My Deja Vu Lover Read Free Page B

Tom, who was a fair cook, put together a hot meal while I, who wasn’t, turned off the TV and turned on the stereo and poured the wine.                  
       We sat on the floor in the front room, stretched out among the pillows and bolsters we had dragged off the couch. Light from the kitchen doorway threw a patterned strip up one wall and across the ceiling of the entry hall, giving us all the light we needed. I could feel Tom watching me more than I could see him, his dark eyes shadows in his narrow face.             
       “What’s the problem, April?”
       “A couple of job interviews, no job.”
       “Sorry, lovey. Wish I could help.”
       “What about you?” I asked, because I knew he hated his job. “Thought of something else to do?”
       “Been thinking about going back to the U. God, I still owe on my student loan. But I need a master’s.”
       That was Macbeth’s chant, that Cyd and Tom needed to get degrees in business or computer science. “What can you do with a master’s? Besides teach high school that is.”
       “Teenagers? Right. Forget that plan.”
       “I’d rather panhandle than go back to school,” I said.
       “We could get married,” Tom said. He said that regularly between girlfriends.
       “What’s-her-name left you, huh?”
       He laughed. “Yeah. Something about me living with my folks. A turnoff, I guess.”
       Tom lived with his parents and I lived on a very small trust fund set up by a grandmother. Real shortage of Macbeth ambition in there somewhere. Also, maybe you have to love something in order to be committed to it and I didn’t have a definition of love. Nothing and no one had ever happened to me that I could separate from the rest of my life and identify as love.
       Having the sort of prettiness that attracts males, I’ve had guys following me since grade school, had sex for the first time when I was in high school and since then had several lovers except that they weren’t. I enjoyed sex but even at seventeen and not very worldly, I knew I didn’t love the guy.
       “How can you do that, have affairs with guys you know you don’t love?” Cyd once asked me.
       “I love the guy I’m with,” I had told her, “when I’m with him, and isn’t that a song?   Thing is, even then, I know in my head I could have as much fun with any of a half dozen other guys I know.”
       To Tom I said, “So, lover, how would marriage solve our financial problems?”
       “It wouldn’t,” he said and managed to knock over his glass of wine while reaching for me. “But it would make poverty more fun.”
       “Uh huh. You could cook for me,” I said over my shoulder as I headed for the bathroom to grab a large towel. “And I could clean up after you,” I added as I knelt and mopped up the wine from the carpet. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I’m going to have to pass on your offer.”
       “Okay. I’ll ask again next week.”
       He would, too, he would still be around next week caring about me and so would Cyd and Macbeth. I could count on them which was why I adored them.
       “Tom, do you believe in premonitions?”
       “The first time I saw you I knew you were the woman I would marry.”
       “Not that kind of premonition. Listen, be serious.”   Kneeling beside him, where he had stretched out on the carpet, I put my face close to his so I could see his expression in the dim light. He didn’t try to grab me, just lifted his face enough to kiss me. I socked his arm.
       “Stop, be serious.”
       “I’m always serious when I kiss.”
       “I’ve got to tell you something. Cyd thinks I imagined it. I didn’t.”
        The scene was sharp, the palm trees, the brilliant sky, the shimmering heat, the wheel beneath my sweating hands, the oncoming car. I described it to Tom, quickly at first, afraid that like Cyd, he would think it was a memory of