Zoe and Sophia are two single women, BFFs for thirty years, and months ago they found themselves unexpectedly cast into a world of chaos and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They’ve heard and are grateful for the advice from all who were willing to help them. But the time for advice has passed as they launch into a new phase as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being. Here is their final adventure of the first “season” of their re-creation.

Tiny white lights strung around budding branches winked as a gusty wind blew through the outdoor café at dusk. Some happy-hour patrons danced to the band’s music booming from the small stage. Several people wore festive masks, which the waitresses placed on tables when they delivered drinks. Others laughed as they sat leaning intimately into one another. Longing eyes traveled up and down newcomers who walked into the café on the warm May evening. Self-conscious young women stood in clusters, playing with their hair, picking at their clothes. False bravado spilled from the lips of young men as they spoke too loudly and swaggered in circles around women they were too timid to approach. Young and old sensed the sultry nights of summer to come, nights of expectation, nights that would stir people to abandon themselves to the white heat of passion, grasping for completion through connection. Suddenly, a second, prolong gust of wind blew in showers, and as with the end of a film, the music stopped, people ran for shelter, and the sensuous spell snapped shut.

Zoe and Sophia leapt from their seats then huddled with the rest of the crowd inside the café
“I’m hungry,” said Zoe, tapping Sophia’s arm. “Let’s go get Mexican.”
“Okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Sophia.
“You look like you’re gonna cry.”
“Nah. I’m just tired.”
“We can go home,” said Zoe.
“To what? To a house filled with packed boxes, rolled up rugs and furniture lined up, ready to be loaded into a U-Haul?” Go home? I have no home. I have no marriage. I have no definition. I have no life that I recognize. I have only ghosts that scream at me from the packed boxes, scepters haunting me from an identity that no longer exists. My life is shit, Zoe.”

“Fuck sake, Sophie. Buck up. Instead of thinking about what you’ve lost, try focusing on things you have to be grateful for, things that give you joy.”
“That’s the worst part, Zoe. I might have lost my joy.”
“Well, you’re the only one who can recapture it, so you better get to work on that.”
“I know. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”

“Sophie, you’re still grieving. And you start a whole new wave of it every time that prick Marty re-enters your life. I can’t believe he showed up on your doorstep again. Well, at least your move to Florida will end that cycle.” Zoe was referring to Sophia’s husband who walked out of the marriage eight months before in the throes of an affair with his predatory girlfriend, Fugly, an affair Sophia finally forced Marty to confess. Twice Marty came home since then, only to flee back to Fugly as soon as he and Fugly patched up their blowout.

“It’s not only about Marty crashing into my life again, Zo. Last week I didn’t fall for his shit. He cried for hours, bemoaning the life he cast aside, and I comforted him through every word and stomached the self-pity he spewed. But do you know that he actually had the audacity to blame me for the dissension with Fugly?”
“Yeah, you told me already.”
“I’m so glad I slept at your house for the time he was at home.”
“No shit.”
“But honestly, Zo, apart from Marty’s recent bullshit, I think what unhinges me has more to do with the change of seasons. I keep sensing last summer, when the project was still going on, and I knew Marty was having an affair, but he lied about it. I was not only tortured by his cruelty, I suffered a complete emotional collapse, and it’s taken me months to crawl out of the black hole. But now, I feel as if I’ve fallen back in.”

Sophia was referring to a project Fugly approached Marty to become part of two years before. Marty told Sophia that Fugly had since admitted that she fell for him “on first sight.” So the project, which would have fulfilled Marty’s life-long dream, became the vehicle to hook Marty, and Fugly succeeded. Although Fugly’s wealthy husband offered to finance the project, his resources couldn’t compare to those of his father. So, Fugly’s legendary father-in-law, Famous Father, put up the money. However, when Famous Father learned of the affair, he ended the project, and Fugly moved out of the marital home, leaving behind a husband and three young children, whom she saw on a visitation schedule. But since Fugly signed no prenup when she married, she still enjoyed living lavishly on her husband’s money. And so did Marty.

“Sophie, let’s go to Ixtapa Cantina and flirt with the Mexican waiters. That always cheers us up.”
“Okay, Zo.”
A few minutes later the women swept into their favorite Mexican restaurant. Since Zoe and Sophia were regulars, the maitre‘d clamored for dirty dishes to be cleared from their favorite booth, and two Margaritas were placed with a flourish in front of the women before they had time to order.

“Should we toast to your divorce being final,” asked Sophia.
“Yes, I think we should,” said Zoe. “But you know, I take no pleasure in hurting George, although it does feel good to be free finally.”
“Do your kids know yet?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t spoken to them about it, but George might have.”
“Do the kids know you’re moving back to Boston?”
“Yes.”
“What’s their reaction?”
“Sara and Meg are happy because I’ll be nearer to them and the grandkids, and Emily and Jamison are noncommittal since it doesn’t really affect them.” Zoe was referring to the fact that her two oldest, who were outstanding young women, both professionals and new mothers, lived in Boston. Her only son, Jamison, a handsome, kind young man, worked in construction in California, and sweet Emily, her youngest, was in college in New York. “But I can’t deny that everyone’s pretty worried about what will happen to George.”

“I feel for them,” said Sophia, “but I guess that’s up to George to figure out.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Have you set a moving date?”
Just then Zoe’s eyes misted up.
“What’s wrong, Zo?”
“Whenever I think about us being so far apart it makes me cry.”
“I know. Me too.”
“But I am nearly packed up myself. In fact, Chloe said I could start moving stuff in now. The house is empty.” Chloe was Zoe’s sister who offered for Zoe to move into a rental house Chloe owned. “I plan to move in right after you leave for Florida. There’s no way I want to be in New Hampshire without you here. Sophie, won’t you reconsider moving to Boston with me instead of moving to Florida?”
“Zo, there’s nothing I want more than to be near you, but Boston just isn’t far enough away from Marty. Plus you know I hate winters. I’m a Californian, not a Yankee like you.” Just then Jose, a new waiter the women didn’t know well, appeared to take their orders.

After ordering, Zoe said, “But in Boston you would be so much closer to your kids.” Zoe was referring to Sophia’s fabulous son Colin who lived in Boston and to her amazing daughter Poppy, son-in-law Fonzi, and granddaughter Lily who lived just a few miles from Sophia and Zoe.
“It breaks my heart to think about leaving them, Zo, but I’m running for my life at this point. And that house in Florida just feels right. From the first moment I saw it in January, the place called to me. It’s exactly what I felt the first time I saw my house here. I remember looking at the arbors over the outside doors, crowded with wisteria and roses, and I just knew it was meant to be my home.”
“Will you put up arbors over the doors in the Florida house?”
“Yeah, but I’ll load them with bougainvillea.”
“Sounds pretty. And it’s nice that you’ll have Florida Guy living right around the corner.” Zoe was referring to a good friend of theirs, who was renting the house to Sophia and whom they visited in Florida months before.
“He’s a dear man, Zoe. Really, knowing that he would be living nearby was the main reason the move to Florida felt safe. Promise me you’ll visit often.”

“As often as I can. Hey, those two guys at the bar are checking us out. Don’t turn around.”
Sophia turned around. Then she turned back to Zoe.
“Nah.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not worth the effort. Why would we bother meeting men anyway? Neither of us is gonna be living here a week from now, Zo.”
“Good point.” Just then Juan, their favorite waiter, placed two more Margaritas on the table even though their first drinks were still nearly full. Zoe gave Juan a questioning look, and he turned and pointed to the two men at the bar. Zoe looked over at the men and smiled. Sophia didn’t turn around but watched Zoe raise her hand to invite the men over. Sophia grabbed her hand, but it was too late. The men were already on their way. Sophia glared at Zoe as she shoved Sophia over to make room for the men in the circular booth.

Sophia threw the men a lame smile as they sat down, and then her nerves flared up, and she reached across the table for her glass of water. Unfortunately, her hand bumped the fresh Margaritas, dumping them into the laps of the newcomers. In a panic, Sophia grabbed her napkin, jumped up and ran to the other side of the booth. She began sopping the fluid from the men’s pants with one hand while waving with the other for Juan to come help clean up the mess. Juan, accustomed to Sophia’s spills, leapt toward the table with bar towels. But by that time, Sophia was on her knees, head bent into the lap of one of the men, so she didn’t see Juan. Just as he reached the table, Sophia stood up in Juan’s path, tripping Juan, who fell across the table and landed with his head in Zoe’s lap.

“Smooth move, Sophie,” hissed Zoe under her breath as she looked down at Juan. She was afraid Juan might have bumped his head on the table and passed out between her legs.
“Sorry, Zo,” said Sophia quietly, trying to regain her composure.
Just then a stunning, young pregnant Mexican woman ran up to the table crying and rambling in Spanish. She glared at Zoe and tugged on Juan’s leg.
In English she said, “What have you done to my Juan?”
Zoe stared at her in horror as the woman reached out and pulled Zoe’s blond hair. Zoe tried to roll Juan off of her lap as he struggled to stand up.
“You are trying to steal my Juan,” shrieked the woman, “Don’t touch him.” Between being shoved by Zoe and pulled by his wife, Juan finally managed to stand. He apologized profusely and hustled his wife from the table.

As Juan staggered off, the heads of the two men dropped downward, their eyes glued to their wet crotches. Pretending as if nothing had happened, Zoe greeted them brightly. The men looked up into Zoe’s smiling face but were silent. Just as Zoe was about to launch on her usual ploy of asking the men all about themselves, Jose placed two large plates of food in front of Zoe and Sophia. Zoe ignored hers and kept talking, but Sophia dug in, thinking that eating might erase the vision of her mishap. Zoe leaned into the men pouring on every ounce of charm she could muster. Sophia’s cheeks filled to capacity as she shoveled an entire tamale into her mouth. The men gave each other the look then in unison stood and reached out to shake hands with Zoe and Sophia, telling the women it was nice to have met them.

“Ni do mee you do,” Sophia boomed with a smile as gobs of tamale shot out of her mouth and landed on the wet crotch of the man standing closest to her. She watched the blob stick for a minute before it fell to the floor. Sophia’s teeth were coated in green tomatillo salsa which dribbled down her chin. She tried to wipe it away with her napkin, but her hair was plastered to her chin, so she used her hand to whip back her hair and then reached out for a shake. Both men looked at her green fingers and quickly withdrew their hands, waving instead, as they backed away from the table then fled out the door.

“That went well,” said Zoe.
“Not too bad. Did you catch their names?”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, we didn’t get that far.”
“Hey, it’s just as well. I need to get to Barnes & Noble before it closes at ten.”
“You drove those guys away in record time. What do you need at the bookstore?”
“I gotta check out the DVD bargain table. I have now watched every episode of The L Word. Twice.”
“Does this mean you’re off your lesbian kick?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For awhile there you were consumed by all things lesbian.”
“I was not. Those characters kept me company in the middle of the night. I can’t concentrate to read when I awake nearly hysterical. Before I discovered DVDs of television shows, I would just lie for hours in the dark obsessing on Marty.”
“What did you think about?”
“Sometimes I pictured him locked between Fugly’s stumpy, misshapen thighs with the purple pimples all over them. He used to tell me how much he loved my long, lean legs. I wondered what he said to her about her thighs. Then I thought about him lying on his pillow and staring at her. She looks like Yeti or some other mythological humanoid creature. I would hear her deep, masculine voice whisper Hallmark sentiments in his ear. And I wondered why he picked her. Then I thought about how he was having his affair while I had major surgery and was laid off from my job as a reporter. Of course, then I remembered that she’s younger and rich. Sometimes I looked over at the hole Marty punched in the wall last summer as he screamed ‘Why can’t you fucking trust me.’ Other times, I pictured him sneaking out of our bed to have email exchanges with Fugly as soon as he thought I was asleep. Then I thought about the hundreds of text messages they sent to each other when we took Lilly to Europe on vacation last summer, especially the ones he sent at two-thirty in the morning on our wedding anniversary. Then I thought….”
“Enough, Sophie. I get the gist. Hurry up. You’re right. We do need to get to the bookstore before it closes.”
“Well, you asked. Do you wanna hear more?”
Zoe dodged the question by looking around for Juan to bring the check. He was nowhere in sight, but his wife paced back and forth like a livid lioness, guarding the kitchen door. Finally, Zoe caught Jose’s attention.

In Barnes & Noble Sophia found the boxed sets of four seasons of The Closer, at fifty percent off. She snagged them, buying her sanity and a whole new stable of imaginary friends.

“What’s that smell?” asked Sophia on the drive home from Portsmouth.
“Sparky’s in the back. He had an accident.” Sparky was Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab. His unfortunate stroke caused not only incontinence, but the poor thing walked sideways and could not manage stairs or stress.
“Can you sleep at my house tonight, Zo. I don’t wanna be alone.”
“Sure. Do you have any Nutella and Chex Mix to eat in bed?”
“Hello. Is Fugly ugly? Of course I do.”

The minute Zoe and Sophia walked through the door of Sophia’s house, Tolstoy, Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat hissed at Sparky, who tried to hide behind the women. Sparky pretended to ignore the insult and simply sniffed, as he jutted his chin in the air and rolled his eyes at Voltaire, Sophia’s Border collie. Sparky wondered why Tolstoy had to be such a bastard to him right off the bat, and Voltaire was inclined to agree that Tolstoy did have a short fuse. Voltaire stood up to get some loving from his precious Sophia then he walked over to Tolstoy and herded him into the living room, hoping to cool him down. Sparky, who wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, thought the other animals were going off to play without him, so he followed them into the living room. That pissed off Tolstoy so much that he took a running leap and landed on Sparky’s back. Sparky yowled and because his stress and incontinence went hand-in-hand, three large turds plopped involuntarily from his bung hole.

“God almighty. There’s that smell again,” cried Sophia.
“I’ll clean it up,” said Zoe as she dashed to the kitchen for cleaning supplies.
“Voltaire can sleep downstairs with Sparky tonight, and Tolstoy can stay upstairs with us. It might be my imagination, but I think there’s friction between them.”
“Could be,” said Zoe absently as she flushed Sparky’s mess down the toilet then headed back to the kitchen. Sparky slunk sideways behind her, wishing he were home alone with his beautiful Zoe instead of stuck here with that bitch Sophia and her ill-tempered cat. Although, when he thought about it, he was pretty happy about spending the night with Voltaire, his oldest and dearest friend.

Sparky stood still a minute in the kitchen after Zoe went back into the dining room. He listened carefully to make sure no one was coming, and then he shoved his face through the swinging doors and slipped into the summer kitchen, where Tolstoy’s cat food and kitty litter lived. It’s hard to tip-toe after a stroke, but as quietly as he could, Sparky snuck up to Tolstoy’s dish and inhaled the kibble. Emboldened, he pranced over to the kitty litter, stuck in his paw, and shuffled the cedar shavings around until he found several cat crap delicacies just waiting to be eaten. Half way through his feast he froze in fright.
“Sparky,” called Zoe. “Where are you?”

Tolstoy knew damn well Sparky’s whereabouts and bolted from Voltaire’s side, racing toward the kitchen. Fearing exposure, Sparky began loping sideways, back toward the dining room. Unfortunately, Zoe and Sophia were standing in their path looking at something on Sophia’s laptop screen, and neither the cat nor the dog paid attention to that fact. Sparky ran headlong into both women from one direction, and Tolstoy tried to leap over them from the other, but he didn’t make it. As a result Zoe and Sophia toppled to the floor in their clumsy attempts to get out of the way of the collision.

“Fuck sake,” said Zoe as she struggled to her feet, “Let’s just go to bed.”
“Ok, Zo,” said Sophia, rubbing the bump on the back of her head.
Upstairs the women changed into night clothes then Zoe perused Sophia’s collection of DVDs of shows, most of which Sophia had never watched until after they went off the air. Zoe dismissed Sex and the City, having seen every episode multiple times. She declined Nash Bridges and The Closer because unlike Sophia, Zoe wasn’t a fan of police shows. That left the six seasons of The L Word, which Zoe was so sick of hearing about, she could puke. Without selecting anything, Zoe climbed in bed next to Sophia.

“What do wanna do,” Zoe asked.
“I’m not premiering The Closer until tomorrow night. Let’s watch The L Word.”
“NO,” said Zoe.
“We could go on-line with the Webcam and see if any guys wanna watch us dance.”
“You know what’s funny? I’m not dating guys on-line anymore.”
Sophia thought for a moment and chucked. “You’ve had quite a journey over the past eight months, haven’t you? You started your on-line dating the same week Marty and I split, right?”
“Yeah, I did. But now I’m not even dating guys in person.”
“Do you miss it, Zo?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Unless I’m making jewelry, being creative, I get anxious and sorta lonely, except when I’m with you.”
“Hum. Why did you stop with the men thing?”
“It stopped feeling good.” Zoe looked pensive for moment then asked, “Do you think I was acting whorish all those months?” Sophia laughed so hard that she snorted. Zoe looked offended. “Nice response, Soph.”
“Power down, Trigger. I’m laughing because you are so far from a ‘whore,’ you have to invent a new word for ‘far.’”
“Meaning?”
“Once you left George, your search for men came from a very old place.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve spent much of your life trying to fill that gaping hole left by your father’s death. On some level, you’re still that vulnerable eight-year-old girl drenched in sorrow. So, whenever you’re lonely, you fall right back into that hole. But you’re lucky. Some of the guys you’ve met actually helped you heal that place a little bit.”
“That’s true, especially Florida Guy. When he’s on, he can be very kind and wise. When he’s wrapped up in his own stuff though, he tends to shut me out, even as a friend. But that’s his deal, not mine.”

“Exactly, Zo. That’s progress. Months ago, you would have taken on his issues as defects in you and seen his reactions as rejection.”
“Good point.”
“Now, I’m not gonna to go down the list of men you’ve forged relationships with over the past eight months, but in each case, you touched their lives in important ways. If it were just about sex, the guys wouldn’t stay in touch, but they do because any form of friendship is better than nothing. It’s something about the way you are with people, Zo. You’re special.”
“Huh?”
“You get into people’s heads and their hearts. You have a basic kindness and curiosity, making you easy to talk to. You also challenge people, which doesn’t always feel good, but you ask men to look inside of themselves and be honest with you about their motivations. The fact that you’re also pretty, have a body to die for, and have a healthy libido doesn’t hurt the situation, but those are transient qualities that don’t sustain the long haul. Not one of those men has completely disappeared from your life. And even though they keep circling around you, you’ve made the choice to walk away because, in the end, they weren’t who you wanted.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Zoe. “It’s more like I’m not sure what I want. I don’t think I’ve found the right mix of intellectual stimulation, physical attraction and emotional availability in one man.”
“And that’s the beauty of growth. You’re not willing to sell yourself short anymore. Don’t worry; you’ll know it when you see it. Hand me the Nutella and a spoon please,” said Sophia as she pushed “play” on the remote. Up popped an episode of The L Word.
“Fuck sake. Do we have to watch this?” asked Zoe as she tossed back a handful of super spicy Chex Mix.”
“You know, if you smear Nutella on the pretzels from the Chex Mix, it’s a good combo,” said Sophia. “Hey, look at that. This is the episode when Bette goes off to a Buddhist monastery after she cheated on Tina seven years into their love affair.”
Zoe watched for a minute then put her chocolate covered spoon and the jar of Nutella back on the bedside table, next to Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart. Pema was an American Buddhist writer Zoe and Sophia adored. “Sophie, do you think lesbians deal with their love and loss differently than anyone else,” she asked, opening the ragged book.
“Nope. People are people. Love is love and loss is loss. That’s why I like this show. It portrays archetypical human behavior, but emphasizes a female point of view.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Zoe, distracted as she lay on her side, with her head bent into the book. A few minutes later Zoe asked, “Do you mind if I read you a couple of passages?”
“Go ahead,” said Sophia as she clicked “pause” on the remote.
Zoe began reading:
In all kinds of situations we can find out what is true simply by studying ourselves in every nook and cranny, in every black hole and bright spot, whether its murky, creepy, grisly, splendid, spooky, frightening, joyful, inspiring, peaceful, or wrathful. We can just look at the whole thing….When we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn’t just ourselves that we’re discovering.  We’re discovering the universe….We discover that everything is awake and everyone is awake. Everything is equally precious and whole and good, and everyone is equally precious and whole and good. When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that’s how we perceive the universe.

The only reason that we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes….The more we relate to others, the more quickly we discover where we are blocked, where we are unkind, afraid, shut down. Seeing this is helpful, but it is also painful. Often, the only way we know how to react is to use it as ammunition against ourselves. We aren’t kind. We aren’t honest. We aren’t brave, and we might as well give up right now. But when we apply the instruction to be soft and nonjudgmental to whatever we see right at that very moment, then this embarrassing reflection in the mirror becomes our friend….That’s the beginning of growing up.
As long as we don’t want to be honest and kind with ourselves, then we are always going to be infants. When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up considerably. Finally, there’s room for genuine inquisitiveness, and we find we have an appetite for what’s out there.

“Well, that’s certainly a chunk of information,” said Sophia as she toyed with the remote. “You know what’s strange? I remember reading that material right after my marriage fell apart. When I hit the paragraph about always being an infant until I learned to be kind and honest with myself, I was horrified. I hated reading it. Now, it doesn’t feel so threatening to me.”
“That’s interesting,” said Zoe. “I guess you’ve made some progress yourself in the past eight months.”
“Have I? It’s hard to know.”

“You’ve spent a ton of time alone, being introspective, foraging around in every aspect of yourself, swimming in and out of the black hole. You’ve also slowly detached from Marty and the horridness he put you through.”
“Well, a little maybe. I guess if I’ve done anything, I’ve rediscovered myself as my own best friend by accepting who I am and being kinder to myself, sometimes. On good days I’ve tried to live more in the moment, more compassionately and spend less time grasping and fixating on things outside of my control, but on bad days, not so much.”
“Yeah. That’s the piece that fades in and out for me too.”
“Well, at least we are more aware of the ways we don’t help ourselves, Zo.”
“That’s true. Speaking of help, could you hand me the Chex Mix.”
“Ok, but only if you’ll release me from the burden of this conversation and let me go back to The L Word.”
“Never mind. I’m going to sleep.”

Just then a text blinged on Sophia’s phone. She opened the message but it was blank. Then her eyes widened.
“What the fuck?”
“What?”
“Fugly just sent me a blank text.”
“Huh?”
Two more texts messages came in, and they too were blank. Then Sophia’s phone rang. When she answered it, Fugly hung up. It rang again, and again Fugly hung up.
“What the fuck. Why is she calling and texting me at this hour of the night?”
“Maybe you should text Marty and find out what’s going on.”
Before Sophia could text Marty, six more blank messages came in.
“Never mind. They must be having another blow-out. He’s probably sleeping in his car again. Why that Yeti troll wants to draw me in is a mystery, but then again, she has no boundaries. I told you eventually they’d eat each other’s faces off. That’s what happens when you put two acute narcissists together.”
“Are you gonna text Marty or what?”
“Maybe…and I feel like telling him not to bring his flaccid dick here to cry and bemoan the chaos he created. His selfishness amazes me. Oops…there I go. What would Pema say?”
Zoe opened the book again to the page she turned down.
“You’re supposed to be soft and nonjudgmental to whatever you see right at this very moment.”
“That’s a tall fucking order,” said Sophia.
“Just watch your show.”
“Okay, Zo,” said Sophia as she set her phone on the bed stand.

A few minutes later, Zoe rolled over and tapped Sophia’s arm. “Hey, did you know our names mean something?”
Sophia pushed “pause,” and looked over at Zoe. “Ahh, no. I thought you were sleeping.”
“I was for a minute, but I keep forgetting to tell you this.”
“Tell me what, Zo?”
“What my therapist told me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“About our names,” said Zoe. “They mean something.”
“How does your therapist know my name?”
“I talk about you all the time. Don’t you talk about me to your therapist?”
“Yes, I do,” said Sophia. “Is there a point here somewhere?”
“Zoe means life and Sophia means wisdom.”

“Is that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“No, you moron, it’s Greek.”
“Hum,” said Sophia as she pushed “play.”

A few mornings later Sophia awoke and looked out of the french doors in her bedroom. She gazed at the mist hovering above the lake behind her house. The rising sun cast a mauve slash across the sky as Sophia listened to the few birds willing to sing so early. Sophia lifted her head for a moment then lay back down, crying quietly. She thought about the beauty surrounding her and felt shame that she could not sustain a joy in its midst. She thought about her children and granddaughter and her pets, trying to find a warm place to hold onto inside. Even the thought of Zoe’s smiling face could not distract Sophia long enough to grab hold of a peace that would save herself from plunging downward. Then her mind wandered to the anger that awakened her in the night and shook her ragged until she finally fell into a fitful sleep. Doubt drilled her raw as she questioned the perilous choice she was making to walk away from everyone she loved, from everything familiar, from all sources of comfort.

Only the day before, she rejoiced in her life, working hours in her gardens, in the bright sunshine, under an azure sky. But she lingered too long, tried to take too much succor from the earth she spent years shaping into a masterpiece of color and form. At dusk she hurried inside, just after realizing that she would miss the blues of June, as she called many of her favorite blue flowers, like delphiniums, which bloomed only in June. And from that moment on, nothing could distract her from the misery that rose up, wrapping its dangerous arms around her, holding her so close that it took her breath. Guilt too enfolded her as she thought about people in the world who suffered from truly terrible catastrophes and deprivation, and that she merely suffered because Marty had thrown her away in his gluttony for adulation, wealth, and someone who would mirror his vanity as virtue. But in the end, Sophia knew that suffering was incomparable, and she struggled to remind herself of Victor Frankl’s ideas in Man’s Search for Meaning, that suffering could give her life meaning, if only she could suffer with nobility through self-transcendence. But Sophia did not feel noble; she felt small, selfish, and willfully blind.

As the sky lightened outside, Sophia closed her eyes and let time slip away while she roamed through every mantra and prayer she used when she was too dark inwardly to appreciate the wonder of her life. Some mantras were long, some were short phrases, but none could channel meaning enough to dislodge her ennui. Voltaire and Tolstoy whined and scratched to go outside, but Sophia lay motionless, as if her limbs were too heavy for her mind to move them. After a couple of hours Sophia finally got out of bed long enough to use the bathroom and let the animals out. But no force could propel her downstairs, where work on her manuscript awaited, where she could get food or answer the phone she purposely left in the kitchen the night before. She knew she’d reached a place in the present moment where there were no more words, nothing left to say about the life that was ripped from her, and the life she was walking into.

Zoe phoned Sophia several times that morning. She also sent text and Facebook messages. Then she began to worry. Finally, at noon she drove the five miles to Sophia’s house. When she walked into the kitchen, Zoe noticed dirty dishes and pans strewn on every surface, so uncharacteristic of Sophia. As she walked through the dining room and living room, she was appalled to see clothes, books and papers heaped on chairs and spilling out of boxes into piles on the floor. Zoe called out but no one answered. Upstairs, she strode into Sophia’s bedroom, but Sophia was nowhere in sight. Then she heard whimpering and walked over to the unmade bed to investigate. Zoe pulled back the covers and found Sophia rolled in a ball, lying crossways at the bottom of the bed.
“Fuck sake, Sophie, it is afternoon. Get up.”
“NO.”
“What are doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Get up, Sophie. You’re as scary as a Stephen King movie.”
“I am up.”
“Bullshit. Get out of bed.”
“NO.”
“What’s goin on, honey?” asked Zoe, her voice softening.
“NOTHING,” shouted Sophia.”
Losing her patience, Zoe grabbed Sophia’s legs and began dragging her off the bed. “Let’s go, old girl. You need a shower.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask. Listen to me, Sophie. You are moving to Florida day after tomorrow. You have a lot of shit to do before then. It looks as though you’ve unpacked more than you’ve packed.”
“Can we go to the beach, Zo?”
“Fuck no. You don’t have time. Colin and Poppy and a bunch of other people will be here tomorrow to help you pack up the U-Haul. Sophie, you can’t quit right before the finish line.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to move?”
“I don’t, but that’s about me. I want you to move if that’s what you want. I know you fear that if you stay anywhere near Marty, you’ll lose your mind, assuming you haven’t already. Look, if you need me to, I’ll stay with you right until you drive out of here. Now get in the fucking shower.”

