The Voting Machine

A Fool Either Way

When my mother was dying in her hospital bed, she cursed and screamed in her last hours. She had always been such a kind and patient woman but something had happened. Like the sickness itself was casting out demons that were hidden in her heart.

"I need to let go of my anger," she said. "The angels will help me cast it out so I can be at peace in the next world."

"That's OK, Mom. Let it all out."

"I need to forgive what your father did to me. When we married we promised we would always be there for each other. And then he cast me aside for other woman."

"Forget about that, Mom. He's a fool."

"Promise me something Temo. Promise me if you ever marry that you don't give up on her when things get hard. That's what love means. It means you don't give up."

***

Annabelle didn't talk about her sadness on the drive back to the motel. I knew there were the same questions running through her head: How was she going to make it without David? She ran away from her own father as a teenager and had a very hard time on her own. Would she lose her way again without David's wisdom and support?

She parked in the alley behind the motel and kissed me. It was the same spot where we kissed before, the night I found the dope taped inside her gas tank.

"Once David is gone, you're the only one I can trust."

"You can trust other people, too. There's Fatima, the other volunteers."

"That's not what I mean," she said. She placed a hand on my heart. She leaned over and kissed me again like she had that first night. Her lips were soft and fragile. "Your wife doesn't want you."

It took her hand away from me. I turned my face aside, avoiding her piercing gaze.

"We shouldn't do this. It's not over with me and Suzy," I said. "I am not giving up."

"How do you know you're not making a mistake?"

"I don't."

My father once told me that all men were fools when it came to women; it was just a question of which type of fool you were going to be. You could be the kind of fool who plays around with lots of women and doesn't stay constant with any one of them. Or you could be the fool who falls in love and stays true to one woman.

Either way, he said, it didn't make a difference. Both kinds of men were equally foolish. Both types of men were pretending that they weren't all alone in the world. And whether you loved hundreds of women or only loved one your whole life, in the end, you were all alone.

I knew there were many men who were interested in Annabelle, educated, attractive, successful men whom she met through her work with the Sunflower Foundation and her father's legal appeal. But she felt a connection to me, because I'd known her when she was high and low. A princess might want to kiss a frog sometimes, because he was the only one who knew how far you could sink in the swamp of life. He knew what it was like to have everything go wrong and find a way to persevere. That knowledge was priceless. It was something she couldn't buy with all the millions in her trust fund.

When I got to my room, I checked my Gmail. It was time to open up Larry's pictures from his stakeout of Suzy.

The first picture showed her in front of Gina's grave in the cemetery up by Ladera Heights. He filmed her from behind, setting flowers under the inscription on the tombstone.

What the heart has known it shall never forget.

Something happened between Suzy and Gina that my wife never told me about. I wondered why she kept it a secret. It wasn't the first time my wife hid something from me. In the past, she'd done it to protect me. It was never scheming or malicious. She must be afraid of what would happen if I found out. What could they share that would be so dangerous?

I braced myself for the second picture. I expected unimaginable pain, like a samurai getting ready to plunge a dagger into his solar plexus.

I saw them in the photo, walking in the park. Any man holding my wife's hand would've been a shock, but this one was incomprehensible, like a jumbled jigsaw in my mind, jamming together pieces of my life that I thought were disconnected.

Suzy was with Davis, the bartender who served me tequila every day as my mind decayed in my final months at Passion. I couldn't think of how the two of them might have met. Another secret my wife was hiding to protect me. I knew the pain was going to be unimaginable, and for a moment, I thought the whole world was caving in on me.

For a fleeting instant, as the walls came crashing down, I remembered Annabelle, who thought she loved me and opened up another door. I wondered for a moment whether I'd made the wrong choice trying to fix things with Suzy. Was I really that stupid and crazy? I was. But that doesn't mean I'd made the wrong choice. This was all meant to happen. I was meant to feel this heart break. I knew my mission, even if it was going very badly. There was no turning back.