THE BURGERLESS, SCOOTERLESS BLOG

An apology as a kind of forward: Back on August 1 of this year, I published a piece of fiction called Samantha’s Porch. I didn’t receive any comments on the piece on WordPress, and I am fine with that, but two people close to me (my older brother and a cousin) texted me about it, and their initial reactions were negative. “Well, that was fun” was from one, and since the piece wasn’t intended to be “fun,” I can only surmise that comment was intended to be ironic. Another comment used the word “icky” and said I might have been trying to “creep the reader out.” I wasn’t trying to achieve that end either. One excellent criticism was that the character Roger was insecure and didn’t have manly confidence. Reading Samantha’s Porch and the sequel below, I kind of agree. I should have delved deeper into his character. One could argue that the story shouldn’t have been written in the first place. It wasn’t a fantasy of this writer, and I don’t have “mommy issues.” I will leave my fantasies between my two ears, for now. I still have family members who would truly be creeped out, and holiday dinners would never be the same.

So why am I writing a sequel to what the couple of readers who bothered to comment on the original may have thought was a mistake to write in the first place? Some writers get writer’s block; I, on the other hand, lack imagination and inspiration. I’m not really a writer of fiction. This blog and the one that preceded it are well over ninety-five percent factual content and are written in the first person. Some posts are shared, that is, someone else’s work.

I do enjoy writing tiny Six-Sentence Stories, but that’s not saying much- literally six-sentence fictional stories. Recently, however, I have been inspired to write longer short fiction. Daniel Baciagalupo Night, Crescent Moon, the prequel to this piece, the now-infamous Samantha’s Porch, and its sequel below this apology.

There, I got that off my chest. Now, if you are still interested, read on. I really hope you’re not creeped out again. — Jack

Roger was polishing the hardwood floor in the guest room while Samantha made coffee in his kitchen. It was nearly 1 p.m., and Samantha had brought over sandwiches and macaroni salad and was about to tell Roger he needed to take a break when she found an open wedding invitation on Roger’s kitchen counter along with a Texas Gas Service bill and a glossy ad for triple-pane windows. When the coffee was ready, she poured two mugs, set the table, and flagged down Roger, telling him their lunch was waiting. A few minutes later, Roger walked into the kitchen, sat down, then noticed Samantha holding the invitation.

“Are you planning to go?”

Roger shrugged while sipping his coffee, then set his mug down and, not looking up, grabbed one half of his sandwich and said, “I haven’t kept up with Mike, and I barely know Sarah.”

Samantha said in a soft whine, “I was hoping I could be your plus-one.” Roger looked at Samantha over his mug and said, “I haven’t been back to Chicago or even gotten out of Austin since hooking up with you.”

“Hooking up?” Samantha said, feigning annoyance. Roger laughed. “Sorry, that is totally inappropriate in my generation’s parlance. What I mean is, ever since we have been together, I haven’t gotten out of this city and haven’t had a good reason to go anywhere outside the city limits. Are you really interested in going?

Samantha said defensively that she loves weddings and would like to see the city: “You know, the museums, maybe one of those hop-on hop-off tours, a lake tour–tourist stuff.”

Roger would have tossed the invitation along with all the other junk mail. Still, after seeing that Samantha would really enjoy the vacation, he said okay with as much excitement as he could muster.

Six weeks later, Roger and Samantha flew out of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to Chicago Midway International Airport.

They arrived in the afternoon, the day before the wedding, checked into the Chicago South Loop Hotel on West 26th Street, had dinner in the restaurant adjacent to the lobby, and opted to return to their room and prepare for the wedding tomorrow—the touristy stuff would come after the wedding day.

The next morning, Roger took Samantha to one of the places he loved for weekend breakfast when he lived in Chicago. The Egg Harbor Cafe was by Lake Michigan and near the hotel where they were staying. Roger called ahead and reserved a table, knowing it was a busy restaurant for such a casual setting. They sat down at a table, and Roger immediately left to order them both coffee at the restaurant’s Coffee Bar.

Immediately after Roger left the table, Samantha noticed a pretty redhead in a two-piece floral-print dress and cardigan. The redhead, with two other women, spent more time looking at Roger than at Samantha. The redhead walked directly towards Samanth. When she got to Samantha’s table, the woman sat down without an invitation.

“Hi,” said the redhead with beautiful green eyes, extending her hand. “I’m Chloé, and who may you be? I noticed you are with Roger Coleman. We are old friends.”

“Samantha,” not giving Chloé any more information.

“You don’t look like Roger’s mother, not that I ever met her, mind you, but I have seen her in a photograph or two of Roger’s old place. We were an item back when he lived here. I think he moved back to Austin, his hometown.”

“Yes, we are neighbors.”