“Okay,” said Sophia as she stripped off her nightgown and turned on the water. “You know, there’s this Pema quote I haven’t thought about in a long time.”
“What is it?”
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation, can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
“Do you see your move as a form of annihilation?”
“Yes, annihilation of everything familiar, the closeness with my family, my relationship with you, my home. All for what?”
“Your sanity and an affirmation that your spirit cannot be destroyed.”
“Is it worth it?”
“Ask yourself that, Sophie.”
“I dunno. What about you, Zo? Do you have the feeling that your choice to leave George was a form of annihilation? I mean, it’s odd that you and I are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, and you often seem just as depressed as I am even though you had a choice about ending your marriage, and I didn’t. Why do we both feel so lost at times?”
Zoe just starred at her angrily. “Sophie, shut up and take a shower. I don’t wanna talk about this right now.”
Sophia glared at Zoe and whispered, “Why are you here anyway? I was content in my bed.”
“Bullshit. You were morose.”
“How the fuck do you know…and why are you such a bitch?”
“Look who’s talking?”
“You picked the fight, Zoe, not I?”
“Yeah, right. Why is it that you need to analyze everything to death?”

“Fuck you,” said Sophia then she guffawed sarcastically as she slammed into the shower and tugged the curtain closed. When she was finished showering, Sophia dried off, put on a bikini and breezed from the bathroom without a word. Zoe stared at her, shocked. In the thirty years Zoe had been Sophia’s best friend, she had never seen Sophia fail to rub lotions over her body after a shower. Nor had Sophia bothered to blow dry her hair or moisturize her face. And then Sophia did something she’d never done to Zoe before.

Sophia refused to speak or make eye contact with Zoe. She pushed past her old friend, opened the kitchen door and walked into the courtyard then stretched out, face down on a chaise lounge. The hot sun transfixed her as she lay very still. She didn’t cry or speak or acknowledge Zoe in any fashion. And if there was one thing that could send Zoe spiraling downward into despair, it was to be shunned. Zoe sat for a few minutes, trying to get Sophia’s attention by prodding her and saying things to make her laugh. But finally, as tears streamed down her face, Zoe climbed into her car and drove away.

Zoe and Sophia did not speak the rest of the day. Zoe tried calling Sophia the next morning, but Sophia didn’t answer. By mid-afternoon Sophia’s family and friends formed a chain, lifting furniture and boxes into the U-Haul truck. Sophia busily cleaned each space they cleared. Her mind was numb apart from the expression “I’m moving on,” which kept drumming in her brain. “Marty has moved on,” she told herself. Then she heard other voices in her mind ask, “But if he has, why does he keep telling me he loves me? Why does he circle back to me when he needs comfort?” “Why does he cry each time he mentions the regret he feels about everything he’s lost?” Sophia’s inner voice, the one way deep down knew the answers to these questions. She knew that Marty did and said these things only so long as he felt insecure. The moment he gained ground again, like a little harpy, he scampered away kicking up dirt in his wake. “MOVE ON,” she began to shout inwardly as dust billowed around her. “MOVE ON,” as each box found a space in the truck. You cannot care what Marty thinks or wants or feels. You are moving on.

That evening Sophia was surrounding by her beloved children and granddaughter. She knew this was the last time laughter and music would ring for her from the home she loved so dearly. Zoe was at her home, also surrounded by her precious children and grandsons, who had come up from Boston to relax in the country for the long holiday weekend. Lobsters and corn on the cob steamed in both kitchens as the two families prepared their traditional New England feasts. Throughout the evening Zoe and Sophia thought about each other, but both dismissed the temptation to be in touch. Finally, at midnight Sophia texted Zoe to say she was sorry for shunning her. But Zoe was asleep, so she did not hear the message come in.

As the gray fingers of dawn crept across the sky, Sophia stood in the shower, hoping the water would drown out the sound of her sobs. Zoe awoke suddenly, thinking she heard someone crying. Panicked, she jumped from her bed and wandered through her house looking for the source of the noise. But everyone was sound asleep.

Two hours later, Sophia stood hugging and kissing her loved ones goodbye, and then climbed into the truck. Just as she started it up, Zoe flew into the circular driveway, and skidded to a halt just inches behind Sophia’s truck.
“Noooo, Sophie. Don’t goooo,” wailed Zoe as she bounded from her car and ran to Sophia’s window. “We can’t possibly know the sublime lightness of being without each other.”
Sophia cast lost eyes downward at Zoe. “I’m glad you came, and I’m sorry I hurt you. I love you.”

Rain clouds passed overhead, spraying mist across Zoe’s face. The clouds then parted, revealing a wedge of blue sky. Zoe bent her body in sobs. Then she stood and held up her arms. “Sophie,” she beseeched, “It’s not too late to change your mind. Nothing says you have to move away. Stay. Please stay with me. We’ll move to Boston together. You can’t leave.”

Sophia stared straight ahead and put the truck in gear. Slowly it rolled down the long driveway. Zoe watched in despair and disbelief. Suddenly, the brake lights shone red then went black then red again then….

                                                                                          The End
.
Since life’s adventures run in cycles, it is anticipated that a new cycle of adventures will emerge for Zoe and Sophia. Until then “reruns” of their adventures will be posted here for anyone who wants to know the story from the beginning .

Thank you to everyone who sent advice, and special thanks to Joan Debow, for her inspiration and editorial work, to Dan Cartier for his masterful operation of this blog, to James Harley, artist, for his endearing graphics and editorial work, and to Samai Cartier for being the impetus.
Peace,

Julie Knight

Blustery air spat rain sideways as the ferry pushed through the harbor. The shoreline rose from the water, piercing the night, indelibly framed by the lights of Manhattan.  Zoe stood on the deck, her face to the sky, arms wrapped around her waist, leaning against the heavy glass door that stood between the cabin and the deck. Ferry lights against the darkness gave her a sepia flush, like the faces of women Anders Zorn painted a hundred years ago. Chill wind whipped her hair from her forehead as she slowly turned her head, revealing calm eyes and a slender smile. Surrounded by strangers pressing against her, Sophia stood inside the warm cabin, looking out through the glass door, nodding as she returned Zoe’s smile.

Zoe and Sophia stepped from the docking ramp and scampered into the terminal, swept along by other night trippers anxious to embark upon their evening excitements. Pushing open their umbrellas, Zoe and Sophia ran from the ferry terminal to the nearby subway station to catch the Number 1 train going uptown. Once seated in the jostling car, Zoe and Sophia sat, heads bent, as they studied a map, searching for the cross street on Seventh Avenue that would put them closest to the jazz club, their destination.

“Now, how do you know this guy, Sophie?”
“Samuel B and I were lovers years ago when he was a student at Berklee College of Music and I was at Emerson.”
“It’s pretty cool that he’s a famous jazz guitarist now.”
“Actually, he’s been famous for a long time, and he’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever known.”
“Too bad you didn’t marry him.”
“Fuck sake, Zoe, I was nineteen at the time. Over the years Samuel B and I bumped into each other once in a while, and I always tried to hear him play when I was in New York, but it’s been well over a decade. I’ve been stuck in New Hampshire far too long.”
“Ya think,” said Zoe. “Not only am I done with New Hampshire, I just can’t go on living next door to George.” Zoe was referring to the fact that during the pendency of her divorce, she lived in the main house on her property and her ex, George, lived in the guest cottage. “But, Sophie, I thought you loved New Hampshire.”

“I did, until Marty cheated on me with Fugly.” Sophia was referring to his husband’s girlfriend who was married to a famous musician, Famous Guy, whose father was someone really famous, Famous Father. Two years before, Fugly approached Marty to become involved in a project being funded by Famous Father. After several months, Fugly and Marty began their affair, and when Famous Father discovered it seven months before, he pulled his money and collapsed the project. Fugly moved out of the marital home, leaving behind three young children she saw on a visitation schedule. Marty moved in with Fugly, forming a new, part-time faux family, and the two enjoyed the support of the vast fortunes of Famous Guy and his father.

“I understand why you need to leave New Hampshire, Sophie.”
“I know you do. All the associations are devastating. Plus Marty’s a prick to me, as if I were the one who had the affair instead of him. I just want out. I also miss living in a city.”
“Amen, sister,” laughed Zoe. “It’s time for both of us to get the hell out of the country. But if you love the city so much, why aren’t you moving somewhere bigger than Naples, Florida?”
“Hey, it’s warm in the winter, it’s not a village on a lake with the population of a few hundred, Miami isn’t that far away, and best of all, I’ll never have to see Marty again in life if I’m lucky.”
“The flow of your logic’s a little jumbled, but I get what you mean.”

“My biggest regret,” said Sophia, “what breaks my heart in two, will be living so distant from Poppy, Fonzi and Lily, and you, of course.” Sophia was referring to her amazing daughter, Poppy who lived with her wonderful husband Fonzi and her beloved daughter Lily, just a few miles from both Sophia and Zoe. “But being in close proximity to Marty is emotionally crippling me.”
“Okay, change the subject, Sophie. You know it makes me crazy to talk about your move.”
“I’m sorry; you’re right. Let’s just enjoy this trip. Who knows when we’ll take another one together.”

Above ground, the women dashed through the downpour until they found the address of the jazz club. But what they found was nothing, no marquee, no sign, no lights.
“Fuck sake, where’s the club?” asked Zoe.
“I don’t know. I Googled where Samuel B would be playing on today’s date and this was the address.”
“What year, Sophie?”
“Ahh, I assumed it was this year.”
“Well, unless we’re in the Twilight Zone, I think the information was old.”
“Shit. Well, we can’t stand in the rain all night. Let’s walk to the West Village. There’s gotta be music there.”

A half hour later, the friends were sodden and cold. The frustration of their search had sapped a measure of excitement from the evening. They huddled in a doorway out of the rain as Zoe searched her Blackberry for jazz clubs in the West Village. Once they began hunting again, they discovered that other clubs had also gone out of business. Finally, they walked into a place where a group of aging musicians played big band tunes, not the thrill they hoped for, but at least the place was dry.
“I’ll have a scotch,” said Zoe to the bartender as she threw Sophia a flat look of disenchantment.
“Make it two,” said Sophia, ignoring Zoe’s vibe.
The bartender asked if they wanted to run a tab.
“NO,” said the women loudly in unison. They had no intention of spending their entire evening listening to big band tunes.

When the band broke for a few minutes, Sophia flagged down a saxophone player and asked him about other nearby jazz clubs.  Zoe sat with pen and paper, poised to write down names and locations, but Sophia began reminiscing with Sax Guy as they discovered friends in common, including her old lover, Samuel B. Zoe smiled politely and nodded absently, wishing that Sophia would get some useful information. Soon after Sax Guy gave Zoe a few names to write down, a tall, handsome fifty-something man walked up and greeted Sax Guy, who introduced him to Zoe and Sophia as a well-known trumpet player. And just like that, Zoe’s apathy vanished. When the trumpet player spoke, it was obvious he was a Brit, and his charm disarmed both Zoe and Sophia. After a few minutes the two musicians wandered off to talk to other musicians in the room, and the women finished their drinks, determined to find at least one club on the list.

As Zoe and Sophia walked to the front door, they discovered that the Brit, Trumpet Guy lingered there, almost as if he were waiting for them. He stepped up, blocking their exit and asked if he could take them to another club. Zoe and Sophia followed him as they hurried through the driving rain until they reached a tiny dive called the 55 Bar on Christopher Street, a place that had been around since 1919, surviving the prohibition era. People were tightly crammed in, nearly spilling out onto the sidewalk. Mike Stern played guitar with a bass player and drummer, and their sound was so intense that Zoe and Sophia didn’t care that they had to stand, spines flattened to the back wall. Trumpet Guy flirted with both women, but they were mostly impervious to his attentions so enthralled were they by the music. The crowd thinned a bit after midnight, so the three of them were able to find stools at the bar. Trumpet Guy sat in the middle and bought a round of drinks. Sophia leaned over the man to catch Zoe’s attention.

“We both have to work in the morning,” said Sophia. “Don’t you think we should get going?”
“Let’s just hear one more song,” pleaded Zoe.
“Stay. Stay,” urged their escort. “The trains and the ferry run all night.”
During a break after the next tune, Sophia turned to Trumpet Guy and asked, “Are you married?”
“No,” he said.
“Where do you live?” asked Zoe.
“Right around the corner,” he answered.
When the next song ended, Sophia again caught Zoe’s attention. “Zoe, we will be exhausted in the morning. We should go soon.”
“Stay…stay,” urged the Brit.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Zoe asked him.
“Yes, but she lives north of the city.”
Two songs later Sophia said to Zoe, “We need to go.”
“Just one more song, Sophie.”
“Stay…stay, the trains and ferry run all night long,” chimed the man yet again.

Zoe and Sophia were beginning to suspect that Trumpet Guy had formed a vision of how the evening might end, which included Zoe and Sophia as a package deal. Since this wasn’t the first time they had encountered this objective in men, they pretended not to notice. Finally, after a round of friendly kisses and hugs, Zoe and Sophia bid goodnight to a pair of disappointed eyes on the face of the handsome Brit.

After a scant four hours of sleep, Zoe and Sophia were hard at work at two tables they set up for themselves in the living room of Emily’s Staten Island apartment. Emily was Zoe’s youngest daughter who recently transferred from a college in Illinois to one on Staten Island to be near her boyfriend, Zee. Emily was grateful when Zoe offered to come to the city for ten days to help Emily nest in her new digs, combining that mission with a working vacation for Zoe and Sophia. Although the apartment had two bedrooms, one of which Zoe and Sophia shared, Emily had fallen asleep on the couch a few feet from the work space, and no amount of clamor seemed to rouse her. What neither Zoe nor Sophia knew was that Zee was also asleep on the couch. They didn’t know Zee was there because he was so skinny that his body disappeared into the crack of the couch, as if he’d been swallowed by it.

Sometime late morning Emily’s curly-haired head popped out from under a blanket, and she lurched from the couch toward the bathroom in a panic that she had to hurry to class. Only then was Zee’s dark, sweet face evident as he opened one eye and saw the two women’s startled faces staring at him from across the room. Zee was a rapper who sometimes played night clubs, so morning was not his time. He gave the women one huge, white-toothed smile then flipped over, threw the blanket over his head, and disappeared once again into the crack in the couch. In a few minutes, Emily emerged from the shower, her petite, yet voluptuous body, wrapped in a towel. She kissed her mother and “aunt” good morning then fled to her bedroom to dress.

“They must have gotten in later than we did,” said Zoe.
“I didn’t know that was possible without it being morning,” said Sophia.
“Ah, youth. How’s your writing coming?”
“Okay. How’s your work going?”
“Really well.”
“I looked up Samuel B on Facebook and wrote to him. I told him that we went to a nonexistent club last night searching for him.”
“Cool. Did he write back?”
“Not yet. What do you wanna do tonight?”
“Hear more music, of course. I’ll ask Emily if she wants to go with us.”
“What about Zee man?”
“Sure, if he’s free,” said Zoe.
“Are you gonna have time to do any sightseeing during the day, Zo?”
“Nope. I gotta work days, but you should go.”
“Nah. I’ll wait until later in the week when Poppy, Fonzi and Lily get here.”
“Yeah. We’ll all go.”

At five o’clock, Zoe and Sophia took showers to get ready for the evening. Samuel B wrote to Sophia during the day to tell her he had a gig at a club called The Jazz Standard and that he’d love to see her again. Emily and Zee were excited to be included, and so the plan was to eat dinner at the club, catch the first set of music and then improvise after that. Emily convinced her mother to let her drive them into Manhattan rather than taking the ferry. Zee sat in the front seat, his face bent into his phone. Emily drove like a veteran cabby, edging into traffic and cutting off other drivers, twisting fast down side streets and stopping with a jerk a split second before rear-ending other cars. Zoe and Sophia sat in the back seat fussing.
“How do I look?” asked Sophia. “Shit, I never should have worn this blouse.”
“You look great,” said Zoe.
“My hair though. All this rain just makes it curl. I look like crap.”
“Your hair is fine.”
“Do you think he’ll recognize me?”
“You don’t look that different. Anyway, why do you care? The guy’s been happily married for a hundred years.”
“I care because I don’t want him to look aghast when he first sees me and to wonder whatever happened to that  young me.  I don’t want him to ask himself how she became such a hag.”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, you are not a hag, but you are obsessing. He’s probably changed a bit himself over the years.”
“You can see his picture on one of his CDs. Google him on your phone. He still looks great.”
“NO,” Zoe barked. “I need to concentrate on where we’re gonna park.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not that easy to park in the city.”
“Well, we’ll drive around until we find a parking lot.”
“I don’t wanna risk it. I’m gonna try Googling parking lots in the West Village.”
“Can you do that?
“I dunno. Anyway, what’s the point of driving if we have to spend eight dollars on the toll bridge and thirty bucks to park and then walk two miles? We should have taken the ferry and the subway.”
“Why are you going crazy about parking, Zo? We’ll park where we park.”

Emily and Zee exchanged sardonic glances, suppressed laughter, and alternated turning up the music as the female racket in the back seat grew louder.
“I know Samuel B’s gonna ask me about my marriage,” cried Sophia.
“So what?” said Zoe.
“I’ll be so humiliated to tell him what happened.”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, there’s nothing to be humiliated about. Anyway, if we never find a place to park, you won’t have to tell him anything.”

Pretty soon Sophia was in tears and mascara streamed down her cheeks. Entrenched in her parking angst, Zoe vigorously twilled her hair in her fingers, turning it into a rat’s nest. They both looked scarier than a Stephen King movie.  And just as the friends were about to begin a new round of loud grasping and fixating on things outside of their control, Emily pulled up to The Jazz Standard and found a parking space right in front. Zoe laughed, releasing her tension as she brushed her hair, and Sophia bounded into the club and made straight for the bathroom to clean up her face. By the time she returned to the dining area, Sophia found the other three at a table already ordering food and a bottle of wine. Sophia asked the waiter what time Samuel B’s set would start. He looked at her confused.

“I’m sorry,” said the waiter, “but he’s not booked to play until the weekend.”
Sophia let out a long sigh. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“Huh?” said Zoe. “Sophie, is Samuel B a figment of your imagination, or have you made him disappear with your anxiety.” Sophia just rolled her eyes.

During dinner the conversation was lively as Emily talked about classes and her waitressing job, and Zee talked about his emerging career as a rapper. Both young people were clever and dryly comical as they compared childhood memories, while Zoe and Sophia looked on with loving admiration. Emily was exquisite. She had curly, light hair and big blue eyes, unusual traits in a bi-racial child. Zee was dark-skinned with large eyes and an enormous smile that lit up his face and compelled others to smile when he did. As Zoe and Sophia watched Emily and Zee interact, they were pricked by bittersweet memories of love affairs in their earlier lives.

After dinner the young people decided to split off from Zoe and Sophia, agreeing to meet back at the car later on. Zoe and Sophia wandered through the West Village breathing in the excitement. As they walked down Christopher Street, past a shop selling leather and sex implements for many tastes and persuasions, a man suddenly stepped into their path. He was a young, gay, African American, with bulging eyes and a broken front tooth.

He grabbed Sophia’s arm, pressed his face into hers, and spewing spit through boozy breath said, “You have recently been betrayed by someone very close to you and your heart is broken.”
Sophia’s eyes widened. “That’s true. My husband betrayed me and broke my heart.”
Then he lurched toward Zoe, cupped her head in his hands and said, “You’ve spent your whole adult life taking care of other people, and now it’s your time to take care of you.”
Zoe laughed in amazement. These were the very words her therapist spoke in her last session.

For the next several minutes the young man astonished Zoe and Sophia as he reeled off facts reflecting their lives. Finally, he let them in on his secret. He claimed to be an angel sent to earth to communicate specifically with certain people, and Zoe and Sophia were on his list. Each time the women tried to walk on, their “angel” encircled them with his energy, touched their hair, and spilled another revelation from his lips. Several times Zoe and Sophia glanced at each other helplessly, trying to convince the man they had to leave him behind. But they were careful to exert only gentleness in their words and gestures. After all, no one wants to offend an angel. When Zoe and Sophia finally spied the entrance to a subway station, they disappeared down the steps, in a quest to find someplace slightly saner to land.

On 3rd Street off McDougal they found the Village Underground. The house band was jumping and so were the clientele. Zoe and Sophia swooned at the Blues, Reggae, Funk and R & B music. They were seated at a table right in front of the band, next to an elderly Spaniard, an artist, who held a sketch pad in his lap. He studied Zoe’s face for a few minutes then reached for his pastels and drew Zoe’s portrait. When the Spaniard was finished sketching, he jumped up, held out his hand to Sophia and twisted his old limbs into some serious dirty dancing, until his wife softly intervened and led him back to his seat before he keeled over. Several other men asked Zoe to dance while Sophia watched. Finally, Sophia decided to dance by herself, and as she did so, she made eye-contact with the man who sat at the table behind hers. Working up a nerve she generally lacked, she gestured for the man to join her. To her amazement, he agreed.

Sophia thought her interpretation of the music was artful and sexy. Unfortunately, her dancing included wild spinning circles, and she flapped her arms in such a way that she knocked into other dancers frequently. Her spastic footwork didn’t have quite enough room on the small dance floor, and at one point she tripped and fell face-first onto the platform stage. The two pretty female vocalists looked down at Sophia, smiled, and continued their dance steps, but delicately, so as not to step on Sophia’s head. As Sophia rolled over mortified, she looked up at the gorgeous lead guitar player, who bent down, hand outstretched and helped her to her feet.

Pretending as if nothing had happened, Sophia smiled brightly at her bewildered dance partner, enticing him not to flee the floor. Since he was a gentleman, he kept on dancing. After three more songs, Sophia tried talking to him, but the music was so loud that she heard only the word soup he shouted in her ear. Sophia nodded toward tables at the back of the club, and he smiled his assent. Once seated outside the ear-shattering zone, Sophia learned that he was an Argentinean economist who worked for the government in Washington, D.C. He hailed from Russian Jews who fled Russia in the 1920s. The mere mention of Russia launched Sophia into one of her favorite topics, Tolstoy’s novels, none of which her scholarly companion had read. Half way through explaining the plot of War and Peace, Sophia saw her companion’s eyes glazing over, so she asked him whether he was married. He was. And because of this fact, the good man was spared the plot of Anna Karenina.

By four a.m. Zoe and Sophia finally climbed into their bed in Staten Island and slept soundly but were awake in time to start their work precisely at nine a.m. For the next few days they kept this merciless schedule, executing “theme” nights once five p.m. struck. One evening they visited China Town, and enjoyed countless shops selling things they couldn’t identify and ate a delicioius, cheap meal at a tiny noodle house. Another evening was devoted entirely to checking out girl bars in Manhattan. Sophia’s recent discovery of the show The L Word prompted this adventure. In order to sleep on nights she was particularly tortured by her current emotional devastation, Sophia watched DVDs of The L Word’s six seasons. She talked about the show’s characters as if they were actual people in her life. Anyone who knew Sophia well, knew that this was not the first time she had pushed through grief by adopting a stable of imaginary friends. Anyone who loved Sophia, accepted this oddity of hers. It kept Sophia from living permanently on Planet Nuts.

Although Zoe and Sophia met scores of friendly, fun-loving lesbians, they realized that Hollywood embellished the glitz and glamour of such places. Big surprise there. On the ferry ride home that night, Zoe turned to a sleepy Sophia and muttered something.
“What did you say?” asked Sophia.
“I didn’t feel right in the lesbian bars. I felt like an unfair imposter.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not a lesbian. So, I felt I was deceiving them because they probably thought I was a lesbian.”
“How do you know what they thought? Anyway, that’s not the point. You like women as people, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well, what’s wrong with hanging out exclusively with a bunch of women?”
“Nothing, Sophie, it just felt dishonest because women were flirting with me.”
“Do you feel dishonest going into a straight bar and talking to men who flirt with you, but whom you would never dream of sleeping with in a million years?”
“No.”
“Well, how’s that different? People are people. I like hanging out with only women sometimes. It’s not about sex. It’s about camaraderie.”
“Hum. I don’t know. I still felt like it was deceptive.”

“Try this on for size,” said Sophia. “Are you black?”
“No,” said Zoe, bewildered by the question.
“Do you feel like a fraud if you go to a black neighborhood and eat in a restaurant where you’re the only white person?”
“I’m not tracking, Sophie.”
“You have a simpatico with black folks because your children are bi-racial. So, you actually like being in all-black environs. You don’t feel like a fraud in that situation because you don’t connect it to sex. You simply like finding commonality with people different from you.”
“We might be at an impasse on this one, but I hear your point.”

As the week crawled along, Zoe and Sophia awaited the arrival of Poppy, Fonzi and Lily, but they didn’t anticipate the ensuing turmoil. Poppy, unaccustomed to cities, arrived one evening in the vortex of a complete breakdown. Fonzi explained delicately, while Poppy was out on the porch downing a glass of wine, that Poppy had come unhinged on the George Washington Bridge, screaming for Fonzi to pull off the bridge someway, somehow. But it was a bridge, after all.

The next day, when the whole gang visited the Statue of Liberty, Poppy wasn’t much better, and she clung to Lilly like tree fungus, casting caustic glances at every poor passerby, terrified that someone would sweep Lily away and sell her into white slavery. Lily wasn’t entirely white since Poppy herself was bi-racial, but that was beside the point. Poppy was a good-natured, brilliant woman with a lovely face, a zaftig figure and a booming laugh. Absolutely nothing frightened Poppy in the wilds. But put her around throngs of humanity and tall buildings, and her laugh was replaced by hyperventilation. At one point Lily begged her mother to let her go off with her “cousin” Emily and the Zee man, to get a hotdog on the back side of Lady Liberty. Well, Poppy’s panic was like a vapor blowing out of her eyes and ears as she screeched, “NO WAY,” scaring everyone around, including the pigeons.

Poppy tested Fonzi’s patience, but the man was bred to kindness and compassion and his adoration of Poppy was unflappable, so he figured out ways to reassure his wife without wringing her neck.

Lilly noticed nothing but the wonder of newness. Her beautiful, dark eyes took in every detail as her sharp mind lined up the facts about New York City, which she had studied preparing for the trip, with the reality of the city she observed. And her delight at several characters who shouted to themselves as they attacked invisible foes was just as forceful as her enthusiasm for Ellis Island. She only wished the grown-ups had as much energy as she did, and patience– especially when she did things like hang her athletic little body upside down from the grip bars on the subway as if she were on a jungle gym.

As for Poppy, the only thing that tranquillized her was on the final day, when everyone went to the Empire State Building. Fonzi took the young people to the top, and Zoe and Sophia took Poppy shopping. It was as if Manhattan itself sighed deeply. Poppy’s cure wasn’t cheap, but it was effective. By the time the group reunited in Central Park for lunch, Poppy was downright giddy.  In fact, she was so relaxed that she only flinched when Lily rushed up to a man who was dancing in the street.  Lily beamed then gaily danced with the man, a lunatic dressed in a pink tutu and black Converse sneakers. But nothing appealed to Poppy as strongly as the next dawn, when the little family set their course for home. By then, Poppy longed for the lakes, the moose, the deer and the monastic life of a country girl.

Since it was the weekend, Zoe slept in. When she finally awoke, she went in search of Sophia and found her in Emily’s tiny yard, on her hands and knees, planting flowers.
“What time did the kids leave?” Zoe asked. “I vaguely remember them coming in to kiss me goodbye. What are you doing?”
Sophia looked up curiously. “What’s it look like? Nice hair by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your bed head sets a new record.”
“So what? You’re covered in dirt.”
“Duh. I’m gardening.”
“This is our last full day. What do wanna do, Sophie?”
“You wanna see Harlem?”
“I’ve never been there. Sure.”
“Let’s shower and see if we can catch the ten o’clock ferry,” said Sophia.

