Bobbie’s Love Letters

Antoinette was home alone, another day for her contemplations to reach beyond the sky net of her now more or less normal life. She is rummaging through one of Lauren’s unpacked wooden chests, the opened vault offering insight into her lover, Antoinette is just thinking she will organize things a bit, when she finds a golden envelop, wrapped nicely with a silken lace. Antoinette admires the wrapping, she unleashes the silk, and within her view captivating letters, at least 62 letters she counts, yes, she decided to count instead of reading first, then she posed herself the moral question, “If I read them am I betraying our trust, is Lauren going to eventually let me read these letters? Should I wait? What if she throws them away before I read them?” Her curiosity helps her decide to see who they are from, they are from Bobbie, Bobbie to her lover. Antoinette does not read any more than that, she quickly puts the works back into the chest, closes it as if definitely for the last time, she mentally notes that the letters do not have a date, they look fresh, they even have a scent, could not be that old, and yet, Lauren had told her that she was her first lover.

That night with Lauren home, over dinner and the usual glass of wine, Antoinette was moody, she wanted to bring the topic to the conversation but could not bring herself to do it. Lauren noticed moodiness, but having had a hard day she opted not to bring the matter to life. Silently the two went to bed, almost without touching each other, and each facing her side of the bed away from the other, the night stood still for a few weeks.

Bobbie, who was Bobbie? I can tell you but I am not sure if I shouldn’t wait till Antoinette and Lauren discuss it, maybe for good reason I shall let Bobbie be silent for now too. It is always safer to follow a pattern.

The next day and the next day after that, Antoinette stared at the wooden chest, the wooden chest stood silent, wooden chests perhaps because of their pirate history have a tendency to keep treasures and secrets for long periods of time; this particular wooden chest seemed content with keeping within something that somehow separated Lauren and Antoinette.

The house became a dueling ring, Antoinette in the house, with the chest, the chest at the center of her grueling attentions, another dinner and another dinner of silence, this went on for about three weeks and then one day things exploded. Antoinette, “Is there something that you want to tell me?” In the middle of a bite Lauren replying, “Something to tell you…” Spaghetti stringing between her teeth and the expanding chasm, “…something like what, that I had a hard day at work or…” Lauren knew that Antoinette was tremendously jealous and so she uttered the following without thinking of the implications, it was just to curtail what she thought her mate might be conjuring with her vivid imagination, “…or do you want me to tell you about a lover or something like that!” And she raised the accent as induced by the breathed air between the two that had undoubtedly huge quantities of dark matter embellishing their lungs.

“You never want to listen, you never want to talk, you keep this silence between us, makes you feel more in control! Well I am not like that, I want to talk things through, there is something eating at us and you don’t want to discuss it because you think it is going to magically fix itself, well it isn’t going to magically fix itself, we have to talk, I want to talk about it, because I love you, and I want our relationship to work and I am willing but you’re not and I can not do this by myself!” Lauren frustrated replied, “Look I am happy in our relationship, I don’t have any problems with it, you’re the one that seems to think we have problems, I have never been happier in my life, so I don’t have to fix anything, why don’t you go see a psychiatrist if that will make you feel better, I personally don’t believe in therapy.”

“See how you are, because you don’t believe in therapy you won’t go with me and it does me no good to go by myself because the problem is within our relationship, I can’t fix it by myself, it won’t do me any good to talk to someone if you won’t go with me!” Antoinette finishing with some starting cries. Then she continues, “we are distant, we haven’t had sex in practically a month, I don’t feel you, you are off somewhere else, I admit that I have been cold, but that is because I can’t open up, and I can’t open up because you are so distant, there was a time when you made me feel so much.” Tears unleashing trickling past her fruitless fingers.

Lauren walks over to her, holds her neck, she gives her a kiss on the forehead, “hey, listen to me, I love you, I love you, I am happy with you, I am in love with us, with us you hear me?” Sobbing Antoinette joins with a few gasps, “Yes, I am so silly, sorry I know you love me its just that sometimes I feel so insecure, I feel that nothing has any seriousness, like I cant grasp anything real.” Lauren holding her hands, breathing near her, talking next to her ear, “We all feel like that at times, there is nothing wrong with that, but you just can’t make it into a problem of our relationship, and more jealousy is not a sign that you love me, it is instead a sign that you are afraid of our love, please, just calm down; think of us; when ever I have problems I think of you and me, and us, and I feel better immediately.”

