked inside and upended the whole thing. Two things fell out out of the envelope: a sheet of rose-colored note paper and a thin, gold band. I managed to stop the ring before it rolled off the table, picking it up so I could examine it more closely. It was a beautiful band, etched with a complex hatchwork pattern around the outside, turning the relatively simple gold band into a real work of art. On the inner surface of the ring there was some engraving in letters so small I could barely read it: ‘J & A ❤ 1878’.

“Okay, so now we have a mysterious ‘B’ along with an equally mysterious ‘J’ and an ‘A’ to boot. Before we’re done we might have the whole alphabet,” my man joked.

I was already too busy reading the note that had come along with the ring, though, to respond. And boy-howdy, what a note it was, too. I certainly was not ready for what I found there.

“Shit! Read this,” I laid the piece of stationary down on the table so that Eggy could read what I’d just found without him having to touch anything.

‘My Once Dear Jay,

I simply can not bear this heart-wrenching shame and I refuse to live the lie you have made out of our sacred wedding vows. However, since I pledged, ‘Till Death Do Us Part’, and I refuse to be forsworn, as you have already been since you violated our marriage bed, that leaves us only one remaining option. And, because your cowardice knows no bounds, I will, of necessity, have to be the brave one for the both of us. May my death provide you with whatever solace is still available to you as you pursue the relentless ruination of your soul.

Yours in Scorn and Betrayal,

Alma’

“Wow! I mean . . . wow! Talk about vindictive. I wonder what the hell this Jay guy did to piss off his wife to the point she’d threaten to kill herself and then send him this note to rub it in that it was all his fault.” I leaned back against the sofa cushions and ran my fingers through my hair, feeling just that unsettled by the letter I’d just read.

“‘The relentless ruination of your soul . . . Yours in Scorn and Betrayal’,” my Mystery Man read the last lines aloud, seeming to be just as bowled over by the letter as I was. “If you ask me, this Alma sounds like a bit of a bitch. Maybe Jay was glad to be rid of her? I know I would be after reading something like that.”

“But what if he deserved it? Maybe he was an abusive prick or something? And it does sound like he was sleeping around on her - ‘violated our marriage bed’ sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? People took that kinda thing pretty seriously back then, right? I mean, far be it from me to judge and all, but . . .”

“No matter what led them to this extreme, it takes two to make an unhappy marriage, Brat,” my man concluded, rather sagely, in my honest opinion.