“It’s not about the money,” I said as I tossed my biggest suitcase onto the bed, nearly hitting her.
“You don’t have to lie, Connor. We both know it’s about the money.”
“But it’s not!” I insisted, boxer briefs flying toward the open satchel.
And it wasn’t, not really. She owed me money for some editing work I had done on the book she was writing. I told her I’d do it for free, but she insisted on paying me. I offered her a discount, but she said she wanted to keep her business affairs and her personal life separate from each other. So I wrote her an invoice on official office letterhead outlining the services I would provide and the rates I charged everyone for whom I did freelance editing work. I even mailed it from my office the way I did for everyone else. As it related to her book, she wasn’t my fiancée; she was just another client.
“Look, I’m gonna pay you,” she said playfully. “Put that away and come to bed.”
I looked at my watch.
“It’s only 8:11,” I said looking up.
She was lying back against the headboard slowly stripping off the oversized t-shirt she had pilfered from me a few months prior. She said she liked my smell and wanted it all around her. I wore the shirt now and then to refresh the scent for her. She liked that.
“Oh, you finally giving my shirt back?” I spat.
She stopped stripping. I kept packing.
“I said I’m going to pay you,” she said, all business once again.
“That’s what you said yesterday. And last Wednesday. And the Wednesday before that,” I said, moving to the closet.
“Well, I just haven’t gotten to it yet,” she offered.
“15 days. I gotta wait 15 days for my own – never mind.”
“What? Your own what?”
“I forgot, it’s not personal with you,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Just business.”
“Right. It’s business. You wouldn’t move out of your office if your business partner was a few weeks short on his rent, would you?”
It was a good try on her part. On more than one occasion the whole of the rent for our office had to come out of my share of the monthly profits because Pedro, my South American business partner, had heavier financial obligations than I did.
“No, I wouldn’t because Pedro is honest with me. I know he needs the money for other things and I don’t mind fronting him a little cash to help him out sometimes.”
“So you’ll help some immigrant Guatemalan but not your own fiancée?!” she shouted.
“Pedro’s Brazilian,” I said.
“Always the jokester.”
“Does this look like a joke to you?” I asked, indicating the large bag taking up most of the lower half of the bed.
“You’d really leave me because of a late payment?” she asked.
“I thought this was business?” I said. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“But Pedro can?”
“Pedro never tried to separate the two. He never tried to say ‘we’re just business partners, we’re not friends when it comes to work.’ You did that. Don’t blame Pedro for your mistake.”
“Who’s to say I made a mistake?” she said, getting defensive.
I responded by putting another pile of shirts into my suitcase.
“Where are you gonna go?” she asked me after a long while.
“Away. I just have to get away from you for a while,” I said.
“How long will you be gone?”
“I dunno. Gotta clear my head. Figure some things out.”
I was still packing, but the gravity of my decision was beginning to slow my progress a little.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“You can pay me my two thousand dollars,” I said simply.
“I thought you said it wasn’t about the money,” she said, thinking she had me.
“It’s not,” I replied. “Not really.”
“Explain it to me, then,” she said, sitting up and lightly brushing against my arm.
I stopped moving altogether then. I may have stopped breathing for a few seconds. Somehow I knew that if I said it out loud I’d never come back. Finally I took a deep breath and started.
“We entered into this arrangement each having certain unspoken expectations. I wanted things from you and you wanted things from me, but neither of us told each other what we wanted. So I do what I do and you do what you do and we each think we’re meeting expectations. But the problem is neither of us really knows what the other one’s expectations are.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “Are we still talking about the editing work?”
“What’s worse than the blind leading the blind?” I asked by way of explanation.
She shrugged in response.
“The blind leading those who can see. And we’ve both been flying blind for so long that neither of us expects that the other can see. So when I say something like ‘we don’t have to keep business separate from our personal lives,’ you don’t think I know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t doubt your intellect,” she said defensively.
“That’s not what I mean.”
I paused again, this time for effect.
“I don’t think you trust me anymore.”
“’Course I trust you,” she said too fast.
“Why won’t you pay me?” I asked.
“I – “
“Have I completed the work?”
“Connor,” she pleaded, the request in her tone.
“Humor me,” I pacified. “Have I completed the work?”
“Yes, Connor, you’ve completed the work.”
“Were you satisfied with the work I did?”
“Very much so. You know you do great work,” she confessed.
“Do you have the money?”
She paused again.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” I said, leaning closer to her. “Do you have the money?”
“Yes, I have the money.”
“Well, what else is there?”
“I don’t know…” she trailed off.
“What is it you don’t know? What I’ll do with the money?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Exactly. You don’t trust me to make good financial decisions with my own money, and since it affects you as my fiancée, you’re withholding it as my client. You said you didn’t want to mix business issues with personal ones but that's exactly what you’ve done.”
“And so you’re leaving? Because I can’t keep my feelings for you out of my business?”
“No. I’m leaving because you bury yourself so deep in your own ridiculous misconceptions that there’s no way I can trust you to tell me the truth.”
I had overstated my point and I knew it immediately. I silently chided myself of indulging my penchant for the superlative.
“What are you – “
It was too late to turn back, so I cut her off.
“Look, I’m an all or nothing kinda guy. I’m either all in or I’m all out. You seem to be a fan of this halfway stuff, except you can never do it. You’re an all or nothing person too, you just refuse to face it.”
“What’s your point?” she asked, getting frustrated.
“Lately I feel like an adjunct fiancée, and I can’t help but wonder who’s filling the rest of your credit hours.”
She hated it when I analyzed things because she said it typically led me to over-analysis and eventually obsession. She was right, too. I had been thinking about having this conversation with her since well before she offered me the chance to edit her book. The work issue was really the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
“I don’t want to make this about you. This is my decision,” I said finally.
“Oh, please,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine? I think I deserve a little more respect than that.”
“Ok then, it is you,” I said. “It’s not me. It’s you. Feel better?”
“Funny. I thought I would.”
I closed the zipper on my full bag and slid it onto the floor. I grabbed the handle and began rolling it toward the door.
“So, that’s it?” she asked when I reached the door.
I turned around.
“Call me when you want me full time. Goodbye, Oakwood.”
