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1:00 p.m.
I felt dirty. I felt used. I was a rat, a fink, a narc.
It didn’t matter that everything that I’d told them was a gigantic figment of my imagination. Nor did it matter that none of it was going to lead to anything or anyone. Their investigation would continue to yield no fruit.
What mattered was that I, Donny Love, had succumbed. They had found my weakest point, the chink in my armour, my Achilles heel. I felt shaky.
This must be how torture victims feel afterwards, I remember thinking. I know, I know, there’s no real comparison, of course, but I think that I was in shock or something.
They had agreed to restore my points, along with “a few extra, as a thank you from the Canadian people”, but I didn’t want to use them now. They were tainted. It would be like Judas going out and spending the thirty pieces of silver. And we all know what Judas decided to do instead.
As the final kicker, when I got home, Allison was gone. She’d taken only one suitcase, which was hopeful, but the note carefully taped to the kitchen table was not:
Donny:
I guess that you forgot that I know how to check the e-mail. You couldn’t resist for even a few hours, could you? Bet you sent that OK to Sharon before I even got to the top of the stairs!
I felt a sick jerk of recognition at that accusation.
I don’t want to talk to you for a few days. I’m going to stay in a hotel, so don’t call my parents or my friends. No one knows that I’ve left you, and that’s the way that I want it to stay, for now.
That one gave me faint sense of hope—if she hadn’t told anyone, maybe she wasn’t sure that it was permanent!
Time for us both to make some decisions.
Allison
She hadn’t started the letter with “Dear” and she hadn’t ended it with “Love”. In all the years that I had loved Allison, she had never left me an angry note. Actually, she had never left me, period. Allison had been loyal and supportive through every crazy scheme, every risky move. She had voiced her concerns, and those more frequently in recent years, but she had almost always been careful not to hurt my feelings.
So, a note with no “Love” in it was brutal.
I didn’t cry, and I know that you’ll think that I was a real bastard for that, but you have to understand that I didn’t really know that she was gone. My brain, designed by God and evolution to ameliorate suffering as much as possible, understood that Allison was not feeling love for me, and that, for today, she was not going to be beside me in the bed, warm and familiar and chatty.
So, I didn’t cry. Instead, I sat down with a beer in front of the computer and did what I seemed to do best. I fucked up my life and the lives of those around me a little bit more.
