Haunted
Corey Mesler
April 2006
Even when I watch TV
There’s a hole where you used to be.
(John Lennon)
April 2006
Even when I watch TV
There’s a hole where you used to be.
(John Lennon)
Start the story with its protagonist’s name: Bob Plumb. Start with the crux of his problem, the grit asking its oyster to pearl: Bob Plumb is haunted.
He thinks he is haunted.
Say this: he lives by himself. Because his wife left him.
Her name was Honey, really Honey. Given name. Honey Plumb was, by all accounts, a beautiful woman, a leading light in life’s drama. She was accustomed to being center stage, when she was younger, for most of her days, when she was Honey Moser.
Why she married Bob is a mystery, one of life’s mysteries. He came along at a time when she was floundering a bit. She had been dumped by a man who had just passed his bar exam. Honey had thought, she had been led to think, that her life was achieving shape through the fast-track success plan that graduating from law school represents. Honey Moser thought she was about to marry a successful, wealthy man. This man, this new lawyer, married someone else. Just like that. Honey cursed herself for planning, for attempting to plan the future. She knew better.
And suddenly, there in her path was this innocuous, fairly attractive man named Bob Plumb, a teacher of English at a private girl’s school. Bob Plumb had nice shoulders, a way of walking that was both hesitant and confident. A bounce.
Bob Plumb was also coming out of a relationship, a sorry relationship with a fellow teacher, a young woman named Linn Bass. Linn, with an i. Bob was looking moony, standing in Honey Moser’s path, looking like a man who had just been kicked in the stomach.
It was in the grocery store, this path, the one that contained both Honey Moser and Bob Plumb. Bob was caressing casabas. He had no idea why he was feeling them, rapping on their firm fruitiness like a spirit knocks on a table. But Bob was not thinking about casabas, their fruitiness, their secrets beneath the skin. Bob was thinking about Linn and her impossibly soft crotch and how, once he was welcome there and now would be welcome there no more. And Bob was thinking that this would haunt him for the rest of his days and, looking ahead because we can, we say, yes it will. Let’s not foreshadow; let’s return to the concrete moment in the produce aisle of Schnuck’s grocery store.
"What are you doing?" Honey Moser asked, smiling her sucky-calf smile.
Bob looked up as if the Lord had tapped him on the shoulder.
Honey Moser stood there in the light, a glimmering eidolon.
"I have no idea," Bob answered honestly.
"Put it down and walk away," Honey said, tinkling.
Bob thought perhaps that it was time to smile, to chance a smile.
He moved his mouth in a shuttering rictus.
Honey Moser squinted, shifting her lovely weight.
"Sorry, yes," Bob said, putting the casaba down and stepping away from both it and Honey Moser.
"Ok," Honey said, beginning to roll away from this awkward man, this mooncalf.
"You’re lovely," Bob said. He just said it.
Honey Moser turned now, her full-on radiance blinding. A simple key, a lucky stab: she had never been called lovely before. Many synonyms but not that particular modifier. It pricked her like a fairy-tale spindle.
"Funny man, odd-duck," Honey said.
But she was smiling.
"Yes, sorry," Bob said again. "I’m, I’m beggared, jetsam. This is what’s left of a man once loved."
"She broke your heart."
"Yes, she did."
"Join the club," Honey said.
"No," Bob said without thinking. "Not you–"
"Oh, yes. Left behind like a sinner at the rapture."
That night Bob and Honey had their first date. They went to a Cuban restaurant near Bob’s home. Afterwards she did what babes-in-the-woods do. They assuaged their simple, human loneliness with contact, sweet, fleshly contact.
A month later they were man and wife.
Rick Pozgar was Bob Plumb’s best friend. A writer who worked in a bookstore, Rick was the kind of sounding board, empath that makes for long-term friendships. Bob loved Rick and Rick loved Bob. Sometimes they even said it.
Rick could not believe that Bob had married before Rick had even met the woman. When they finally got together, Rick and his girlfriend, Sandra, and Bob and Honey, the conversation was warm and lively. Rick liked Honey immediately and Sandra and Honey went off during the evening, into the kitchen to build a bond that males could never understand. Honey and Sandra had coffee the next day. They talked lovingly about their men, their funny habits, their goony love affair with each other, even about them sexually.
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