Fiction Series

She Moves in Mysterious Ways — Part 2

This is the second installment in the series; the first is here:

CW: contains suicidal moments

(continuation from Part 1 — see above)…

After a minute, they released their embrace. Zak reached for multiple napkins and handed them to Cassie, almost certainly to help her with a face covered by a slick of mascara and eye shadow.

Zak looked around. “I think you should clean up and we can go somewhere else and talk.”

Cassie nodded, gathered her purse, tossed a twenty dollar bill on the bar and headed back to the restroom to clean up as best she could and once again try to regain her composure.

Once outside, they walked toward Ambers Diner about a block away. Neither said a word as Cassie was fighting an alcohol-infused haze which was only made worse by her recent increase of estrogen. Within 10 steps outside of the Cardinal, Cassie stopped and removed her shoes, favoring the risk of glass shards over enduring another wobbly step in her painful red pumps.

Ambers Diner was an bar-time greasy spoon, a badly worn homage to a 1950’s era soda fountain with pictures of teenagers in poodle skirts and pompadours. At the early hour of 11 pm the night crew was just getting started on their shift and there were few patrons. Cassandra led Zak to the booth in the far corner. They both sighed as they landed on the booth seats — it was the first time Cassie realized that Zak may be as inebriated as her.

“Where? Where did you get that?” Cassie wasted no time in asking, pointing to Zak’s pendant.

Zak, visibly unkempt, looked at the laminated menu on the table. This was not information he was eager to share, but he knew he had no choice.

“An old man gave it to me, about four years ago”

“Who?… what was the man’s name?” Cassie remained impatient.

“I don’t know. He delivered a pizza to my hotel room.” Zak turned to look Cassie straight on.

A woman in a faded poodle skirt and polyester top approached, poured each of them a cup of coffee and took their order for pancakes. The smell of coffee was welcome, but didn’t sway from the task at hand.

“Let me get this straight — A man… delivered you a pizza and gave you this pendant?”

“And that’s not the oddest thing — the oddest thing is I never ordered pizza”

Cassie fought all kinds of feelings. Nausea from the drinking and her mental state, pain from her feet from walking in ill-fitting shoes, sorrow about Lynn ditching her, an irrational desire to throttle Zak for simply being a man, and the strain in garnering enough attention to comprehend Zak’s story.

“Wait, back up. Spill it. ALL OF IT”

Zak looked uncomfortable. He was sweating even though the air was cold. He fidgeted with his fingers, concentrating on a silver metal band he wore on his pinky finger.

Cassie knew she sounded like a mad woman. To demand provenance of someone’s jewelry is insane, save for shoplifting or infidelity. But Cassie knew there was a story she must hear, and she knew Zak was going to tell it.

“I was sitting on the floor in a hotel. The Doubletree in Mukwonago… I hit rock bottom and I had rope and a plan…”. Zak’s eyes stared off through the window.

Cassie expressed no surprise or horror at the statement. She expected as much and knew Zak wasn’t looking for empathy at that moment.

“go on…”

Although still stoic, Cassie melted a little bit, propping her head on her hands over the table. Even before she became Cassie, she had a soft spot for men who open up their feelings to her.

“And in he walked. Not even knocked — just barged in a locked door like it was open. Gray-haired white man, my height, thin build, wearing a cobalt blue suit. Suit looked good on him.”

“Doesn’t sound like a typical pizza delivery man to me.” Cassie quipped, now wishing to lighten what has become an ever-darkening conversation.

“Yeah… well I don’t know who he was or where he came from. He just said ‘you know you have to continue living, but living your life, not the life you’ve fallen into’. Then he put the pizza box down on the desk and handed me this necklace and told me as long as I had this pendant I had the power to be the kind of man I wanted and needed to be.”

Cassie smiled. “And then he just left?”

“He smiled, turned away and walked out — actually he more like skipped out, humming and stuff, like he was in a really good mood. Never saw him again.”

“Did you run after him?”

“No.” Zak chuckled to himself realizing the absurdity of the story. “Funny thing is when someone breaks into your room and gives you jewelry, a pizza, a pithy few lines from a Hallmark card and then promptly vanishes, you become a little stunned. Actually a lot stunned.”