Once out of the shower the two friends rubbed moisturizer over their slender torsos and long, lean legs. After drying their blond hair, their eyes met in the bathroom mirror as they applied subtle makeup to their faces.
“Zo, you won’t believe what happened this morning.”
“What?”
“Marty thought he was sending Fugly a text, but he sent it to me by accident.”
“No shit. What did it say?”
“It was hard to make out the context, but since he addressed her by name, I knew it was for her. He told her to “get fucked” twice. I guess paradise is eluding him. I wrote him back.”
“What did you say?”
“I wrote ‘What starts in chaos–ends in chaos. And BTW, you sent this to me by mistake.’”
“Holy shit. Did he write back?”
“Nope. I guess he’s figuring out he’ll never have the standing he wants with his new faux family. Marty likes being king of the castle. But Fugly will never move over, trust me. She and Marty are so narcissistic, that they are bound to eat each other’s faces off.”
“Would you ever go back to him if they broke up?”
“Nope. I know who he is now. I don’t need a coward who lies and cheats. I just hope he doesn’t show up on my doorstep looking for “mommy comfort” when I get home.”
“He is such a dick wad, Sophie. Please remember how shattered you were last month when he came home, wanting to reconcile, and then after a couple of weeks went right back to Fugly.”
“I won’t make that mistake again, Zo.”
“Not to change the subject, but if we go out tonight, we should try to get back at a reasonable time. We have a long drive ahead tomorrow.”
“Let’s go catch Samuel B’s first set and try to get back here before midnight.”

By early afternoon Zoe and Sophia emerged from the subway at 125th Street in Harlem. Zoe began snapping pictures of landmarks like the Apollo Theater as Sophia perused the street vendors’ wares. Zoe kept waiting for the Harlem she read about and saw in movies to jump out at her, but it never did. Instead of dashing black men in fancy suits, escorting minxy blues singers in evening gowns, she saw families out for a stroll on a warm spring afternoon. Instead of sensing danger and excitement, she sensed benign ordinariness, a place where people were friendly and helpful and didn’t seem to notice Zoe and Sophia more than they did anyone else.

Late that afternoon Zoe and Sophia were back in Staten Island, packing their bags so they could make an early departure the next morning. In the evening Zoe and Sophia drove with Emily and Zee back into Manhattan. Emily dropped Zoe and Sophia at The Jazz Standard, promising to pick them up at ten-thirty after she dropped Zee at his gig. Although Sophia again spent the drive obsessing on seeing Samuel B after so many years, she needn’t have worried.

When Zoe and Sophia stepped out of the car, the first people they saw walking down the street toward them were Samuel B and his colleague, Piano Man. Even in the darkness, Sophia recognized Samuel B.  Years slipped away like rain on a leaf, and Sophia walked hurriedly toward her old friend. His kind spirit reached out to her, entwining her in a time when life was fresh, full of awe, and barely weighed down by experience. They embraced each other for several seconds, and then pulled back, smiling into each other’s eyes. Love never dies, Sophia thought to herself.

Inside the club, Zoe sat talking with Piano Man while Sophia visited with her dear old friend. After catching up on each others’ families, Sophia’s failed marriage came up, and Sophia could not staunch the tears. She realized it had been a long time since she looked into the eyes of a truly compassionate, selfless male friend who wasn’t consumed by insecurity. She felt so grateful to be reminded that men like Samuel B moved through the world and that perhaps someday, she would meet another one like him, a man she could safely entrust her heart to, without fear that he would crush it and then discard it as worthless.

Zoe and Sophia listened raptly to the amazing music the band created, but at ten-thirty they met Emily outside as promised. Something about her encounter with Samuel B diminished Sophia’s ever-present sorrow, and she suddenly felt so tired, that she curled up in the backseat and fell asleep. Zoe’s internal disposition was just the opposite. She was bucking to keep the night young. So, instead of dropping them in Staten Island, Emily invited Zoe to go to Brooklyn to meet Emily’s girlfriends for a late supper.

Near midnight, Sophia awoke with a start from a happy dream she tried to remember, but couldn’t. At first she wasn’t sure where she was, then within seconds, she remembered she was in the car. Sophia heard Zoe admonishing Emily not to park too far from the curb.
“Where are we,” called Sophia, still supine in the back seat.
“At a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn,” said Zoe. “Get up. We’re going in for dinner.”
“So much for an early night,” said Sophia.
“I want to see Clara and Katrina,” said Zoe. “I’ve scarcely seen them since they started college down here.” Clara and Katrina were Emily’s two best friends whom Emily had known since they attended the same private high school. Although Emily was a day student, the girls were boarders all the way from Brooklyn, and Zoe had been their “Mom” away from home, always there to comfort the girls if they were alarmed by unfamiliar, scary things in New Hampshire, like nature.

Clara and Katrina were well known in the crowded, dark restaurant, which featured goat stew, jerk chicken and steamy Reggae music. They were both tall, stunning black women who were sharp as a rose’s thorn and bursting with joi de vivre. With petite, exotic Emily in the middle, the three swept through the room to the table as the heads of men swiveled. Zoe and Sophia, the only white people in the place, took up the rear. Clara brandished the drinks menu, pointing to names that made Zoe and Sophia blush, like “Lay Me” and “Triple Orgasm.” Zoe and Sophia laughed so hard at the young ones’ antics that they had trouble keeping food in their mouths. Time slipped and slithered to a euphoria, a feeling neither Zoe nor Sophia wanted to let slide away.

By early afternoon the next day, Zoe looked at Sophia in distress.
“What did I forget? I know I forgot something.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Sophia. “Where are we?”
“Still in Connecticut. We should be crossing the Massachusetts border within the hour.”
“I’m gonna need to pee soon, Zo. Are you hungry?”
“I need gas anyway,” said Zoe. “We’ll pull off at the next exit.”

Just then, Zoe’s phone rang.
“It’s my lawyer. Should I answer it?”
“Of course.”
Zoe listened for a little while then ended the call.
“My divorce is final,” she said, tears glistening in her eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
“Passages, finality,” said Zoe, blowing her nose. “Plus I have to pay George a shit load of alimony.”
“Zoe, it’s been a long road to get here.  You’re finally free, apart from the indentured servitude of alimony, of course.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Sophie?”
“Sounds like.”

As Zoe drove onto an exit ramp just after reaching Massachusetts, Sophia heard a text message blinging. She looked down at her phone and saw the text was from their friend, Florida Guy, the man who owned the house she wanted to rent in Florida.
“What’s up?” asked Zoe.
“The house in Florida is now empty, and I can move in anytime.”
Sophia began to cry.
“Why the tears?” asked Zoe.
“Relief, fear, pain. I know I’ve wanted to move for months, but now that it’s real, I’m scared and dreadfully sad about leaving my family… and you, of course.”

Zoe pulled into a gas station. She turned to face Sophia, and they stared into each others’ eyes for several seconds, watching the ambivalence of their choices dance then droop then dance again in their thoughts. Finally Zoe said, “WHAT’S IN THESE GRAB BAGS THAT WE CALL OUR MINDS?”
Sophia struggled to respond. Helplessly, she cried, “I DON’T KNOW. WHAT IS IN THESE GRAB BAGS THAT WE CALL OUR MINDS?”
Zoe just shook her head then reached out her arms for Sophia to hold her.

Hours later, as dusk filled the sky, Zoe pulled into Sophia’s driveway.
Sophia gasped. “Why is Marty’s car here?”
“Fuck sake, Sophie. Let’s just drive on to my house. You can stay there until you find out why he’s at your house.”
“No. I’ll go in. We’ll talk tomorrow. Thanks for a wonderful trip. I love you,” said Sophia, pulling her luggage from the back seat. Zoe watched her friend as she robotically dragged her belongings up the walkway. Sophia didn’t turn around before the front door slammed behind her.

That night, Zoe and Sophia moved along their new groundless paths in darkness. From time to time each wondered whether the other was thinking about their undefined futures, about the story yet to be written with words they’d never seen, about the picture yet to be painted with colors they’d never used. They balanced on the pinpoint of time called the present, recognizing the past was irretrievable and the future impossible to predict. The only thing Zoe and Sophia knew for sure was that they were off on another adventure as The Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but nearing the end of “Season One” of the Adventures of Zoe & Sophia.  Remember, to read the whole story, begin with the first post.  Easiest access to earlier posts is to click on bolded dates on the calendar to the the right of the story. 

Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos!  Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty.  They need advice from anyone willing to help them.   For instance, what advice would you and your BFF give if you asked each other “WHERE ARE WE GOING?  AND WHAT WILL WE FIND?”  Any advice you can give to Zoe and Sophia would be helpful, but this is what they said to each other. 

The day started softly with the rising sun. Mist hung like chiffon over the water behind Sophia’s house. Swiftly, two great blue herons rose through the mist, fleeing a sudden invasion of mallards and Canada geese. An ancient snapping turtle swam the center lane of the lake as he journeyed toward the dam at the other end, sinking every few yards, foraging for prey. Ospreys hovered overhead then plunged feet first into the shimmering surface when they spotted a good catch old snappy had missed. Once the ospreys ascended, clutching fish in their claws, they broke toward the sky, their slow wing-beats changing to glides as they soared.

Zoe rolled over and watched Sophia wake up. She reached out and stroked Sophia’s soft, light hair. Poignant pictures pricked her, snap shots of moments that filled thirty years of their sustained love as best friends. Sophia’s eyes fluttered open, and a smile sprang out to greet Zoe.
“Don’t give away your power, Sophie.”
“I won’t. Never again will I give away my power.”
“Let’s take a walk.”
“First, I need coffee.”

Because the days were closing in on Zoe and Sophia before Sophia’s permanent exodus from New Hampshire to Florida, the friends spent many nights together. They framed each other, stored up each other’s warmth and energy, like birds gathering food in autumn, preparing for the long stretches to come during which they would know each other’s voices and words, but be too distant for touch, smell and sight.

Zoe and Sophia walked down to the water, holding hands like school girls in a playground. They dipped their toes in the lake, and as brave as Zoe was about icy water, even she gave up the idea of swimming. But they giggled as they splashed each other. Side by side they perched on the arms of a weathered Adirondack chair, watching their dogs Sparky and Voltaire chase a tennis ball up and down the shoreline. A chilly breeze finally drove them back inside.

Sophia built a small fire in the fireplace, while Zoe made another pot of coffee.
“What about you, Zoe. Are you going to hold on to your powers too?”
“Which ones? I mean, what do you see as my powers?”
“The same as mine, the same as everyone’s. If you can see my powers, you can see your own.”
“Do I have your power in the strength with which you love?”
“Of course you do.”
“I guess I knew that. How about the way your creativity gives you power,” asked Zoe.
“Ah huh, yours does too.”
“But Sophie, that’s your work. Writing is what you do. I have a wonderful job, but it’s not artistically creative.”
“I suppose it’s a matter of semantics, but you spend much of your time outside your job creating art with your jewelry. How we spend our time is a huge factor in what defines us—don’t you think?”
“I guess.”

“When Marty and I were together, I used to say work was what I did, but my marriage and home were who I was.”
“I remember,” said Zoe, lifting her eyebrows. “I never felt that way except toward motherhood, which was all about who I was. Otherwise, I was often happiest at work. But my marriage to George was pretty volatile from the beginning and always lacked mutuality.”
“Do you think my closeness with Marty was one of the ways I gave up my power, Zoe?”
“Maybe. You let Marty define certain aspects of you. You lived for and around him so totally. Actually, he was the same way with you. I’m not sure I’ve ever known a more symbiotic couple. It worked for you when it worked, making his betrayal all that more crushing. But that’s not the power I was worried about you giving away, Soph.”

“What did you mean?”
“I meant the power you’ve given to Marty to hurt you since the split.”
“Yes, I need to take back the power of finding my own value. Marty can never again be at its core. Long before the split though, I was trying to resurrect him. What a sad waste of time. The Marty I knew died when he began his affair with Fugly.”

“I don’t wanna talk about Marty right now or about that ugly, rich, predatory girlfriend of his. Even thinking about them robs you of your power. Right now, I wanna talk about us. What else gives us power, Sophie?”
“Our curiosity and intelligence.”
“That’s true. Neither of us questions those qualities in ourselves. But if we’re all that intelligent, why do we give away our power?
“Do you know what Pema says?” Sophia was referring to Pema Chodron, their favorite American Buddhist writer.
“What does Pema say?”
“She says fear drives most people and our instinct is to run away from our fears. But when we run from them, we give the power to our fears. She thinks we should run toward those things we fear then fear loses its power.”

“That sounds like Psychology 101,” said Zoe as she walked into the kitchen and grabbed a half-eaten bag of Chex Mix.
Sophia followed her to the kitchen. “That’s true, Zoe, but it’s one thing if you’re talking about fear of heights or dogs or the dark. It’s another thing to talk about the deep-seated emotional fears that can become the driving motivation for how we fashion our lives.”

“Okay, Sophie. Give me an example. What do I run away from?”
“You run from fear of being alone and have since you were a child. You can probably look back on your life and see how fleeing that fear was the cornerstone of some of the most important decisions you made.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe what attracted you to George was his unhealthy fixation on you. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight. You found someone whose insecurity matched your fear of being alone.”
“Interesting. I wonder if I can extricate myself from that fear.”
“Maybe. If you could view aloneness as a state of nature that won’t harm you, then you wouldn’t be so afraid of it. I wish you enjoyed you as much as I enjoy you.”
Zoe laughed. “I kinda see what you mean. No one can live inside of me except me. It’s just I and I in the end.”

“Okay, Rasta woman, what do I run away from?”
“You run from the fear of loss.”
“Ya think?” laughed Sophia.
“If you could transform your ideas about loss it might help you.”
“Meaning?”
“Every second of every day, everything changes. If you could substitute the idea of loss with the concept of change, maybe your fear of loss would lose its power. Change is like time; it never stops. Time is the rhythm of life, change is the melodic sound—they are inextricable.”

“Deep. But you’re insinuating that all change is good, Zo.”
“Not really. It is what it is. Why fear what we can’t control?”
“Why fear anything?” asked Sophia quietly.
“There you go,” said Zoe as she took a bow. “It’s easy to say, and hard to do, of course. But let’s get back to the power thing. What do we feel when we feel powerless?”

Sophia tossed a handful of Chex Mix into her mouth and crunched for a few seconds before answering. “I’d say when we feel powerless, we feel our lives lack value, and that really, really scares us.”
“Okay, I’m done for now, Sophie. Hand over the Chex Mix. This discussion gave me a headache. What are we gonna do with this gorgeous day?”

“I dunno” said Sophia, ”work in our flower gardens?”
“No, no, no,” Zoe said, shaking her head emphatically. “I’m not watching you talk to twenty flower beds filled with “your babies” and cry hysterically because you’re not gonna be here when they blossom. Let’s go to New York.”
“That’s kinda far for a quick jaunt. Anyway, we’re going there next week.”
“Okay, let’s do Boston then.”
“Can we go to the Museum of Fine Arts?”
“Why not? We’ll do lunch. Hey, maybe we’ll meet some interesting men.”
“Or maybe we’ll just see some interesting art work.”
“Either way works for me, Sophie. Let’s shower.”

After they showered, the women stood in their panties and bras as steam billowed around them. They rubbed lotion over their slender torsos and long lean legs, but the mirror was too clouded for them to see their reflections. Sophia tugged on the bathroom window, which stuck like so many others in her 1770 home. When she finally pulled it free, she propped it open with an old hairbrush. Soon the steam floated outside into the warm spring air. Zoe and Sophia bent upside down, drying their blond hair before they applied moisturizer and subtle makeup to their faces. Because the day was warm enough, they dressed in camisoles and shorts, and slipped sandals onto their feet. But even in the sunshine, Boston’s wind off the harbor would have a chilling dampness, so they packed sweaters.

Meanwhile, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab Sparky was in a power pout, his face turned to the wall. He was upset because Voltaire, Sophia’s border collie, insisted on dividing his time fairly between Sparky and Tolstoy. Tolstoy was Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat. Sparky was less than fond of Tolstoy, but Voltaire adored the cat. Voltaire lay by the fire on his side with one paw slung around Tolstoy, who was plastered to Voltaire’s chest, licking his face. Not only did Sparky not get how anyone could love Tolstoy, but his feelings were hurt because he felt left out. Sparky glanced over at the “love birds,” and Tolstoy shot Sparky a slit-eyed look, for no other reason than just to rub it in. Tolstoy’s a bastard, thought Sparky. Sparky’s a dweeb, thought Tolstoy. Voltaire rolled his eyes, shook his head, and wished everyone would just get along.

“What are we gonna do with the dogs, Zo?”
“I’ll call George and tell him I’m dropping them off at the house. He’ll let them out and feed them later.” Although Zoe and George’s divorce was just a few weeks away, they still lived on the same property. Zoe lived in the 1790 house, and George lived in the guest cottage.
“That’s probably best. It’s too warm to leave them in the car for long, and that way we won’t have to hurry home. We can just go where the wind blows us.”
“Whatever,” said Zoe, grimacing at Sophia’s metaphor.
“What’s wrong,” asked Sophia.
“Go where the wind blows us? Fuck sake, Sophie.”
“Fuck you, Zoe. Okay, we’ll ride the tail of a falling star and land where it drops us.”
“Skip it. Do you know what the special exhibit at the MFA is right now?”
“No, but we can Google it. Anyway, I’m in the mood for the ancient Egyptians. Maybe we can even walk over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and look at the garden under the atrium. I bet the flowers are lovely.”
“Okay, but let’s get going and please bring something to eat for the ride.”

Sophia walked hurriedly to the kitchen cupboard and grabbed a new bag of Chex Mix, a jar of Nutella and two spoons and stuffed them in a cloth bag. Then she drew from the fridge four bottles of vitamin water and dashed out the door.

On the drive to Boston, the women first sang along with vintage Jill Scott. When their favorite song, Living My Life like its Golden, began to play, they looked at each other and smiled then threw back their heads and bellowed the words from the base of their stomachs. But by the time the song ended, Sophia was in tears.
“What’s wrong, Sophie?”
“This was the theme song for my life when Marty and I were together. I was so smug in my marriage. I adored him, you know.”
“Yeah, but you had to overlook a lot.”
“Meaning?”
“You had to overlook his hardcore narcissism.”
“In what ways?”
“Marty’s the kind of person who thinks primarily of his own needs, rarely apologizes, lacks true empathy, shows little compassion, is vain glorious, and feels others are always being thoughtless and lacking in care towards him.”
“Well, that’s quite a laundry list.”
“I’m not done, Sophie. Marty has a way of forcing others to explain their actions, rarely visa versa. And do you know how often in an hour you used to say “I’m sorry” to him? It made me wanna puke sometimes. You lived in constant fear of disappointing him because he was impossible to please. Nothing was ever his fault and everyone else was always “wrong,” never him.”
“What prompted this rant, Zoe?”
“It’s not a rant; it’s clarity I wish you would see. You were a perfect foil to him, the eternal optimist who trusted him irrationally to your detriment. Sophie, you’re the only adult I know who still believes in Tinkerbell.”

“I accepted him for who he was,” said Sophia.  “Growing up, he was modeled that people were either for you or against you. He’s all about black or white, no gray. Remember how judgmental he was about people who had affairs? Now, he has to make what he did be “right,” and he can’t stand the mirror I hold up to him. Since I no longer worship him because he cheated on me and left the marriage, I fell from grace.”
“Go figure, Sophie. He’s the troll fucker, but you’re the bad guy.”
“That’s an interesting nickname.”
“Well, Fugly looks and walks like a troll, she’s not that bright, and she has the depth of a flyswatter. All she really has going for her is a lot of money that other people earned.”
“Well, I’m moving past that now, Zoe. I think a better name for him is the deconstructed half-man.”
“Meaning?”
“Marty’s whole motif was vested in integrity and accountability and doing meaningful things with one’s life. He can’t argue that what he did to me reflected either integrity or accountability. And recently, I asked him what he and Fugly did all day. He said they sat around and watched TV, and when he was working, she invented stuff to do. He said she’s looking for meaning.”

“Well, you’ve written two books since this whole shit started. That’s not half bad, Sophie. Cream always rises to the top.”
“That’s what my mother used to say when I didn’t feel good about myself.”
“You have so much value, Sophie, but Marty’s too stupid to know it.”
“Not necessarily, Zo. If financial security was his objective, he certainly achieved it.”
“Good point.”
“Zo, the mountain I struggle to climb is to release all expectations of Marty. Mercifully, the summit just might be in sight. And once I bury him atop of it, I will dance on his proverbial grave. There are no bridges back to Marty. Now, could you please turn up the music; I don’t wanna talk about him anymore.”

As they drove, the women listened to the South African musician, Hugh Masekela. His songs were political, uplifting and lively. They sang along, snapped their fingers and danced as vigorously as they could, pinned in by their seatbelts. But pretty soon, Zoe could tell Sophia was growing restless.
“What do wanna talk about now, Sophie?”
“I wanna talk about The L Word.”
“What is your obsession with that show?”
“I love all the universal themes reflected from a purely female perspective.”
“Lesbian female perspective you mean.”
“Not entirely. One of the main characters, Kit, is straight and some of them are bi-sexual and transsexual. Some characters are even gay and straight men.”
“Who are your favorite characters?”
“The writer Alice and the museum art director Bette,” said Sophia.
“Why those two?”
“I identify with them. Can you believe Bette was reading Pema on the show? I nearly fell over.”
“Weren’t you watching in bed?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I like Alice and Bette too,” said Zoe, “but my favorite character is the sex magnet, Shane.”
“Does she remind you of yourself?”
“No, not really, but I do relate to her pain, especially when I was in my early twenties.”
“I’m beginning to panic, Zo. I only bought DVDs of the first four seasons, and I’m nearly done watching those. Maybe we can stop at Barnes & Noble so I can buy the last two seasons.”
“I wanna go to a lesbian bar tonight to dance,” said Zoe suddenly. “I haven’t been to one since we lived in Boston, before you met Marty. We used to have so much fun dancing, remember?”
“I do. But how did we go from watching The L Word to dancing at a lesbian bar?”
“How did we go from Shane the sex magnet to Barnes & Nobel?”

“I’m sorry,” said Sophia.  ”Did you want me to explore further why you like the Shane character so much?
Zoe nodded. “Do you think she’s a sex addict?”
“I’m not sure what that is, Zo.”
“I guess it’s a person who uses sex like alcohol or drugs, to mask insecurity and pain.”
“Well, I think the Shane character uses sex because it simulates love without her having to feel love, which she’s afraid to do because she was abandoned by her parents as a child.”
“Do you think I’m a sex addict, Sophie?”
“Absolutely not. I think you have a highly tuned libido. If you were a sex addict, you’d have screwed around on George all those years, but you didn’t. Plus, you don’t have indiscriminate, meaningless sex. You forge strong bonds with men. And when you decided you didn’t wanna do that or have sex for the time being, you just walked away and started making jewelry.”
“Huh?”
“In other words, you might be drawn to wanting male attention, but that has more to do with wanting to be loved than with wanting to have sex.”
“Hum. Interesting.”

A few minutes later the women walked into the Museum of Fine Arts. First, they visited the darkened, hushed room where the Egyptian mummies lay encased in glass. Next, they found the brighter room where the Impressionist paintings hung. By mid-afternoon, Zoe and Sophia were hungry. Because the day was warm and sunny, they decided to go to the basement cafeteria and take a tray of food outside to eat in the museum’s enclosed courtyard. In the courtyard young mothers sat talking, watching their children play on the grass amidst fearless birds that pecked at crumbs on tables and in the dirt. But no interesting-looking single men were afoot.

After lunch, Zoe and Sophia walked the couple of blocks to the Isabella Stuart Gardiner Museum, a place they had visited many times, especially when their children were young. They knew the eclectic, extraordinary exhibits well, so instead of meandering from room to room, they perched on the low wall surrounding the amazing indoor garden. The museum itself was patterned after a Venetian palazzo, and the garden, its centerpiece, was crowned by an atrium five stories above.

“Would you have envisioned us living the lives we are now when we were in our twenties?” asked Zoe.
“No. But I’ve never really thought about it either.”
“Didn’t people in their fifties seem ancient to us?”
“Practically dead. But, you know what…I don’t feel old. Do you, Zo?”
“Nope. I still feel young inside.”
“Well, fortunately, you still look young too. Not a day over forty.”
“Forty’s not young either when you’re twenty. But you too, Sophie, are well preserved.”
“Maybe that’s because we don’t feel old. Well, most of the time I don’t. On days when I’m utterly miserable about Marty, I feel pretty old. I don’t like what all the crying does to the lines around my eyes.”
“Those lines have a way of disappearing when you stop crying.”
“That alone is a good reason to stop. Thank God for Elizabeth Arden, Lancome, Clinique….”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, enough with the product lines. You’re broke, so maybe you shouldn’t be spending what little you have on that stuff.”
“Like hell I shouldn’t, Zo. It’s worth every penny. As much as I cry, imagine what I’d look like without that shit to count on.”
“Why are we talking about facial moisturizers?”
“Would you rather talk about the orchids and the lilies? Hey, look over there. Those guys are checking us out. Work your magic, Zo. Send out that vibe. Maybe they’ll come over to meet us.”
“You’re a big talker,” said Zoe as she turned around to see the men Sophia spied.
“They look like brothers,” said Sophia.
“Yeah, they do. Not bad looking, well dressed—I like guys who wear oxford shirts under sports jackets over jeans,” said Zoe as she caught the men’s eyes and smiled gently.

Before long the men walked over and sat down on the garden wall next to Zoe and Sophia. One of the men struck up a conversation by asking Sophia the name of a nearby flower. Sophia could identify the names of everything growing in front of them. Had she only answered the man’s question about the single flower, she might have avoided toppling into the rabbit hole of her nerves. But no, she babbled on randomly about flower after flower until Zoe jabbed her in the ribs to shut it before she blew it. Sophia halted in mid-sentence, expelling air from her lips instead of words, and the two men looked askance for a second wondering where the rest of Sophia’s thought had wandered to. Zoe took up the conversational mission, wrapping the men around her words with her charm. Soon, they asked Zoe and Sophia if they knew of a place nearby where they could walk to have a glass of wine.

As the foursome strolled to a nearby wine café, Zoe and Sophia learned that they were fifty-something brothers, two years apart in age, lived in California, and were in Boston to attend a family wedding. Both men were divorced, had grown children and did something behind the scenes in the film industry. Since this was Zoe’s field too, of course she found immediate commonality. Unfortunately, Sophia did not. Younger Brother Guy made no secret that he was gunning for Zoe, and with an almost imperceptible nod to Sophia, Zoe made known the feeling was mutual. Older Brother Guy was solicitous and sweet to Sophia, tried everything to draw her out on the walk, but her brain was so busy saying “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” that she missed the more subtle nuances of his gallantry. But each time she glanced into his eyes, she was aware of how attractive she found him.

They sat at a small table in the crowded café, and Zoe continued her animated conversation while the waiter brought them a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a platter heaped with cheese and crackers. Sophia, still unable to contribute much to the conversation, nodded like a fool and laughed at the wrong times. Zoe threw her a bone, encouraging Sophia to talk about how she was turning one of her recent manuscripts into a screenplay, but Sophia dropped the bone with a monosyllabic response and stuffed her mouth full of crackers instead.

Unfortunately, the crackers in Sophia’s mouth were like dust bunnies clogging a vacuum cleaner, and when she took a swig of wine in an attempt to soften the mass, she choked, and a ball of half-masticated crumbs spewed from her mouth and shot across the table, hitting Zoe in the left side of her head as she gazed flirtatiously into the lovely eyes of Younger Brother Guy. The men turned slowly and stared at Sophia.
“Fuck sake, Sophie, eat much,” said Zoe, raking her fingers through the mushy mess clinging to her hair.
“Sorry,” said Sophia as she wiped from her chin the soggy crumbs that hadn’t made the journey across the table.

The men pretended nothing had happened and resumed their lively repartee despite that Zoe’s attention was distilled into a steady glare, which shrieked at Sophia to cut the shit. Feeling she needed to redeem herself, Sophia risked a conversational maneuver.
“My favorite TV show is The L Word. Do you like it,” she asked.
“I thought that show finished up,” said Older Brother Guy.”
“It did, but I just bought the first four seasons on DVD. They were on the sale table at the bookstore.”
“That’s nice,” said Younger Brother Guy. A glazed look crossed his eyes as he cocked his head to one side in bewilderment.

