Abused By Illusions

Heavy dark clouds rolled across the highway as Thomas turned onto it. Although he was almost giddy deep within him dwelt darkness that when released was capable of eclipsing even the darkest of such storm clouds. He turned the radio to an oldie station. Frank Sinatra was just starting to sing “A Sinner Kissed an Angel,” which was Thomas’ favorite song in the world. He glanced down at his Rolex realizing that he was ten minutes late already. “What the hell,” he thought. “This was always so much more fulfilling when he made them wait a while.” He knew Lisa’s type. Women like her had long ago exchanged life sustaining, if boring, dignity for an addiction to anticipation. They lived in a world of what could be and never seemed to have the slightest conception of what really was. A slight smile crossed his lips for an instant as he thought how pathetic such thinking really was. He began to sing along with old blue eyes as the storm inside him began to recede.
“The night a sinner kissed an angel
He wanted thrills, she wanted love,
Oh but his sighs were tender
As he begged her to surrender,
The night a sinner kissed an angel,
And she believed that it was love.
How was she to know that every lovely vow
Was part of the game he was playing.”
The announcer cut into the song with a weather warning just as a large black dog ran across the road in front of Thomas’ car. Thomas jabbed on the brakes a bit too hard and the car began to slide. Thomas cursed as he realized a slow rain had begun to fall as he had daydreamed and sang along with Frank. The road had gotten as slick as glass. Everything seemed as if it was in slow motion as the car slid toward the deep ditch on the side of the road. A loud thump signaled that a tire had left the road and dropped in the ditch as the car came to a halt. Thomas spun the wheels as he tried to get the car back on the road. The Cadillac rocked as it tried to regain traction as he started to give up there was a lurch and the car shot out of the ditch. Thomas shut off the radio deciding to pay more attention as he finished the drive to Lisa’s house. Thomas pulled into the driveway, shut off the car, and walked toward Lisa’s front door. He noticed as he knocked on the door that the storm clouds were quickly moving to the south and the night was clearing. As the door opened the same was not true of the storm welling up once again deep within him.
“Well hello Thomas,” Lisa chirped as she came into view wearing a flowered dropped-waist dress and a pair of wide yet delicately tapered heels. “I had almost given up on you. I thought perhaps you decided to stand me up but here you are. You can’t possibly know how much I have been looking forward to our third date.”
Thomas looked at Lisa and smiled and then looked down at the pair of pumps, that in his mind belonged on a rural schoolteacher not his date. “I wouldn’t have missed tonight for anything,” he said. “Now go put on your heels!”
Lisa looked at him like an awkward embarrassed schoolgirl and her expression changed to one that closely resembled one as well. “I have them on,” she spat, holding them out and tilting them in a way that reminded him of the spoiled teenage brats that used to do the house cleaning back when he, as a much younger man, had managed the cabin area at Bohemian Grove.
No, really, Lisa go put them on. The storm deep within him was brewing again as he shoved her toward her bedroom. “Come on you have to get this right everything must be perfect tonight,” he thought. A wave of euphoria washed over him as she teetered back into the living room stopping right in front of him.
“Very nice,” he gasped as he took her hand and walked her to the car.
As Thomas backed out of the driveway he thought to himself that the rented Cadillac was getting easier to drive. As they drove down I-64 he congratulated himself on the good sense that he had shown in renting a car for what he was now sure was going to turn out to be his best party yet.
Half and hour later they arrived at the Hyatt and were shown quickly to the table his secretary had reserved earlier in the week. The Hyatt’s dining room was just his sort of place. No one from his firm or those that he did business with would be caught dead here. Just a few families with crying babies and the quintessential middle class loser dining alone. In short no one that could have known him and more importantly no one that would ever remember him. Thomas attempted to make small talk with Lisa, over their Seafood Diet Platters, about his company and how his lawyer had advised him to open bank accounts in the Bahamas and Cayman Islands.
“It’s all perfectly legal,” he said with an air of pompousness. “Most people are just too stupid to know that those tax-saving tricks exist.” Thomas noticed that Lisa was getting a glazed over look in her eyes after he had talked business for just a short while and thought how incredibly ignorant that she was. “You can’t get good help these days,” he said, sipping his coffee and lounging back in his chair, his long legs crossed. “Everyone thinks they deserve huge salaries, but no one wants to do any work.” Lisa made some inaudible response to his statement but he could tell that she was lost somewhere in her emotional anticipation and had no interest in the important things that he was sharing with her about his world. He looked over and noticed that Lisa was apparently done picking at her dinner and was searching for those beautiful shoes that she had, so rudely, taken off as soon as they had been seated in the restaurant.
Thomas walked Lisa back to the rented Cadillac and drove her to his estate in Cambridge. The look on her face as they pulled up the driveway and he parked in the circle drive told him that she was quite impressed by his estate. He thought as he was showing her through the house that the scamp was probably already thinking of ways to spend his fortune redecorating his house to more suit her trailer park taste. He shuddered as he thought of a garish velvet painting hanging over his mantle. As they descended the stairs and returned to the living room, Thomas thought how much better his lifestyle was than marriage even if it wasn’t quite as accepted. He poured himself a gin and tonic and poured Lisa a tall glass of bourbon on the rocks. Deftly he dropped the GHB into Lisa’s drink and stirred both of them before handing her the drink. He started to wonder how long the GHB would take to have the desired effect on Lisa as he put a Frank Sinatra album on the turntable before returning to sit beside her on the couch.
“Do you have any other records,” Lisa asks.
“Sinatra’s great!” Thomas scowls. “Just listen!” Thomas starts to sing along quietly:
“Strange music in my ears,
Only now as you spoke did it start,
Strange music of the sphere,
Could its lovely hum be coming from my heart?”
Suddenly Lisa is 16 again and back in the Bohemian Grove of 24 years ago, the same song is playing, and she is running from two men in the clearing on the North Side of the cabin area. One is dressed as a ghost and the other is dressed as a skeleton. The one dressed as a skeleton has the much younger but clearly discernable face of Thomas. He is tearing her dress as she is screaming for help.
The turntable skips as Thomas falls against it. Lisa stands up and moves toward him quickly. She is holding a knife with a handle made from a deer antler that has “Bohemian Club 1976” inscribed on the blade. She deftly slips the knife in between Thomas’ ribs and walks to the expensive stereo system and switches it from the turntable to the radio. The Duran Duran song “Hungry Like the Wolf” is playing and she begins to sing along as she takes one of her spiked heels off and gently stuffs its spike down Thomas’ throat.
“I’m in touch with the ground
I’m on the hunt, I’m after you
Smell like I sound, I’m lost in a crowd
And I’m hungry like the wolf
Straddle the line, in discord and rhyme
I’m on the hunt I’m after you
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And I’m hungry like the wolf.”
Lisa watched as the storm dissipated one final time and then was gone from Thomas’ eyes forever.

© C.I. Abramson, 2004

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