High C

2. The End (Part 2)

DeeDee looked down from the window of her south facing condo at the few boats still docked in the dark marina. Covered for winter and huddled together like pigeons on a wire, it made her feel lonely to look at them. They had each other, after all.

Sometimes she mocked herself for being melodramatic, but the truth was she had never ended a relationship with a man she was madly in love with before and she wasn't sure how to mourn it. Four months later, her heart was still in shock, as though it had been moved to another part of her body where it now beat unsurely, waiting to put it back in its place. She tested herself with her hot cheek and brow bone pressed against the cold of the window to see if tears would come now. The well, it seemed, had at last gone dry. Whether for good or for the moment, only time would tell. She sighed heavily to form a fog over her reflection and drew a tear for Kurt Heinrich there instead.

The problem was she'd never been in love with a married man before either. Seven blissful months without suspicion passed before her lover finally felt he had to confess that he was married. Worse still, DeeDee had made excuses to keep Kurt in her life and in her bed for an entire month afterwards before she found the strength to send him away. Her feelings about the entire mess were woven together like a wilted daisy chain of grief and anger and shame. It wasn't as though he'd pleaded for time for a divorce that would never happen. It wasn't a marriage he claimed to be held hostage by for the sake of children. Contrary to the most popular justifications for infidelity, his explanation was simply that DeeDee had knocked him for a loop. That he had never been so stricken with love that the urge to make someone a part of his life outweighed all costs - apart from honesty and giving up a wife who was, by his own account, his best friend and wonderfully, willfully ignorant.

She loved him. She loved him not.

She had told Natasha none of it. As much as they loved each other, the sisters did not share their secrets. Natasha had very fixed opinions of what was and wasn't acceptable based entirely on her own feelings. She ran on intuition which validated itself constantly. This meant she was never wrong, even when she might be. DeeDee was more cautious, more sensitive and considerate of nuances in her decision making, though perhaps even more immovable once a verdict had been reached.

Whether Natasha would have wanted Kurt put before a firing squad or encouraged DeeDee to be selfish for once in her life was anybody's guess, but the fact was her sister's advice would become the only acceptable course of action, regardless of her own feelings and insights, and DeeDee just didn't want to hear it. She'd made her decision.

Call it pride or principle, she could not take from someone's happiness to secure her own. She could not share her love or have it held in reserve for convenience. She believed Kurt loved her in his way and would suffer her loss, a God awful acknowledgement worthy of a tragic comedy. She could just die laughing.

So now she wiped a dry cheek out of habit and tore herself away from her view of the marina in order to survey the damage done to her kitchen. Making hors d'oeuvres for a catered luncheon might seem a foolish and unwanted gesture, but looming insomnia was all the reason she needed. Creating an assembly line of individual edible presents calmed her like a game of solitaire might for others. It was as good as meditation, and half as good as sleep. She had decided on preparing something in star-shaped moulds when she came across a recipe for jellied beet and goat cheese napoleons. It was not yet nine o'clock but with two dozen peeled beets to boil before being cut into star shapes, her counters already looked like a crime scene. Now was not the time to run out of steam and get sloppy.

Standing over a pot of boiling vinegar and sugar, she longed for the days when she smoked cigarettes in wild denial no harm would come to her if she stopped at a good age. She hadn't smoked in twelve years, but every now and then she flirted with the impulse to go back, as if to an ex solely for distraction. But no, those were equally dangerous, bad ideas. Instead, she shook her own fortitude's hand, put on Ella Fitzgerald's 'Air Mail Special' and began dissolving her agar agar in the name of less harmful, more healing rebellion.