Antoinette moved her arm and the wineglass went crashing down into crystals. They both took attention and Antoinette, “I am becoming such a klutz.” Lauren laughed, “A beautiful klutz, lets go to bed.”

The two went to bed, in the bedroom was the chest with Bobbie’s letters.

Ok I will tell you about the letters.

Bobbie, Bobbie, was someone that was madly in love with Lauren, she was a nicely husky natural baby face and sedately beautiful woman, she had this very wonderful calm way about her, like she knew just what she wanted, like she would not make any mistakes about her choices in life, that she knew where she was going, that she might have to go at it alone for a while but that she would make it in the world. Such people have an enigmatic attraction, life does not seem complex to them, it is something that they just live through without much doubt. Bobbie, was the daughter of one of Lauren’s mentors, Ralph Andalonol. Ralph had taught Lauren much in the way of detective work, he was, along with Ogle, a first rate mentor, he knew the business of digging up crimes and their criminals, but he had something else, he had been frank with Lauren, he once told her, “this police work is shit Lauren, I never wanted to be a cop, I fell into the labor of it one day and never found my way out of this shit hole. I will teach you, you want me to teach you I will help you become the best, but don’t expect me to tell you that you chose a fine profession or that we are on the side of the good guys. You’re going to see shit here and you aren’t going to be able to tell if the shit is from your guys or the bad guys, that’s the truth here Lauren. You will do well to know that from the start, that way you don’t get any fancy ideas about saving the world and becoming the first cop Wonder Woman.”

Yeap that is exactly how their friendship started, Lauren at the time thought, “Oh another crap spitting disappointed cop.” Later she grew to love him as a friend and mentor, and she realized that his early speeches had trained her in the most difficult art of law enforcement, seeing gray all over the place, seeing gray all over the place. This is where life blurs definitions, where you see the likeness between a judge and a syndicate boss. Where you see the gray relationship between supreme justice and supreme injustice, where the hoodlum in the street learns your heart and you his, where bullets define the only genuine difference between humans, some are dead some are alive. Detective Andalonol, was not here to define the gray line, everything was gray.

He had always wanted to be the captain of a fishing vessel, he thought of himself as a man that had never caught his ship, he had the mariner’s blood, he read the nautical charts with pleasure in his eyes, he even knew how to use a sextant and would use it in his backyard charting the earth’s navigation across the universe strapped on to a solar system. He was Bobbie’s father, he adored her, and cared for her after her mother died in a car accident. So many people die in car accidents; in any given day a metal clump on wheels smashes into pedestrians, churns and crushing their bones, organs and flesh, the noises are subtle, the screams of the driver that perhaps realizes that there is a nightmare that will never sleep, the pedestrian’s tumbling eyes helpless under the wheels going into shock realizing helplessness; what scream can rescue you now when only silence can buy you peace, there before your eyes your mangled body parts, an open wound throwing blood into your face, your favorite shirt an invalid tourniquet, your eyes reading rubber threads, the street severely motionless, the lights, the colors, the passers by, all distorted from this angle. Bobbie’s mother died that way, a painless memory a splinter in her daughter’s brain.

Detective Andalonol wanted his daughter to be the captain of a shipping vessel. He would take her on deep sea fishing excursions, she saw her father struggle with swordfish, reel them in, take a picture with them and then back into the shining sea they went. Her father didn’t have the heart to kill any of the fish that he caught, he was always throwing them back, no matter how big no matter how abundant he always ended up throwing them back into the waters where from they came. Bobbie understood the implications that his behavior implied towards his dream of being a fishing vessel captain, but she was so beautiful of mind, one of those rare types, that could keep all of those comments to herself, her Dad was a good cop, he caught criminals and no fish, and he probably was more a cop than a fisherman but he had to think of himself as a fisherman and she did nothing to discourage this behavior. Naturally he wanted his daughter to be a fisherman, even if that meant getting up at four o’clock in the morning, even if it meant that she would have to endure long periods at sea, away from her loving father, a father that had never remarried and needed his daughter more than she needed him.