From this bit of encouragement, Sophia launched into the same discussion of her favorite characters, which she had with Zoe earlier in the day. Two sentences in, Sophia glanced at Zoe’s slitted eyes, which screamed “change the subject,” and once again, Sophia stopped in mid-stream, failing to complete a cogent thought.
“I never saw The L Word,” said Younger Brother Guy.
“Neither did I,” said his brother.
“Well, okay then,” said Sophia as she pushed several slices of cheese into her mouth as if to plug the portal through which stupid thoughts could not escape her brain.

Despite Sophia’s incompetence at coherent speech, Older Brother Guy realized that she suffered from nerves, and he found her very attractive, so he tried once again to engage her by asking whether she liked to travel. Since Sophia’s mouth was too full of cheese to answer, Zoe jumped in and told the men about their recent trip to Naples, Florida, which spawned Sophia’s desire to move to Naples as soon as the house she planned to rent became vacant. Zoe also explained how a complication with the owner of the house and the departing tenants held up Sophia’s original timetable, and that Sophia was frustrated because she had packed everything in her New Hampshire home, and just awaited the final word that the Florida house was free. Zoe hoped that perhaps this explanation would help justify Sophia’s strange behavior.

Unfortunately, when Zoe mentioned Sophia’s imminent move, Zoe’s emotions suddenly rushed to the surface, and she decided to contain them by also stuffing her mouth with cheese. So, when Younger Brother Guy asked Zoe what her plans were for the evening, Zoe tried to explain that she and Sophia were going dancing at a lesbian bar. But it came out as “doeing dandding ah a desblian blah.”

Sophia’s palate was clear by this time, so she translated for Zoe. And just as Sophia was about to invite the men to come along, Zoe burst out crying and gagged on her cheese. Since snot ran from her nose, she was able to spit the blob of cheese into a napkin and blow her nose at the same time. The Brother Guys were very cordial in the way they placed fifty bucks on the table as they said their goodbyes and hurried out the door.

“That went well,” said Sophia.
“Not too bad,” said Zoe.
“You know, I’m too tired to go dancing tonight.”
“Me too. Let’s just go home. We can save our dancing energy for next week when we go to New York City.”

As Zoe and Sophia stepped outside into dusk, muted lights sought to twinkle. They walked in silence for a minute in the soothing, warm air then Sophia said, “I read a quote yesterday that I really liked.”
“What did it say?”
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Sophie?”
“No clue.”

Again, the two friends walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Sophia turned to Zoe and asked, “WHERE ARE WE GOING?”
Zoe turned to Sophia and asked, “AND WHAT WILL WE FIND?”
As Sophia climbed into the passenger seat of Zoe’s car, she said, “I BELIEVE WE’VE HIT THE INHERENTLY UNKNOWABLE IMPASSE.”
“YES, I BELIEVE WE HAVE,” said Zoe as she pulled out into the city traffic.

As the two astonishingly confused, but shimmering fifty-something best friends wove along the back streets of Boston, they danced, straining against their seatbelts. Jill sang Living My Life like its Golden, while Zoe and Sophia belted out the tune, roaring like lionesses. And as darkness closed the curtain on the day, they raced over the Tobin Bridge heading toward home, off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog.  Easiest access is to click on the bolded dates in the calander to the right of the story.  And keep sending in your wonderful comments.  Thank you. 

Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to help them. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF if she asked, “WHY DOES MOVING TO FLORIDA FEEL SO RIGHT EVEN THOUGH I’M UPROOTING MYSELF FROM MY LOVED ONES AND EVERYTHING FAMILIAR THAT I CHERISH?” Any advice you can give to Sophia would be helpful, but this is what Zoe said.

As the sun began to rise, Sophia lay sleeping in her 1770 home in New Hampshire. Canada geese squawking overhead awakened her. Voltaire, her border collie, lay by Sophia’s side. She tried to reach over to pat him, but her huge Maine Coon cat, Tolstoy, was asleep on her stomach, pinning Sophia on her back like a beetle. She poked Tolstoy until he moved off, then she rolled over and wrapped her arms around Voltaire, smelling the scruff of his neck. Finally, she arose, walked to the french doors of her bedroom, and looked down at the lake behind her house. A few feet beyond the doors, mist hovered over two weathered rocking chairs, where several birds perched. When Sophia opened the French doors, her pets bounded outside, and the birds took flight.

Sophia stepped out of the room and stood on the dew drenched grass for a moment. She breathed deeply the spring air, which reminded her of a San Diego dawn in December, delicious and inviting. When she turned to go back indoors, her eyes scanned boxes of books, suitcases filled with clothes, paintings stacked against the wall, and electronic cords wrapped with tape. Contemplating another day of sorting, discarding, lifting, cleaning and packing heightened the stiffness in her limbs. Anticipating another day of culling through decades of joy, struggle, pleasure, pain, dreams, disappointments, love, and loss deepened the heaviness in her heart. But what she tried to avoid was starting the day feeling anger and pain about her husband Marty’s betrayal and departure from the marriage. Her move to Florida was an attempt to regain the spirit that seeped from her daily, an attempt to retake her power instead of handing it over to him, like a nameless servant delivering wine to a drunk king.

Zoe sat at the kitchen table of her 1790 house on the same lake, five miles up the road. She’d been awake since four o’clock, unable to shake off an anxiety dream that awakened her. In front of Zoe was a compartmentalized box containing hundreds of beads. Until recently, her laptop would have sat where the beads now were, and Zoe would have been studying the pictures and informational profiles of dozens of strangers on dating websites. But she had decided to stop obsessively connecting online with men, and instead, spent countless hours stringing beads onto wire, creating an exquisite line of necklaces and earrings. Her devotion to filling time this way stemmed from an intense need not to feel alone. That need was especially strong as she pushed from her mind Sophia’s eminent move to Florida.

Zoe looked at her watch, hoping Sophia was awake. Just then her phone rang.
“Hey, Zo. Whatcha doin?”
“Beading. You?”
“Getting ready to start more packing.”
“You need help?”
“I need boxes. Help is good too,” said Sophia. “Why are you beading at this hour?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“Stress. Do you have any food at your house?”
“Not much,” said Sophia.
“You wanna go out for breakfast?”
“Not really. Once I get my packing momentum going, I don’t like to stop.”
“You gotta eat,” said Zoe.
“Why?”
“Duh.”
“Shut up. Okay, I’ll go out to breakfast with you.”
“I’ll be over in bit. You need anything?”
“Some dog food. I’m almost out.”
“Hey, you must be so happy to have Voltaire back with you.”
“Zoe, I can’t even describe what a source of comfort and joy he’s been.”
“Has Marty tried to fight you about keeping the dog?”
“Marty who?”

When Marty left the marriage to go live with his girlfriend, Fugly, he took the dogs, Voltaire and Dickens with him. Fugly was married to a famous musician, Famous Guy, who was the son of someone really famous, Famous Father. When Fugly moved out of the marital home, she left behind three small children whom she saw on a visitation schedule. Pressure was applied in such a way that Marty had not been allowed to stay at Fugly’s on the nights she had visitation. So, for months Marty stayed those nights at a dumpy motel near Fugly’s house. The dogs were not allowed to stay at the motel. But rather than letting the dogs stay with Sophia on those nights, Marty insisted they stay at Fugly’s, and Sophia suspected it was because Fugly wanted the dogs to be her dogs, the same way she wanted Sophia’s husband to be her boyfriend. From the day Sophia met Fugly, before Fugly and Marty started their affair, when the two were first involved in the project funded by Famous Father, Sophia’s impression of Fugly was that she was a predatory woman without boundaries, who took whatever she wanted out of a ruthless sense of entitlement.

Just a few weeks before, after months of absence, Marty re-entered Sophia’s life and said he wanted to reconcile with her. They spent two intense, (and at times brutal), weeks together before Marty returned to Fugly. Sophia figured out the main reason Marty decided to come home was to force Fugly’s hand about living with her full time, not just on the “off visitation” nights. Fugly had probably called Marty’s bluff when he threatened to return to Sophia if he couldn’t get what he wanted. But Marty never bluffed without being willing to carry out the threat behind it. Once Fugly took care of her end regarding the children, Marty left Sophia again, and moved in full-time with Fugly.

When Marty left the second time, again he took the dogs, despite Sophia’s repeated pleading that Voltaire and Dickens belonged to Sophia just as much as they did to Marty. Then, serendipity intervened. On their first weekend back together as a couple, Marty and Fugly wanted to go off for a romantic getaway. Rather than asking Sophia to tend the dogs, Marty asked their daughter Poppy and her husband Fonzi to care for the dogs. Poppy mentioned the arrangement to Sophia on the phone.

After Sophia’s call with Poppy ended, she tried to calm the rising torment and rage. But inside, something cracked and Sophia began to scream and scream. She screamed so long and so loudly that she thought her voice might travel the distance of an ocean. When the screaming finally stopped, Sophia sat limply in a chair in front of the fireplace, sobbing. And then, Sophia decided to stand up, to take back her power.
Sophia drove to Poppy’s home. During the drive she thought about what to tell Poppy and Fonzi to explain her actions. But when Sophia tried to talk, she couldn’t be heard. Her voice was too hoarse from the strain of screaming. Instead of speaking, when Sophia opened Poppy’s front door, she whistled to Voltaire, the ten-year-old border collie. He ran straight to her, wagging his tail. She gestured for Voltaire to follow her outside, and then she closed the door. It broke her heart to leave young Dickens behind, but Sophia wanted to be fair. She wouldn’t dream of depriving Marty of both dogs.

“Sophie, are you there,” hissed Zoe. “You zoned out on me.”
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
“Tell me what happened when you told Marty you were keeping Voltaire?”
“I didn’t tell him. I texted him. I said if he fought me on this, then I would have a ‘voice.’”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“He knew what I meant. Marty has too much at stake and too much to hide from Fugly, particularly about what went on here and what was said while he was back with me. My “voice” will speak the truth, and he can’t risk that. He has to live in the shit he created for himself. But I don’t wanna hurt him. I just wanted my fucking dog back. Now, Voltaire is home, and that’s all I care about.”
“You sound empowered, Sophie. Good for you. Look, I gotta go. I’ll see you in a bit.”

As Zoe stood in the shower, a sense of excitement about spring began to stir in her. Hot water jettisoned her back, down her bottom and onto her thighs as she thought how novel it would be to buy food and actually cook a meal. A hot brunch would make a nice change from the Chex Mix and Nutella that Sophia practically lived on these days. Perhaps they could eat outside in the one of Sophia’s many gardens.

After Zoe slathered her body with lotion and dried her hair, she selected clothes to wear and carried them into the kitchen to dress. But as she walked past the table, she glanced at the bead box and decided to create just one more pair of earrings before driving to Sophia’s. Zoe strung a fabulous dangly earring with tiny, pale jade beads mixed with even more delicate crystals and one pink onyx teardrop bead at the end. When she looked for a second teardrop bead to make the other earring, she realized she’d used the last one.

Why the lack of a bead became so bewildering was hard to say, but Zoe felt abandoned suddenly by her beads. Knowing her reaction was absurd, she pushed away from the table and walked outside to see whether any daffodils were open yet. As Sophia had earlier, Zoe breathed in the spring smells. And there was some quality about that amazing spring air that gripped her with yearning to be with a man again. It had been weeks. As if guided by a force out of her control, Zoe walked back inside, turned on her laptop, and fell to the temptation of her dating sites.

For the next three hours, Sophia tried calling Zoe several times, but she didn’t answer. Concerned that Zoe might be living on Planet Nuts, Sophia decided to take Voltaire up the road to Zoe’s. The day felt like mid-June rather than early April, and Sophia lowered the car windows, letting the warm air stream in. When she drove into the yard, Sophia’s eyes widened at the glorious sight of hundreds of opened daffodils growing in flower beds and around trees that surrounded Zoe’s home.

Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab lay in the sunshine on the front porch. He struggled to his feet, dragged his hind end down the three porch steps then ran sideways out to the car to greet his guests. Normally, Sparky was less than keen on Sophia’s visits, and he was even less ardent about visiting at Sophia’s house. He thought Sophia was a bitch who monopolized his lovely Zoe. She also lived with that mean, bully-boy Tolstoy, the biggest, most intimidating, territorial cat Sparky had ever known. Except for the food Sparky stole from Tolstoy’s bowl and the cat crap he enjoyed as dessert, Sparky saw no point in gracing Tolstoy or Sophia with his presence. But today, his senses told him Sophia had brought someone so special, that he could overlook Sophia’s shortcomings. Voltaire was back!

Voltaire danced around in the back seat the minute he heard Sparky’s howl. Sparky and Voltaire had loved each other since they were puppies. Voltaire thought Sparky’s stroke was an unfortunate turn of events, but Sparky certainly had more vigor than the last time Voltaire saw him. The minute Sophia opened the back door of her car, Voltaire bounded out and the two old friends dashed across a field and into the woods to wrestle and catch up on old times.

Sophia hurried into the house in search of Zoe. She found her at the kitchen table sitting in her bra and panties, with the clothes she’d neglected to dress in still slung over a chair next to her.
“Fuck sake, Zoe, what happened to breakfast?”
“Hi,” said Zoe, looking up at her friend with a distant dreaminess in her eyes.
“You’re cruising the dating sites, aren’t you?”
“I was missing a bead.”
“Huh?”
“I’m just gathering pen pals, Sophie. No dating, I promise.”
“Why are you promising me that, Zo? You’re an adult single woman. You can do anything you wanna do.”
“Yeah, but I’m afraid you’ll judge me.”
“Not my dealeo. You’re the one who thought the dating site business was becoming compulsive. I don’t judge anything you do. I love you just as you are.”
“Thank you, Sophie, and I you. Are you hungry?”
“Not really. But are you gonna get dressed today?”
“I guess I should.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here. It’s gorgeous outside.”
“I don’t know, Sophie. I’m pretty happy sitting right here.”
“Suit yourself. But I’m going back home then. I’ve got shit to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, apart from sorting and packing up the house and barn, I haven’t even cleaned out my flower beds.”
“Why are you gonna bother to clean out all those beds? You’re not going to be living there?”
“My gardens are a masterpiece I spent nearly two decades cultivating. I can’t just let them go—not while I can still see them. Zoe, I gotta tell  ya–you are acting really weird.”
“Am I?” asked Zoe as her eyes slowly drew away from Sophia’s and focused once again on the laptop screen filled with strangers’ faces
“I’ll see you later,” said Sophia. Zoe didn’t bother to respond. Outside, Sophia whistled to Voltaire who reluctantly parted from Sparky.

As she drove home, Sophia felt odd. Sensing a disconnect from Zoe was foreign to her. But once home, she shook off the feeling by putting on some Cuban jazz.  Then she changed into a bathing suit and rubbed olive oil onto her legs and arms. Her mood lightened instantly as she danced out to the barn to find a rake, with Voltaire prancing by her side, trying to herd Sophia’s every step. Before long, Sophia was enraptured as each rakeful pulled back layers of leaves, revealing the very tops of thousands of plants, which were just pushing through the soil of her twenty flower beds. To someone who didn’t know flowers, they just looked like masses of green things. But Sophia could see in her mind’s eye what they would look like when they bore the blossoms of lilies, oriental poppies, foxglove, phlox, peonies, roses, purple coneflower, coreopsis, campanula, Shasta daisies, bee balm and a myriad of other flowers. Soon, Sophia was talking to them, to her “babies.”

Several hours later, Zoe grew hungry. She still sat at her table and starred at her laptop as she sent off dozens of pithy emails to men she cared nothing about. It wasn’t until her stomach churned after one particularly interesting exchange, that she noticed Sophia’s absence. She felt something akin to panic when she realized the place to which she had let herself go. Zoe picked up her phone and called Sophia, but there was no answer. Hurriedly, Zoe dressed and dashed from the house, calling to Sparky. Excitedly, Sparky galloped sideways toward the car, involuntarily dropping turds in his wake, a common expression of Sparky’s delight. Together, they jumped in her car and barreled toward Sophia’s house.

When Zoe drove into Sophia’s, she heard loud music blasting from the windows and noticed that all six doors stood open. Tolstoy, dreading the sight of that bitch Zoe and her moronic, lame dog Sparky, sprinted into the woods.  But Voltaire barked with glee and ran to greet them. Sophia was nowhere in sight. Zoe walked inside, looked around mystified then called out for Sophia. As Zoe walked through each room, she was appalled by what she saw. Finally, she hurried back outside and walked down to the rose garden, which was surrounded by a white picket fence. Under the white arbor she saw a massive pile of leaves thrashing all by itself, and she heard the low tones of unmistakable keening. Next to the leaf pile lay a rake, which Zoe picked up and used gently to poke the gyrating, noisy heap. Before long, Zoe uncovered Sophia curled in a fetal position, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face.

“Fuck sake, Sophie. Why are you under the leaves?”
“I don’t know. I guess it feels safe here.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m bonding with my earth before it’s not mine anymore.”
“That makes no sense. Stand up.”
“No.”
“You have avoided living on Planet Nuts for awhile now. What happened?”
“I started thinking,” said Sophia as she sat up. Leaves clung to her hair and face.
“Meaning?”
“I realized once I move, Marty will bring Fugly here, and they will claim this land as theirs. They will sit and walk and play amidst the beauty I labored to create for so many years. It will be as if I never existed.” With this, Sophia wound into a whole new round of sobs.
Zoe sat down next to Sophia in the leaves and rubbed her head.
“Sophie, here’s a visual that might ease your pain. Picture Fugly, who looks and walks like a troll, stomping around the grounds on her gross, misshapen thighs with the purple pimples on them. She’s apt to offend the flowers. And you know she is gonna scare away the birds with that weird manly voice of hers.”

Sophia began to laugh and Zoe joined in, then they both lay down on the leaves and stared up at the blue sky.
“Sophie, you’ll create new, magical gardens, tropical ones. Won’t that be fun?”
“You’re right. It’s just hard to let go.”
“By the way, what the fuck is going on inside the house?”
“What do mean?”
“You’re not just packing up. You’ve re-designed the rooms.”
“I want to leave the house looking beautiful, different, but still beautiful.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.”
“If I were you, I’d just move my shit out and walk away.”
“I can’t do that, Zo.”
“Don’t get me wrong. The place looks incredible. I miss your antique blue and white china on the mantelpiece but I see why you replaced it with the muted pottery.  It’s more masculine.  But how come you’re leaving so many of your paintings behind? Never mind that.  Why are you leaving the house perfectly arranged?  Is it to please Marty…so he’ll remember you a certain way?”
“Hard to say,” said Sophia as she paused to think for a moment. “Not really, I guess. I just can’t leave it all ugly and empty looking. My spirit is in this house. It’s not fair to the house. Also my family will visit here, and I want it to look nice for them. Marty has no imagination when it comes to decorating. He hangs pictures too high and doesn’t really think about colors and spatial relationships that complement one another, things like that.”
“You need to stop caring, Sophie. You have to let go.”
“I know. But I’ve never been able just to drop anything and walk away leaving a mess.”
“Kinda like Marty did with your marriage and your so-called reconciliation?”
“That’s how Marty and I differ. I like tidy endings, Zo. You know that.”

Just then, Zoe remembered why she’d rushed over to find Sophia in the first place. She sat up quickly and thought for a moment how she would broach the subject. But she couldn’t come up with a graceful segue, so she just took a deep breath and dove in.
“We have dates tonight.”
“WHAT?” cried Sophia.
“And they’re coming here to pick us up?”
“HUH? When did you arrange these dates?”
“This afternoon. I’ve just been doing a little rekindling of on-line friendships, that’s all.”
“Okay,” said Sophia, shaking her head in resignation.
“Don’t worry,” said Zoe calmly. “We already know these guys. We had dinner with them in Portsmouth a few months ago. They’ve been friends with each other for years. You know, the ones from Boston. One of them is an accountant and the other teaches literature at Emerson College. Anyway, they’re up here on a fishing trip for the weekend. In fact, they’re staying on the lake, just down the road.”
“And they’re coming here because?”
“I thought it would be easier if they picked us up.”
“Jesus, Zoe. I’m not sure I can pull it together to be charming tonight.”
“How’s that different from the last time we had dinner with them?”
“Fuck you.”
“What would you be doing instead, Sophie? Crying? Watching old DVDs of Nash Bridges with your boyfriend Don Johnson?
“No, you bitch. I finished watching all those. I would be watching the second season of The L Word.”
“I thought you didn’t watch TV.”
“I don’t. I was in the bookstore the other day, and they were having a sale on DVDs. Early seasons of The L Word were the cheapest thing on the sale table. I got the whole first season for ten bucks. It was worth every penny to save my sanity in the middle of the night. According to my shrink, my psyche’s had a setback, which translates into intrusive thoughts and uncontrolled crying, especially at night. When I’m this bereft, I can’t concentrate enough to read. But I can’t watch crap either. With something well-made, I’m engaged enough to find a little peace.”

“I’ve seen a few episodes of The L Word,” said Zoe, smiling. “What do you like about it?”
“I love all of it,” said Sophia. “But it’s kinda funny how behind I am on everything. Entire shows air on cable, run a few years, have finales, and I don’t see them until they end up in boxed sets on the bargain table of bookstores.”
“Well, no one would accuse you of being in the loop, Sophie.”
“Just as well. Anyway, I love the lesbians and their friendships. And I think the writing and acting are amazing. You know, I might try writing some screenplays.”
“You should ask your agent what he thinks.”
“I will. So what time are these guys picking us up?”
“Eight.”
“That’s in two hours. We’d better shower.”

A little while later, the two old friends stood in bras and panties, in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing moisturizers over their slender bodies and long, lean legs. After they dried their blond hair, their eyes met in the mirror as they artfully applied subtle make-up.
“Zoe, why am I having such a hard time letting go of my marriage?”
“As you pack and sort through all the stuff that reminds you of the wonderful years, your emotions get stirred up.”
“It’ horrible.  I can find no peace here.  I hate Marty. He’s a fucking bastard.”
“That’s the problem, Sophie. You don’t hate him. You’ve tried to feel indifferent toward him, but that doesn’t work because you still love him. Then he rejected you again, so all you’re left with is hate, but it’s not hate at all. If you could just understand that he’s not a very good man. He’s acutely narcissistic and is absolutely incapable of holding himself accountable for his actions. In his mind everyone else is the problem. With Marty, there’s no gray, no middle ground. He’s always the hero of every story, so if people don’t worship Marty, he dislikes them. Right now, he spurns you because you hold up a mirror of himself that he doesn’t want to see. Anyway, fuck Marty. Why are we talking about him?”

“Wow, Zo. You sound like my therapist.”
“Can we talk about a far more pressing matter, Sophie? Me? I’m having trouble thinking about your move. It’s really starting to depress me, even scare me a little.”
“Me too, Zo. I can’t bear the thought of us being so far apart. Yet….”
“Yet, what?”
“ZOE, WHY DOES MOVING TO FLORIDA FEEL SO RIGHT EVEN THOUGH I’M UPROOTING MYSELF FROM MY LOVED ONES AND EVERYTHING FAMILIAR THAT I CHERISH?”

Zoe rolled a hank of hair onto the curling iron.  She held the iron still for a couple of seconds.  Then, as she released her grip and a curl sprang free, she answered.  “IT’S ABOUT SAVING YOURSELF, SOPHIE. YOU’VE DECIDED THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GRASPING AND FIXATING ON THE PAST. YOU’RE NOT AFRAID TO STEP INTO THE GROUNDLESSNESS, THE OPEN SPACE. YOU ARE TAKING THE ULTIMATE, FEARLESS RISK. I’M PROUD OF YOU.”

Just then, they heard the doorbell ring.
“Fuck sake, the guys are early,” said Zoe as she dressed quickly and ran to the front door to let in their dates. Zoe greeted Literature Guy and Accountant Guy with warmth, offered them a beer and a seat on the couch. She then went back to the bathroom to check on Sophia. Sophia looked radiant and unusually confident. Zoe followed her to the living room, and they sat across from the men and engaged them in a lively conversation.

Once the four agreed it was time to leave for the restaurant, they stood up and walked through the dining room.  In the kitchen Tolstoy stood over Sparky glowering at him.  He was pissed because he wanted to take a nap next to Voltaire, but Sparky and Voltaire lay curled around each other, sound asleep.  Tolstoy was mortified at having to share Voltaire with Sparky.  As Sophia stepped into the kitchen, she was looking behind her, attempting to come across as demure and flirtatious with Literature Guy, a tall, handsome, fifty-something man with longish brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. He asked Sophia if she would be willing to look it over a manuscript of his. She said it would be her pleasure. Then just as she asked whether he would be one of her readers too, Sophia walked into the sleeping dogs and started to fall face first. Two strong hands grabbed her by the waist and caught her fall. She turned and blushed, smiling up into Literature Guy’s lovely eyes. She realized she really liked this man, and suddenly she felt that distant, almost forgotten tingling, of sexual longing.

“Wait a sec,” said Zoe, “We better let the dogs out before we take off.” Zoe opened the door and the dogs trotted outside. Zoe then closed the door and leaned her back against it, smiling up seductively at Accountant Guy, her handsome, bald, fit, African American date. Just then, they heard a terrible clatter, and the dogs bayed pitifully to be let back inside. The source of their desperation was no secret.

Sparky and Voltaire lurched through the doorway, frothed at the mouth, and then ran in circles as their stunned, miserable eyes sought Zoe’s and Sophia’s. The men jumped back at first and then bolted from the house, followed by Tolstoy. Zoe and Sophia just looked at each other frantically.
“FUCK,” they said in unison, “Skunk.”

After the dogs galloped through the downstairs and up to the second floor, the women finally cornered then and drove them back outside. Zoe and Sophia declined the meek offer of help from the men. Instead, they stood in the doorway waving goodbye to their dates, trying to look sexy while gagging on the dense, ghastly smell. Literature Guy held his thumb and little finger to his ear and mouthed “I’ll call you.” But Sophia wondered vaguely whether he would.

Like reluctant soldiers going into battle, the women forged ahead with the necessary tasks. Sophia ran around the house and opened dozens of windows while Zoe made a bathing concoction for the dogs. It took both women to lift each dog into the bathtub for soaking, and even then, the dogs were so startled, so overwhelmed by the direct skunk hit, that they splashed much of the solution onto the bathroom floor.

Two hours later, Zoe and Sophia knew the smell was still too strong to sleep in the house, so they piled the dogs into the back of Zoe’s car. But just before driving away, Sophia opened her door and jumped out.
“I forgot something,” she called to Zoe as she ran back into the house.
When Sophia reappeared, she juggled in her hands boxed DVD sets of The L Word and the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, Zoe’s and Sophia’s favorite American Buddhist writer.
“What are you doing?” asked Zoe.
“I thought maybe we could read a bit of Pema. After that, I want to watch these shows. I like my imaginary lesbian friends, plus the stories are full of important political ideas and poignant universal themes about love, loss and humanity.”
“God almighty, Sophie, you are so strange.”
“Don’t you want to watch my shows?”
“Maybe I’ll watch them or maybe I’ll bead. Right now, I can’t think about anything but fleeing this disgusting stench.”
“Your house is gonna stink too, you know, just from us.”
“Oh well. It’ll be better after we shower. I think getting skunked was a sign, Sophie.”
“Of what?”
“I fell off the straight and narrow today with the dating websites, and you are creating a footprint rather than detachment with all your work in the house, creating beauty for Marty that he’ll never appreciate.”
Sophia smiled. “Ironically, the embedded skunk odor might be a lingering parting gift for Marty.”
“That would be apt. But I still think the gods are punishing us.”
“That’s ridiculous, Zo. Now, listen to me. I’ve wanted to say this to you for awhile. Most artists are driven by compulsion. As I writer, I know I am. What you’ve done recently is to use your compulsion to create some magnificent jewelry. Most of the creative people I know are filling some black hole or another. It shouldn’t be a source of shame.  When you cruise the web for men, you are compelled to express through words. Now, you’ve transformed that energy into fantastic artistic expression. I’m really impressed.”
“Wow, Sophie, I never thought of it that way.”

“Zo, do you think those guys liked us?”
Zoe shrugged. “Hard to tell—there’s just nothing sexy about skunk musk. So, I wouldn’t call it the most romantic second date, but it wasn’t the worst one we’ve ever had together.”
“Do you think those guys would come over to your house after we shower, you know, for a nightcap?”

