When I'd taken my leave of Maddie and moved to Washington, she'd predicted that I would leave her immediately for a cute little redheaded undergraduate. This did not occur. Instead, I broke up with Maddie and was dating a cute little brown-headed undergraduate within weeks. Although that's technically not as bad, it would still be enough to get me castrated. I therefore downplayed it. It didn't help.
Plop, plop.
After the Oklahoma trip, I returned to Seattle and took up residence in the Issaquah Motel 6. Good times. I hadn't looked for work in months, so I was effectively starting over. "I'll do anything," I told the agents staring quizzically at the home phone number on my resume. "A-n-y-t-h-i-n-g."
An utterly pointless romantic sacrifice, quitting my job and driving cross-country had also tapped my meager cash reserves dry. I was living on what little credit was left on my college credit card, and that would run out in days. The job gears were in motion, but it would be several months before a paycheck started to come in. I sold CDs for cash. "Aren't you glad you have them for times like this?" asked a friend.
"Not Certificates of Deposit. Compact Discs."
"Oh."
I wasn't going to make it. I needed an infusion of cash, and fast. I briefly considered family but decided the cost would be too high. I'd rather starve. There was only one person on earth from whom I thought I could reasonably ask for money. I would call the person most like family to me. I would call Maddie.
The conversation that ensued will forever define pain for me. I hope. It's as if the woman kept a legal pad by the phone, just in case I called and asked a favor. On that pad was a list of my offenses, real and imaginary, over the preceding seven years. "Yeah, I'll lend you the money," she said. "But then again, on July 1, 1991, you flirted with that red-headed bank teller in the Minerva Park branch."
"Huh? Who?"
"Don't play dumb."
Who's playing? "Sigh. I'm sorry. So very, very sorry."
"And on December 6, 1990, when I said we were having sex at least twice a week, you showed me how you'd kept records all year."
That one I remembered. "I'm so sorry."
"And on September..."
And so it went, in geological time. I got the loan, and she got to declare victory. I'm not sure what a pound of flesh goes for nowadays, but back then it was a bargain. As I recall, she turned a profit.