One day, one day, Lauren went to Detective Andalonol’s house, to fix herself a shot of whiskey and to drown a bad day at the office, a bad day at the office was usually a shootout that had dead cops, dead civilians, dead criminals, dead all over. She went over, to a beautifully constructed wooden house, it was a sort of modern cabin, large, five bedrooms and yet small, or quaint, lusciously clean, and reeking of comfort from all angles, it had a sauna, a Jacuzzi, a nicely cared for backyard, and within, the furnishings were modest but all so well laid out, that they seem part of the wood fixtures, grown organic furnishings. While they waited for Andalonol to get home, Lauren and Bobbie chatted in the studio. The drinks perhaps made them more honest, they had always had lots in common but nothing in particular, they just liked talking and being together. This day Lauren was frazzled and she had welcomed a much needed hugging session with Bobbie. Comforting as that might have been, and redundant and pointless as it was for Bobbie to tell Lauren that she was never going to be a ship’s captain, as it was the hugging and drinks were nurturing more, and so it came that the two stared at each other, for a brief moment when the aperture of their mutually probing eyes let them know something intimate about each other. Something told them that they loved each other, their souls reached out and told one another that they felt loved, and yet neither Bobbie nor Lauren admitted anything, not a word was spoken. Lauren removed Bobbie’s frazzled hair from her forehead, while Bobbie touched Lauren’s shoulder in a comforting manner.

Then Bobbie, moved Lauren to the couch, gently coerced her to sit and then rushed over to a desk drawer, withdrew some contents, a beautiful golden envelope wrapped with silk, she then, smiling, handed it to Lauren and said, “these are for you,” Lauren was a bit uncertain of what she was accepting, Bobbie noticed and complied with a difficult explanation, “I have always been writing letters to my lover, they don’t have your name because I didn’t know your name, but they are for you, I wanted to give them to you sooner but I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t certain till now that you are my spiritual lover.” There was just one little problem, at this time Lauren still thought of herself as merely a dissatisfied heterosexual, she still thought that it was all still a matter of finding Mr. Right, everything would be good after that; and so she replied, “Oh no, I can’t accept this, I can’t accept this, thank you but no.” And with that her long fingers, palm stretched, pushed the golden envelop away.

Normal people understand rejection but Bobbie, a tomboyish short-haired blond with a confident baby face, blue eyes disposition, was sure of herself, “No, don’t say no, these are for you, don’t worry I don’t expect anything, I wrote them knowing that you wouldn’t expect them, I am happy to give them to you, I am happy knowing that they were not written in vain, that you did show up, I wouldn’t have expected it to be you, but I am certain these are for you,” she paused, smiled, and reasserted herself, “…they are from me to you.” Lauren helplessly accepted the letters and placed them in her purse, taking only a brief moment to acknowledge the gorgeous wrapping.

It was then that “Hello girls how are we?” It was Detective Andalonol, the two saw him entering the room and readjusted themselves, Lauren feeling like she had done something wrong begun to look for an excuse to get out, “Oh I really must go now.” Detective Andalonol unaware of the transpiring emotional cauldron, “I won’t hear of it, you will stay and you will have a few more drinks with us until we forget three dead, two seriously wounded by stabbings, and one that got away, we have to first forget all that Lauren.”

After much comradeship Lauren managed to get out, with a brief moment, to search Bobbie with her eyes, she felt something, something which she liked, she noticed it, and said “Bobbie, I am glad you are trusting me with these letters, I will read them, read them soon.” Bobbie, greeted the warmness with a spiritual smile, Dad noticed nothing.

On the way home, Lauren got a flat tire, she didn’t want to be bothered by anyone, so she pulled over on the side of a very busy freeway, and changed her flat tire for a good one. Occasionally cursing the tire, but really seeming to enjoy the arduous moment.

When she got home Lauren did not read the letters she placed them in her wooden chest, and forgot about them. Forgetting was made easier because Detective Andalonol was killed three months later in one of those bad days. Bobbie moved away, without even telling Lauren where she went.

Then one day, Antoinette opened that wooden chest.