My Deja Vu Lover

My Déjà Vu Lover

PHOEBE MATTHEWS

LostLoves Books

Second edition:

Copyright © by Phoebe Matthews

Cover Design Copyright © by LostLoves Books

First edition by TheWildRosePress

This is a work of fiction. With the exception of well-known historical personages, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

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CHAPTER 1

The first time I saw the accident was on Tuesday afternoon. I was standing with my friend Cyd at the corner of Westlake and Pine, waiting for the light to change to WALK so that we could cross Pine and check the sale racks at Nordie’s before I went to my interview and Cyd returned to her office.

There was nothing unusual about the day. It was typical Seattle late winter, the sky yellow-gray where the low sun tried to shine through the endless cloud cover, the  store fronts dull behind the mist, the sidewalks slick. People hurried, heads ducked, collars turned up, but only a few bothered with umbrellas. In Seattle we try to ignore rain.

I had clerked through the holidays at an exclusive dress shop, then been laid off when sales slowed.

Running my hand across my hair, I could feel the damp film on my long, thick mop and knew that by the time I reached my next interview, my conditioner-tamed curls would have dissolved into frizz. And then all anyone ever saw when they looked at me was blond bimbo. Actually, my hair is a light reddish brown, not blond, but I am short and curvy and have an upturned nose and full mouth and that’s the reaction I get, bimbo. Not a word people say aloud to me but there it is, written all over their faces.

My suit was rain-dotted, my new killer heels water-stained. Cyd ignored the mist as only she could, unaware that it left its sleek sheen on the broad planes of her face. Her gray eyes peered calmly through the streaked lenses of  her glasses. She spoke rapidly, planning a trip for us next spring, the first trip the four of us would take together, explaining we would travel in Macbeth’s car.

Cyd liked to make long range plans. I never planned anything past the next weekend.

Tom’s car would never make it over the pass, she said, laughed, and added, if he could get it started at all. Come on, April, the light’s about to change.

I tried to forget the two job interviews I had endured that morning, polite faces telling me the position was filled, nothing else opening, but do keep in touch. A weekend away, the four of us, sounded good, except the driving part. Deep in my gut I had this terror that filled me with nausea and took away my breath any time I was in a car on anything faster than a downtown street. No idea why. Never been in an accident. But this trip Cyd was planning, east across the Cascades, was months away and so why worry now.

As Cyd spoke, I imagined Macbeth at the wheel, Cyd beside him, Tom and me in the back and that might be okay.

And then I saw the crash.

I looked up at the stoplight. In its place was a palm tree. A blinding dazzle of blue sky, primary blue, the shade I used to color the sky when I was in first grade, was broken by palm fronds atop telephone-pole shaped tree trunks.  I could feel the sun heat, the vision was that realistic, and I smelled a cloying sweet cologne. I wasn’t sure if the cologne was mine or was being worn by the person next to me, a man, but before I could turn and look at him, I saw the oncoming car. Saw, in that other car, the three people who mattered most to me in all the world, Cyd, Macbeth and Tom.

Perspiration popped out on my face. My fingers cramped around the steering wheel. I peered through the sun-streaked windshield. I was driving, unbelieving, numb with fear, my thoughts a mirror of their terrified expressions. There was something different about them and about the car but I could not define it. All I could see, through the turmoil of my fury and horror, were the three pale ovals of their faces, their eyes wide. I saw Macbeth’s arm flash in front of Cyd’s shoulders as if to hold her back, and Cyd’s mouth formed the scream, No!  I saw the palms of Tom’s hands pressed against the windshield as though he could hold the two cars apart.

The man beside me in the car I was driving tried to grab the wheel and turn it, pulling. Pain shot through my wrists as I tightened my grip. He screamed a string of oaths, sound screeching with the tires, anger as hot as the day, my own voice ripping out of me. And somewhere inside me my heart exploded.

Even then, even while I stared at my best friends and my throat muscles cramped to hold back my own screams, I tried to bat away his hands, stop us, stop the car, and my foot jammed down hard on the gas.