“I think they’d rather eat bat shit.”
“Bats shit?

“Everything shits.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

Once Zoe and Sophia were clean again, they tucked into Zoe’s warm bed. They could barely smell the skunk on themselves as they lay alternating handfuls of Chex Mix with spoonfuls of Nutella. For hours, The L Word drama unfolded, filling the heads of the two old friends with fascinating imagery–until they finally drifted to sleep–off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but remember, if you want the whole story, begin at the bottom of the blog. The easiest way to find earlier episodes is to go to the calendar in the right-hand column and click on the bolded dates. And please, keep those comments coming. Thanks.

Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to help them. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF if she asked, “HOW DO I FORGE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GEORGE THAT ENCOMPASSES RESPECT, COMPASSION AND GOODWILL IN ORDER TO HONOR THE YEARS WE SPENT TOGETHER?” Any advice you can give to Zoe would be helpful, but this is what Sophia said.

At midnight Zoe and Sophia were wide awake. Both women sat at their laptops in their 1700s New Hampshire homes, five miles apart. Zoe was feeling acute stress about her divorce trial the following morning, but she also felt grateful that her sister Chloe had traveled from Boston to support her.

Sophia worried about Zoe’s divorce hearing too. She knew just how vulnerable her best friend was and that it would take very little for her to cave into her pain. But Sophia was also consumed with releasing her anger toward her husband Marty and the way he recently dipped selfishly back into her life for a couple of weeks, and then returned to his girlfriend Fugly.

Since Zoe could see that Sophia was online, she typed into her Facebook chat box, “Call Me.”

“Hey, Zo. You should try to sleep. You’ll need your wits about you tomorrow.”

“It’s a nice thought, but my mind won’t shut up.”

“My mind’s running too. Why won’t yours shut up?”

“Well, I just keep wondering how two people who were married for decades, who shared their innermost thoughts, their joys and struggles, could become so disengaged and need to spend so much money on lawyers. Why couldn’t George and I have talked more and sorted this out for ourselves. What happened to the love, Sophie?”

“Anger, bitterness, loss, rejection, humiliation, resentment….”

“Okay, okay. I get the point.”

“Maybe you and George could still talk,” said Sophia.

“It’s a little late for that. Anyway, what would I say to him?”

“If I were George, I know what might make me feel better.”

“What, Sophie?”

“Let George know you appreciate the positive aspects of the marriage. I wish Marty had the decency to let me know the good stuff instead of mostly demonizing me.”

“I haven’t done that to George—not the way Marty has with you.”

“I know, but have you actually talked to George about the good things he brought to the marriage?”

“Not so much. What would I say?”

“You have four amazing children. He had something to do with that.”

“True.”

“George also knew how to take care of your heart when you mourned losses in your life.”

“He did indeed.”

“He could make you laugh, Zo, and you always said the sex was good.”

“True again, but why would I say these things to George now?”

“It’s time to find some closure. I hate that word, but it fits. Zoe, your motivations for leaving only suggest that, in the end, the positive did not outweigh the negative, but you can’t deny there was good stuff there too.”

“So, you think by talking to him we might find some closure?”

“It can’t hurt. Part of why you two don’t speak often is that he probably still feels resentful and abandoned. You left him, and he is, no doubt, struggling to find worth in himself. If you let him know that he has value in your eyes, it might help him heal. I can relate, you know. Of course, it would be nice if George were receptive and realized just how much grace and selflessness you’ve shown over the past year. It’s obvious to me that you still care about him.”

“Of course, I do. I love George. I wish him only the best and have gone out of my way not to cause him harm…not like Marty. He’s been a bastard to you.”

“No kidding, but I have to let it go, Zo. And honestly, now I’m grateful because the most destructive aspect of the equation has stepped out of my turmoil.”

“Fuck sake, Sophie, speak English. I know it’s late, but could you try to be more literal and less metaphorical.”

“I never asked Marty to come back. He came to me. But before he did, I was gripped by my longing for him. I knew I could forgive the affair, the lies, even the cruel treatment and learn to trust him again. But it was not the Marty I knew who came back. That person is dead in a sense. Now, that place inside of me that longed for him has vanished. I don’t want to be anywhere near Marty. I don’t want his energy, his eyes, his body, his touch, his smell, his thoughts or his words. He is not someone I care to know any longer. That’s progress.”

“I’ll say it is.”

“Hey, Zoe, at least you have your trip to Florida to look forward to.”

“I cancelled the reservation today.”

“Why?”

“I realized I was just running away from what I need to feel,” said Zoe.

“What do you mean?”

“I was flying down to see Florida Guy as a temporary fix. I need to stay here and deal with my feelings about the divorce. I’ll go see Florida Guy after you move down there, and hopefully he’ll still want to be with me.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I have a feeling he’s conflicted about me.”

Since Zoe’s separation from George, she had dated several men. But for the past few weeks she suspended cruising the internet dating sites, and she let go of all her relationships except the one with Florida Guy. He was the only man for whom she felt a true attachment that encompassed a deep friendship.

“I need to go to sleep, Sophie, at least try. Chloe went to bed earlier, and maybe if I climb in next to her, just the comfort of having her here will help me to drift off. My sister is very good to me.”

“Yes, she is. You’re lucky to have her.”

After Zoe hung up, Sophia walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom. She felt a jab of aged sorrow, wishing her sister were still alive to climb in to bed with for comfort. But the only living thing in her bed was Tolstoy, her huge Maine Coon cat. He lay sleeping on what was Marty’s side of the bed, next to Sophia’s goodie bag. Sophia silently slid between the sheets, not wanting to wake Tolstoy. If he were awake, he’d leap on her stomach and pin her down until morning, and Sophia really wanted to sit up and watch an old DVD she found in the closet while she was packing for her move to Florida.

Zoe made fun of Sophia a few days before when she proudly brandished three seasons of the old TV show Nash Bridges. They were on a shelf next to DVDs of the entire series of Miami Vice. Something about Don Johnson’s sex appeal had always captured Sophia’s attention. She regarded him as a secret fantasy who had been hanging around in the wings of her mind for twenty-five years. Zoe shrugged at the sex appeal bit and nearly shouted that Sophia couldn’t seriously think Don Johnson was a good actor. But Sophia defended him even on that score. She thought Don Johnson was underrated. Finally, they agreed to disagree. Of course, Zoe had to admit she never watched even one episode of Nash Bridges—she said she would rather eat arsenic.

Once Don Johnson and his sidekick Cheech Marin actually sprung into action on the TV screen, Sophia was so tired that she forgot to eat her usual Chex Mix and Nutella evening snack and fell fast asleep.

The next morning George was the only African American at the courthouse. Eyebrows arched when he first walked into the courtroom for the divorce trial. He was distinguished in a suit and tie, and each time Zoe glanced over at him, she thought how handsome he looked, but thinner than usual. From time to time, George leaned in to his attorney’s ear to whisper. Zoe didn’t try to guess what George was saying. She really didn’t care. She just wanted the whole thing to be over.

Zoe looked limp as she shuffled back into the courtroom after a recess during the trial. She hoped today would mark the resolution of her long marriage. But it was beginning to look as if too many issues remained unresolved, from a legal standpoint, a practical one, and to Zoe’s surprise, an emotional one. Zoe and George took the stand and testified as to their truths. Soon, the judge would hold in her hands the facts, and with them, the power to divide the aspects of their former lives, which the couple weren’t able to agree upon. But no judge could guide Zoe about how she should feel. She felt empty and shadowy and confused.

Occasionally, she glanced back at her sister, wishing she could walk over and fold herself in Chloe’s arms. Chloe bent forward, straining to hear every word the witnesses spoke. She had the luxury of detachment and distance, so she could track the judge’s demeanor and that of the two attorneys. She tried to keep her face free of expression, but a few times she wanted to gasp at what she deemed outrageous unfairness in the process she observed.

Chloe and Zoe were undeniably sisters in their pretty facial features, but their statures were quite different. Zoe was tall, lean and long legged. Chloe was petite, with the small, lithe limbs of a ballerina. They both had blond hair and their mother’s smile, which radiated across any room. Chloe’s cornflower blue eyes compassionately sought Zoe’s hazel ones during Zoe’s examination on the witness stand. Chloe was relieved that Zoe’s testimony was clear, articulate and came straight from her heart, without rancor, without spite. But Chloe still felt helpless to protect her younger sister from the pain that emanated from Zoe’s eyes. Protection of Zoe was something Chloe had felt responsible for since they were children, especially after the death of their father, which left a mother and her three young daughters in emotional shambles.

Zoe also wished Sophia were in the courtroom, but Sophia purposely stayed away. She didn’t want to upset George, who was once one of her dearest friends. George cut Sophia loose as a friend on the day Zoe left him and temporarily moved into Sophia’s house, over a year before. Sophia knew her presence at the trial would just serve to remind George of the harshest period, the first few months following Zoe’s departure from the marriage.

Meanwhile, Sophia was too preoccupied to devote meaningful time to editing her current manuscript. She decided to work off nervous energy a couple miles away from the courthouse, until the trial was over. She planned to meet Zoe and Chloe for a meal and a debriefing. Shopping was the only way Sophia knew how to distract herself fully from worrying about Zoe. Shopping also helped obliterate every image of Marty that popped into her head. Her mind, though, was so vigilant in its scrutiny of these thoughts that she was mentally exhausted.

But physically, Sophia was fine as she streamed up and down the aisles of a TJ Maxx and filled the shopping cart to overflowing with clothes she would try on but could not afford to buy. A couple of times she grated the heels of other shoppers, when her shopping cart went straight ahead, but her eyes caught something in another direction. Before long, people saw Sophia coming, saw the glazed look in her eyes, and eased out of her path as diplomatically as they could. Sophia was unaware that she appeared like something between a crazed monkey and a rabid bat.

At one point three shoppers came into the store together, shared a cart and were having a lively discussion as they browsed the racks of clothes. They didn’t see Sophia, who was pushing her cart at full tilt, as her eyes focused downward on the cell phone, willing it to ring. Unfortunately, one of the three women stepped out into the aisle as Sophia rushed past her. Sophia’s foot caught the woman’s ankle. The woman tripped and fell into one of her friends. The friend was knocked off balance and grabbed hold of the third friend to try to break her fall. The third friend wasn’t paying attention, and as she took her next step, she keeled over on top of the other two women who lay on the floor, under an entire rack of fashionable spring jackets that had landed on top of them.

Sophia heard the cries of the three women and turned around to see what was wrong. They glowered up at Sophia. Within seconds, other shoppers rushed to help the fallen woman. Concerned, Sophia started to hurry back toward them too, but just then, her cell phone blinged an incoming text message from Zoe. Sophia stopped to read it, directly in the path of two salespeople who were also rushing to the scene of the accident. In their efforts not to mow down Sophia, they bumped into each other, tripped and knocked down the three fallen shoppers, just as they were getting back on their feet. Zoe’s message told Sophia to meet her right away, and to everyone’s relief, Sophia’s dashed from the store, leaving a cart full of clothes by the door.

Two tall, slender blonds flanking a third, smaller one, strode confidently down the busy street in Dover. Chloe’s elfin, graceful walk was accentuated by Zoe’s and Sophia’s long strides. On any other day, the sheer delight of the warm spring air would have been enough for them to throw back their heads and laugh at nothing much, since easy laughter was a quality all three shared. But today, their expressions were somber, helpless.

The trial had not yielded an end result, and after three hours of testimony, the case was continued for another month. Although Zoe and the other two were headed to an Italian restaurant, when they walked past an Asian one, they saw through the window an empty table. Sunshine steamed down on the table. Their collective need for light, to dispel their internal darkness, was so compelling, that they walked into the Asian restaurant, sat at the illuminated table, and soaked up the light, waiting to order food for which they had little appetite.

While they waited, Zoe and Chloe filled Sophia in on some of the stickier issues during the trial, which required further evidence and resulted in the month’s delay. Both women talked through tears. By the time the charming, young Chinese woman arrived at their table, they realized that a cup of soup and a glass of wine was all their stomachs could abide. When the wine arrived, they raised their glasses to toast, but their minds went blank.

“To new beginnings?” asked Chloe finally.

“To family, newly configured?” asked Zoe.

“Shit,” said Sophia. “Let’s just toast to the passage of time, and that we won’t always feel this bleak. Life is what we make it, right? Here’s to joy.”

“Never mind,” said Zoe. “Skip the toast. What are we gonna do with the rest of the afternoon and evening. Sophie’s right. We need to find our joy. Can you stay another night, Chloe?”

Chloe’s bright blue eyes lit up and an impish smile spread across her face.

“I’ll call Thomas and let him know I won’t be home,” said Chloe. Thomas was Chloe’s husband.

“We could read out loud from When Things Fall Apart,” said Sophia. She was referring to a book by the American Buddhists writer Pema Chodron, whom Zoe and Sophia adored.

“NO,” said Zoe and Chloe in unison. “Maybe later,” added Zoe.

“Then what should we do?” asked Sophia.

“Well, shopping is a pretty good curative when I feel like shit,” said Zoe.

“Okay, but we have to go some place other than TJ Maxx. I can’t go back there today,” said Sophia.

The other two looked at her quizzically.

“It’s a long story,” said Sophia.

“Fuck sake, Sophie, does it involve broken bones or blood?”

“No, Zo, it does not. Never mind, okay?”

“I’ll just use my imagination,” said Zoe.

Chloe, uncertain of why the conversation had become so cryptic said, “Later, can we go hear some music, maybe go dancing? My night life is pretty staid these days. I like getting together with the same couples for drinks and dinner and talking about familiar stuff, but I’d like to do something different.”

Zoe and Sophia looked at each other, smiled, then nodded at Chloe. The memory, now fading, of being married for decades snagged them. And it occurred to both women, that although sometimes they looked back with melancholy at the loss of a spousal devotion and comfort, they didn’t miss certain aspects of long-married life, like the tedium of predictability.

Zoe and Sophia took Chloe to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Fox Run Mall in Newington. They weren’t in the mood to buy much, but walking from store to store, and chatting as they perused books, jewelry and the new spring lines released some of their stress.

By late afternoon they pulled up to Zoe’s house to shower and change their clothes for the evening. Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired, incontinent yellow lab barked loudly as they approached the front door. Zoe went in first, but the force field of smell reached the women behind her. Normally, Sparky would have been in the car with Zoe all day, but she wanted to spare him the intensity of what she anticipated feeling once the trial was over, so she had left him at home.

Apart from incontinence, Sparky’s stroke rendered him incapable of walking straight, so Sparky bounded out the door sideways and slammed right into Chloe who didn’t know she was supposed to jump out of Sparky’s way. In his excitement, he let out a stream of yellow stuff that barely missed poor Chloe, who lay stunned on the front porch.

“What…was THAT,” yelled Chloe.

“Sorry,” called Zoe as she raced around the downstairs cleaning up the piles Sparky had deposited throughout.

Sophia turned to shut the door, just as Sparky tried to run back inside to say hello. In the last inch before the door closed, Sparky caught Sophia’s eye. That bitch, he thought. I’ve been stuck here all day without my beautiful Zoe, and that awful Sophia will probably make me stay out here forever. Why does she have to come to my house, anyway? She should just stay home with her big bully cat Tolstoy and have a mean-person party with him. Sparky slunk off to sulk under a tree as the women took turns showering.

Although the downstairs bathroom mirror was a little crowded, Zoe, Sophia and Chloe all managed to wedge in front of it, as they stood in their panties and bras lathering moisturizers on their bodies, drying their blond hair and artfully applying make-up.

“Where are we going, Zo?” asked Sophia.

“I don’t know. What type of music do you wanna hear, Clo?”

“I’d love to hear some live R & B,” said Chloe.

“Tonight there’s an R & B band at the Dolphin Striker in Portsmouth, and the food’s pretty good.” As Zoe said this, she caught in the mirror the discomfort reflected in Sophia’s eyes. Sophia sighed hard. “What do you think, Sophie? Can you handle that place again?”

“I guess,” said Sophia.

Chloe looked in the mirror, back and forth, into the eyes of the other two. “Is there a problem?”

Sophia took a deep breath before answering. “Marty found me at the Dolphin Striker the night he told me he wanted to leave his girlfriend Fugly and come back home to me. Zoe and I haven’t been there since.”

“I don’t care where we go, Sophie,” said Chloe. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“No,” said Sophia. “I’ve been traumatized, Chloe, and everywhere I turn has some association with Marty that triggers either despair or panic. That’s the main reason I don’t want to live here anymore. In Florida, I won’t have to be constantly reminded of the nightmare of Marty. I might even be able to accept the situation and find some compassion for him.”

Just then Zoe’s eyes began to brim with tears. “Sophie, please talk about something else. Until now, I’ve been able to stuff my feelings about your move, but it’s been a tough day, and I don’t have the emotional stamina.”

“Okay, Zo.”

“Wait,” said Chloe, “I wanna hear what happened when Marty came back. What were his reasons?”

“I’m gonna go get dressed,” said Zoe as she turned and walked from the bathroom. “I’ve heard the story and it makes me sick.”

Sophia shrugged and looked at Chloe in the mirror. “Marty said we belonged together. And he said a lot of other things like that he was an old curmudgeon and that I understood him.”

“Wow, that’s weird…and not that romantic,” said Chloe.

“But before long he started telling me everything he gave up to come back to me, kinda like guilting me for his choice.”

“What did he give up?”

“He said Fugly was willing to pay off all his debts and set him up with a new business.”

“I thought it was her famous husband and really famous father-in-law who had all the money.”

“I guess she must have plenty too if she was able to do all that for Marty. Well, now he doesn’t have to “give up” anything for me, does he?”

“Do you think that was some of his motivation for going back to her?”

“I dunno. Could be.”

“Does she have kids?”

“Three young ones, but they stayed with their father. She sees them on a visitation schedule. When Marty came back, he admitted that it really bothered him that he wasn’t allowed to stay with Fugly on the nights she had her kids. He had to stay in a dumpy little motel near her house. A couple of days after he went back to her, we were on the phone, and he told me that’s all been taken care of, and he’s allowed to live with Fugly full-time. I guess coming back to me was the leverage he needed to get Fugly to do what he wanted.”

“That’s diabolical, Sophie. Although I don’t know Marty well, I’ve known him a long time. He always struck me as arrogant, but I had no idea his selfishness was so extreme.”

“Hey, he’s probably not that different than anyone else, Chloe. He wants to get his needs met. He just had different needs when we were together. People change. From everything I’ve observed, Fugly is a predatory human being. She aggressively seeks whatever she wants even if she hurts other people in the process. I guess Marty’s espoused that way of thinking. It ignores a little thing called Karma, of course, which follows us wherever. But he’s not my problem anymore.”

Chloe looked at Sophia in the mirror for a moment before asking, “What is Zoe going to do without you?”

Sophia lifted her eyebrows and shook her head. “Dunno. And what am I going to do without Zoe?”

Just then, Zoe called from the living room for them to hurry up. Minutes later, the three women drove toward Portsmouth. Chloe sat in the passenger seat talking to Zoe about Zoe’s despair. Chloe said she was relieved that her sister chose to curtail her frantic connection with several men at once. When Zoe asked her why, her sister said that the emotional emptiness that motivated Zoe’s actions wasn’t going to be filled by other people. Zoe needed to work on loving herself more. Sophia, who sat in the backseat listening, pulled from her purse a book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

“You know what?” said Sophia, “I just read something about that. It has to do with the laws of attraction and rearranging the way we think about ourselves. Do you mind if I read a passage from this book?”

“Go ahead,” said Zoe.

Sophia started to read:

“The reason you have to love You is because it is impossible to feel good if you don’t love You. When you feel bad about yourself, you are blocking all the love and all the good the Universe has for you.
When you feel bad about yourself it feels as though you are sucking the life out of you, because all of your good, on every subject—including health, wealth, and love—is on the frequency of joy and feeling good….When you don’t feel good about You, you are on a frequency that is attracting more people, situations, and circumstances that will continue to make you feel bad about You.

You must change your focus and begin to think about all the things that are wonderful about you. Look for the positives in You. As you focus on those things, the law of attraction will show you more great things about You. You attract what you think about. All you have to do is begin with one prolonged thought of something good about You, and the law of attraction will respond by giving You more like thoughts.”

“Hum, it’s sounds a little simplistic, but plausible,” said Chloe.

“Good point,” said Zoe, ” but I’ve learned that the wisest solutions in life are often the most simple ones,” said Zoe.

“Let’s play a game,” said Sophia. “Let’s take turns naming good things about ourselves.”

“Okay,” said Zoe. “I’m intelligent.”

“I good at nurturing,” said Sophia.

“I’m resourceful,” said Chloe.

“I’m a good lover,” said Zoe.

“I’m creative,” said Sophia.

“I’m ingenious,” said Chloe.

“I’m done with this game,” said Zoe. “We’re almost there, so let’s send out into the universe our desires to find a good parking spot, a good table, good music, and a cute waiter.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”
Chloe looked confused.

After parking right in front of the Dolphin Striker, the three women shimmered as they stepped into the sultry atmosphere. The R & B band had already started their set, and the women found an empty table right in front. They each ordered crab cakes and salad, which were delicious. The young man who waited on them was handsome, amusing and flirtatious.  Zoe and Chloe danced with abandon as partners. Sophia decided to opt out since she’d already caused one train wreck that day in the store. Tonight, she preferred to watch.  

After a couple of hours, Zoe and Sophia thought Chloe might enjoy a dance club, so they walked across the street to the Gaslight. Unfortunately, the place was nearly deserted, owing perhaps to the unrelenting Techno music that split their ear drums. They danced for a couple of songs then called it an early night.

But when they got back to Zoe’s house, all three of them were still jumpy, wanting to dance. Zoe put on an old Marvin Gay CD, and Chloe and Sophia whirled around the living room in their sheer nightgowns. Zoe sat down at her laptop, turned on her Webcam, and began cruising a dating site, for the first time in weeks. She flirted with a fireman from Chicago before asking if he wanted to watch some dancing. He nodded enthusiastically, at which point Zoe jumped up and joined the other two. Sophia looked over at the stranger’s face on the laptop screen.

“What are you doing, Zo?” asked Sophia.

“I thought I’d show Chloe one of the things we do for fun.”

“But I thought you swore off Webcam dating.”

“I’m not dating, Sophie, I’m just dancing.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. But just then, one of her favorite songs, Sexual Healing, started to play, and she couldn’t help throwing herself into a series of perfect pirouettes. Zoe, eyes closed, moved sensuously, gracefully to the music. And Sophia grooved out spastically, thinking she looked fabulous with her best moves. Before long, the song transported the women to a distant place inside of themselves, where the excruciating ache of pubescent excitement still lived. When the song ended, Zoe walked over to the Webcam and turned it off then she lowered the volume of the music.

“Let’s talk,” Zoe said as she lay down across an oriental rug on the living room floor.

“What’s wrong, Zo?” asked Sophia as she joined her on the floor.

“This is a nice distraction, but I’m still perplexed and a bit sad.”

“What about?” asked Chloe as she lay down on the other side of Zoe.

“I need to move on with my life, but I’m dragged down by such old shit. Somehow, I feel that I need to sort things out with George before I can move forward with emotional clarity.”

“We talked about that last night,” said Sophia as she studied the knotholes in one of the old ceiling beams.

“I know. But I can’t remember what we said.”

“What was the question?” asked Chloe, as she glanced out the window at the full moon.

Zoe sighed before answering. “HOW DO I FORGE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GEORGE THAT ENCOMPASSES RESPECT, COMPASSION AND GOODWILL IN ORDER TO HONOR THE YEARS WE SPENT TOGETHER?”

Sophia chimed in first. “TO REACH GEORGE, YOU NEED TO MAKE IT ABOUT GEORGE. LET HIM KNOW, THAT DESPITE THE DIVORCE, YOU WILL ALWAYS LOVE HIM AND VALUE HIS CONTRIBUTION TO YOUR LIFE.”

Then Chloe spoke. “YOU CAN’T CONTROL ANYONE BUT YOURSELF, ZO. ALL YOU CAN DO IS LIVE BY EXAMPLE. IF YOU WANT A FRIENDSHIP BASED ON RESPECT, COMPASSION AND GOODWILL, DEMONSTRATE THOSE QUALITIES. THEN GEORGE MUST CHOOSE WHETHER TO RECIPROCATE. IF HE CHOOSES NOT TO, IT’S OUT OF YOUR CONTROL.”

Zoe listened carefully and as she did so, ideas of how to move forward with George sprung into her mind. But after a couple of minutes, her mind wandered away.

“Hey, Sophie, let’s take Clo to an all-night tanning salon.”

“I don’t do tanning salons,” said Chloe.

“Bummer,” said Sophia.

“Actually, neither did we when we were married,” said Zoe. “But people change. A tanning bed is a pretty good place to meditate.”

“You guys meditate?” asked Chloe.

“Of course, we do,” said Sophia. “How else would we manage our lives?” 

“You manage your lives?” asked Chloe.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” cried Zoe.

“I was kidding,” said Chloe. “Oh well, since I’m living the singles scene tonight, I guess a few minutes in a tanning bed won’t kill me.”

Without bothering to get dressed, the fifty-something BFFs, plus one sister, threw coats over their sheer nightgowns and pulled boots on over their bare feet. Then they dashed out the door, laughing at nothing much, and drove into the night, under a full moon, off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…And remember to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog.  You can use the calendar in the right column and click on the bolded dates of publication.  And thanks for your wonderful comments.  Keep them coming!

Holy shit was Sophia’s first thought as she awoke. What am I doing? Over and over the words drummed in her head. Sophia lay in bed next to her husband Marty, from whom she’d been estranged for six months, since he admitted his affair. Several days before, Sophia put up no resistance to his request to come home. Marty found Sophia dancing with Zoe to Latino music at a restaurant in Portsmouth one night. He simply proclaimed that Sophia and he belonged together, and that was enough to convince her to reconcile with him.

For the first few days, their reunion was magical. Marty was kind, affectionate, attentive and apologetic. Sophia was forgiving, trusting and loving. And of course, the sex was amazing. Together, they read a book called After the Affair by Janice Abrahms Spring. They knew a blueprint was crucial to help them work through the pain of Marty’s betrayal, discover why the marriage had broken, and to heal the hurt of their animosity toward each other in the preceding months. Marty collected his belongings from his girlfriend Fugly’s house and told Sophia that he’d broken it off with her. Sophia made an appointment for them to see a therapist.

As husband and wife, Sophia and Marty talked and cried and laughed for endless hours. Sometimes they raged, released their anger and then reset, wrapping each other in tenderness and comfort. The time they spent with their daughter Poppy and granddaughter Lily cleansed the old bitterness, allowing joy to swim to the surface. The profound power of belonging to a united family again surged through them and overflowed, like a river after a long rain. Then slowly, like the drip, drip, drip of Chinese water torture, the worm began to turn.

It was six a.m. when Sophia slipped from the bed and crept downstairs to the dining room. She made coffee then sat at her laptop, hoping Zoe was awake. Sophia needed to talk to her.

Zoe was awake and had been for an hour, talking on the Webcam to Florida Guy. Recently, Zoe decided to pull away from her compulsive pattern of seeking male attention. She stopped cruising internet dating sites. She also ended relationships she had forged with various men over several months. Determined to face her terror of being alone, she began devoting herself to herself. The only man she now communicated with was Florida Guy, for whom she had trust, respect and deep feelings. From him, Zoe received wisdom, friendship and quite possibly, love.

Zoe saw Sophia’s two-word chat message come in on her Facebook page. It said, “Call me.”
“What’s up, Sophie?”
“What the fuck am I doing, Zo?”
“Meaning?”
“I feel as though my self-esteem has fallen through the floor.”

“Why?”

“I told Marty from the first day he came back that I loved him, but that I loved me more. During our discussions I was very clear that I wasn’t willing to go back to being the person he took out his frustrations on. Especially during the months he was hiding his affair, I was flattened by the constant criticism, by forever being told I was wrong and feeling sorry all the time, for every thought that came out of my mouth. Now, he’s treating me like that again. It hurts.”

