Peril

ABE

As he strolled the aisle at Macy’s, hoping to find just the right shirt and tie, he suddenly felt a terrible jeopardy. Something else, too, the inevitable approach of failure, loss, ruin. But what else could he expect, suddenly getting a thing for some woman he didn’t know, a married woman, a woman on the run? How could he expect a happy ending to a story that began with so many things already lined up against it? But then, he’d always chosen badly, and gotten worse, a history that had continually repeated itself, and which no doubt explained the downward pull of his mind, its assumption of unhappy ends.

For years he’d believed that his doomed take on things had begun when Mavis left him, and not just left him for anyone but for another piano player, though this time she’d chosen a guy who was really good.

But he was no longer sure his downward cast of mind had begun with Mavis. After all, by the time she’d skipped, he’d already figured out she wasn’t much of a woman.

No, it wasn’t Mavis, he decided now. It was just the way life had settled over him. The words of “But Beautiful” declared that love was a heartache either way, and it seemed to Abe that he’d come to apply that notion to every aspect of life. He was like Lucille when The Weight fell upon her, only he didn’t have the excuse of bad chemistry. He had created The Weight, especially when it came to women. So much so that if the woman didn’t go for it right away, he just took a hike, washed his hands of the whole thing. If she had a boyfriend… sayonara. Who needs the competition. If she had a few issues, good-bye, toots. Back to the bills in the back room. The slightest problem, and he headed for the hills. How many chances for happiness had he lost by giving up so quickly? he wondered. Too many, that much was sure. Too many to sing that song again. And so this time, he decided, issues or no issues, he would put up a fight.

Suddenly he thought of the gun Mortimer had given him, and the gift, along with the idea behind it, struck him as curiously admirable. Here was a guy, Mortimer, who unquestioningly assumed that if you loved someone, and someone else tried to take her from you against her will or tried to hurt her in some way you… well… you blew that worthless fucker’s head off is what you did. Because you had this love, and nothing was going to stop you from defending it. Not the law, not good sense, not even your fear of the consequences. If someone came for the woman you loved, you did something about it. Never mind what happened later, all the hand-wringing and second-guessing, and maybe even regret. At that moment, in that situation, you threw away the rules, because the only rule was love, and the rule of love was that no one took the one you loved from you if she didn’t want to go.

But would he really do that? he wondered. If Samantha’s father-in-law showed up, backed him into a corner, gave him no other option, would he really go that far, reach for a gun? He didn’t know, and that uncertainty struck him as an accusation. He didn’t know because he was civilized, and because he was civilized he would calculate the odds, try to reason through the consequences, a process that would turn him into some lousy broker, gauging profits and losses, the opposite of a passionate man, which was, he realized, the kind of man he most despised, but also the kind of man he was, and hated being.

So that was it, he decided, that was what he wanted, that was what would make him happy, just to know for sure that if things really came to a head over Samantha, he would risk it all for her.