“Oh, that’s why you came!” Chloé said, still fishing. “You are Roger’s plus-one. I was wondering if he had a girlfriend, but I guess not.”

Samantha smiled, then said, “Well, I don’t think I would qualify as a ‘girl’ anymore.”

Before Chloé could react to Samantha’s bombshell reply, Roger walked up with two mugs of coffee. “Sorry it took so long, babe.” (This may have been the first time Roger ever referred to Samantha as “babe.” It felt awkward for Roger, but he tried it because he wanted to send a message to Chloé, whom he had noticed as he walked back to their table.) “I ordered an Iced Caramel Macchiato for myself. If you want to try it and you like it, I’ll switch with you.”

Roger set down the two mugs, took a seat next to Samantha, kissed her on the cheek, and sipped his macchiato. (The kiss on the cheek was another gesture that was out of step with the way the two Texans acted in public, but again, Roger was sending a message.) “Ah, just as I remember it. You should give it a try.”

Samantha turned to Roger and said, “Have you said hello to Chloé?” Roger took another sip of his macchiato, then said, “Hi, Chloé. Is that Angela and someone else I do not recognize over at what I imagine is your table?”

A waitress approaches to take Samantha and Roger’s order after Chloé politely corrects the waitress that she is with a different table. Samantha orders the salmon benedict, and Roger orders a San Antonio Skillet. “Two eggs, chorizo, bacon, jalapeños, onions, tomatoes, and pepper jack, over home fries. Me likey,” Roger exclaimed, overacting in his nervousness about being around Chloé for the first time in many months. Samantha warns, “Absolutely no kisses after the spicy breakfast, Roger.”

“I have a bottle of mouthwash in our room. I promise I’ll gargle for three minutes the first thing after breakfast.”

Chloé smiles and asks Samantha whether Roger still orders the same food whenever they go out to familiar restaurants in Austin.

“Yes,” Samantha replied, “he says he suffers from something I forgot the name of.”

“FOMO,” Chloé quickly shot back, “Fear of Missing Out. I remember it was quite debilitating with him. I couldn’t get him to try anything new.”

“That’s it, we don’t go out much, but then again, whatever I cook for him, he eats,” Samantha said, almost boasting.

“That’s easy because she’s a great cook,” Roger interjected, kissing her again on the cheek.

“Yeah, get your kisses in now. When the food gets here, I’m calling a moratorium until you’ve thoroughly detoxed that mouth.”

“My, my,” Chloé said with a curious smile, “the way you two interact, it’s as if you are married.”

“Don’t be surprised if you see a ring on her finger the next time we’re up here for another wedding.”

Samantha stared at Roger for a moment while Roger announced, This looks like our grub.” As the waitress placed the food down, Roger asked Chloé, aren’t you guys going to eat?” referring to Chloé and the two other women at the table across the dining area.

“We ate already, and I can see I am holding up my girlfriends, so I’ll say goodbye for now, and I hope you stay for the whole reception tonight.”

They said goodbyes, but before Chloé left their table, she asked if it would be okay with both of them for her to have one dance with Roger tonight.

Roger was almost caught with an open mouth full of masticated egg, sausage, peppers, cheese, etc. Samantha smiled and said, “Of course.” Roger swallowed his food and asked Samantha if she knew what that was about. Samantha gently stabbed at her Benedict and said, “She’s going to apologize to you. Be a good man and accept her apologies with grace and humility.”

“Yeah, but one of the few things I was happy about when she dumped me was, I wouldn’t have to dance with her and go through the passive-aggressive comments she relentlessly doled out about me stepping on her feet or crushing her hand whenever we danced,” he said with dread.

“I think we’ve fixed that problem, haven’t we?”

Samantha was quiet for the rest of breakfast and the trip back to the hotel. When they got back to their room to prepare for the wedding, Samantha turned to Roger, sterner than Roger had ever experienced from Samantha.

“Roger, I’m not your showpiece from Texas to let everyone know you survived your old girlfriend. No more of this “babe” stuff and the constant cheek kissing, do you understand? I’m a real live person, not some doll you can show around to prove you are over Chloé. And this marriage thing: where in the world did that come from? We never talked about marriage, and whenever we do, if we ever get there, it won’t be in a coffee joint in Chicago, do you understand me?”

“Sorry, I’ll tone it way down,” Roger contritely replied, putting up his hands in a show of surrender, but he was concerned about how Samantha seemed against the marriage idea. However, he delivered the comment tactlessly. Roger thought to himself that it must be the power Chloé still had over him.

They both agreed to take a short nap, and they set alarms on their phones to make sure they woke up with enough time to get dressed and catch a cab or a Lyft to the church. The whole nap thing was new to Roger, especially with a middle-aged woman.