And then I was back standing in the rain on the corner of Westlake and Pine, the center of the retail district in Seattle, surrounded by tall old buildings that housed Macy’s and Nordstrom, and by the glass-walled Westlake Mall, by so many other normal everyday sights.

My heart pounded against my ribs. My palms were wet with nervous perspiration. My breath came in quick gasps. Damp-coated people brushed past and cars swished by on the wet street. Overhead the monorail hissed away from the loading platform.

Cyd said, April? What’s wrong?

I was shaking violently in the cold rain. I stared at her but couldn’t speak.

She caught my arm, turned me around, led me across a couple of streets and into Nordie’s, marched me to the escalator. My brain was paralyzed. We rode up several levels, then walked the length of a floor past racks of clothing until we reached the store’s restaurant. It was almost empty now, a little late for lunch, a little early for coffee break. Cyd pushed me firmly into a booth and told me to stay there. I wanted to put my head down on the table but knew that if I did, I would probably pass out and fall off the bench.

Cyd returned with a coffee mug, not easy because this wasn’t a self-service place. She marched toward me in her neatly belted raincoat, a fierce expression on her face. A distressed waitress scurried behind her, but when Cyd turned her head so quickly that her short black hair fanned out and then she glared at the poor woman, the waitress did an abrupt turn away from her. I didn’t try to figure out Cyd’s action. I pressed my palms against the mug and let the warmth seep into my cold hands.

Slowly the space around me came into focus, the wall of booths, the polished tables and chairs in the center, the commotion of customers through the open archways.

Cyd slid into the booth facing me. She tossed her purse on the table between us and her wet raincoat on the seat beside herself, then said, Feeling better?

My teeth stopped chattering so I guessed I was better and nodded. My suit jacket was wool. Mist beaded on it but did not soak through. I could feel moisture sliding through my frizzy hair. Grabbing at the handful of paper napkins that Cyd had dropped on the table, I scrubbed at my face and neck, dried my hands.

Didn’t you bring an umbrella?

She didn’t bother asking why I wasn’t wearing a coat. She knew I never did, not to interviews, because then I’d have to carry it around indoors and I hate doing that.

Had I started out the morning with an umbrella? I think so.

Then you’ve left it somewhere.

No point answering. Obviously, I had lost another umbrella. Like Hansel and Gretel with their bread crumbs, my trails of umbrellas disappeared all over Seattle and I could never track them.

Hope you’re not coming down with flu, she said, her voice softening.

Cyd really was my best and dearest friend, even if we were so different. She was organized and sensible and I admired her tremendously but didn’t even try to imitate. She was everything I wasn’t, tall, slim, her dark hair always sleek and shiny.

No, I’m not sick.

Had anything to eat today? Shall I order lunch? she asked.

No. I stared at her, not knowing how to explain.

As usual, she saw right through me and almost seemed to read my mind. So what spooked you?

Don’t know, I said, then met her gaze. Okay. I saw a car crash. Two cars. Right before we crossed the street. Only the crash wasn’t there, not on Pine, but it was, too, right when we were waiting for the light.

Cyd frowned. There wasn’t any accident.

I know. I know that. But I saw it. I saw palm trees and blue sky and two cars. I was driving one of them.

This was a dream?

I was wide awake. I wrung my folded hands literally, something I had heard of people doing but not actually seen anyone do.

Cyd reached across the table, placed one firm hand on top of my hands. Stopped me. Looked at me with those calm eyes. Yes, I understand, it was kind of a vision, but have you seen it before? Like in a dream, or more likely, one of those recurring childhood nightmares.

No, not like that. Not my imagination. It was real. I was there. I could feel the heat and I could smell, oh damn, aftershave! That’s what it was, he wore aftershave, my dad used to wear that stuff, kind of a heavy sweet smell, and I was driving and there was this guy next to me but I don’t know who he was.

Maybe you’re remembering something that happened long ago.

How could I? I don’t drive, I reminded her.

I was twenty-five years old and had never learned to drive because the truth was, I was afraid of cars and had been for as long as I could remember.

Never? What about high school, driver’s ed?

