Dana and I were looking at bathing suits, rifling through racks of tops and bottoms and other various types of clothing.

"How long have you known Eric?" she casually asks me.

"Uhmmm, about two and half years now. We met when he was on a business trip here two years ago in March." The air conditioning in the shop was on overdrive, the hangers drag screeching across the chrome stands and clink against one another over and over again in a steady rhythm.

"Are things serious between you?" She glances towards me and continues circling the round as she pulls one unacceptable suit past her gaze after another.

"Well we've seen each other on and off. I've seen him in Atlanta, California, Charlotte, and here again. Every time I think we're through it just persists, and while I'm crazy about him, how realistic is it with the distance between us? I know he's always had other women in his life so we aren't exclusive. What's a girl to do?" I shrugged and smiled at her, being casual about it all, and I keep sliding hangers as she turns and starts to depart.

"Oh yeah, I know what you mean." She says coyly.

Something about the way she says it, the sly sideways glance she gives me, makes me think she knows what I mean in particular with Eric.

"Have you and Eric been together?" I cautiously ask her.

"Oh yeah, but it was a while ago, not recently." She waved her hand away as though it meant nothing to her.

Now that I think of it, she never looked me in the face when she said it. She keeps shopping. "You know what an absolute jerk he can be. He's so self absorbed, totally enamored with himself."

"Well, he is a man." I act as though it's casual to me as well; never mind the letter and this visit, or my hopes and dreams. Inside I feel as though she's just humiliated me to the core no matter what my external reaction. What could I have possibly said in his defense? Not much.

I remained silent, for a minute longer as we moved on to another rack and she was distracting herself so as not to appear overly interested in my response. "I think it's all over but the fanfare, in a lot of ways. I want to get married, have a family; I don't think Eric is ready to give me that." We went on shopping, and we didn't talk about Eric anymore.

I wasn't very happy about what she said about having been Eric's lover. There was an uncomfortable familiarity in this transaction. Elaine's saunter towards

Eric on the field; Gerald's intimation that he was allowed to have his intimacies that excluded all women, Eric's asking for reprieve of my letting him go after the revelation of other lovers to me, and that had been going on for more than two years now. I wanted more than the casual comfort of each other, I wanted it all.

This incident really angered me in a way I had not been before. It was one thing to be with me, and have his customer here. But did he really have to ask ME to take HER shopping if he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her?

For the first time I felt used by him and I'd had it. We finish the shopping trip with my being nonchalant about what she shared with me. I'd as much as ended it already hadn't I? What difference did it make? I'd had other lovers too, and would again wouldn't I? It really just confirmed what I thought I should do in the first place.

Finally Dana is getting out of my car to return to her hotel. I'd driven between my apartment and her hotel so many times that week I was practically on autopilot. She is gathering her many bags, as she comments, "It's just like him to think he can get away with having two lovers shop together without discovering it isn't it?"

Sealing the fate she was bestowing, the end of my tolerance of the status quo, "Yeah, unfortunately, it seems like it is Dana. Good luck with the show, and your new product. I hope it goes just the way you want it to."

"Thanks for taking me shopping Marissa; I'd never have found this great suit without you!"

Even as angry as I felt, I was not going to confront Eric about it. I was cool towards him the rest of our visit.

"How'd the shopping trip go?" he says distractedly as he's starting to get his things together. He's leaving the next day. He's been here a whole week and not a word about "us". Nothing. I do not want to be the one to bring it up all over again, and it sort of aches the whole idea of having put this out there and letting him come here. I felt like his free hotel and concierge.

"Oh she's a real joy Eric, a real joy. I was never so happy to get someone out of my hair in all my life."

There's something about my tone, and I haven't greeted him, kissed him, and flirted at all, obviously I'm irritated if not angry.

He looked at me surprised, paused, and chose not to take the bait. He regrouped. "She seems to have dampened your mood considerably."

"Yes. She has that effect, doesn't she?" He didn't inquire as to why I might be inclined to be so b.i.t.c.hy towards him after the shopping trip with Dana. He never intuited any communication between us or a particular problem.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door. While I readied for dinner and I thought, 'If he really wanted to talk about "us" he'd bring it up. If it is important to him to salvage or develop what we have between us, he'll take care of it.'

Yet, he didn't. I don't know what he was or wasn't aware of. I don't know if he sensed a change, I don't know if he cared, I don't know if he was relieved I wasn't pushing the relationship issue.

We had a light dinner, I was quiet, and he was avoiding our promised discussion. I was too stubborn to bring it up again, to uncertain of him and what I wanted anymore. When we went back to my place, he packed and I took care of a few details I'd let slide for the week. We had to go to bed early for him to catch a 6:00 am flight back to the west coast. We made love but it wasn't memorable, and I didn't sleep worth a d.a.m.n knowing this romance wasn't going to be salvaged, fully explored, and that it was really over this time.

