The Unforgiving Minute Read Online Free PDF Page B

kiss from your maiden aunt. The drive back to her
    apartment was totally silent. As she left the car I shouted
    after her, “Can’t we have coffee tomorrow morning to talk this
    over?”
    “No, not tomorrow,” she said. “Let’s not talk for a
    while, and then maybe we can be friends.”
    As I drove away, my mind was truly boggled. It was like
    being hit over the head with the proverbial ton of bricks. I
    couldn’t believe I was getting the old “can’t we be friends?”
    routine.
    I tossed and turned in my bed for hours. I had a tight
    feeling in my chest and gut. I couldn’t tell what I was feeling.
    Anger was mixed with grief and emptiness was mixed with a vague
    feeling of a monkey being off my back. Julie asked me what the
    matter was at breakfast that morning and I contrived a story
    about business pressures. My drive into the city seemed endless
    and I drove in a trance. I felt like a teenager who had broken
    up with his steady. I was desperate and ready to play the fool,
    a role that I sadly played for the best part of the next year. I
    stopped at a florist shop and picked up a dozen roses. I was
    convinced at this time that I was ready to leave my wife, my
    home, and my children for this woman. I wrote a card and
    enclosed it with the flowers:
    “Laura, my love. Only you can make my
    dreams come true. Marry me. I love you, Bob.”
    Laura was a person of rigid habits and disciplines. I
    knew that at precisely ten there was a scheduled coffee break, at
    which time she always headed for the ladies’ room in the hall.
    We had met there so many times. We always joked that it was like
    meeting between classes in high school. I actually lurked in the
    hall with my box of flowers under my arm. People looked at me
    like I was some sort of idiot, but my pain precluded any sane and
    reasonable behavior. I saw her walk out the door of her office
    and my heart skipped a beat. My fantasy was that she would
    tearfully run to my arms and everything would be as it was.
    Instead, she glared at me with a look of hate in her eyes that I
    had never seen before. The face that always looked so pretty to
    me, even in the morning upon waking up, took on an ugliness I had
    never seen before. She screamed at the top of her lungs. I felt
    lucky that no one else was in the hallway at the time. “I told
    you it’s over. Stop trying to make something out of this. It’s
    hopeless. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone!”
    I threw the flowers at her feet and literally ran back to
    my office. The receptionist looked at me like I was a madman.
    I locked myself in my office and actually sat there crying
    like a baby. I think I hated myself at that moment more than
    anything.
    About twenty minutes later, my private line rang. I
    picked it up with anticipation. Laura’s voice was calm and soft.
    “That was very sweet; I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief. “Did you read the card?”
    She said that she had and that it moved her deeply and
    before I could get a word in she said, “I’m very confused; you’ve
    got to give me time to think. There’s no one else, believe me,
    but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. If I didn’t
    discuss it, it’s because I have great difficulty putting the
    words together. I’m not like you.”
    I pleaded and cajoled and even sounded to myself like I
    was whining and sniveling. I knew that I was putting myself in a
    position of great weakness, but I was obsessed. She finally told
    me that she couldn’t speak any longer and hung up. I managed to
    get her to lunch several times in the next few weeks but as soon
    as my whining and begging started she clammed up and the lunch
    turned into a shambles. Her overriding theme at all times was
    that nothing had changed. She still felt the same about me but
    was not willing to go back into what she now seemed to consider a
    bad situation for her. My despair evolved into despondency and I
    just couldn’t shake it