Didn’t take driver’s ed, I said.

At the table nearest our booth two women, about our ages, leaned toward each other. They were dressed Nordie style, casually expensive, carefully mismatched outfits. One spoke with angry intensity that made her voice carry. I had a veil and Mom decided she didn’t like the way it fit on my hair, and there I was, five minutes before I went down the aisle, Mom with her comb out, messing around and nagging me and I wanted to deck her but, oh, you’ll see, you’ll probably go through the same crap.

Cyd said, April, you were probably in an accident when you were a child. You’ve forgotten.

I was driving. The frantic terror rose in my mind again. I wanted so much to make Cyd understand but I’ve never been good at expressing myself.

She said, Maybe it was your mother driving, maybe you remember her hands on the wheel. You know how nervous you are in cars?  I bet that’s it, you were in an accident, or maybe a near miss, something when you were three or four, something you’ve pushed into your subconscious.

I tried to speak slowly, stay calm, but my voice burned in my throat and turned into a frantic whisper. It wasn’t a memory or a nightmare. That crash was real and I was there. Driving. Not an accident. I wanted to wreck that car. I was furious with the man sitting next to me. I wanted to hurt him. But then I saw you and Tom and Macbeth staring through the windshield of the oncoming car and I didn’t want to hit you. But I couldn’t stop.

Cyd said, Drink your coffee. I’m going to go order lunch. Bet you skipped breakfast, huh? Never mind about that next interview. I’ll call and change it for you.

What about your job? You’ll be late.

I’ll phone and tell then I’ve got ptomaine. We’re so behind, nobody’s going to fire me.

I grasped the edge of the table to keep my hands from shaking. I can’t eat. Listen, Cyd, this happened. Or it is going to happen. I don’t get premonitions, never have, but maybe?

Definitely not a premonition, Cyd said in that flat, confident voice. Tell you what, when palm trees start growing in Seattle, I’ll start to worry.

Macbeth sometimes calls me the waterworks because I am no good at controlling my emotions. I cry through movies, happy or sad, they do that to me, so there I was again, face suddenly burning, hot tears running down my face.

Cyd offered to go home with me but what for? I told her I was probably upset about the morning interviews and I’d be fine. What I didn’t tell her was that I needed the afternoon alone in our apartment pulling myself together, not talking to anyone.

All right, she said, go home and eat something. Get some rest.

CHAPTER 2

So that’s what I did, went home, hung up my wet suit on the shower curtain rod, pulled on sweats. Then I went back out to the front room and turned on the TV and set the sound at blast level. There was nothing on in the afternoon of interest but it created light flickers and noise I could ignore. If I played CDs on the stereo the music would have overwhelmed me, the mood I was in, and left me crying.

Cyd and I had been roommates in college, stumbling over each other’s backpacks, bumping into each other’s open closet doors for two years. When Cyd and the guys graduated four years ago, college ended for me, too, even though I had only made it through three years and had barely enough credits accumulated to account for two years. I was weary of signing up for classes that were filled, or forcing myself to sit at a desk under a strip of fluorescent light committing to memory facts that bored me. And I was sick of staring at blank Blue Books in attempts to create exam answers to questions whose origins evaded me.

The U had fulfilled my requirements. I’d tramped across its wide acre of new bricks surrounded by block-shaped buildings, and jogged the tree-lined paths past its old Gothic-architectured heart. In its crowded housing and musty coffee shops I had found what I wanted.

During my early teens my parents had divorced. I’d been sent off to boarding school and then to college on a trust fund left for me by a grandmother, but what I wanted was family. And that’s what I found with my friends.

So when the three of them graduated from the U, I went with them, renting an apartment on Capitol Hill with Cyd. Gave her an excuse to put off living with Macbeth.

We’re okay for a weekend, she once explained to me, and I thought okay was kind of cold, but judging other people’s sex lives is maybe not possible. If I move in with him, we won’t last three months.

As Tom and I didn’t have a relationship to figure out, that worked. There’d been a series of romantic disasters during those three years on campus. Between brief and sometimes steamy affairs with others, Tom and I had what could only be called casual sex, occasional, wonderful, and never discussed afterwards. Okay, we sometimes discussed sex, but we never discussed our lack of a relationship.