In a way I was relieved it was almost over.

So he left, and that was that. Or once again, I thought it would be.

Chapter 15.

As the summer pa.s.sed and fall settled into the muggy South my contact with Eric was minimal. I heard from him a few times after he got back to California but I determined I'd let it slide and forget about whatever fantasies I had of turning our love affair into something permanent. Not that I didn't want him, but the entire exchange with Dana had given me resolve to let him go once and for all.

I moved from the little apartment in Buckhead to take on a more serious commitment towards my completing my conversion, and to immerse myself in the Jewish community. I had a new roommate, a dear friend and when everything else changes, your focus changes and I thought of Eric less often and never with any ideas towards a future we might share together.

Within a few months David came back to Atlanta for a wedding of a mutual friend, and when I found him at my door, evidently working out on a regular basis, his long hair shining in the son, we reunited for the third and final time. Of course, Eric casually warned me not to indulge this fantasy again, and with resignation threw his hands up in the air when I did.

Almost a year and a half had pa.s.sed from the last time I'd seen Eric when David finally asked me to marry him. The shiny diamond that was on my left hand would grasp my attention and fill me with happiness every fifteen seconds. I thought I'd finally resolved our issues that I'd have a real family to belong to.

While I hadn't spoken to Eric in the better part of that past year, Eric was the only man I felt the need to tell I was going to marry David. I'm not sure why really; it just seemed that our friendship and our connection remained deep enough, and our pattern of staying connected strong enough, to tell him that it really was over forever. So I called him.

"Oh Eric guess what I have on my finger???" I gleefully asked.

"What?" he said it, not quite with trepidation, but surely he knew it was a likely event by now.

"It's a diamond ring!! David took me out for dinner on the 23rd and we were sitting at our table looking over the city when he handed me this card and a little box. I thought it would be earrings you know? But it was an engagement ring! I was so excited!"

"Obviously you said yes then..." he said dryly.

"Did I say "Yes"?" I asked incredulously, "Of course I said yes." I replied "Girrrrrrl, you really shouldn't do this. It's a really, really, REALLY bad idea. You know this man has never really made you happy and never really will."

That was debatable; we'd had our tender moments. I didn't respond, but it did dampen my enthusiasm.

He continued, "I'm not saying that 'I love you and marry me instead.' I am saying you shouldn't marry him, you should find someone else."

"Well Eric, I didn't tell you so you would ask me to marry you instead of David."

"It's not that I don't care for you, I do. I'm not ready now, wasn't ready before and besides, you're half crazy anyway..."

"HA HA HA. Well I didn't expect you to jump for joy. I just thought I needed to tell you, no one else, just needed to tell you."

"Well, even if I think I'm right, I hope I'm wrong and that you will be very happy with David; even if he is an a.s.s-hole."

It didn't really make me feel good. I didn't really know his motivation at the time, though now I think he was just being honest, and recognizing the authenticity that lived between us.

And so, I completed my conversion to Judaism and married David, and it was truly the happiest day of my life.

I don't think I thought of Eric on my wedding day and probably not very often until later when it became clear that every promise David ever made was an empty lie designed to manipulate me into giving him whatever he wanted. Suddenly the marriage was becoming a very lonely place for me, and I found myself recounting the relationship with Eric as though it were lost in some fashion that I might have been able to prevent or remold into a different outcome.

The truth be told, while there were other men I cared for and spent more time with, once I married they were forgotten. But I never forgot Eric as my lover, or my friend, and this I tried mightily to do. The connection with him was too hard even for me to put into words and it had a way of making me feel isolated and alone in an acute manner. It would echo in the memory of my reaching for his hand quietly north of Santa Barbara or the feel of the wind and smell of the surf on the beach in Carmel, or in the confidences he whispered to me lying in his bed so long ago in the little bungalow on the harbor.

Chapter 16.

One afternoon during the first year of my marriage the strangest thing happened. I was making sales calls to life insurance companies. A man answered one of my many calls, and we had a lovely conversation. The connection was easy and light and he had a kind, wry wit. After a long while, I was taking his name and address he told me his full name; Saul Davis. I said, "I was very much in love with someone with your last name once. His name was Eric."

"Oh?" Laughingly he says, "My son's name is Eric."

"Well my Eric was Eric Ashley Davis, and he was named after his aunt and uncle who died in a car wreck the night before he was born."

"That's not your Eric Ashley, that's MY Eric Ashley" said an incredulous Saul.

