Ice Cream

And I did. I got transferred to a different office in another city. The first few months were hell on me. I often awoke in the middle of the night screaming out Justine's name. I'd cry for a while and try to go back to sleep. I found over a few weeks that the best thing to do was to get a cup of tea and try to write down my feelings about Justine. I always wrote, "HATE," in big angry letters. Then I'd write "love," right beside it in smaller letters.

It took me almost a year to realize that both were true. I loved Justine with all my heart and soul, but I hated what she had done to us. My iPhone brought it all to a head. I was grocery shopping when my mom called me. "Rudy you have to come home," she said. "It's Justine."

How can you tell when you love someone? People always wonder about that. Is it some magical combination of proteins or amino acids that take over the brain? How the hell should I know? But I do know that when you love someone and someone tells you they need you, you drop everything and go to them immediately. And that's what I did. I didn't go home for clothes. I didn't call in and let them know I wouldn't be in to work. I didn't even go to the checkout counter. I just walked away and left my cart in the middle of the store. Fuck the milk. Fuck the eggs, Justine needed me.

She didn't look good at all. She was a skeleton. She hadn't been taking care of herself and had never been treated for her Gonorrhea. She apparently didn't know that she was still on my health care and that they would have paid for all of the treatments she needed. I sat down at her bedside and watched her sleep. There were tubes all over her. When she finally woke up several hours later, her eyes focused on me immediately.

"Hi Honey," she said. "I guess I really fucked things up didn't I?" she asked. "Did they tell you what I have?" I nodded. "Did they tell you what they want to do to me?" I nodded again as a tear rolled down my cheeks.

"Thanks for coming to visit me," she said. "I know you don't want to hear this but I still love you. I always will. I don't know why I played all of those fucking games, but through all of it I never stopped loving you. You are a part of me and you always will be. I guess I should also tell you that there was another guy. It was an electrician, a big guy with a huge dick. I only gave him four strokes. But he wanted me so bad he was already dripping when he put it in me." She started crying as she said this.

"If I could have just kept my legs closed, you and I would still be together, we'd still be happy and I'd probably be pregnant by now. I can see her too you know," she said.

"Justine, I set you up," I said with tears rolling down my cheeks. "I did this to you. I was angry at you for sleeping with those guys so I arranged to fuck up all of their lives and give you an STD. I figured you'd be embarrassed even more when you had to go to the clinic to get treated. I just wanted you to feel some of the pain I felt. This is my fault."

She smiled at me then and shook her head. "God damn it, Rudy. You did all of that over me? You ruined three marriages and hurt or crippled two men over me? You really must have loved me almost as much as I love you. You didn't make me fuck him or any of them. Most of the women we know wouldn't have let a strange man into their homes let alone their vaginas. None of this is your fault, the blame is all mine. I was just a silly girl playing games. I tried to have my cake and eat it too. But if it makes you feel any better, you did hurt me. None of your revenge plans bothered me Rudy. I didn't give a darn about any of those men and though I hate to say it. Them losing their health or their wives or their kids didn't affect me at all. But when you left me, Rudy I almost died. I just didn't want to live. I didn't take care of myself, because I didn't care." She grabbed my hand and held it to her chest.

"My heart only beats for you, rudy. I'm not trying to guilt trip you into anything, but you need to know what's going on here. If they do this operation a part of me is going to die. One of my biggest dreams will become impossible. I'll have lost everything. If it matters so much to you that I live, you have to give me something to live for. Otherwise what's the point in me going through the surgery?"

She didn't need to say another word we both knew what she wanted, and though reason totally disagreed with me, I went with my heart. So okay I'm a wimp. I moved back into the house to take care of Justine after the surgery. I got my old job back and nursed her back to health. It took her three months to get her strength back and get the combination of drugs she needed to fight off a multitude of infections stabilized. She started to look like her old self. She was beautiful again. We spent every spare moment together. It was as if we both realized that our time together was tentative, nothing was sure. We spent a lot of time lying in each other's arms in front of the fireplace. We talked about everything and nothing. A big topic of discussion for us was always the kids. There were of course certain things we couldn't talk about or do. Any mention of Ice Cream sent me into a fury.

"What's her name?" she asked me one night. "Our daughter that you saw, the one that looked like me. What's her name?"

"Julee," I said crying.

"Where'd that come from?" she asked wiping away my tears. That was one of our big rules. No crying no matter what. We had to just play the hand we'd been dealt. Crying over it would never solve anything.

