Unfinished Business

Jared: part 3

After our previous discussion there were still a lot of things I needed to say to Jared. I was caught off guard and unprepared and wanted to make sure that I hadn’t misrepresented myself. He arrived late to our networking meeting the following week and I met him at the door saying, “Don’t leave after this”. He nodded and went to find a place to sit.

Jared is one of the more popular members of our group. After each meeting, he is always mobbed by people wanting to regale him with tales of their various ailments. It’s death by a thousand cuts of, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” From a distance, it’s almost comical. They crowd around him like lepers begging Christ for a miracle. And he is in fact regarded by many to have supernatural healing powers. 

When the meeting concludes, I busy myself as I wait for him to heal the blind and restore the infirmed. Finally there’s a break in the crowd and I make my way across the room. He says, “Would you like to continue our discussion?” I nod and say, “I think we have more to talk about “. He agrees and this time it was decided that we will have our conversation in private at his office. 

When we get there, he pours each of us a glass of water and while he’s at it I ask him, “Hey, how did you know the answer to ‘what do you tell a man with two black eyes’?”

About a month earlier I was the scheduled presenter for our networking group. At the end of my presentation I had some prizes for those who could answer my trivia questions. Already out of time and in a panic to finish up, my questions were ridiculous. I asked things like, “What day is it?” and “What color is this?” Growing increasingly anxious to wrap it up but still having one more prize to give away, I remembered a joke from the movie Be Cool, which came out in 2005. Last question, “What do you tell a man with two black eyes?” Silence falls as everyone wonders out what the fuck I’m taking about.

Up until this point, Jared had been catching up on hundreds of unanswered text messages and didn’t appear to be listening or paying attention in the slightest. Without missing a beat, or even looking up, he says, “Nothing. He’s already been told, twice.” The crowd erupts and I can’t hide my delight as I walk over and give him a high five. It was a beautifully scripted moment that wasn’t planned at all. 

Jared had wanted to do our first follow up coffee talk after that meeting but my car was at Ray’s shop and I had invited a guest who was also my ride. Just one more in a series of thwarted attempts to get ourselves sorted out. 

I am seated in a comfy armchair and Jared is down the hall getting our water. He calls back to me, “It’s a military joke that’s usually more offensive than the version you told.”  

“I’m sure everyone thought we planned it.”

“Well it certainly looked that way”, he says while handing me a red Solo cup. 

I set my water down on the little table that is next to my chair and silently rehearse the speech I had come here to deliver. There are chairs close to me but Jared opts to sit on the other side of the room. Before I can begin he fumbles his cup, splashing water on his lap and the floor. It’s funny but I try not to laugh and instead say, “just set that anywhere”. He’s obviously flustered by this betrayal of his ultra calm demeanor and says, “excuse me, I’m nervous”, while getting back up to go dry himself off. 

Well that’s interesting. Christ the Redeemer is nervous, because of me. 

Jared returns with a fresh glass of water and sits back down more carefully this time. 

I had come prepared. Wearing a skirt and high heels, I sit back in my chair, legs crossed and arms extended on the arm rests. I feel like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. 

“Just so you know, I didn’t come here initially with any kind of ulterior motive. I honestly just thought we were going to have a normal coffee talk.” 

He says, “Oh no, neither did I. I thought it was strictly professional.”

He was starting to say something else but I interrupted, “My spider sense was going off almost immediately though. We were in that room (the one with the wooden desk) and I could see your thought bubble.” 

He looks concerned and I reassure him, “You didn’t do or say anything even slightly inappropriate.” 

He asks, “Was it because you saw an opportunity to do something without getting caught?” 

“No, I just knew what was going to happen”. 

At this moment I notice he’s regarding me with an expression I hadn’t seen before. It’s him but he looks very different, as if the theatrical lighting on his face had changed. Well hello, unmasked Jared, your doctor-face is missing.

He says, “I anticipated that we would be having this conversation and was getting hard last night thinking about it. I was watching you walk around during the meeting and couldn’t stop wondering if you were wearing panties.” His voice spikes up a little and it’s an inflection that I later come to realize is masking a strong emotion. This makes me smile and I say, “I am, but it’s ok”, meaning that they could come off at any time.

Not wanting to get derailed, I continue with my planned speech. “When I said before that being good at flying under the radar wasn’t necessarily something I was proud of, it wasn’t entirely accurate.” 

He looks intrigued.

“The truth is that I’ve been doing this my entire adult life and I’m very good at it. I’ve had multiple ongoing relationships since I was in high school. I had one that lasted over twenty years and another that’s been ongoing for seventeen and, of course, plenty of shorter ones that have come and gone. Where everyone falls is usually just a matter of timing and they’re each their own thing. If one of them ends, it is because of problems in that relationship and not because of any outside influence.”

My heart is pounding just a little but I’m doing my damndest to be calm and cool, maintaining eye contact, speaking deliberately, watching him watching me and seeing his wheels turn. 

“And you can trust me, by the way. Whatever’s on your mind, just say it. Believe me, I’m in no position to judge you.”

Jared considers this for a moment and asks, “Did you ever try to stop?”

“I wouldn’t say that I tried to stop but there have been times when I wasn’t actively doing it. The problem is that my mind works a certain way, making spider webs out of everything, whether it needs to or not. Even when I’ve made an attempt to ‘be good’, I inevitably end up bored and restless”. 

Jared says, “For years, I would hook up with girls that I met on the internet and never give it a second thought. It didn’t bother me at all but lately I’ve been feeling conflicted about it.” 

I’m a little alarmed and say, “I would never do that, it’s way too dangerous. When I said that fucking with amateurs will ruin your life, those are the people who are going to take you down.” 

And as if to prove my point, he recounts several instances of these encounters going south, including one that ended with an organized extortion attempt.

What the fuck?

I say, “You can’t be doing shit like that because every one of them is now an unaccounted for loose end that could climb out of the woodwork at any time.”

To the average fly on the wall, this is a very weird conversation.

“That’s not how I operate and I am not a loose end. When I was younger, I would do things just for the scandal but now I only make a move when I feel there’s a genuine connection, it’s the only thing that interests me.” 

I can see I’ve jumped the gun a bit. He doesn’t disagree but it’s made him nervous. I change the subject.

“From where I’m sitting, it looks to me like you’re unhappy in your marriage but you’re trapped because of the kids and because of the stability needed to run both your businesses. If you ‘peace out’ now, it’s going to seriously fuck up your shit.”

He says, “It would destroy my kids.” 

“Yes, that’s part of your shit that would get fucked up. I’ve survived a long time because I play by certain rules of engagement. Whatever happens between us, stays between us. I would never attempt to drag your family into it because there’s no way for me to do that without exposing myself as well. And you will do the same.”

Being former military, he recognizes and appreciates the logic of my thinking. I am a stellar friend but also a wickedly fierce adversary. He won’t fuck with me, I already know that. 

He says, “So, are we going to do this?”

Me: “Of course we are”

Him: “Well not today, I have to teach a class in 5 minutes. Next week?”

We agree on making it happen the following week.

The phone is ringing because his students are across the way locked out of their classroom. 

Yet again, the clock has run out just when things were getting interesting.

I want to leave him with something to think about and also show that I’m serious so I get up from my chair and cross the room to where he’s standing. Pressing my body against him, hard, I place my hand on the back of his head and kiss him. He kisses me back and we’re almost greenlit until he remembers that he really does have to get going. I know he won’t be able to focus on the business at hand for the rest of the afternoon and it makes me feel a little better about the gnawing uneasiness and persistent sense of unfinished business that continues to plague me.