Unbelievably, I was on the phone with Eric's father! I can't even imagine what the odds of that occurring might have been. When Eric's father revealed this amazing coincidence to me, I simply, quietly said, "I was once very much in love with your son."

"He's an easy man to love.", and it was true, he was easy to love.

"Yes, he was."

Suddenly there was a thread of information between myself and Eric once again and it was delivered less than a year after I'd told him good bye in order to marry David. A coincidence such as this? Of course Saul was bound to tell Eric about our telephone acquaintance. A few short weeks and late one afternoon the phone rings when I'm alone in the little studio office I shared with David.

"Hey Marissa, it's Eric, Eric Ashley Davis. How's married life? Are things going relatively well?"

They say that you cannot tell your heart what you want, that your heart will tell you. My heart was suddenly pounding in my chest and I was worried I'd be breathless when I spoke.

"Eric! Hey! Well it's going pretty well I guess, all things considered." I didn't share my disappointment in the honeymoon trip; how David's s.e.xual appet.i.te couldn't seem to be satiated unless he found some way to denigrate me during that week. That he felt distant immediately and that I was struggling being away from my friends and my family in Atlanta, or that David had made up the song "Atlanta Is a Cesspool" to comfort me in my loss, or that he constantly called me Mary, and I hated the name."

"Is he working any harder than he was before the wedding?" I could almost see the look on his face in my minds eye. As though he knew that David's apathy towards occupational effort would never dissipate.

"Well, I had the shock of discovering that he had never written a check before, five days after we got back from our honeymoon...and that totally took me by surprise."

"You've got to be kidding me." Eric laughed uproariously.

"Nope. But he's learning a lot. I just really didn't have any idea how much he needed to know."

"I'm here in town" he changed the subject, "I have a number of customers across the river from you. Come and see me." I could hear it in his voice, not that he a.s.sumed I would come and see him, but that he genuinely hoped I would.

"Eric, I can't do that. You know I can't do that." I annoyed myself by being flattered and disappointed myself by actually tossing around a few ideas about how I might be able to go, lying to myself about my attraction to Eric.

"Well bring David with you then." Eric says innocently, as though I only imagined what I thought I'd heard in his voice.

"Oh yeah, that would go over very well. I won't even make it to a year married!" I laughed. "I really can't make it. We're glued to the hip, and he would never understand my wanting to remain friends with you."

"Ok, ok. I'll just have dinner on my own then. Nice little town you live in, where should I go?"

"Mmmmmm, I don't know. So sorry I can't play Amba.s.sador again... There's a few good rib and seafood places down on the river. David asked me to marry him down there. Food's good, service is good; it's close to your hotel. Try Mike Fink's."

"I think I'll have ribs then, though I wish you'd be there..." his voice trailed off.

"You call all your old girlfriends while you travel?" Boy s.l.u.t, I thought, he'd turn my marriage inside out for absolutely nothing.

"Well, a few, yeah, I keep in touch. I like to keep up with you and Katrina. I was nuts about you both, just don't know which one of you is crazier."

"What about Elaine, she certainly tries hard enough?" I suppose I could have left that alone.

"At that she does, she certainly does. We keep seeing each other on and off. I just don't think it's going to work out though."

"You should spare her the agony of unfulfilled desire Eric. It's cruel, wanting you and not having you, don't you know?"

"Uh huh. I see how you're suffering without me. You sure you won't come and see me?" One final roll of the dice.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Take care Eric." I was proud of myself for letting it go, I felt stronger.

"You too...you too." And he said good bye with a click.

For the next few years I knew through Saul how Eric was and what he was doing. In all honesty I'm sure I called on Saul much longer than I needed to just to hear little bits of information. Eric would call periodically if he was in town and we'd always have the exact same conversation we had before. When email became widely available he'd write now and again and my heart would betray me with its hard thump in my chest each time I heard his name, his voice or saw his name in the inbox.

Eventually Saul told me that Eric had finally gotten married. It had been a long time since I'd spoken to Saul or heard from Eric either. I was reasonably happy with David and our business life was going well too. I continued to convince myself that Eric was just a highlight in my former life.

I learned that he'd moved to Atlanta of all places, and knowing the irony of his being there after I left always bothered me more than I wanted to admit to myself, much less to David. I lost track again when Saul no longer used the kinds of services my company provided and continued sales calls were no longer appropriate. Not knowing what happened to Eric sort of bothered me, but I wasn't willing to compromise my marriage by deliberately finding out what happened with him. I wanted my marriage to work, and I loved my husband.

Chapter 17.

A year or more had pa.s.sed by, and one afternoon I was working, absorbed in the operation of a thriving business I loved and was so happy running.