As they lay, Roger reached over and put his hand in the palm of Samantha’s. Samantha, still thinking about Roger’s attitude at breakfast, commented softly, “You know I’m not always going to look like this.”

Roger said, “You will always be beautiful in my eyes.”

Samantha continued, “There’s going to come a time when I will not be physically attractive to you at all. I’ll be just this old lady, and I certainly won’t be a ‘showpiece’ anymore.

Roger, tired of the argument, said, “I love you, Samantha, and I will always love you.”

Samantha’s eyes glistened. “You don’t really understand, do you?”

“Yes, I do. We all get old, and you’ll be 22 years older than me, always.”

Samantha closed her eyes, and a couple of tears ran down the side of her face onto her pillow. “There’s a very good chance you’ll be taking care of me. And someday somebody like Chloé or Amber is going to walk into your life; they’re going to be as old as you are, which is a lot younger than me, and I’ll be this albatross around your neck.”

Roger sat up on the bed, frustrated, and responded, “You don’t think I have thought this thing through, do you?”

Samantha opened her eyes again. “Just try not to think about marriage; that scares me, considering I’ve been through that rodeo before, and it got ugly near the end. I don’t think you have the bones to be cruel to me, but I don’t want to break your heart with walkers, wheelchairs, ramps, cancer, changing my diapers, a double mastectomy, dementia.”

“Wow, aren’t you a ray of sunshine.”

“It’s called reality, Roger.”

Roger was quiet, but Samantha could tell she had broken him. He was trying, unsuccessfully, to surreptitiously wipe away tears by holding his fingers to his eyes like he had a headache.

Samantha reached over and patted his thigh. “Lie down, Roger, let’s try to get a few minutes of sleep before the wedding. Let’s have fun while we’re here. When we get back home, we’ll continue to be ‘friends with benefits,” she said with a smile. She hated that saying but didn’t know what else to call their relationship.

At the wedding, Roger fielded a dozen or so questions about his whereabouts and introduced Samantha to some of his old friends and associates. Samantha enjoyed the wedding service and thought Sarah’s wedding dress was beautiful. She also loved that the bridesmaids’ dresses were stunning but didn’t upstage the bride. Both Samantha and Roger couldn’t help but notice how beautiful Chloé looked in her bridesmaid dress. Roger was preoccupied with what kind of wedding he and Samantha would have if they ever decided to get hitched, and who, if anyone, of the current attendees would be invited to the prospective ceremony—he couldn’t think of three or four people from this event.

After the wedding, those who didn’t have time to greet the couple from Texas before the service had plenty of questions on the short walk to the reception. Roger let Samantha do most of the talking unless queries were directed at him personally. As they walked to the reception hall adjacent to the sanctuary, Samantha reached for Roger’s hand, and Roger took hers. It was the first public show of affection Samantha had shown Roger since the times on Samantha’s porch, when they would occasionally kiss and caress for all the neighbors to see, especially Mrs. Simpson, who was perpetually watering her lawn and picking at her hedges.

Samantha called her “Gladys Kravitz.” Roger didn’t get the joke until he looked up the name on YouTube and saw clips from an old 60s TV series called “Bewitched.” Then Roger couldn’t stop chuckling whenever they caught Mrs. Simpson looking at them together. Samantha’s conservative views on public shows of affection were something Roger had a hard time dealing with. Dinner dates seemed more like a night out with Mom than a night out with his lover. Roger took holding hands during the short walk to the reception hall as a win for his style of a public relationship, if not a triumphant one.

At the reception, Roger found their table and was relieved it wasn’t too close to the wedding party where Chloé was seated. Roger had noticed throughout the wedding ceremony and reception that Chloé didn’t seem to be with anyone. He was looking for the man that she said she was seeing when she dumped him that night, which now seems like a million years ago. As tacky as it was, Roger was surreptitiously looking for Chloé after the wedding, but he never saw her with anyone, and he was almost certain all the ushers were called for.

During the dinner, when Samantha left for the restroom with another woman at their table, the woman’s husband, Lars, who worked with Roger before he moved, asked what happened to him: “You seemed to have changed. Is it the occasion or that you are with an older woman?” Roger asked if Lars could be more specific. “Well, for starters, you don’t cuss as a pipefitter should,” Lars said, laughing.

“Oh, that’s the mysterious pull of the Swear Jar—two of them, to be exact. Well, three if you are counting Samantha, whose purse is a walking Swear Jar.”

“Swear Jar?”

“Yeah, one day, maybe about a week after our relationship went from platonic to romantic, she comes over with a 16-ounce mason jar with a sticker on it that reads in her immaculate script: ‘Swear Jar.’ She then tells me she has an identical one at her place. I need to drop a dollar in either jar whenever I cuss. The jars filled up fast at first until I started catching myself before swearing around her. She keeps the money; she says it goes for food. Since she feeds me most nights and often breakfast and lunch most weekends and holidays, I guess you can say I’m getting some of it back.”

