A New Pecking Order
by Douglas Young
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
“Camellia, I think an airline pilot counts as quite a catch,” he offered.
“Well, they definitely knew how to wine and dine me,” she conceded, “and we did make some terrific times. But they were all married and either wouldn’t leave the wife or I didn’t cotton to becoming Miss Stepmom.”
“Have there been no decent guys who weren’t pilots... or married?” He barely suppressed a laugh, and she elbowed him a little harder with a grin as they came upon a creek and began following it downstream.
“Not really. I mean, most were full of flash and fun, but nothing enduring, and I now realize that was my own fault. I’ll put it this way. My rap sheet of ‘bad boy’ beaus got so long that I even switched teams a few years back.” She exhaled smoke and looked at him with a sly smile. Seeing his furrowed brow, she bent forward with a giggle.
“Your innocence makes you all the cuter, Raddy. Though you’re still a tad naïve for a lawyer, no matter how small the town.” She chuckled with a raised eyebrow. “Ahem. I figured since the straight road wasn’t leading me anywhere, why not veer off onto the dyke path?”
“You went down a path to a dike?” He appeared confused as she stopped and looked at him.
At last unable to hide his grin, she tickled his belly. “Bravo.” She nodded. “I bet you’ve got a real fine poker face in court, too.”
He winked at her. “So are you... still on ‘the dyke path’?” he asked with a look of concern.
“’Fear not,’ thou fine heterosexual man,” she trumpeted before he took her hand to help her step over a large tree that had fallen across the creek. After they climbed over it, he kept hold of her hand.
When he looked at her face, she continued talking as if nothing had happened. Oh, if my ninth-grade self could see me now, what hope that would have given me, he reflected. What a whole new outlook on life that could have spawned.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she qualified herself. “I had some pleasant times with chicks and, unlike most guys, none ever cheated on me—”
“That you know of, he interjected. I’ve handled some divorce cases and, trust me, all kinds of fascinating information can — and usually does — come out,”
“Point well taken, dear, and I’ll withdraw the remark about your naïveté.” She kicked a pine cone into the creek. “But there was just so much more drama with chicks. Ugh. The endless analyzing of every little thing. Too many emotional ups and downs. Imagine all the normal mood swings with a typical chick but doubled.”
“No, thanks,” he said shaking his head and waving a hand before holding her arm as they stepped onto some wet rocks gleaming in the moonlight at the water’s edge.
“I mean, no offense, babe,” she asserted, “but men are so simple. As Mae West said, ‘Men are like linoleum floors. Lay ’em right, and you can walk all over them for years.’ Mae’s my spirit guide.”
Chuckling, he asked, “But was the relative lack of emotional turmoil the only thing you missed about guys?”
“Ahhh. Ever the smooth and subtle one, Mr. Attorney.” She smiled at him. “The sex—”
“Now I wasn’t necessarily referring to that,” he interrupted.
“Oh, yes, you were.” She smiled. “That smooth lawyer schtick can work in court, but you can’t fool me, babe,” she announced before inhaling her cigarette. “Hooking up with chicks was still a good time, but it just never had the oompf of getting it on with guys. It was pleasing enough, sure, but it always felt incomplete.
“I mean, the first time I hooked up with a guy, I was like, this is it! But after each roll with a gal, it was always, this is it? Something was always missing. Acceptable, but like a roller coaster ride with no hills and thrills, a pizza with no pepperoni, or a barbeque sandwich with no meat.”
“Pun intended?” He looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Hey, Mr. Innocent got that,” she replied, grinning.
Scratching the top of his head, he gave his best Stan Laurel smile. “So,” he began, “after you got back on the straight and narrow heterosexual path, did you finally find a good man? Ever get close to marrying anyone?”
After a pause while he admired the moonlit waters of the winding creek cradled by overhanging branches, he turned to her. “Only one,” she finally answered with a faraway voice and the slightest sigh before looking at the stars, taking a drag on her cigarette and tossing it in the water.
Realizing he could barely hear the party’s music and seeing her stare at the ground with a serious face amidst another long pause, he squeezed her hand. “Camellia, I’m sorry if I touched a nerve.”
“Don’t be,” she remarked and patted his hand. “There was one fellow — just one, mind you — who I actually thought I might spend my life with. He was one of only two guys I ever lived with and the only one I even gave up my own place for. We were both twenty-eight and just completely clicked, guessing each other’s thoughts, finishing the other’s sentences, always wanting to do the same things — well, almost always. He could be so funny, too, was wicked smart and really successful as the computer programmer for a good-sized business. Never even looked at another gal and truly loved me.”
“He sounds dreamy,” Radford observed as she lit another cigarette.
“He was,” she remarked wistfully while exhaling smoke. “But since nobody’s perfect, I suppose he had to have at least one flaw, too, right? Well, as great as his virtues were, I guess his downside had to be big as well, and it was: he abused drugs.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” Radford remarked as she gave him a fleeting forced smile.
“Yeah, me, too,” she lamented before taking a drag. “He thought he could handle them, and he convinced me. I mean, he was fully functional doing all that complex computer crap for a large firm and still able to smoke as much weed and snort as much blow as he pleased. I still thought he did too much and told him so. But then I was partying with him, too, just not nearly as hard. What I didn’t know is that he was also doing heroin.”