“Do you know why he’s acting like that?”
“Marty’s pulled away. I can feel his heart isn’t in this.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Apart from the way he relates, he hasn’t unpacked his suitcases. They just line the bedroom walls, mocking me.”
“Not good,” said Zoe.
“The past few days he’s been sullen and distant. He sleeps all the time, and the joy seems to seep out of him hourly.”
“What does he say?”
“He says he been depressed for months.”
“Does he say why?”
“He says he’s having an identity crisis, that he’s lost his moral compass and that he doesn’t know who he is anymore or where he belongs. He also said he hated staying in that dumpy, little motel and that the contrast between his nights there, and his time at Fugly’s, where wealth and possessions were so abundant that they were taken for granted, was just too daunting. He said that’s why he wanted to come back to his own home.”

“Okay, but where did you fit in. What were the reasons he gave for wanting to come back to you?”
“He said he felt haunted by me. He said whenever he would start to feel good or enjoy some activity, he felt disturbed. He didn’t feel right enjoying life without me.”
“Well, that’s interesting. I gotta tell you, Sophie, it sounds like he’s come back for closure, not for you. He needs to assuage his guilt.”
“That’s the same thing Poppy said.”
“Hum. Well, at least you’re having sex.”
“We were and it was fabulous BTW, but last night he wouldn’t make love with me. He said he was too depressed.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No.”
“Did something happen, Sophie? Can you pinpoint when things started to turn?”

“Well, for starters, he began texting with Fugly. And he talks a lot with his brother Wayne on the phone.”
“Is Wayne the gay brother?”
“Not according to Wayne.”
“Sophie, he talks like a gay guy, he looks gay, walks gay, lives with gay guys. How is Wayne not gay?”
“Does it matter, Zoe? We love gay guys. Maybe fundamental dishonesty is a family trait–I don’t know. Can I just get to the point here?”
“What was the point?”
“Wayne didn’t approve of the reconciliation. Who knows whether it was because he enjoyed the bragging rights to Marty’s relationship with Fugly. I suspect he told everyone the identities of her husband and her father-in-law.”

Sophia was referring to the fact that Fugly was married to a famous musician, Famous Guy. But Famous Guy was the son of someone really famous, Famous Father. It was Famous Father who financed the business project that Fugly proposed to Marty, which brought them together in the first place. But when Famous Father learned of their affair, he pulled out his money and the project collapsed. A couple of months afterwards, Fugly moved out and left three young children in the marital home. Marty was only allowed to stay at Fugly’s on the nights when the children were not with her for visitation. Other nights, he had stayed in a weekly-rental motel near Fugly’s house.

“You know, Sophie, that wouldn’t surprise me. As delightful as Wayne was the few times I met him, he always struck me as a name dropper, the type who basks in the glow of vicarious importance since he lacks the motivation or nerve to do anything extraordinary in his own right.”
“I don’t know, Zo.”
“Anyway, what happened after Marty started talking to Wayne?”
“Well, after their first two-hour conversation, Marty picked a fight with me. Once we calmed down, information started spilling out about how Fugly and her husband, Famous Guy, were away together for a couple of weeks, out of state, for some intensive counseling. I asked him how he knew this, and he said Wayne was in touch with Fugly. I didn’t think much about it until Marty started being more and more hostile toward me. It was the same behavior he showed during the months leading up to the split. Most conversations became about what a bad, crazy person I was. Then he admitted receiving text messages from Fugly, but he wouldn’t discuss them with me.”

Zoe cleared her throat but said nothing.

“Finally, I put two and two together. I have a feeling I’ve been a player in a chess match between Marty and Fugly. You can’t tell me that Fugly’s two weeks of intensive therapy with her husband, in some distant location, was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Marty must have known about the plan before he came looking for me. Now, I could be totally wrong about this, and I hope I am. But even if he didn’t know beforehand, Marty’s been privy to everything going on with Fugly through his phone calls with Wayne.”
“Sophia, I want you to leave that house immediately and come here. If that’s truly the case, you are not emotionally or psychologically safe there.”
“But, Zo, what if I’m wrong? What if he is sincerely here to reconcile with me and just needs time? I will have blown that chance by not trusting him.”
“Sophie, face facts. One, you are smart; two, you are intuitive; and three, you know Marty very well.”
“Hum. I hear the dogs coming down the stairs. I’ll talk to you later,” said Sophia and hung up.

Just then, the door to the living room burst open. Tolstoy, Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat, led the pack. Sophia’s dogs, Voltaire and Dickens, galloped after him, heading straight toward Sophia. Ever since the dogs returned home, they showered Sophia with excitement. She crouched to get out of their way, but the dogs jumped up and knocked her over. Since she was down, Tolstoy leapt onto her stomach and pinned her to the floor. The dogs joined in the game. Voltaire lay across Sophia’s chest and licked her face. Dickens sat on her knees and took a friendly swipe at Tolstoy, a prelude to boxing. Sophia lay helplessly laughing.

Tolstoy was so happy to have his big brothers back. He pined for them from the day Marty took them away. Since then, Tolstoy had been stuck with Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab, as a playmate. The thought of Sparky made Tolstoy roll his eyes.  Sparky got on Tolstoy’s nerves for a host of reasons. Because of his “condition” he had no clue how to wrestle. God almighty, he couldn’t even roll over by himself. And because Sparky ran sideways, chasing him was not fun, just confusing. Sparky was dull as dirt too, since all he did was moon over that bitch Zoe, which sucked the sense of humor right out of him. But the worst part was that Sparky was forever stealing Tolstoy’s food and then following it up with a “nightcap” of cat crap. Tolstoy realized he was obsessing on Sparky, instead of appreciating the sheer delight of Voltaire and Dickens, so he told himself to shut up.

Without a word to Sophia, Marty looked down at her as he walked past and then opened the outside kitchen door. All three animals danced through it. Unaided, Sophia rose to her feet and offered Marty coffee. They sat silently drinking it in front of the fire. And then Marty started with a barrage of criticism and ended with his news. He told Sophia that he was moving back to Fugly’s. At first Sophia cried. And then she began to talk, really talk.

Sophia asked Marty why he returned, disrupted her world, treated her coldly, told her that she was a crazy and awful person, and to top it off, became violent with her. Then she nailed him between the eyes with the most ironic aspect of all. It was he who came back to her, but somehow he twisted it around and now accused her of “imprisoning” him. She asked him whether he put her through all that just so he could assuage his guilt over his betrayal. Finally, she laid her theory on the table. She suspected that because Fugly and Famous Guy went off to thrash out their marital detritus, Marty felt insecure. But from the minute he sensed he was back on good footing with Fugly, his alienation from Sophia escalated. She dismissed the original motive Marty professed—that Sophia and he belonged together—as a fleeting thought that vanished early on. She said she believed Marty truly came back to her partly for closure, partly for safety, and partly as a strategy.

Marty neither denied nor confirmed Sophia’s words. He expressed that for the sake of the family, they should try to be friends. Marty told Sophia he loved her, but could never “love” her as a husband again. He said he was leaving for her own good, that all his negativity would eventually dampen her spirit and extinguish the way Sophia had recreated herself by carving out a new identity. Their voices rose. Their voices fell. But soon, there were no more words.

Marty collected his unpacked luggage, called to the dogs and drove past the doorway where Sophia stood watching, feeling numb and breathless.

Tolstoy sat in front of the house, feeling powerless as he watched Marty’s car pull into the road.

Sophia didn’t call Zoe or her daughter Poppy or her son Colin or anyone else. She reached for the handle of an old basket in the summer kitchen and wandered around the house until she found When Things fall Apart, by Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist writer. She put the book in the basket and placed The Secret by Rhonda Byrne on top of it. In the kitchen she found a bag of Chex Mix, a jar of Nutella, a soup spoon and a bottle of vitamin water. These too went into the basket. She striped off her clothes until she stood in her bra and panties. On the counter in the kitchen, she opened a bottle of rich, green extra virgin olive oil, poured out a handful and rubbed it on her arms, stomach and legs. She turned on a CD by Yo Yo Ma playing Brazilian music, opened the window and put the speaker in the window sill.

The sun was high in the sky and the air unusually warm for a March day. Sophia walked beyond the barn and gazed out at the shimmering lake she adored. On her way back, she went into the barn for a chaise lounge and dragged it into the courtyard, out of sight of the road. She set the basket on the grass next to her and lay down, listened to the music and read about compassion and the power of positive thought. She alternated handfuls of Chex Mix with spoonfuls of Nutella, but she did not let herself cry. She told herself that she did not want to die, that the pain would pass, much the way it did in childbirth. One day, she would not even be able to remember the way today’s anguish felt. Patience, she told herself. Patience.

A few hours later Zoe found Sophia sound asleep in the sun. Nutella chocolate dripped down her chin with bits of Chex Mix stuck to it. Tolstoy lay on Sophia’s stomach, licking olive oil off of her arm. Zoe had no idea why Sophia was like this. She marched up to the chaise lounge and stood over her friend, hands on hips.

“Fuck sake, Sophie, WAKE UP! You look scarier than a Stephen King movie.”

“Hey, Zo,” Sophia said with a start. The metallic feeling from sleeping in the sun invaded her perceptions.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Pretending I already live in Florida.”

“Why?”

“Marty left. He went back to Fugly.”

“Fuck. I’m so sorry, Sophie. You must be hurting.”

“Yes and humiliated. But I also feel like an idiot for letting him come back in the first place. I have no one to blame but myself.”

“Bullshit. Marty came back to you, and you trusted him. You also gave the process a hundred percent in good faith. Now, I just wish you would see him for who he really is.”

“Who is he, Zo?”

“He’s a guy blinded by the ego—the self.”

“What do you mean?”

“Name a self…any self….Marty is self-deluded, self-aggrandized, self-consumed, self-martyred, self-pitying, and self-serving.”

“You forgot selfish.”

“Technically, that’s not a compound adjective with a hyphenated “self.” But, that is his most pronounced characteristic, selfish. He will never be anyone other than who his is today. Accept that, and let go of the guy who was once your wonderful husband. He doesn’t live in that body, mind and spirit anymore.”

“I know that now.”

“Sophie, it is one thing to take care of our own needs. That’s important. It’s another thing to do so with treachery toward another person.”

“He got physical with me again, you know.”
“He hit you?”
“Yes. A few times.”
“God dammit.”
“Yeah. He cornered me in a chair, threatening to kill me if I spoke or moved. After he smacked me in the head, I said I ought to call Fugly and warn her that he was dangerous. Do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Oh, so now you just want to ruin my life?’”

Zoe laughed so hard, she snorted. “So, the truth of his actions was your fault, and if you tell the truth, you would be ruining his life, eh? The audacity is spellbinding and the blindness, breathtaking. The man lacks any accountability or integrity. He’s not a good man, Sophie. Maybe he was once, but no more. And in some reduced measure, he may be again, but weep not for his soul, my love.”
“That was poetic. You’re right, of course.”
“Now get up, go take a shower, and let’s go shopping.”

“Wait. I want to tell you what I told my therapist the other day. When I was eleven, after my brothers were killed, I used to think I saw them everywhere. And always my young heart wanted them to come home to me. When my sister was killed, I was an adult and knew I couldn’t carry those wishes in my heart, but still, I just wanted to see her, talk to her, hold her, and kiss her— just one more time. When Marty and I split, it was without rational explanation, without a goodbye, without comfort. I felt as if my head, my spirit were chopped off by a guillotine. Unlike my siblings, Marty returned from the dead, metaphorically. But it was the worst nightmare realized because it wasn’t Marty. It wasn’t even his ghost.”
Zoe’s eyes misted as she starred at Sophia for a few seconds. Then she said, “Okay, Sophie, let’s go shopping.”
“No. You go. I need to think.”

For the next few days Zoe hovered around Sophia. So did Poppy and her husband Fonzi. Sophia’s son Colin traveled up for a visit too. But no one talked much about what had happened. Sophia stayed busy writing, but she ate very little and slept even less. Sophia only felt deep joy during the hours she devoted to her granddaughter Lily. But whenever she was alone and idle, Sophia’s thoughts were consumed with one word–Why. Why? Why?

Meanwhile, when Zoe wasn’t hovering, she was trying to sort out where her life was leading. She had removed every obstacle, every other man from the landscape, and now she needed to know if the relationship with Florida Guy was worth sinking roots into. She had hidden nothing of her essential self from him. He could either take her as she was or decide to leave her alone. But she was uncertain of where he stood, whether he was willing to risk love. And without seeing him, spending time with him, reading the meaning of his words in his eyes, he still presented an illusion. So, one afternoon, Zoe booked a flight to Florida.

On her way home from work, Zoe stopped in at Sophia’s. Zoe found Sophia, head bent over her laptop, typing furiously. That she hadn’t showered or dressed all day was obvious to Zoe.
“How’s it going, Sophie?”
Sophia looked up at her with haunted eyes.

“Marty called earlier. He wanted to know if I would change my plans with Lily tomorrow so he could see her.”
“What did you say?”
“I agreed as long as he continued to respect the boundary we set that he not take Lily to Fugly’s for visits until I move away. It’s too painful for me. Fugly sucked up my life like a vacuum cleaner. She admitted to Marty that she deliberately sought to lure him away from me. And now she has my husband again, and after I move, she’ll have this home, on this beautiful lake—a perfect summer house. But for now, I can’t bear to think of Lily spending time with that predatory person. I just can’t watch it. Marty can share Lily after I’m gone.”
“What did he say?”
“What did he scream, you mean? He screamed that I was trying to control his life, right down to not allowing him to visit with Lily in ‘his’ home.”
“What did you say?”
“I said that I wasn’t aware it was ‘his’ home since he wasn’t allowed to stay at Fugly’s when she had her children for visitation.”
“And?”
“He said, that was all taken care of. He’s allowed to live with her full-time now.”
“So, you were right.”
“Yes. But the stakes were higher than I suspected. On some level, conscious or not, I believe I was the leverage in his power move to get what he wanted from Fugly. She must have called his bluff. He has always said that one should never bluff and not be willing to follow through. I’m convinced one big reason he came back to me was to force Fugly’s hand and the hands of whoever is making the decisions for her kids. He wanted her to validate their relationship, to clear the way for him to live with her all the time.”

“Did you say that to Marty?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He gasped. Then nothing…it was the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.”
“What do you feel now, Sophie?”
“Indifference. That moment of his silence was transformative.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s as if I’ve let go, and I’m drifting down a river of indifference. Marty shot the bullet that finally killed my love. There’s nothing left to resist. I’ve released myself from him.”
“Jesus,” cried Zoe. “You can’t write that shit.”
“Shakespeare did. He created lots of diabolical characters. Oh well, I guess Fugly and I share something in common. We were both played.”

Zoe went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine. Sophia focused again on her manuscript. When Zoe returned, she handed Sophia the wine and then she built a small fire. The room had grown cold. After awhile, Zoe asked Sophia to stop writing and to sit with her by the fire. Then Zoe told her about the trip to Florida.
“How long will you be gone?” asked Sophia, as panic rose in her throat.
“Just a few days.”
“When do you leave?”
“Day after tomorrow,” said Zoe. “Will you be okay?”
“Of course.”
“Can Sparky stay with you?”
“Of course.”

Tolstoy’s ears perked. Since Zoe arrived, he had been feeling smug that Sparky was cooped up in the chilly car, while he was inside and warm, stretched out by the fire. But when he heard Zoe’s question, he leapt up to the table and landed on Sophia’s open laptop. Random letters sprung up across the screen.

“Dammit, Tolstoy, get off,” said Sophia.
Tolstoy’s big green eyes just stared at Sophia. They pleaded with her not to let Sparky stay over for days on end. Sophia lifted Tolstoy and carried him to the door and put him outside. Pissed off, Tolstoy sprinted to Zoe’s car. Sparky saw Tolstoy and barked. If nothing else, thought Tolstoy, I can get Sparky agitated and jealous. Tolstoy pranced around the car, looking at Sparky the whole time, taunting and teasing, as Sparky jumped from window to window, begging for liberation. This feels powerful, thought Tolstoy. I like it.

Zoe heard Sparky and took pity on him. She hurried to the car and opened the door to let him out. Shit, thought Tolstoy, as he made a dash for the house. Sparky ran after him sideways, involuntarily discharging turds in his wake. Tolstoy shot between Zoe’s legs and Sparky tried to follow. As big as Tolstoy was, Sparky was bigger, and Zoe was lifted and hurled on her back. Sophia, watching from the doorway, ran out to help Zoe, but she tripped over Tolstoy as he plowed into her, trying to make his escape. Sophia fell forwards and skidded to a stop on top of Zoe, but not before skinning her knee.

Under the fading sky, the setting sun cast a glow over the two old friends as they lay on the ground, staring into each other’s stunned eyes. And then something broke. They began to laugh. And for the first time in days, their laughter did not devolve into tears.

Finally, they helped each other to their feet and walked inside.
“Let’s drive to Portsmouth and eat somewhere new, Sophie. We need to flirt with some cute waiters.”
“Okay, Zo.”
“You’re losing your tan, you know.”
“I know. Not once did I go to a tanning bed to meditate while Marty was here. It’s as if I forgot who I was…again.”
“Do you know why?”
“Why?”
Zoe reached for a journal she kept in her purse. “I read this quote by Wayne Dyer and wrote it down. Here it is,” she said and began to read.

“Believing that who we are is defined by what other people think of us cripples the joyful spontaneity of our authentic selves. If others disapprove, and their opinion defines us, then we modify ourselves or shrink from view. Our image of ourselves is located in them, and when they reject us, we no longer “are” at all….We cease to exist except as a reflection of what others think. The fact is that who we are has absolutely nothing to do with any thoughts or opinions that exist in anyone else in this world.”

“Wow. That’s deep, Zo.”
“Well, these notions apply to both of us, for sure. I realize that I allow myself to be defined by the way I’m regarded by the men I’m with. If they distance themselves, I feel rejected and to some extent, I lose a sense of self; my self-image is located in them. I modify or shrink who I am to please them because I don’t want to feel the loneliness that stalks me.”

“I see what you mean, Zoe. Tell me if this tracks. Part of why I lost my sense of self after Marty’s betrayal was that I was defined by his reflection of me, one of rejection, so I ceased to exist on some level. Just as I was beginning to materialize as my authentic self again, he came back into my life and brought with him his disapproval and negative opinions of me, which I allowed to define me again.”
“That makes sense, Sophie.”
“But that idea cuts two ways if you think about it. Who I thought Marty was—the Marty I adored–has nothing to do with who he is, and more importantly for me, who he thought I was—an awful, crazy person–has nothing to do with who I am.”

“Sophie, I say we work harder on embracing the joyful spontaneity of our authentic selves.”
“That sounds like a worthwhile goal. If we change the way we think about ourselves, we can accept who we are and love ourselves more.”
“Was that a Buddhist thing, Sophie?”
“How would I know, Zo?

After the women showered and lathered their slender torsos and long, lean legs with fragrant lotions, they stood in their panties and bras in front of the bathroom mirror, arguing. They both wanted to wear the same shirt out to dinner in Portsmouth. Zoe gave in and then Sophia said no, Zoe should wear the navy blue top. Then Zoe said no, Sophia should. Finally they decided that neither of them would wear it. As they began to laugh at the sheer stupidity of the discourse, their eyes met in the mirror.
Sophia said quietly, “I think I have Marty’s motivations figured out, Zo, but WHY DID I LET MARTY COME HOME? WHY DID I OPEN MYSELF UP TO BEING REJECTED ALL OVER AGAIN?
Zoe picked up the mascara wand and began blackening her eyelashes. Then she said, “SOPHIE, YOU HAVE A BASIC KINDNESS AND AN AMAZING CAPACITY TO FORGIVE THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE, AND THAT’S WHY YOU TOOK HIM BACK. BUT SEEING MARTY’S ACTIONS AS REJECTION OF YOU, ROBS YOU OF YOURSELF. SO, DON’T THINK OF THEM AS REJECTION. THINK OF THEM AS LESSONS YOU WERE MEANT TO LEARN ABOUT HIM. YOU NOW KNOW WHO MARTY IS TO YOU.”

“Hum. Anyway, Zo, should we go tanning before we eat or afterwards?”
“After. I don’t wanna smell like that tan-enhancing crap we use on our skin.”
“You gotta point. Do you have any ideas where we should eat?”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, do I have to do all the planning around here? You choose for once.”
“Well, there’s this vegan restaurant that just opened up.”
“Never mind. Let’s just go to Ixtapa Cantina. At least we know they have cute Mexican waiters. I don’t wanna take any chances.”
“Okay, Zo.”

The evening spring air rushed through the open car windows as Zoe cranked up the sound to a vintage M. J. Blige song. From somewhere in the core of their hearts, the two fifty-something BFFs sang loudly to the heavens– words they knew to be true–You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down. They smiled as they sang, and then off they drove, on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but remember, to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog. The easiest way to find the earlier stories is to use the calendar in the right-hand column. Just click on the dates that are in BOLD. And please, keep sending your wonderful advice. Thank you.

One late afternoon Zoe rushed around her house, cleaning again each spotless room, deflecting thoughts that stalked her like little harpies. She was acrobatic in her ability to dodge these thoughts, but the one sure method she removed from her repertoire of agile moves was her dating websites. She was on lockdown with the laptop until she figured out why she needed connections with the faces and words of so many strangers.

Sophia sat with her elbow leaning on the dining room table, her hand cradling her head. She tried to write, but all her mind did was listen to the rain and think what a perfect metaphor it was for her life. The rain was like tears that echoed her pain, but rain was restorative, infusing life into withering plants. She knew she wasn’t a drought-blighted plant, but sometimes she felt like one.

Zoe knew she needed to talk about her thoughts when their whispers escalated to screams. So, she called Sophia.
“Hey, Sophie, what’s up?”
“Nothin. How are you?”
“Not good.”
“Why not?”
“I’m restless. Three days ago I banned myself from the dating sites and resolved not to talk to or see any of the men who keep pursuing me. It just feels so empty.”
“What made you decide to do those things?”
“I realized that whenever I feel lonely, I panic.”
“So, being by yourself scares you?”
“My skin crawls, Sophie. My stomach churns. I feel like an animal, cornered by prey, trapped in my aloneness.”
“Does staying busy help, Zo?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do with your time?”
“When I’m not at work, I drive and stare mostly, and if I’m not driving and staring, I’m trying to figure out how to sleep.”
“Oh, baby. That’s depression at its worst. Has there been anything bright in your day?”
“Florida Guy called. He was very kind to me, in a friendship way. He recognizes that what motivates me to fill time seeking male attention is a need to plug holes of loss and abandonment from my past, going all the way back to my father’s death when I was eight. He gets it.”
“Doesn’t Florida Guy count as one of the men pursuing you?”
“He’s different. I have strong feelings for him. And he’s in Florida. All we can do is talk and write since I disabled the Webcam on my laptop.”
“Is he helpful? I mean, does he offer you good advice?”
“He says I need to change my thinking. Maybe that’s the secret to solving most things we perceive as problems. Just change the way we think about them,” said Zoe.
“Did you say the secret? I haven’t finished reading The Secret, but I think the message is pretty simple, really. Change the ways we think because our thoughts have a powerful influence on what we bring to ourselves.”
“Yes, simplicity itself,” said Zoe, “but it’s not so easy to do, especially when we can’t see the trees for the forest. What’s going on with you?”
“I can’t talk about it on the phone. You wanna come over?”

An hour later Zoe and Sparky, her stroke-impaired yellow lab dashed into Sophia’s. Rain dripped from them into a puddle that Tolstoy sauntered over to lick. Tolstoy was Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat, the man of the house. He loved Sophia dearly, but he was frustrated with her that morning. She was so preoccupied with troubles that she forgot to put water in his cat bowl. Even worse, she’d put some blue shit in the toilet water, which made Tolstoy want to puke, so he was not only irritated, he was parched. Sparky, who couldn’t walk straight on a good day, and who was incontinent and dumber than dirt (at least Tolstoy thought so), started to lap Tolstoy as an act of friendship and an invitation to play.

Sparky realized he must be pretty bored to want anything to do with Tolstoy, but his beautiful Zoe was so sad that morning that she had ignored him altogether. Sparky shook more raindrops off his coat, which sprayed over Sophia and her laptop. Sparky put his paw over his ears when he saw Sophia lift her head for a second. Those slitted eyes told her story every time. Okay, okay, he thought. I fucked up, but why does she need to be such a bitch to me?

Tolstoy saw Sparky’s nervous reaction. Mounting tension always made Tolstoy hungry. Well, everything made Tolstoy hungry since Sophia’s husband Marty walked out and took Tolstoy’s big brothers with him, the border collies Dickens and Voltaire. Plain and simple, Tolstoy had a serious eating disorder, which is why he scurried out of the dining room, through the kitchen and out the swinging door to the summer kitchen. Perhaps Sophia had remembered to leave some kibble in his bowl. Sparky sensed that the tears were about to fly with the two women, and frankly, he was getting a little tired of the morose shit, so he slunk off to follow Tolstoy out to the summer kitchen.

Zoe walked over to Sophia, who hadn’t stirred since she arrived except to glare at Sparky. Sophia’s forehead rested on a book. Gently, Zoe tried to lift Sophia’s head, but Sophia wouldn’t budge. Finally, Zoe gave her hair a tug, not too hard, just enough to pull Sophia out of her weird, depressed trance.
“OUCH,” cried Sophia. “Why did you do that?”

“I wasn’t sure you were alive, just testing. What were you doing anyway?”
“I was visualizing.”
“Huh?”
“Putting pictures in my mind of what I want and believing those things had already come to me.”
“Huh?”
Sophia picked up the book next to her and handed it to Zoe. It was The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Then she said, “Read the book. It’s about changing our thoughts to make the things we want come to us.”
“Fuck sake,” said Zoe. “Can we discuss the book later? Tell me what you wouldn’t talk about on the phone.”
“Something happened this morning. I had my weekly meeting with Marty over division of assets. He seemed really lost and sad and told me he was feeling ambivalent about us.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He said he had drawn away from Fugly lately, and that he was thinking about me all the time.”

Marty was Sophia’s husband who left her after he disclosed his affair with Fugly, as Sophia called her. Fugly, who looked like a man-troll, pursued Marty during the course of his relationship with her on a business project. Fugly’s husband was a famous musician, Famous Guy. His father, Famous Father, was really famous, and it was Famous Father who financed the project proposed by Fugly to Marty, one that would fulfill a dream Marty sought for years. Once Famous Father found out about the affair, he pulled his money out of the project and it collapsed. But Fugly left Famous Guy to be with Marty. That’s not all she left. She walked out on three young children whom she now saw on a visitation schedule.

“What does Marty want from you?”
“I’m not sure, probably just a dialogue. But he did own up to some things that he hasn’t before.”
“Like what?”
“He’s maintained all along that because I was a mean, bitter wife, I drove him away. But this morning he said that Fugly admitted that she wanted him from the first day they met, and that she put that desire into actions and words that drew him away. I knew all this from the beginning, I sensed it in the way she broke every boundary, openly pursued him, and I railed against all of it. I pleaded, I screamed, I fought to make him see. But, as he said, he finally just ‘fell.’ Who wouldn’t? He had a wife at home intuiting the situation he denied in himself and acting like a harridan. He had the other woman who wanted him, being wonderful and adoring toward him.”
“So, where do things stand?”
“I told him about Jack.”

Jack was Sophia’s new lover.
“What did he say?”
“Not much. But I could see pain spring into his eyes. What I didn’t tell him was that I don’t see a future with Jack. Jack’s good on paper, a writer like me, and we share the same taste in music, food, art, blah, blah, blah. But Jack is so much like Marty. And the fact that he left his wife for another woman and destroyed a marriage, I just don’t think I could love someone who would do that to another person, no matter how cleansed they feel.”
“Why not?” asked Zoe.
“Because it was cowardly, disrespectful, and selfish, and people who do that are forever haunted by their guilt. And if they are not, well, who would want a person without a conscience?”
“You have a point. If you want out of a marriage, just have the balls to leave. Don’t jump into another relationship, before you’ve left the last one,” said Zoe.
“It’s a matter of degrees. It’s one thing to have a slip, screw around a couple of times, and then face up to what you’ve done. It’s another thing to “fall in love” with someone over many months while you’re still married and still telling your wife everyday how much you love her and worse, telling her she’s imagining the affair. That’s what both Marty and Jack did. That takes a lot of deception, self and otherwise.”