“Sounds like she’s your Mom.”

“Funny, no, my parents intimidated my sister and me in different ways. I don’t know what the grand total of Dove soap bars I ate was, but by the time I left home, I was a relatively clean-mouthed kid around older people. It took being a plumber on the job to get me cussing like one.”

Just then, the woman Samantha had left with to go to the restroom returned. When Roger asked the woman if she knew where Samantha was, the woman looked around, then pointed to Samantha, who was across the hall speaking with Sarah’s mother, Cynthia. “What Roger never found out was that Cynthia had told Samantha that Sarah, before she started seeing Mike, had a bad crush on Roger back when he was with Chloé. Still, Chloé was so high-strung, possessive, and demanding that Roger seemed to spend most of his free time trying to make Chloé happy. I can see he is clearly a happier man with you than he ever was with Chloé,” Cynthia told Samantha.

A few minutes later, Samantha returned to her chair and immediately wrote down some museums and sites Cynthia suggested they consider visiting.

After the parents’ dance was over and the floor was open to the guests, Chloé made her way to Roger and Samantha’s table. Roger could feel Samantha’s hand gently squeeze his as she whispered, “Remember: grace and humility.”

He stood up and walked the rest of the way onto the dance floor. Chloé and Roger came together, then Roger tactfully pushed Chloé away without letting her go. Chloé looked around at the open real estate between their chests, surprised and a little disappointed. “I believe this is called the salon embrace,” Roger said as they began to move.

“I-I want to apologize to you, Roger. I have wanted to apologize to you for a long time now.”

“Don’t worry about it. All is forgiven. Anyway, you were in love and didn’t know how to break up, so you chose the nuclear option. I got over it.”

Chloé cocked her head at him, almost in disbelief. “Th-thank you. You are a very different person from the man I drove away from that night. Anyway, that guy I told you I loved, he was one of the architects from my firm. I thought we were both in love, but he just wanted the sex, you know; his wife put the kibosh on our little love affair. When the news got around the office, they dumped me since I was only an intern—expendable, you know.”

“I’m so sorry, Chloé.”

They talked about how things are with her friends. How some of them missed Roger. “Steven hasn’t had anyone to destroy in chess or pool.”

Roger said, smiling, “I sometimes play chess online during my lunch breaks at work. I’ll send you the link to the app. You can send it to him, if you like. I guess he and I are both out of luck as far as 9 Ball goes.”

Chloé looked down and then up at Roger. “You know, you haven’t stepped on my feet this whole song, and you haven’t crushed my hand, for that matter; Roger, you can dance!”

“I’ve had a lot of practice from a very patient next-door neighbor.”

“I wish I could have been that patient. Sorry for all the comments about your dancing, Roger,” Chloé said with genuine remorse.

Roger didn’t catch Chloé’s apology; he was looking for his Plus-One. Samantha was laughing with someone, one hand at her throat, her white shock of hair now looking silver as it caught the chandelier light.

When the song ended and the MC cued up the next one, he announced, “This one is for the lovers out there.”

“Excuse me,” Roger said, leaving Chloé while he looked across the dance floor.

Roger noticed Samanth had turned to find him. Roger stood in the middle of the dance floor, facing Samantha. Then the famous C-sharp piano opening started, and Samantha met Roger in a close embrace, Samantha resting her cheek on Roger’s chest as the singer began:

“My baby makes me proud/Lord, don’t she make me proud/She never makes a scene/By hangin’ all over me in a crowd…”

Roger looks down and whispers to his dance partner, “You’re hangin’ all over me in a crowd.”

Samantha can’t hold back a loud laugh, understanding the public display they’re showing and how she’s guarded against it since Roger moved next door in Austin.

But when they turn out the lights
I know she’ll be leavin’ with me

Whispering again, “I sure hope so; she’s got my plane ticket.”

Samantha gently complained, “So, are you going to ruin this moment for us?”

“No, I’ll stop,” Roger replied, but thought to himself that this was the very first time in all the hours Samantha taught him the box step that her embrace was intimate—and, for the first time, in public.

She’s always a lady
Just like a lady should be

Samantha looked up at Roger, her eyes glistening. “I love you, Roger Coleman.”

Roger smiles back at her, “Hold that thought until after you’ve experienced this city’s unique rush hour traffic.”

But when they turn out the lights
She’s still a baby to me

Samantha laughed.

’Cause when we get behind closed doors
Then she lets her hair hang down
And she makes me glad I’m a man
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors…

“I love you too, Samantha Bennet,” and with that, Samantha tilted her chin up towards him and kissed Roger.