“Wow,” Radford murmured.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “But dog if he wasn’t still able to keep juggling it all, and right to the very end. My year living with him was the happiest I’d ever been.” She took another hit off her cigarette. “And then I woke up one morning, reached over, and felt this cold blob.”
Radford stopped to face her while she stared at the water. “He was dead,” she said evenly.
“Oh, Camellia. I’m ever so sorry. I had no idea. If you’d rather not—”
“Thanks, but no, I think it might help. I haven’t talked about him with anyone in quite a while. Anyway, I called the ambulance but I knew he was gone, which the paramedics confirmed. I found his secret kit with a syringe and spoon and the whole works hidden in a shoebox in his closet. I had no idea he was on smack. So he ultimately fooled me, too.”
She steered them down another path and soon they entered a moon-lit meadow where the stars seemed to shine more brightly to illuminate the pine, oak, and dogwood trees surrounding them.
“And before the shock could even wear off, that’s when the nightmare really began,” she continued in a louder, angrier voice. “There was a police investigation and I got questioned — grilled, more like it — I don’t know how many times. It made the papers, and I had to get lawyered up. If I’d ’a known you were a lawyer, you sure would ’a heard from me. Anyway, there was weed, coke, and smack in the house, but because Seth’s was the only name on the lease, I passed all the drug tests — thank God — and had no track marks. Plus, since the district attorney felt sorry for me losing my boyfriend, he didn’t prosecute me for possession.”
“Thank Heaven for that,” Radford observed.
“Indeed. It definitely got me to stop using drugs. That’s for dang sure, all except for my trusty coffin nails.” She inhaled again.
“Camellia, did you get some support from anyone in all this mess?”
“Mom helped, some. She did, though not without ragging on me again about still being ‘a bum magnet’ getting involved with ‘a druggie.’” Sighing heavily, “And I guess that’s fair. But what do you do when everything else about someone just seems so right and you love him — maybe even more because you know he’s messed up and you want to help him?”
“I sure hope his family was grateful to you for sticking with him to the end,” Radford remarked.
“Ha! They hated me. Well, his siblings were okay. They knew what an addict their brother was and that I was actually a stabilizing force, which is kinda funny. But his parents were in total denial about him and, to be fair, I guess I was, too, to some extent. Still, they actually blamed me for his death. They had the gall to claim I got him to use all those drugs and then did nothing until it was too late the night he died. They even threatened to sue me.”
“Oh, Camellia,” he said putting his arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and they stopped in the middle of the field.
“For a long time, I blamed myself, too, for not waking up in time.”
“Camellia, that’s utterly unreasonable. Please believe me,” he implored. “He was the heroin-user, not you. You didn’t even know about it. And, as savvy as I think you are, he sure must have gone to a whole heap of trouble to hide it from you, too. And you were asleep that night. Plus, he was a big boy. Twenty-eight, no less. It had long been his responsibility to man up and face his problem. Not to be mean, but he was hardly considerate hiding such an addiction from you.”
“Yeah, my Prince Charming wasn’t so just right after all. Still, it hurt so bad, Radford — the worst pain of my life — and, when I think about it, it still does.”
“Of course,” he stated and gave her a full hug which she eagerly returned and would not relinquish. He wished he knew the words to offer the most solace, but was at a loss. Nothing was said for a couple of minutes as they continued holding each other.
Illuminated by a cloudless moon, he cherished the azaleas, gardenias, and honeysuckle vines all around them in full bloom. How he relished their competing aromas and the high-pitched chorus of chirping birds and crickets. Is this the most surreal moment of my life? he mused.
Though feeling slightly guilty, he was overwhelmed by a powerful sense of warmth and recalled his last hot bath years before when recovering from minor surgery. But now he felt so much affection, and what he wanted to believe was a genuine connection. He had never gotten so close to someone in so short a time.
When she quietly began to weep, he gently stroked her head and back, still struggling to find the right words. She shivered and drew him tighter.
As awful as it was recalling her life’s worst chapter, Camellia felt better having shared her anguish. She also figured a lot of the present pain was fueled by how deeply disappointed and hurt she was by several classmates at the party, especially ex-boyfriends.
But her spirits had soared with Radford as she was thrilled to sense a close bond with someone, particularly a man, since she had not dated anyone in many months, a record for her. That everything was happening so fast with a person she barely noticed in school was all the stranger yet still both exciting and refreshingly comforting.
Unlike other dating relationships that had progressed suddenly, it was a significant relief knowing that, should this become a romance, she was with someone she harbored no misgivings about. Ever since her nightmare ending with Seth, this requirement was non-negotiable.
“Camellia,” Radford began, “as terrible as the tragic ending of that relationship was, it’s over and will only grow ever dimmer as it fades ever farther in your rearview mirror. But that doesn’t take away any of the good times and even joy you got to share with someone really special for a whole year. I know it’s real easy for me to say this, and maybe it’ll take years for you to accept, but how many folks ever find anyone with whom they’re so simpatico? At least you’ll always have that.”
Copyright © 2025 by Douglas Young