Tom and I liked each other and wanted to remain friends. Does it say something about both of us and our inability to commit to anything if I explain we agreed firmly on one point? Friends lasted, lovers didn’t.

When Tom found another girl, and he always did, guys do, I’d do some private weeping. But there was no point being jealous when I wasn’t willing to play the steady girlfriend role. Had he ever asked?  Sort of, in the middle of lovemaking, and afterwards we both pretended it had never happened.

Cyd and I had three rooms that were taller than they were wide. A bay window peered out toward the street through the tangle of vine maple that covered the old brick exterior. We painted the walls, cabinets, door frames, radiators, and anything else that took paint. Flat white of course. Macbeth, who knew how to do everything and did it well, built bookshelves for our boxloads of books, hung a clothes rod across one end of our closetless bedroom, then wired Cyd’s stereo and mounted the speakers near the ceiling. He repaired the leaking refrigerator and the nonfunctioning stove, then shamed the landlord into paying for all the paint and lumber and rods as well as for the wiring and hardware for the repairs.

Cyd and I scrubbed the nothing-color carpet. For the first month we rolled out our sleeping bags every night. When my next quarterly check from my trust fund finally arrived, we bought twin beds. With her first paycheck and the attached confidence, Cyd added a couch to her credit card. It was long and soft and gray because Cyd loved gray. I bought throw pillows in a mismatch of colors.

Cyd had stood in the center of the room staring at them, the day I came home from a shopping trip with Tom. He followed obediently behind me, his arms so full he could hardly see around the packages. We made a game of ripping off the plastic coverings, dropping them on the floor, and laughed our way into silliness while tossing the pillows at each other and then onto the couch.

And then we noticed silent Cyd.

What’s wrong?  Don’t you like them?

She said slowly, The velvet is nice. But you have one green pillow and a gold bolster and a red cushion and a whatever that is—

Halfway between blue and purple, I said.

Uh huh. And navy and wine. Plus they are all different shapes and sizes. Why?

Hadn’t she looked at the rod that ran the width of our bedroom?  Half of it was hangers with neat gray stuff and the other half was hangers with every color ever invented. At least I was good about keeping my stuff on my side.

Okay, we can take them back, I said.

Can we? Tom asked. We’ve torn off the plastic.

No, no, Cyd said quickly, they’re fine, really.  She had this determined expression on her face, the one she wore when it was time to clean the bathroom. I guess it worked, I guess she decided she could live with the cushions because she never mentioned them again.

Next, Mac had scrounged up table and chairs from somewhere. He was the one who liked to sit on a chair and eat from a table rather than sitting on the floor yoga-style.

Now, with the TV blocking out thinking, I made myself a nest of the velvet cushions on the floor beneath the bay window and worked slowly on a manicure. The concentration I applied to matching the curve of each nail to the other nails kept me comfortably brain dead.

Macbeth banged twice on the front door with his closed fist, causing the door to rattle, and then, in case I might possibly know anyone else who knocked that way, he shouted, April, it’s me!

Come on in! I shouted back.

He used his key. We were always losing ours. Macbeth was our backup in so many ways. And being Macbeth, he flipped on the overhead light as soon as he entered. Tom would have stumbled around in the gloom, no more aware that dusk had settled than I was, but Macbeth always knew where he was, what he was doing, and how it related to the rest of the world.

What’s with sitting in the dark, babe?

I’m not reading, mother, so it’s okay, I won’t strain my eyes.

Grabbing another cushion as he crossed the room, he settled himself on the floor beside me. Cyd phoned. She’ll be working late. She sent me over because she’s worried about you. Something about a bummer day.

Ceiling lights suited Macbeth, have to admit, accenting the neat haircut, clean profile, tailored sports coat, dark slacks. I leaned my head back against the windowsill and treated him like eye candy, not that I would ever tell him so. He was Cyd’s guy.

I’m okay.

Not coming down with anything? He pressed the back of his hand against my