“So, have you told Jack what you’re thinking?”
“Not yet. I have a date with him tomorrow night. I thought I’d tell him then. My only reluctance, honestly, is that I like having someone to make love with, someone to sleep next to at night. It’s been so long for me. The problem is that I still fantasize about Marty.”
“Yuck.”
“Hey, you make love with someone for decades, and they know what you want and need. Marty understood my body better than anyone ever has. I have a sense Marty misses the sex with me too.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, for the last few weeks, every time I see him, he has that sort of hungry look in his eyes.”
“What does that mean, Sophie?”
“He can’t help his eyes from looking me up and down. And the sexual tension between us is tangible. He was never shy about telling me I was a wonderful lover.”
“Sophie, would you ever take Marty back if he asked?”
“NO,” cried Sophia. Zoe gave her a look shaped like a vast question mark but said nothing. Tears formed in Sophia’s eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Never mind,” said Zoe.
“It’s okay. I’ve never really thought about whether I would go back with him. But I do know I wish I could make love with him one more time. I’ve never admitted that to anyone.”
“Okay, Sophie. Change is constant; growth is optional. That would not be growth. Anyway, let’s quit talking about sex, okay? I’ve sworn off of it for the time being.”

“Wow, Zo, that’s huge. But what are you gonna do for sex?”
“Well, I haven’t yet tried out the sex toys you bought at the Naughty Party while I was out in L.A. No time like the present, I guess.”
“Humm,” said Sophia, “Come to think of it, neither have I. I finally took the toys off Marty’s side of the bed and put them in his bedside table. In fact, I forgot all about them.”
“Why do you need them now that you have Jack?”
“Have you not been listening to me? I’m breaking it off tomorrow night, Zo.”
“Oh, I thought that was a maybe…not a for sure.”
“It’s over. I can’t lead him on. I just have too much residual shit to be able to accept who he is, and I get him all confused with Marty and blah, blah, blah. I don’t wanna talk about it. But I will miss the sex.”
“Well, once again we’re talking about sex.”

“Hey, does your new regime mean we can’t go out on anymore dinner dates?” asked Sophia.
“Not necessarily. We could go out with guys I wouldn’t want to sleep with if they were the last men on earth.”
“Where would you find them?”
“Just turn on Match.Com. You’ll find millions of them.”
“I say we do it, Zo. I miss our double dates. We haven’t been on one since I met Jack.”
“Okay, but you have to set them up. I’m not even dipping my toe into that stream right now. I don’t want to get washed downriver, if you know what I mean.”

Sophia turned to her laptop, clicked out of her manuscript and into Match.Com. Just then, they heard terrible squealing followed by crashing yowling and moaning. Zoe and Sophia rushed through the kitchen until they reached the swinging door to the summer kitchen. Zoe tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Sophia pushed too, and finally they were able to shove Sparky’s girth forward enough to step inside. Since Sparky’s stroke, he had trouble rolling over. Sparky was stuck on his back like a bug, baying like a hound dog. Blood dripped from the tip of his ear.

Tolstoy looked up, saw Zoe, and glared. Why the hell was she interfering, he wondered? Then he turned his head and saw Sophia’s concerned glance, which quelled his distress. Tolstoy, tail erect, marched back and forth in front of his upended cat bowl, which lay amidst kibble strewn on the floor. He guarded the area like a sentry, but he kept losing his concentration when he remembered the dead mouse hanging from his teeth. Tolstoy was pretty certain that if he dropped the mouse on the floor to devour, Sparky would once again try to invade his food. The bit of Sparky’s ear that was caught in Tolstoy’s claw was also annoying the hell out of him.

Sophia looked down at Sparky whose nose was covered in kitty litter. Cat crap dribbled from his mouth. Sparky didn’t know he wore flecks of kitty litter on his face, so when he looked up at Sophia, he flashed innocent eyes at her that said, “What? What?” Sophia just shook her head, and Sparky wondered why that bitch always ruined his desert with her dirty looks. She was the one with the antisocial cat; she was the one whom his beautiful Zoe paid attention to instead of him. Why couldn’t she just take her bastard cat into the next room and let Zoe help him roll over and stand up?

Sophia strode to the outside door, jerked it open and ordered the animals outside that instant, including the dead mouse. Then Zoe bent down and locked the animal door, so they couldn’t sneak back inside. Tolstoy sprinted out of sight. He was pissed. He hated rain, but he hated Sparky even more for getting them in trouble. But at least he had some comfort food to make him feel better. Sparky was pissed too. Tolstoy was a prick, he thought, as he staggered sideways to the covered porch and stretched out.  He admitted that he was quite full and a little sleepy from the cat crap.

Zoe and Sophia returned to the dining room and to Match.Com. Zoe refused to show Sophia how to cruise local guys, nor would she dictate what to write in the emails that would entice two men to be game for a date on short notice. As a result Sophia couldn’t line up two live ones for the evening. Finally, she clicked out of Match and Goggled live music playing in the area that evening. The Dolphin Striker in Portsmouth had a Latino band. Sophia adored Latino music.
“Let’s go take showers,” said Sophia.
“Why?”
“We’re going to Portsmouth for dinner and to hear a Latino band.”
“We are? What happen to finding dates?”
“It’s not gonna happen. We don’t need dates to go out and have fun, Zo.”
“We don’t?”
“God almighty. Just go take a shower.”
“ What are we gonna wear?”
“Pick anything you want from my closet.”

After the women showered, they stood in Sophia’s downstairs bathroom applying lotions to their slender torsos and long, lean legs. Zoe loved showering at Sophia’s house because she had an endless array of body creams to choose from, creams of every scent, except fruity ones which Sophia found putrid. Zoe’s favorites were the ones made with Shea butter or olive oil. Other moisturizers sat in rows, waiting to address any and all zones and conditions of the face, neck and chest. Once the women dried their blond hair and applied artful make-up, they dressed in different colored pencil skirts and cute tops from The Loft.

Soon, they were on the road to Portsmouth.
“Now, Sophie, there’s a chance we might meet some guys at the Dolphin Striker.”
“That would be cool–meeting guys the old fashioned way.”
“Well, if we do, you know the drill. No accidently filling your mouth too full, going into hysterics then spitting food all over the guys. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“And no dragging out Pema and reading out loud or meditating while we’re there, okay?” Zoe was referring to Pema Chodron the American Buddhist writer both women loved.
“Yes. I mean, no, I won’t do that. I’m so much better now. I won’t have a meltdown. At least I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
“But, Zo, can I read from Pema right now? Wouldn’t you like to embrace groundlessness and find some open space before we get to Portsmouth?”
“No and no. Give me the book,” said Zoe, holding out her hand. “I know it’s in your purse.”
Sophia drew Pema’s book When Things Fall Apart from her purse and reluctantly handed it over as a child might a coveted toy which she wasn’t allowed to take into school. Sophia remained silent for awhile, holding her purse tightly in case Zoe wanted her to hand over anything else.

Even though she was with Sophia and on her way to spend a festive evening among other people, Zoe was suddenly gripped with a panic that surged in and out like the tide. A grim feeling squeezed her stomach and stuck in her throat. She felt as though a force were lowering her onto shards of erect glass, and internally she sobbed from pain that she could not yet feel. The fear of it caused her suddenly to reach over and grab Sophia’s arm. Sophia turned to face her. Then Zoe said, “I’VE BEEN IN A PATTERN THAT DOESN’T FEEL GOOD. DO YOU THINK I CAN CHANGE THE PATTERN?”
Sophia looked out the window. A full moon was rising. She thought about her answer for a moment. Then she turned to her old friend and said, “YOU HAVE ALREADY BEGUN TO GROW BY THE CHOICES FOR CHANGE YOU MADE IN JUST THREE DAYS, ZO. OWN THOSE CHOICES, RELAX ENOUGH TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEM.”
“Thank you, Sophie. I GUESS I’VE EMBRACED THAT CHANGE IS CONTANT. NOW, I ALSO SEE THAT GROWTH IS OPTIONAL, MINE TO CHOOSE, MINE TO RECOGNIZE.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“I dunno.”

As Zoe and Sophia walked from their car toward the restaurant, they saw Poppy, Fonzi and Jasmine walking toward them. Poppy was Sophia’s daughter and Fonzi, as they called him, was her husband. Jasmine and Poppy had been best friends since childhood. All five faces lit up.
Poppy called out to her mother and “aunt.” Zoe and Sophia rushed up to the three, showering them with kisses and hugs.

“What are you two lovely ladies doing here?” asked Fonzi.
“We came for dinner and to hear the Latino band. And you?” said Sophia.
“We were trying to decide where to eat.” said Poppy.
“There’s a band here tonight?” asked Jasmine, her face beaming. Jasmine was between men at the moment and loved musicians.

“Where are the kids?” asked Zoe. Zoe was referring to Lily, Sophia’s granddaughter and her best friend Jamile, Jasmine’s daughter.
“Jasmine planned something really fun for Jamile and Lily,” said Poppy. “She rented a suite for the night in a hotel with a swimming pool. The kids are there with the nanny swimming. Fonzi and I are staying in the suite too.”
Jasmine just smiled, revealing delightful dimples and pretty brown eyes. Then she humbly nodded a head of wavy, honey-blond hair, but said nothing.
“That’s very generous of you, Jasmine,” said Sophia, who leaned into Jasmine and wrapped her arms around her.

Jasmine was the top executive of a computer company. She was one of a rare breed of young woman whose math and science skills were so highly developed that she was plucked right out of college and installed as a software engineer, on a rung of the ladder more elevated than any man hired at the same time. It took her very few years to rise to the top, but she didn’t forget her humble upbringing, having been raised by a struggling single mother. Jasmine shared her hard work and good fortune with everyone, except a husband. She wanted to be a mother, but not a wife. So, she eschewed marriage offers from various boyfriends, including Jamile’s father.
“Well, I say we eat here. Let’s go in,” said Fonzi, somewhat baffled to be the man with four lovely dates on his arm.

Inside, the band was just setting up. The group found a table right in front of the band’s platform and ordered food. Sophia sat admiring how attractive Poppy looked with her dark brown, soft curly hair and olive skin, her beautiful eyes set above high cheekbones, and her zaftig figure. Both Poppy and Jasmine turned heads of the young men in the place. The men also eyed Fonzi with envy as he sat between these two curvaceous young women. Zoe and Sophia turned heads too even though they were older than the other three. A great deal of diligence by Zoe and Sophia, aided by dim lighting, disguised just how much older they were.

Poppy’s and Jasmine’s eyes lit up the minute the loud, bright music started. They leapt from the table to dance in the small patch of floor in front of the band. Their grace was mesmerizing and watching them brought back memories to Sophia and Zoe of when the two were preteens, dancing in front of a mirror in Poppy’s bedroom.

Fonzi leaned into Sophia’s face when she asked him whether he was concerned with learning how to dance in his pre-teens. He said he was more interested in sliding down the banisters at his Catholic school, but only when the nuns weren’t looking. He still had the splinter scars to prove that passion. Of course, poor Fonzi had to spend evenings at the mercy of his dear mother’s tweezers as she dug relentlessly around the flesh of his butt, to free the blades of wood. He explained that the smell of rubbing alcohol still made him gag, as it was the penitence he paid when his mother cleansed the wounds of his naughtiness. Who could not adore Fonzi, Sophia thought to herself?

Finally, Zoe and Sophia gave into the spirit of the music, and they too jumped up to dance. Zoe’s moves were smooth and sensuous, contained and workable in the small space. Sophia was incapable of economy of motion, and she swung out in an aggressive interpretation of the Latin sound. Unfortunately, she tripped over a cord from the electric bass and began to fall, face first, into the handsome bass player. Poppy and Jasmine caught her on the way down and propelled her back into motion. Zoe turned her back and danced with an imaginary partner, pretending she didn’t know Sophia. Within seconds a middle-aged African American man materialized to fill the role.

Sophia’s arms lashed out in spastic motion, barely missing Zoe’s new partner. Her arms instead landed squarely across Poppy’s head, which knocked Poppy off balance and sent her banging into Jasmine. Jasmine tripped and bumped into a man dancing next to Sophia, and his foot caught Sophia’s ankle. Sophia stumbled and started to fall. What could have been a domino moment of dancers losing their balance, toppling the musicians in their wake, was averted when two hands grabbed Sophia from behind and held her fast. Slowly, Sophia turned her head to see the face of her rescuer. Her eyes widened; her heart stopped. Marty held her tightly in his arms.

“What are you doing?” Sophia asked.
“I had a feeling you might be here tonight,” said Marty.
“Why was that important?”
“I want to come home. We belong together.”

The music stopped. Zoe looked over at Sophia’s blank eyes. Sophia saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. At that moment Poppy glanced toward her mother and caught sight of her father. She hurried to Marty, smiling her welcome. She and Jasmine swept Marty away to their table where he shook hands with Fonzi and sat down. Zoe left Sophia standing alone on the dance floor, stark still, staring at nothing. Without a word Zoe went to the table and collected their belongings. She handed Fonzi fifty dollars and walked back to the dance floor. Then she gently guided Sophia out of the room and into the quiet night.

The glow of the full moon lit the faces of the two old friends, who remained silent on the ride home. But each of them knew in the pits of their stomachs that they were off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continues…but remember, if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog. And PLEASE, keep sending in your wonderful advice! Thanks.

Sophia awoke in the night, puzzled by the weight across her chest. At first she thought it was Tolstoy, the huge Maine Coon cat who habitually sat on Sophia as she slept, pinning her to the bed. Sophia poked at the object, didn’t feel fur and realized an arm rested on her. Only then did she remember there was a man in her bed, her new lover, Jack. She carefully lifted his arm and slipped from the covers, tiptoed to the door and went downstairs to her laptop in the dining room. She opened her Facebook page, hoping Zoe would pop up in the chat box. Sophia needed badly to chat.

But when Sophia logged in, Zoe was logged off, which sent Sophia stumbling up the rocky path to panic. Sophia asked herself what the hell she was doing. Why was she involved with a man who had cheated on his wife? Was she seeking a man like her ex, Marty, who was horrid to her, hid his affair with his predatory girlfriend Fugly and then dropped Sophia on her head with no discussion, no kindness, no closure whatsoever?  Was Sophia setting herself up for a repeat performance of the worst emotional wreckage of her life? Just as these thoughts threatened to dispatch Sophia to Planet Nuts, she heard footsteps creak down the staircase of her 1770s home in New Hampshire. The door to the living room opened, and in the frame stood Jack, looking for Sophia. She smiled and waved shyly as he walked toward the dining room.

“Are you okay?” asked Jack.
“Yes, I’m fine. I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d write for awhile.”
“Why do I get the impression you’re not telling me the whole truth?”Sophia shrugged, uncertain whether she dared risk telling Jack her concerns so soon. Nothing he said or did led to the conclusion that Jack was untrustworthy. She just harbored fear, given his history of infidelity. Of course, Sophia knew fear was the other side of hope, according to Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist writer Zoe and Sophia adored.

If Sophia hoped that Jack was an honest person, then she was hoping her fears that he wasn’t, would not be realized. She figured out then and there to be honest with him, and just allow the present moment to unfold, permit communication to begin, and trust her instincts to guide her about believing in Jack.

“It’s old shit for me,” Sophia said, as she licked a gob of Nutella chocolate spread from a spoon. You had an affair on your wife, which scares me.”
“Fair enough,” said Jack.
“Then I realize that my fear springs from hoping you won’t do that to me. I am fixating on something over which I have no control, you for starters, and the future for finishers.” With this pithy comment, Sophia tossed back a handful of Bold Party Blend Chex Mix and chewed relentlessly, hoping the crunching sound would distract her from the discomfort of the moment.

“That’s an interesting way to put it, but I get your meaning. I guess you’re just gonna have to trust me. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m with you, at this moment, in the middle of the night, freezing my ass off in your lovely dining room. Over time, you must judge for yourself whether you can trust me. All I can say is that I will be trustworthy. It’s your choice to believe me, but without trust, there’s no valid relationship anyway, so what’s the point of worrying? Now, could you either help me build a fire so we can talk without turning blue, or could you get your adorable bottom up to bed, please? I need you to wrap those long, lean legs around me. I want our fingers to rub each other up and down our spines.”

Sophia clung to her chair like tree fungus. Quick blasts of hot air shot from her mouth. Each breath was filled with Chex Mix, glued together with Nutella. She sounded like a choo choo train and looked pretty scary. Jack’s eyes widened as he leapt out of the path of Sophia’s flying blobs of food. Sophia was so unused to being touched by a man, that even the mention of it drove her off her rocker. She flew out of her chair, hoping to shield Jack from the spewed food, but she choked on what was in her mouth, which caused her to trip over a chair, as her fingers clutched her throat. She fell like a chopped tree, right into Jack. He managed to catch her fall and his, but not before chunks of Chex found their way into his face. Sophia didn’t know what to say, of course. So, she ran back to her laptop, looked in the live chat box, and hoped Zoe would be logged on by now. But Zoe was not.

Zoe lay in her bed with the Webcam on her chest, talking to Boston Guy. And they were just talking. She told him that she valued his friendship enormously, but she regarded him as a child would her teddy bear, as a security blanket, but as a pal she had to let go of as an adult. She laid out for him the benefit versus detriment equation, and she concluded that the detriment outweighed the benefit. He peered into the Webcam quizzically and asked whether she would be willing to nestle up to the stuffed toy once in awhile, just as a treat. Zoe said no.

Zoe then went offline and reached for her phone to check her text messages. She wished like hell Florida Guy had returned her earlier message to him, but he hadn’t. The next text made her palms sweat, her breath shallow. The message was from Company Guy, her lover years before, even before George, who broke her heart and left her churning with a hunk of burning, unrequited love. Since the split with George, Company Guy re-entered Zoe’s life only through text and emails, but as before, he was the one man who until recently could swallow her emotions whole, chew them up, and then spit them out. AND Zoe would thank him for the honor of devastating her. Not anymore.
“Leave me alone,” was all she wrote back. Then she closed her eyes, pictured Florida Guy holding her and fell fast asleep.

The next morning Sophia lay in blissful splendor, spooning with Jack, who was sound asleep. Dawn had broken, which meant it was time for Sophia to get up and start working at her laptop downstairs. She had lots to do beyond writing, and her strict schedule required a minimum of six hours of daily devotion to her manuscripts. So, to get her work done and make it to her lunch date with her mentor Guinevere by noon, she had no time to lose. Guinevere was the grand dame of writers and literature in New Hampshire. Everyone venerated her. Just the mention of her name in literary circles brought a misty look to the speakers’ eyes, a look mingling profound respect with sheer delight. Guinevere was nearly eighty, an author herself, and she was worshiped by many writers, including Sophia, for her amazing guidance over the years.

Later in the day Sophia and Zoe were meeting their old chums Howard and Tess for a drink. Zoe wanted to introduce the three of them to Jack. Howard and Tess were the only “couple” friends who remained stalwart in their attempts to love and support Sophia through the past several months of her excruciating separation from Marty. Sophia loved Howard like a brother. He was an earnest, tender man with rat radar. He would let Sophia know in the gentlest of ways, whether he neither liked nor found commonality with Jack.

Tess was a dear friend with a razor sharp mind, a woman who never minced words. But Tess also had a vast, kind heart, and she would deliver an unpopular notion with a laugh so disarming that one could never take offense to what she said. But Tess’s eyes always told the story. If either of these people, whom Sophia held in such high regard, indicated in verbal or nonverbal ways that Jack was not the right person for Sophia, Sophia would not ignore their wisdom, notwithstanding the profound physical attraction she felt for Jack. As for Zoe, her closeness to Sophia made an objective assessment impossible, but Sophia still wanted Zoe there for support.

A couple of hours into Sophia’s work, Jack appeared downstairs, dressed and ready to head home to work himself. Jack wrote biographies, mostly of sports figures, and as with Sophia, weekend days varied little from weekdays. He and Sophia shared a cup of coffee then she sent him off with a breakfast bar and a long, lingering kiss. Just as he walked out the door, Zoe called.
“Hey, Zo, what’s up?’
“I’m feeling really numb today.”
“Numb cold or numb stupid or numb sad or….”
“Fuck sake, ENOUGH with the numb,” cried Zoe.
“Okay, okay. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Awhile back, we talked about my yearning to be in a more creative, diverse environment, and to be more creative myself. Part of that desire stems from a feeling of emptiness. I chase away my loneliness by filling up endless hours going out to dinner with various guys. I’m not even sleeping with anyone now, and I see none of these men as real partners, except Florida Guy. But Florida Guy is in Florida fuck sake.”

“Well, I’m moving to Florida. You could come too.”
“Not if I want to earn a living, I can’t. And that’s another thing. Every time I think about you moving away, a pit mushrooms in my stomach. I feel like bloated rust.”
“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry. I know you only want me to listen and not try to solve anything, so just keep talking.” But as she said this, Sophia could hear Zoe crying on the other end of the line. “Talk to me, girl. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I should have bought a better brand of tissue. I’m starting to get crusty nose.”
“It’s early. And I don’t have anything until my lunch date with Guinevere; do you want me to come over?”
“Guinevere,” Zoe sobbed. “She’s so wonderful. Yes, Sophie, come over. I need you.”

A few minutes later Sophia drove up to Zoe’s charming 1790s home. It was eerily silent. Usually Sparky, Zoe’s incontinent, stroke-impaired yellow Lab would be barking crazily at the sound of the car. Sophia went inside but didn’t see Zoe. She walked through the downstairs then headed upstairs. Soon she heard the Natalie Cole song This Will be an Everlasting Love blaring from Zoe’s bedroom. Sparky’s bark sounded faintly beneath the blast of music. As Sophia cracked open the door, Sparky burst out and nearly ran her over, dropping turds in his wake. Sophia kept her balance and walked gingerly over the stinking mess. Oddly, Sparky wore a bikini top. A straw hat, held on by a pink ribbon, bounced up and down on his head.

The curtains were drawn and the room was dim. Zoe lay on her back on the bed, arms and legs moving in and out rhythmically, like a sunbathing snow angel as she bellowed, “EVERLASTING LOVE” over and over. She wore the bikini bottom that matched Sparky’s top. Otherwise, Zoe was naked except for a pair of red spiked heels. Her hair was a mass of neglected bed-head snarls, and mascara dripped down her face. Strewn around the bed were a collection of seashells spilling out of beach buckets. Littered across the floor were several suitcases with clothes thrown into them.

“Fuck sake, Zoe. What are you doing,” asked Sophia as she walked to the old CD boom box and lowered the volume.
“I’ve been packing all night. I’m going to Florida. If Florida Guy won’t call me back, I’m gonna fly down and make him talk to me. He loves me. I know he does. And I love him. I don’t want see other men at all, even for dinner. I just want him.”
“Were you packing Sparky too? Why is he dressed?”
“I was pretending he was you.”
“Why?’
“Because now that you have Jack, I’m afraid you’re gonna abandon me.”

“Zoe, get the fuck up and stop acting like a crazed monkey. I love you.” With this Sophia reached down and rubbed Zoe’s head. Then she pulled a bathrobe out from under a pile of clothes in one of the suitcases and laid it over Zoe. “Listen to me. I am NOT your father. I am not one of your emotionally unavailable guys. We’ve been best friends for thirty years, and I’ve only known Jack for eleven days. No one can replace you. I need you, Zo, just as much as you need me. We give to each other what no one else can give us. Think about the joy we’ve shared over probably the worst year in our lives.”

“Okay, Sophie,” said Zoe as she rolled over and lumbered to her feet.
“When’s the last time you talked to Florida Guy?”
“It’s been four days although he did text and asked me if I were seeing other men. I can’t lie. I won’t lie. But seeing other men doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with them. Still, he said the thought of other men in my life tore out his heart.”
“Well, what does he want from you?”
“He never really says.”
“What do you want from him?”
“I’m not sure,” said Zoe as she walked toward the shower. “I think I want a relationship, but I don’t see how to pull it off.”
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying, having dinner with other guys isn’t the best path to that objective.”
“I know. I just keep hedging my bets, I guess. Until I get a sense that he’s ready to commit, at least long distance at first, I can’t live with the dread of being alone.”
“You know what Nietzsche said? ‘In order to grow strong, you must first sink your roots into nothingness and learn to face your loneliest loneliness.’ Maybe that’s what you should be working on instead of trying to forge relationships.
“You sound like my therapist.”
“You’re free to pay me a hundred bucks an hour.”
“Don’t you have someplace you need to be, Sophie?”
“In fact, I do. Is your spell over? Can I get on with my day without worrying that you’re gonna hang upside down from the shower rod?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“I’ll see you at five o’clock at Ixtapa Cantina.”

At noon Sophia walked into the Pine Gardens Chinese restaurant in Exeter. Guinevere stood waiting, her plump body leaning on a unique black cane, inlaid with a mother-of-pearl design. She was one of those rare older women whose eyes sparkled with mischief when she smiled. Her white hair, cropped in a bob, framed a pretty face. She gave Sophia a warm, burly hug, one long enough to transmit strong affirmative energy.
“What’s going on with you, these days?” asked Sophia.
“I’m making an effort to live my life deliberately,” said Guinevere in her robust, lively voice.
Sophia laughed.
“I work at the bookstore three days a week, on the other days I meet for meals with family, friends and other writers, I run a reading group, and the rest of the time I write and read. For an old lady that’s pretty deliberate, I’d say.”
“Yes indeed,” said Sophia, laughing again.

Over won ton soup and moo goo gai pan with brown rice, the women talked about Sophia’s current manuscript, which Guinevere was reading in snippets which Sophia sent her. They also talked about Marty’s recent compassionate treatment of Sophia and her objective to let go of negativity, of the pain and anger brought on by Marty’s departure from the marriage. Guinevere was like a school girl, taking in the story frame-by-frame, the way writers do. She giggled at Sophia’s satirical observations about where Sophia landed now that  Marty and she had called a cease fire. Sophia also described Jack.

Then Guinevere shared details about her young married life, working for a publishing house in New York City and living hand-to-mouth as a struggling writer. She talked about her parents and grandparents, and Sophia listened as Guinevere’s words painted vivid pictures of lives spanning well over a hundred years. Guinevere’s ability to articulate and describe was still so keen and quick that Sophia’s only hope was by the time she was eighty, that she would have half of the woman’s clarity.

Throughout the meal the theme kept circling back to Guinevere’s original statement about living life deliberately. The women laughed every time one of them said something to underscore an example of living deliberately, living in an awareness of the present moment, living as if it were the last day one had to live. Sophia looked back down the corridor of the past year-and-a-half of trauma and hurt brought on by the dying and death of her marriage. She reflected that through it all, she managed to live deliberately. She was in touch with her pain, she wrote a book that helped her to heal, and she was well on the way to finishing a second one. Sorrow was not the only emotion that defined those hours for Sophia. She deliberately sought joy in her family and Zoe. And now, at least for today, she found joy in discovering Jack.

At the end of lunch, Guinevere sat crunching her fortune cookie. She glanced down at the white strip of paper and decided to read it, no sense in wasting thoughts or words. She chortled as she handed the fortune to Sophia.
“I almost didn’t read this,” said Guinevere, her eyes dancing, “but I think it’s relevant.”
Sophia looked at it and laughed. It said, “Killing time murders opportunities.”
Both women were attuned to synchronicity and neither could resist the best humor of all, irony.

Zoe meanwhile regrouped, upended the clothes from the suitcases into a pile on the floor, undressed poor Sparky and cleaned up his heaps of crap. Next, she cleaned her house and began thinking about how she could create a blueprint for her life that was different from the construct in which she now lived. Baby steps, she kept telling herself. Change was frightening, but healthy, like burning a field. The grass would grow in greener, fuller.

Zoe decided that living in New Hampshire would be unbearable when and if Sophia moved away, so she made a plan as to how she could work remotely from Boston or Florida. Where didn’t matter, just anywhere else. Next, she called her friends, the husband and wife who were artists living in Cambridge. They had invited her to be part of the formulation of an artists’ retreat on their land in Jamaica. She shared her ideas of how to bring their vision to fruition. Zoe’s strengths were in organizing and networking, qualities lacking in both of her friends.

