The sound of the snow being blown against the window made a tinkling sound. "Even now," the stranger said, "I can here the sound of those discs banging together."
"You must hate yourself for letting her go."
"Letting her go? Letting her go! That never happened. The failure of the relationship was entirely her fault."
"But you said..."
"Yes I said I had my problems, but she of all people in the world should have known what she was dealing with and in this case I can assure you that she did. She can say that she didn't understand what was needed, but....but I'm getting ahead of myself." He twirled his class idly. "Where was I," he said to himself. He had pulled his other arm back from under the table, but he immediately put it behind Jane so it remained hidden.
The regular noted that Jane still had the same expression on her face as when he thought the stranger had his hand up her dress. Interesting that he never noticed it before. "You talked about the first night you spent with the girl."
"It was not the first night I spent with the girl. I had already spent the night with her, fully clothed. And the first night we had sex, I didn't spend the entire night with her. I didn't go to sleep with her. I should have, I suppose. You see I had not expected what happened and I had a child's birthday party to go to."
"What?" A large segment of the audience seemed to gasp this at once. It was as if they were sitting at a table with a demon.
But the stranger took no offense. He laughed. "You know, if i had half a brain then i'd be half witted. My brain was damaged. Not in a way that would defend my actions. I don't think I have a damaged brain, not they way that you are thinking. It requires an explanation.
"I was in love with someone, but I did not know how much she was willing to risk to be with me until she pulled me down on the bed with her.. I was caught off guard, happily I will add. Of course, I could have said no. I could have said no to her, or at least not yet. And, more importantly, I could have said no to the child. Children need to learn disappointment, and they need to understand love. There was a way to thread the needle, to do both, the birthday and then the truth perhaps...the truth.
It was the one thing that I could not do for everyone. Everyone!" He shouted the last word. Then he took a deep breath and continued.
"If I had been capable of honesty, I would have told my wife that, much as I liked her, much as I respected her, that the feelings I had for her were eclipsed by a love that predated our even meeting and one which turned out to be much stronger. And, of course, my wife and I did not have a relationship based on me falling in love with her and getting down on my knee and professing my undying love; something which never happened. I married her because it was the only honorable road that seemed open to me. My affection for her was based on shared experience and my respect for her and what she had done. Even had I been in love with my wife first, however, there was a need to be honest. Because many people who did the down on one knee type of marriage get divorced when the situation changes. It only requires character. A very minimal amount of courage. A very minimal amount of humanity."
He stopped. With his one free hand he drained his glass, filled it and drained it again. He paused for so long that the regular was certain that he had stopped, that the enormity of what had happened had overwhelmed him. His expression was fixed. The regular might have suspected that he had died, except that his grip on the glass was so tight the regular feared the thick glass would break. The snow continued to ring against the glass, the group around the table held their breath.
Finally, his hand released its grip on the glass. As if there had been no delay he continued, "Love dictated that I tell my wife that I was in love with someone else, irregardless of how much I loved her. It would have been the kinder thing. But the pain, the pain of losing everything. I had, you see, learned that I had to live entirely in the moment to survive. There very spirituality that had allowed me to achieve so much with my problems, my life and with the girl insulated me from what it should have made so obvious to me. I did not have to think ahead to what the right thing to do was, I could love in the moment without fearing all the dangers that surrounded me. In fact, I think it was obvious to me. I was in a state of virtue, but even being entirely there, the negative aspects of my personality continued to exist. I was scared and I was beginning to recover from the bottom and I did not want to derail the recovery which was still far from certain. The odds of economic meltdown outweighed the chances of even a modest recovery.
There is no excuse, of course. Well, there are a hundred excuses, none of consequence. My situation had nothing to do with the sex or the marriage. It had everything to do with being honest with everyone, especially myself. And in the end the one who would be harmed the most, would be the one I lied to the worst, myself.
I had destroyed much of my memory. I would often listening to stories by friends of our past exploits and they would tell details that were lost to me, sometimes the entire story was lost. All that time calculating. Calculating what I would need to recover, how I would deal with my problems. I was not living, I missed what was going on around me. I made myself be there physically, but mentally I was somewhere else, calculating the same numbers over and over again. To deal with the problems, I used the mental power required to maintain memory. They were reallocated to coming up with solutions. As you will find out, my mind did this well, but I ignored my friends. My friends were largely business associates anyway, but there were true friends. But so many of them tied friendship to status and I felt I had lost my status. The only time when I was there was when I was pursuing the virtuous path, then and when I was with the girl. It was as if when I was with her my life was starting all over again, the slate was empty.
At the same time I was trying to save my own ego and incorrectly I believed that meant protecting what was left of my finances and dealing with the tidal wave of lawsuits that were building against me and which I was trying to circumvent.
So what was I to do? I spent much of my time dealing with the economic disasters that came along in the form of the oil spill and the Chinese drywall, the real estate collapse, the hurricane, and partners who may have robbed from me.
I was depressed and the two things that gave me the power to go on were virtue, that made me realize that what mattered was not success or failure...and the girl. One was road to the right thing, the other was less clear. Today, sitting at this table, you may feel you know what the relationship with the girl required, but are you sure you are all thinking the same thing? I know now, but at the time I did not know. And it was the girl, and not me, who would destroy the relationship.
When he said this last sentence, one clear thing. He said it, but he did not believe it.
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