Bobby Newby had three women in his life, each of whom provided ingredients important if not essential to his existence. He was no longer a young man, having already passed what almost certainly had been the majority of his reasonably expected lifetime.
His ex-wife and he had raised three children, now grown to adulthood, and, following a couple of difficult years before and after the divorce, had resumed to some degree the friendship that had been the basis of their twenty-four-year marriage. This friendship, Bobby knew, he would have terrible difficulty doing without, seeing as how his ex-wife was the one person in the world he trusted above all others. His devotion to her remained undiminished; nobody could ever replace her in his affections.
Bobby's former companion, the woman he had taken up with after the collapse of his marriage, still held a romantic fascination for him. She was equally irreplaceable, simply because never before meeting and living with herfor four yearshad he felt so completely engaged emotionally. The problem with both of these women, Bobby had discovered, was that for various reasons he could not live happily with them, reasons that did not, he concluded after considerable contemplation, connote fault on either of their parts.
His current girlfriend, who was much younger than he, wasfor the time beingmore accepting of his desire to maintain separate residences, though she had recently, after dating Bobby for a year, been suggesting that, being childless, she would soon need to make a decision regarding her biological clock, a situation that Bobby knew would clearly necessitate a further commitment by him if the relationship were to continue.
Bobby was at something of an impasse. He was aware that all three of these women, each desirable in their ways, were waiting for him to make a decision regarding them so that they could get on with their lives. Not that he had been holding out promises to any of them; but he knew, nevertheless, the choice was, for the moment, his.
Once he was with Ned and Larry at Larrys house on the river, Bobby Newby felt more alone than ever. Despite his old pals conviviality and genuine enthusiasm at seeing him, Bobby began to think that Kafka had been correct in his assessment of the human condition. There were no more satisfactory answers in life than there would be in death. Regarding hisand, perhaps, Kafkas dilemma with women, Bobby understood that he would never be able to satisfy what they perceived as their needs, that nobody could. Suddenly, Bobby felt better, and he started to relax. Even Kafka, he thought, must have now and again taken a moment of comfort in the realization that one was at both the beginning and the end of consciousness responsible only for ones own life. At least there could be a painless interlude or two before the horror, as Conrad identified it, returned to spoil things for everybody.
The fishing was good. Each day aboard Larrys boat in the Gulf of Mexico Bobby caught several redfish, many in the thirty-pound range. At night he went to bed tired and happy and slept well.
The evening of the day before he was scheduled to leave, Bobby accompanied Ned and Larry to a bar downriver. It was a large, lively place named Billys Bad Boy. Larry introduced Ned and Bobby to several patrons, all locals, one of whom was an attractive woman who looked to be about thirty-five. She had white-blonde hair cut short and perfect teeth. Her name was Verna Lee. Bobby found Verna Lee very easy to talk to; she seemed intelligent, was not too obviously flirtatious, and had a ready sense of humor.
Bobby laughed, gave her a short version of his predicament, and told her how the fishing was proving salutary.
Verna Lee reached over and squeezed Bobbys free hand, the one that was not holding a glass, then let go.
Verna Lee got up and walked over to the bar. She returned five minutes later with two drinks, one of which she handed to Bobby. She sat down and they touched glasses and drank.
You didn't know his wife? Shareen. No, I met Frank a couple of years after the accident. Where did you meet him? "On an airplane, where else?"
Bobby nodded and said, Holidays don't last forever, Verna Lee."
Barry Gifford s novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Mr. Giffords most recent books include The Phantom Father, named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Wyoming, named a Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, and which has been adapted for the stage and film; American Falls: The Collected Short Stories, The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room: A Barry Gifford Reader, Brando Rides Alone, Do the Blind Dream?, Back in America, and Read Em and Weep: My Favorite Novels. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information please visit www.BarryGifford.com.