Afterwards, Zoe decided to drive to Portsmouth before she was due for the drinks date with Sophia and the others. Shopping was always a balm. Just as she reached the highway, Florida Guy called. She wondered whether her positive energy toward a new direction somehow flowed to him. Unlike her last several conversations with him, this one was loving and thoughtful. For the entire drive to Portsmouth, they gently discussed Zoe’s need for male attention. Just before they hung up, he said that if she were willing to let go of dating other men, he would be willing to provide her with all the attention she could handle, sexual and otherwise. Florida Guy’s proclamation was like corn popping in Zoe’s head as she reeled between awe and ecstasy. As soon as he hung up, Zoe called Sophia.

“Hey, Zo. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the River Run Bookstore looking for a book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
“Meet me at Ixtapa.”

A few minutes later Zoe and Sophia drove up to Ixtapa Cantina at the exact same moment. They hugged each other then walked into the lobby, arm and arm, smiling into each other’s faces, like an old couple who’d been together for a very long time. Juan, their favorite cute Mexican waiter, waved at them, and before Zoe or Sophia could tell him not to, he placed, with a flourish of gallantry, two margaritas on the table in front of them.

“I guess we should nurse these slowly,” said Sophia, “Howard and Tess won’t be here for awhile, and I want a clear head when they meet Jack.”
“I’ve made progress today,” said Zoe. I’ve started putting a positive life plan into action, and Florida Guy professed that he could be in a committed relationship with me if I were receptive to letting go of the other men in my life.”
“Wow. That’s huge. So all your desperation from this morning just vanished?”
“In a sense, yes. I realize I’ve been so entangled in negative and obsessive thinking that I was lost.”
“You must have figured out ”The Secret,’ Zo.”
“What are you talking about?”

Sophia handed her the book. Together they read through a few pages. The gist was that the law of attraction is a fundamental law of nature. We attract to ourselves those things our thoughts send out into the universe. If we formulate positive thoughts in our mind and then send those out, positive things are attracted back to us, like a magnet. The inverse is true of negative thoughts. Our feelings are merely guides to let us know whether our thoughts are “good” ones or “bad” ones, attracting those things we want or do not want in our lives.

Just then, Jack walked into Ixtapa, wearing a big smile. The sight of him robbed Sophia of her breath and all she could do was nudge Zoe and point. Zoe beamed her approval, at least as far as appearance was concerned. He was tall, with thick, white hair, a handsome face and a fit body. Zoe jumped up from the L-shaped booth to introduce herself. Sophia tried to jump up too, but her sweater caught on the corner of the table and sprung her back down like a rubber band. Unfortunately, she bumped the table on the way, and the two full margaritas tipped over and splashed onto Sophia’s hair, down her shirt, and into the lap of her skinny jeans. Juan raced over with bar towels to clean up the mess on the seat. Jack and Zoe stood watching, glancing with amusement into each other’s eyes. Just as Sophia hurried toward the restroom to clean herself off, Howard and Tess breezed through the door.

Sophia was so embarrassed that she stayed a long time in the restroom. Still looking a mess, she finally returned to the table and saw five new margaritas had been delivered, along with a basket of warm tortillas and salsa. The introductions were over and everyone was engaged in lively conversation about The Secret, which by some miracle of positive thought, had escaped being drenched in tequila.

Howard and Jack talked about the power of positive thought to accumulate wealth. Tess and Zoe talked about the powerful thought that went into Tess’s recent hairdo. Tess’s hair was naturally curly, but just that afternoon, she asked her hairdresser to blow dry her hair straight, just to see what it looked like. Howard gave mixed reviews about the transformation, but Zoe and Sophia loved it.
“Tess, let me see your phone,” said Zoe. “Let’s take a picture of you and send it to your sister in Connecticut to see what she thinks.”
“Okay,” said Tess.

Soon, Juan came to take the order for appetizers. Sophia only half listened to the banter about Tess’s hair. Instead, she struggled to get a read from Howard’s demeanor about his reaction to Jack. The forecast was murky. Howard’s body language was guarded; his arms remained folded against his chest. His laughter sounded a little forced, or perhaps that was Sophia’ imagination. Jack’s charm and good looks dazzled the women, so they were no help as a gauge. Just as the appetizers arrived and they ordered a second round of drinks, Tess’s phone blinged, signaling the arrival of a text message.

Tess looked down at her phone. The message was from her sister telling her the straightened hair looked chic. But before Tess could eat a bite, another text message came in. It was from her mother and father who were wintering in Florida. The text clearly expressed that Tess should bring back the curls.
“How many people did you send that picture to, Tess,” asked Sophia.
“I just sent the one–to my sister.” Zoe and Sophia laughed at the speed of thought that came back to Tess about her hair.

Neither Howard nor Jack paid any attention to the hair-talk. They were still discussing how to accumulate wealth through the transmission of brain waves. As Tess took the first sip of her drink, another text came in from a second sister in New York. She liked the straight look. Tess was growing irritated and hungry and thirsty. The next two texts were from her teenage son and daughter. The son thought her hair was fabulous, but the daughter said she looked like an old woman. Finally, just as Tess and the others were downing the last drop of their drinks, another text blinged on Tess’s phone. It was from her brother in China. He was thumbs up on the curls.
“Well, we have to get going,” said Tess to Howard.
“Why? Do we have plans for tonight?”
“Yes. I have to go home and wash my hair.”

After kisses and hugs of farewell, Howard and Tess gave Sophia neither smiles nor frowns before they hurried out the door. Jack asked whether Zoe and Sophia wanted to stay and join him for dinner, but they both said they had plans for the evening. Sophia and Jack kissed and confirmed they’d talk later on.

Sophia grabbed Zoe’s arm as they walked quickly away from the restaurant toward some of their favorite nearby stores.
“What did you think of him, Zo?”
“The jury’s still out.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s gorgeous, charming, smart, funny and interesting. Everything Marty was. I’m not sure whether you can trust him.”
“In what way…how?”
“I don’t mean things like cheating on you. I’m talking about emotional engagement.”
“How the hell did you read that from him?”
“It’s hard to say. I think he might be ambivalent, you know, a push-pull kind of guy.”

Sophia was silent for a minute while the two friends walked through The Gap, fingering piles of clothing. Finally, she said, “Well, if anyone would know about that sort of man, it would be you.”
Zoe turned to her, wincing. “I know you said that because you’re hurt by my observation. You’re right, of course. But let’s just say it’s easier to see when other people are walking into the jaws of a lion than it is to see when we are doing it ourselves.”

“True enough,” said Sophia, whose face puckered as tears sprung from her eyes. “It all goes back to the law of attraction. I’m attracted to someone like Marty, however negative the outcome might be, because it’s familiar. I understand his instincts. It’s safe because I know what to expect, but it’s unsafe because the real issue is about who Jack might be, intrinsically. Perhaps you see in Jack certain attributes I overlooked in Marty because I loved him.”
“Exactly,” said Zoe. “Which raises the question of whether you want to get into the same cycle with a new person who is similar to Marty in so many ways?”

“I think the bigger question is about where I am, Zo. “AM I EMOTIONALLY BALANCED ENOUGH TO LOVE A MAN RIGHT NOW?”
Zoe held up a green camisole in front of herself as she faced a mirror. Sophia faced the mirror too. Their eyes met in the reflection, and Zoe took a deep breath before answering. “I QUESTION WHETHER YOU ARE IN A PLACE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO SEE A MAN CLEARLY ENOUGH TO LOVE HIM WITHOUT BLINDERS ON. YOU WANT A CONNECTION WITH A MAN, BUT YOU ARE STILL IN SO MUCH PAIN.”
“You might be right, Zo. I’ll have to take this one really slowly…if at all.”
“Hey, Sophie, let’s go to my house and watch old DVDs of Sex and the City. Those should get you thinking straight.”

“Okay,” said Sophia. “Can we first stop at the bakery near my house? I hear they have Nutella cheesecake.”
“Be still my heart.”
“Hey, Zoe, do you think either of us is really ready to fall in love yet?”
“I can fall in love with anything that has Nutella in it.”
“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

And so, in separate cars the two fifty-something BFFs drove toward home, consumed by thoughts of love gained and love lost and love that might not be. But they never questioned their love for Nutella as they roared through night on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but remember, if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog. And keep your wonderful advice flowing. Thanks.

March 9th, 2010
PLEASE send your advice to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to offer it. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF were she to ask, “I WANT TO SPEND TIME BEING MORE CREATIVE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?”Any advice you can give to Zoe would be helpful, but this is what Sophia said.

Before Zoe opened her eyes, she tried to remember where she was. The smell was familiar. Sparky, her stroke-impaired yellow Lab had involuntarily purged enough hard turds into the dog bed to fill the air with a distinct olfactory unpleasantness. Zoe could feel the weight of her laptop on her stomach where she’d left it when she fell asleep after Webcam “dating” late into the night with Florida Guy. But the angle of her head was unfamiliar because she wasn’t sleeping on her own pillows. Finally, she remembered she was in Cambridge, at the home of some old friends, who invited her to dinner and to stay over. The windstorm a few nights earlier stole the power from hundreds of thousands of people in New Hampshire, and Zoe still didn’t have hers back. Because the branch of Zoe’s company didn’t have power either, Zoe had to work out of its Boston office for a couple of days.

Zoe finally opened her eyes and smiled as she remembered the night before. Her friends were an interesting couple. He was an artist and poet originally from (Rasta) Jamaica. She was a painter and dance instructor, a New York Jew fortunate enough to have a comfortable trust fund. The couple found each other at an arts festival in the late 1970s and had been happily married ever since.

The evening before was filled with music, dance, poetry, painting, rum punch and good vegan food. Zoe inhaled the fun. Before dinner the friends showed Zoe pictures of their home on the beach in Jamaica, where they spent two months every year. They captured Zoe’s delight with their vision to turn the place into a year-round artists’ retreat. During dinner, the husband read some of his poetry. Between dinner and washing dishes, Zoe posed for the couple so they could sketch her. After they sketched, the wife put a box of crystal beads in front of Zoe, and she made herself a lovely necklace and earrings. Later a few neighbors dropped by and everyone danced to Reggae with wild abandon.
Then a hard knot formed in Zoe’s stomach. She thought about what her life would be like in New Hampshire if Sophia moved to Florida. Aside from work and endless dates with ill-suited men, all she could see was a barren patch of cold nothing.

Sophia stuck a toe out the door, just to feel the air. She closed her eyes and listened for a couple of minutes to birdsong she hadn’t heard in many months. Something internal stirred her. Was it the sense of spring? This was her anniversary, and she wondered if her husband Marty remembered as he awoke in the arms of his girlfriend, Fugly. With her eyes still closed, Sophia allowed herself to recall when she first met Marty. Sophia had gone home that night, unable to sleep as colors and sound swirled through the air of her dark, silent bedroom. Marty went home and left a note on the kitchen counter that said, “I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry. They both knew it was love at first sight, and the love endured for many wonderful years. But Sophia could only take a few seconds of these memories before her eyes snapped open, and she begged herself not to cry. Too many tears already had been shed for the loss that robbed her of her breath, her joy, her desire to live some days. She needed to talk to Zoe.
“Hi, Sophie.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Cambridge. Wow, I’m surprised you got out of bed.”
“I made myself get up, but I wish it were tomorrow.”
“It will be soon enough—never wish time away. Time is all we have.”
“Huh?”
“Wanna do something fun tonight, Soph? It’ll take your mind off, you know….”
“Like what, Zo?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Be in a coma,” said Sophia flatly.

Zoe changed the subject. “I really hope my power’s restored today. But if it isn’t, I’ll stay with you tonight. Anyway, let me see if I can line up dates for us,”
“Maybe. I gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Back to bed.”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Try not to live on Planet Nuts until then.”
“Okay, Zo.”

It wasn’t the best day for Sophia to stroll down memory lane, but she couldn’t help herself. She thought if she remembered some of the better years with Marty, it might help her honor what they had and let it go. Sophia started pulling dozens of photo albums from shelves where they’d lived collecting dust for too long. She piled them around her on the dining room floor. Sophia sat amidst the piled albums and took in decades of love, loss, laughter, pain, peace and turbulence. Every picture jabbed her until one found her most tender spot, and that portrayal plunged a sword into the middle of her heart.

The picture was of Marty and Sophia in bathing suits and straw hats watching the U.S. Tennis Open under the tree in their yard. For years they brought the TV outside and spent every spare moment of two weeks watching and pretending they were in New York. Even when Lily was only five days old, the infant lay in a drawer, outside in a shaded area, and her grandparents cuddled her as they sat rapt, adoring the baby, the tennis and each other. It was during the U.S. Open the summer before, that Marty admitted his affair with Fugly, and Sophia’s world came crashing down. Tennis brought Marty and Fugly together, ripping Sophia out of all future frames. The stab wound now bled. Stunned and numb, Sophia curled into a fetal position and lay for a long time amidst the strewn photo albums. She was pretty sure Marty forgot it was their anniversary.

A while later Zoe breezed through the kitchen door. Her head bent down as she looked at a spectacular photo Tennessee Guy texted to her. It was his full-frontal-nude body. Tennessee Guy was the twenty-five year old who pursued Zoe relentlessly. He did everything from fly to Vermont tracking Zoe down, to propose marriage a week later. AND at each turn, Tennessee Guy met with Zoe’s indifference, but he remained undaunted.
Unfortunately, because Zoe was so absorbed in the photo, she didn’t notice Sophia lying in a fetal position, nor did she see the stacks of photo albums strewn everywhere. As a result she tripped over Sophia and fell headlong on top of her. Sophia didn’t stir.

Sparky was right behind Zoe, and he became so distressed that his sweet Zoe might be hurt, that he barked anxiously then let out a steady stream into the fire place. Soon the whole house smelled like burnt pee. Tolstoy, Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat, became instantly offended by the odor. He hissed and yowled at Sparky then took a running leap and landed on Sparky’s back, where he clung, by his claws for dear life. Tolstoy’s girth was so great that the impact of Tolstoy’s body sent Sparky slamming into the wall, where he lay whimpering.

Tolstoy released his grip on Sparky and leapt over to Sophia, wondering why that bitch Zoe had to bring that lame-ass dog to his house every day. Tolstoy licked Sophia’s face, thinking she needed reviving or cleaning, he wasn’t sure which. Sparky wondered why that bitch Sophia had to have such an evil cat. But soon his thoughts turned back to sweet Zoe’s well being. He tried to find his legs to get up and go comfort her, but he was stuck on his back, like a bug.

“Fuck sake, Sophie, say something. Ouch or shit, anything.”
“Ouch…shit,” murmured Sophia.
“Why today of all days did you drag out these pictures?”
“I need him, Zoe, if only the memory of his face and smile.”
“He’s been such a creep to you.”
“In the end I’m not sure it matters. I know who he is deep down. I still love him.”
“Yes, but could you forgive him?”
“To err is human, to forgive is divine.”
“Who said that?”
“Alexander Pope.”
“Sophie, if anybody could forgive, you could. I believe all people have divinity somewhere inside of themselves, and your divinity is an ability to forgive.”
“Thank you.”
“But what about forget? Could you forget the brutal way he shunned you and his meanness toward you, and the fact that he left you for another woman?”
“I guess I’d have to, Zoe. Hey, I don’t know why we’re lying on the floor talking about this dumb shit anyway. Marty’s got Fugly, and I don’t see him making his way back to me. So, could you get the fuck up off of me and figure out a way to fumigate this house. Sparky outdid himself this time.”
“Power down, sister,” said Zoe as she rolled over, straddling Sophia in order to have room to stand without knocking over furniture or falling in the fire. But before she stood, she looked down into Sophia’s eyes. “Sophie, you look scarier than a Stephen King movie. When is the last time you showered and put on makeup?”
“Can’t remember.”
“That long. GO TAKE A SHOWER. Your depression is starting to smell as bad as Sparky’s butt.”
“Okay, Zo.”

With that, Sophia stood up and walked to the bathroom while Zoe put away the photo albums and cleaned up after Sparky. Unfortunately, she managed to get soot and urine all over herself, so she headed upstairs to grab some of Sophia’s clean clothes and to take a shower in the other bathroom.

A few minutes later the women stood in their panties and bras lathering their slender torsos and long, lean legs with olive oil lotion. Next, they took turns drying their blond hair, and then applied subtle make-up, as their eyes met in the mirror.
“Why did we shower?” asked Sophia.
“Ahh, because it’s the hygienic thing to do, bag lady.”
“You know, that’s really insensitive toward bag ladies. They are people too.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Sophia pulled back and squinted at Zoe.
“Why didn’t you come back with some pithy comment, Zo?”
“You’re way too vulnerable and depressed to have a sense of humor today. In fact, you’re down right dreary.”
“How should I be?”
“Try to think about everyone and everything you have to be thankful for.”
“Good idea.”

Just then Zoe’s phone rang. It was Traveler Guy asking if she wanted to meet for lunch in Portsmouth. Zoe looked over at Sophia.
“Will you be okay if I go out to lunch with Traveler Guy?”
“No problem,” said Sophia, but her heart raced in a panic. She didn’t want to be alone. As Zoe readied herself to leave, Sophia decided to text Marty on a pretext about a bill that needed paying. He didn’t respond.

Sophia saw Zoe off and then sat down to write. But the words wouldn’t come. She checked her Facebook page and her email, and just as alarm rose in her throat, signaling the kickoff of at least a couple of hours of staring and crying, Marty called her. He asked if she’d meet him at Popovers, a wireless café in Portsmouth, to go over some information about their taxes. Sophia trembled, as she always did when she anticipated being in Marty’s presence. Sometimes her physical reaction was the fear of fighting, something she tried not to do with him anymore. At other times, it was sexual and emotional yearning just to be near him.

Although Sophia had two hours to kill before her meeting with Marty, she packed up her laptop and left the house immediately. She had to flee the memories about the day, so she decided to drive straight to Popovers, where she could read and do some writing.

Zoe met Traveler Guy at Ixtapa, her favorite Mexican restaurant in Portsmouth where she and Sophia often went to flirt with the cute Mexican waiters. Zoe still struggled to accept Traveler Guy’s nose, but her bigger problem was with his self-consumption. His most profound demonstration of this was wrapped in his inability to communicate with her consistently. He would declare that he really wanted to fashion a relationship, but then he wouldn’t call for days. When he did meet her for a meal like today, he tended to dominate the conversation, talking about his job, about a recent trip to Amsterdam, about his witchy ex-wife and his beautiful daughters.

Never once did he ask Zoe anything about herself. A couple of times she tried to talk about her newborn grandson and about her high-powered job in the entertainment industry, but the conversation invariably veered back to Traveler Guy until she brought up Sophia’s name. That seemed to perk his interest. He asked to see a picture of Sophia, so Zoe opened her laptop and went to Sophia’s photo section of Facebook. He nodded approvingly as a small smile crept across his face. He quietly alluded to the closeness of Zoe’s relationship with Sophia and raised a wondering eyebrow as if he were picturing something in his mind, to which he did not want to give voice. Finally, Zoe figured out where all his obtuse questions were headed, where Traveler Guy’s interest usually led, to matters below the waist.
“No,” Zoe said bluntly, “Sophia and I do not have sex with each other. We’re like sisters, so if you have some idea about a threesome, change the channel.”
After their meal arrived, Zoe decided to cut in on Traveler Guy’s blathering, and she talked nonstop about whatever crossed her mind.

Meanwhile, Sophia set up her laptop at a marble table at Popovers. The window she sat next to gave her a view of Market Square and the lovely old brick buildings that bordered the hub of downtown. She ordered decalf Earl Gray tea and looked around her as she sipped it. Lots of writers set up digs at that particular café. Sitting at the table behind her and at the one to her left, were two, lone interesting looking men who wrote furiously, impervious to their surroundings.

Her nervous tension about meeting Marty didn’t subside, but she was able to concentrate for a few minutes until the battery in her laptop gave her a two minute warning. She stood up and searched for an outlet, but the one she found was too far away for her cord. The writing man nearest to the plug stood up, discerning her need and offered her to sit at his table and work.

Sophia froze. She looked up four inches, into a set of magnificent hazel eyes. The man’s face broke into a smile so captivating that it took her breath away. Then she studied his striking, pure white, thick hair. Next, her eyes trailed down to his broad shoulders and slim hips. The only thing he lacked was the potbelly so many fifty-something men carried around like a trophy. Sophia’s eyes widened, but words lay trapped in her brain. A nod alone escaped to convey her agreement to the man’s idea.

Unfortunately, the move to his table was not a smooth one. He asked for her cord, which she tried to hand him, but she bumped against the table, and the cord toppled her teacup and propelled her phone half way across the room. She put her laptop opposite his, but didn’t see his glass of iced coffee. The contents of the glass spilled to the floor in the exact spot where the man’s feet were planted. Sophia ran up to the counter to snatch a hunk of napkins to clean his shoes, but in her hurry back, she tripped on a nearby chair and fell headlong into Handsome Guy, who graciously caught Sophia in his arms and held her for several seconds too long to be merely a “good save.”

Sophia and Handsome Guy talked for an hour. Their commonalities astounded her. She discovered his name was Jack, and that he wrote biographies, mostly of sports figures. Sophia and Jack shared their love of music, art, birds, gardening and sunshine. He told her he had two grown children and a grandson, and that he was a devoted husband for decades. But just as Jack turned fifty, a younger woman joined his support staff, and she made a play for him. Incapable of resisting her allure, he walked out on his wife.  The relationship with the other woman, although intense, was short lived, and he went home to his wife. She tried to take him back. They availed themselves of every resource, but in the end, she fell in love with someone else and left him.

Sophia just listened and watched the pain play across his face. Sophia gazed into the eyes of a humbled man, somewhat broken, but a good man, a kind and intelligent man, a man of character. She didn’t tell him much of her story, only that she was also a writer and that she suffered as his wife had suffered. Jack nodded, looking lovingly into her eyes. Reluctantly, he pulled his eyes away and glanced at his watch. Then he reached into his wallet and handed her his card and asked her please, please to be in touch. As he walked away, Sophia was so smitten she forgot all about Marty and Fugly and everything else on earth at that moment.

Instead of writing, Sophia drew Pema’s Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart from her purse and began to read. Pema was the American Buddhist writer whom Zoe and Sophia adored. Sophia reminded herself to live in the present, not to have expectations about what might or might not happen in the future.

Sophia’s mind bounced back and forth like a recoiling wire between what she knew and what she felt. She knew she should release thoughts that fixated and grasped for things beyond her reach, past or future. In that instant Sophia felt an intense draw to Jack, yet she paused because he had demolished his wife’s trust, the same way Marty had destroyed hers. She was afraid because she wanted Jack, plain and simple. But she had to be careful to protect her heart. Sophia was certain that living in fear of the future was a useless waste of living. And she yearned to embrace all the possibilities. But could she do that without a safety net? Then she remembered a quote Pema herself used as a guide. “Only to the extent we expose ourselves to annihilation over and over again can that which is indestructible be found in us.” In life, Sophia told herself, there is only groundlessness. Everything falls apart, and everything comes back together another way.

When Marty walked in a few minutes later, Sophia looked up and smiled at him. He handed her a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse, the type of wine he brought her on their first date many years before.
“Happy Anniversary,” said Marty.
“Thank you,” said Sophia. “I forgive you.”

And just like that, she let go of the Marty in front of her. He was someone else now. Love of the old Marty, her Marty, welled up inside of her, and she knew that was the love to honor and cherish, the love that would remain in her heart forever. But today, she celebrated a different anniversary. It was the first hour of the first day of knowing Jack. Her intuition told her that she could love this man and he her. Jack was flawed, yes, but he was also humbled, a man who’d learned his lesson.

Meanwhile, Zoe’s lunch wound down with Traveler Guy, and she was relieved it was over. She gave him a peck on his cheek as they parted outside of Ixtapa, but her head was bent and fingers busy texting even as she walked away from him. First, she texted Florida Guy to tell him she missed him. He did not respond. She called him, but he didn’t answer the phone, which was always attached to his belt. She left a message, telling him again that she missed him. He did not call back.  God, did she ever yearn for Florida Guy.  She decided to call Sophia.
“Hi, Sophie, where are you?”
“I’m at Popovers. I met my new man today.”
“Huh?”
“His name is Jack.”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, make sense.”
“I met a guy in Popovers today, and I have a feeling we could fall in love.”
“Are you delusional? What’s he like?”
“I’m not delusional. I just know it when I see it.”
“Know what?”
“Never mind. We’ll talk. Are you in Portsmouth?”
“Yes. Wanna meet somewhere?”
“Let’s go shopping, Zo.”
“I’ll come to you.”

On her drive to meet Sophia, Zoe took a phone call from New York Guy. She arranged to meet him the next night in Boston. Today, she had to devote to thinking about where her life was going, and there was no better sounding board than Sophia.

The afternoon air was filled with a hint of spring. Zoe and Sophia ambled along on the sunny side of the street, stopping occasionally to sit and talk on the benches in Market Square. Sophia described Jack and the magical hour she’d spent with him. The women walked further and popped into various boutiques to look at clothing and jewelery. Inside Cool Jewels, Zoe turned to Sophia.
“Does meeting Jack make you think twice about moving to Florida?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you tell him about Florida?”
“Briefly. No details though.”
“If you move, that means I’m still in a quandary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to stay in New Hampshire. There’s nothing here for me except my job. I need to live in a more diverse place, where I see people of all colors and nationalities.”
“No question you’ll have to move away to do that. New Hampshire is homogenized. Why can’t you just move back to Boston; that’s where you’re from? Could you convince your company to let you work there?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did the idea of my moving to Florida bring on this craving, Zo?”
“To some extent. But I’ve missed living in a city for a long time. By the way, I had the best time in Cambridge last night. It made me realize how much I need to be part of an artistic community.”
“Tell me about it.”

Zoe told her about the night before with her old friends. Her face was radiant as she recalled the sketching, poetry and dancing. A yearning sprung from her eyes when she told Sophia that the couple offered for her to become involved in establishing an artists’ retreat in Jamaica. Finally, she said, “I WANT TO SPEND TIME BEING MORE CREATIVE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?”
“What are your artistic interests, Zo?”
“I can string beads. You should see the earrings and a necklace I made.”
“Okay,” said Sophia tentatively. “Is that considered art?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You don’t paint or play an instrument, but you dance well for the Webcam.”
“Hum.”
“Wait, Zo… you are incredibly artful in your gardening. Your esthetic is not only stunning, it’s unique.”
“That’s true!”
“And you pitch me fabulous ideas for my stories?”
“Yeah, but that’s really your art.”
“True. You know, Zo, if dating were an art form, you could FILL a museum.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Sophie?”

When Sophia stopped laughing at her own joke she said, “Your greatest strengths are organization and communication. You have amazing empathy and tact, and you articulate ideas better than anyone I know. Your other great talent is sex.”
“Nice of you to say, but how do these skill sets fit into an artists’ retreat?”
“ZO, YOU COULD ORGANIZE, NETWORK, ADVERTISE AND ADMINISTER AN ARTISTS’ RETREAT, AND ON THE DOWN TIME YOU COULD TEACH GARDEN DESIGN AND KARMA SUTRA MOVES TO THE ARTISTS!”

Zoe nodded her head happily. “Hey, Soph, I want to go back to Ixtapa. We need to celebrate with margaritas”
“What are we celebrating, Zo?”
“I have Art.  And you just might have a new man.”
“Yeah. Let’s celebrate!”
“And we can flirt with the cute Mexican waiters.”
“On the way home, can we stop at the tanning salon?” asked Sophia. “Pema’s talking in my ear right now, and I do my best meditation in the tanning bed.”
“Okay.”

As the two friends swept into Ixtapa, the smarmy host welcomed Zoe back. Zoe nodded then remembered her dismal date earlier.
“You know, Sophie, I’ve tried, but I just don’t think I can get around Traveler Guy’s nose.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

Zoe and Sophia sat at their usual table and didn’t have to wait even a minute before Jose, their favorite Mexican waiter, placed Margaritas in front of the shimmering fifty-something BFFs. But before they took a sip, in unison they drew their cell phones from their purses, and off they went, on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…read about major changes is the Bff’s lives. But remember, if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the Blog.