This is the third excerpt from the author's upcoming new novel. All reviews and comments welcome!

PHAEDRA

Phaedra awoke several times throughout the night.  The cool early morning air was causing condensation on the windows outside.

“Shit!” she exclaimed as she hit her knee on the steering wheel as she attempted to get comfortable. She was having trouble sleeping.  Her mind was racing and she couldn’t seem to get Sarah out of her mind.

She loved Sarah’s sassiness and straight-forwardness.  She loved the fact that Sarah was always so full of life, jet-setting around the country and moving up the ladder at her advertising firm; she loved her ambition and drive to be somebody, to have something.  Sarah could cuss you out one minute, then kiss you the next; she was always so honest about what she thought and felt at all times.  Sarah also knew exactly what pushed Phaedra’s buttons, and vice-versa, which has always excited Phaedra.  She also loved Sarah’s body, which was long, lean and slightly muscular, and her chocolate brown skin – she wondered what it tasted like?  She was so opposite Phaedra, who was short, light-skinned and a little plump, and also personality-wise, as Phaedra was such a quiet introvert.  She felt that if they ever got together, they would compliment each other quite nicely.

It was a running joke among the five friends that Phaedra always had a ‘thing’ for Sarah.  And Sarah was keenly aware of this attraction, but she was having none of it. As Sarah would often put it, she was ‘strictly dickly, thank you!’  It was no secret that Phaedra was bi-sexual, but she had a real preference for the softer, nurturing love of a woman.  It seemed that whenever she got involved with a man, he ended up using and abusing her.  This abuse began when she had barely reached puberty. 

When she was 12, her drunken uncle had come home and brutally forced himself on her while on an overnight visit to see her cousins.  He threatened to kill her and her mother if she ever told anyone.  From that point on, whenever she visited her cousins, he also made sure to visit her.   So she kept silent until the day he died, 15 years later, brewing hate and resentment within her all those years.

She could have danced a jig on his grave.

“Damn!”, yelled Phaedra again, momentarily clutching her knee after she hit it against the steering wheel again as she tried to get in a more comfortable position.  How the hell did I end up in THIS situation? This is just fucking ridiculous, she thinks to herself, her anger beginning to well inside her as she reflected on the events leading up to her current state.

She met her former husband, Mark, almost two years ago as a student of hers at Georgetown University.  Something about him, probably his charm and unusually good looks, attracted her to him.  He made excuses to talk to her, even had her tutor him as he wooed her as best he could.  She savored the attention.

“Ms. Woods, I still don’t quite get the difference between the dependent clause and the independent clause. Both these sentences seem to be able to stand alone to me, but you said this one cannot”, Mark half-said, half-whispered into her ear as he stood over her chair after class one evening, pointing at a page in the textbook.

“Mr. Simpson, the use of this word in the sentence tells…”, she started to say as she turned to face him, and he suddenly planted the most passionate, incredible kiss she had ever experienced on her wanting lips.  Her body seemed to melt right into his as he sensuously raised her out of her seat and embraced her, kissing her all the while.  She felt as if she had just found Heaven. 

There were strict policies against faculty dating students, but try as she might to avoid crossing the line, after that kiss these study sessions slowly became ‘dates’.

After the semester was over, and he was no longer enrolled as a student, they began dating openly, and he moved into her small cottage home in Tacoma Park two months later.  She fell hard for him and they married three months afterward.  Then all hell broke loose.

Six weeks later, Phaedra awoke in the wee hours of the morning to the eerie sense that something was wrong.  She looked at the empty spot in the bed beside her.  Mark was gone.  She got up and walked through the house.  His belongings were still there, but he was nowhere to be found.  She tried calling his cellphone – he did not answer.  Well, maybe something came up, he’ll call soon, she thought to herself and went back to a fitful sleep.

He hadn’t come home for three days, and she couldn’t find him anywhere - not the school, hospitals, jail nor the morgue.  She was out of her mind with worry.  When he hadn’t come home for two weeks, her hurt, worry and concern had turned to anger. 

She had been to the bank and found that he had wiped out all her accounts - savings, CD’s and checking - and she was broke.  She had no way of paying her mortgage or bills.

Her credit was ruined as well.  He had taken out loans in both their names to the tune of over $175,000 and defaulted on them all.  After some investigation on her own through public records and the college library, she found he had done this several times before, and was married to her and three other women at the same time.  She had been duped after trusting a man – again.

She had no one to talk to.  Her only child, Brett, to whom she gave birth as a young teen, and who is set to graduate from Howard University Law School next year, disowned her long ago due to her ‘alternative’ lifestyle, as had most of her family.  She trusted very few people, so she basically stayed to herself.

Unable to pay her mortgage and totally wiped out financially, credit ruined, she eventually lost her home and her beloved Mercedes, which she bought as a gift to herself after she received tenure.  All she had left was a cellphone and her office at the university, where she slept on occasion.  She did not want the faculty or other personnel to learn of her plight, so she did this very infrequently.

She could not find a decent place to live because her credit was so totally destroyed due to the huge debts Mark had rung up in her name, so she was faced with a daunting choice - either live out of her 1992 Ford Escort or a seedy rooming house, which seemed to be all that she could obtain at this point.  She chose the Escort.

The next morning she awoke with a stiff neck and sore knee, but somehow managed to drag herself into the ladies’ room at the rest stop, wash her face and grab some coffee.  It was 5:30 am.  She had an 8:00 am tutoring session with a student, so she had to get ready.

She drove back to the university and headed for the women’s locker room, duffle bag in hand, wearing athletic shorts and sneakers.  She walked out the back door to the track, and began her daily 2-mile run around the track.

“G’Morning Ladies!” Phaedra called to the neighborhood ladies, who came to the track in the early morning to exercise before the staff and students arrived, as she ran.  She finished, walked back in the gym and showered.  She took out a change of clothes, an easy pair of dark slacks, white cotton oxford-style tailored shirt, and espadrilles, and then dressed.  She met her student at her office by 7:50 am.

Phaedra emerged from her office around 9:15 am after the tutoring session and noticed a familiar-looking shadow walking toward her from the far end of the hall.  As the figure moved closer, recognition froze her in place.

“Hey baby!  Did you miss me?”

It was Mark.

She could hear the silence screaming through her mind as all the anger, hurt, fury, resentment and disbelief welled up inside her within an instant.

If she’d had a gun, she would have shot him dead.
 
 
 
 Copyright 2006,  R.M. Green