Early in the morning I was in the Travis Street Apartment. Louise had already moved out and I hadn't seen her in several days. She had left some of her things behind and I had put them out on the back balcony in brown paper sacks. I expected her to come by and pick the stuff up.
I heard someone pull up out back and slightly opened the kitchen door to see out onto the balcony. There was Louise going up and down the steps carrying the sacks to the car. She didn't seen me. I looked at the car but could only see the lower portion of it because my vision was blocked by the roof of the carport behind the Apartment. I was surprised that the car, a gray Cadillac Coup de Ville, wasn't Louise's. I couldn't tell if anyone else was in the car.
I opened the door, walked out onto the back steps and said, "Well come on in a minute."
She said she would step in for just a minute. She looked a little different. I looked at her and said, "Well, how's it going."
She said things were going OK for her. I had the feeling she was now living with another man and asked, "Well, have you moved in with somebody?"
She looked at me, half smiled and replied, "No. I got married."
I was rather surprised, but not terribly so. I said, "Well, I was afraid you might do something like that."
I wasn't particularly bothered that she had remarried, although I thought it was probably an obvious mistake for her to rush into another marriage. But it was something she would just have to live with.
I didn't feel close to her and certainly didn't want to touch her. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring, but had a ring with a pearl in it on her left ring finger. She took off the gray coat she was wearing, revealing a long, elegant dress which she obviously wanted to show me.
I had an idea who the man she had married was and figured the Cadillac must belong to him. I thought he was well-to-do. Probably the main reason she had married him was because he was well-off. It appeared to me that she had made a mistake. She looked quite unhappy.
We were standing in the kitchen, she with her back to the door to the living room and I facing the living room and looking at her. From where I was, I could clearly see the front door to the living room. Suddenly that door opened and a man walked in.
He was a tall husky fellow wearing a large beige jacket. Louise didn't see him. I pointed to him and said, "Who's that? Is that your husband?"
She looked and said, "Yes."
He walked into the kitchen and Louise stopped him. He pushed her aside and advanced toward me. He apparently suspected Louise was doing something with me and appeared belligerent. He began swinging his fists at me; I prepared to defend myself.
Copyright 2003 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