"The first part of Justine is "JU," I said. "The last part of Rudy is, "EE." She smiled. "L" is for love," I said. "And that's all that's ever been between us." She nodded her head trying not to cry as well.

Some of my neighbors look at me funny when I walk down the street holding her hand tightly in mine. But I don't care. This is my life not theirs so they don't get a fucking vote on what I do or who I'm with. We even had sex after a fashion. Even though it would be months before we could actually engage in actual intercourse. Justine would put on one of her costumes sometimes, but more often than not we'd just jerk off in front of each other, sometimes several times a day just like before. It wasn't awful but God I missed her touch.

The doctors were amazed by Justine's recovery. They kept telling us how sorry they were. They'd had to do a complete Hysterectomy on Justine. The removal of both her ovaries and Fallopian tubes. The untreated Gonorrhea had wrought too much damage to save anything. Justine had known for a few weeks that they'd needed to do it and refused. She'd decided that she'd rather die than give up the chance to have babies.

In the end though, it wasn't the Gonorrhea that killed her. After the surgery and several courses of very strong antibiotics she was pronounced disease free. I remember how happy I was when they told us. Justine smiled a bit and squeezed my hand, but I got the feeling that there was still something missing. It was Julee who took her away from me.

Justine just couldn't handle the fact that the one thing she wanted more than anything else would never be. She still followed my logic from before that she had killed our babies because they would never be. So one day while I was at work, less than a year after we got back together Justine took nearly two bottles of very strong sleeping pills and never woke up. She left me a short note. She loved me more than life itself but she couldn't live knowing that she'd killed our babies. I fell apart. It took me months before I even shaved and cleaned myself let alone did anything else.

After a while I started having the dreams. I dreamed that Justine and Julee were waiting for me in heaven. So I tried to join them. I stepped off the edge of a chair with a rope wrapped around my neck. I hung there for what seemed like hours while the rope sank into my neck and my vision blurred and I lost consciousness. Just before I went out I was happy. I actually saw Justine. Then I noticed that she was pissed. She grabbed the rope and yanked it until it came loose from the ceiling. Then she called 911 and sat next to me on the floor where I'd fallen. She told me that if I ever did anything that stupid again, she wouldn't wait for me at the gates.

She wanted me to go one with my life and find someone new to love. She didn't want me to be alone. She said it was important because if we were going to be together for eternity I had to keep my emotions strong. It takes practice to love someone as hard as we do and she needed me to be strong for her. So fifteen months ago I started dating again. I've gone out with women. Some were good some were bad. I've even had sex with a few. But finally I think I'm really ready to love again.

The woman I'd told all of this to was smiling up at me. We were sitting on a bench in front of the waterfront. Her head was in my lap and she was looking up at me with the most wonderful expression on her face. It was a mixture of pleasure and happiness, with just a little bit of concern thrown in. It looked like love.

"Jennifer," she said and pulled me down to kiss her waiting lips. "All night you were too nervous to ask me my name so I told you what it is." I smiled and nodded.

"I guess if we're going to get married and live happily ever after you should know that," she said. "Rudy I've been waiting for you for all my life. My first three husbands all cheated on me."

I looked shocked. "Oh yeah, you liked what you saw from the very beginning," she said. "It wasn't that way with them. I know I'm not a supermodel. I'm pretty but it's girl next door pretty. And I get the idea that you like that. Like with Justine, you really want a partner and best friend that you can fuck a lot. That's what I want too. I'm not one of those girls who are going to withhold their favors to get what they want. I definitely give up the pussy, but only to one person. My man. I'll stay with you forever Rudy. I'll grow old with you. And we're really not too old we're only in our mid thirties. I'll have your babies. Anything you want I'll do. Just promise me one thing. Don't ever cheat on me."

"How'd you go through the other husbands though," I asked holding her hand.

"Remember when you made the decision to get your revenge on Justine and her lovers?" she asked. "Well it's kind of the same for me. My first husband died from eating poison mushrooms. He had a really bad reaction and went into anaphylactic shock. He died horribly and painfully right in front of me." She shook her head as if trying to erase a bad memory.

"My second husband died from eating poison mushrooms too. It was a really weird coincidence. I should tell you that I make pepper steak too," she said.

"What about your last husband," I asked.

"You're not a cheater," she said. "You and I will live together forever."

"Uhm I meant the guy who came before me," I said.

"Oh, he died of a fractured skull," she said.

"Wow," I said. "How did that happen?" I was relieved, one more coincidence would have had me a little bit worried.

She got the strangest look on her face and said, "That bastard wouldn't eat the mushrooms."