“So, what was the pizza?”

“Pineapple and pepperoni. Which was and continues to be my favorite combination”

“Did you eat it?”

For the first time since they met Cassie saw Zak smile. Stretching backwards against the bench cushion, he raised his arms, splayed his hands and simply said “It was INCREDIBLE!”

“Was there a label on the box?”

“Yep. Delmar’s Pizzeria”

“That a real place?”

“Well it’s a real place, but it’s in Brooklyn, like a thousand miles away. I visited there afterwards, but didn’t lead me to the man.”

The coffee started to work its magic on Cassie. “Ok, let me get this right, a old man wearing a blue suit and bearing a hot pizza from Brooklyn comes to Wisconsin, breaks into your room, gives you this necklace, tells you to change your life around. That about right?”

“Yes” Zak nodded, a bit smug in the affirmative. “And it worked too. After that my life completely transformed. He just showed up at exactly the right time with the right attitude.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Cassie countered in an authoritarian tone, putting her coffee down and pulling back from the table.

“Well people believe a fat old man in a red suit with a herd of deer goes around the world in one night bringing gifts for every kid… so to answer your question… Yes.” Zak’s body language both displayed that he knew the story was really strange, but at the same time he wasn’t going to back down. It was also obvious to Cassie that Zak was on his way to being cocky — she only hoped not ‘testosterone’ cocky.

“Okay, I believe you.”

Zak’s eyes got wide and conveyed skepticism.

“You believe me? really?”

“Yes” she replied in a neutral but definitive voice, looking Zak straight in the eyes, before diverting her attention to the waitress that dropped off their food.

“Wow, I can’t wait until I hear your story.” Zak proclaimed.

Cassie felt ashamed for not being prepared. She was so much on a fact-finding mission and encompassed in concentrating on Zak that she completely forgot that she would need to reciprocate. It was a story she never told anyone.

Three Years Prior

Shawn pulled over his car to the side of the road alongside the stand of pine trees. It was a sparsely traveled country road, a gravel road at that. An unmarked solitary path — most certainly a pathway established and traveled by deer (based on the scat) — led straight east a half mile, encountering the bluff over Lake Michigan. Shawn walked carefully using the scant light of the morning twilight, punctuating 48 sleepless hours spent predominantly as a huddled lifeless mass in bed.

He called the small grassy clearing at the edge Eagle’s Bluff, which was a grass-covered clayey ledge that overlooked Lake Michigan. The bluff was somewhere between 100 and 120 feet above the large rip rap rocks that protected the shore and the fragile and almost vertical slope. The outlook was, in Shawn’s mind, the most beautiful place in the world, invoking a similar emotion as someone remarking about the ocean or a majestic mountain.

The thing that drew Shawn to this particular location was privacy. In the hundred or so times he ventured down the pathway he never encountered another person. In fact he only knew about it on a whim — stopping one day for no apparent reason other than to find access to the lake. He knew from others that the whole stretch of land was owned by an old man who lived on the far south side of the property and rarely ventured outside, let alone into the thicket of the massive stand of trees.

It was picturesque, but today the beauty didn’t work its magic on Shawn’s disheveled mental and physical state. At 27 he was physically tired, mentally exhausted, and emotionally drained. He couldn’t do anything right and couldn’t control or harbor any negative emotion. The previous week saw him lose his job, his two best friends and his fiancé. The holy triad that supported his already precarious existence was gone, and it was objectively all his fault. No one would miss him, and he doubted he would miss himself either. One glorious running jump off the high cliff to punctuate his life. He stepped closer to the edge.

A voice from the background and from his right shouted — “You’re a fool”

The voice startled Shawn. He looked around and saw no one. He backed up once again, preparing for a running jump into oblivion.

The voice once again, this time from behind him and to his left side — “You’re really going to do this? Just give up?”

He turned around again, looking for the voice, finding no one.

Mind is playing tricks on me. He must be going insane, yet another reason to end it all.

Clearly flustered he walked away from the bluff to reset, this time ready to run regardless of who may be watching. At least his exit would be documented.

When he turned around, a woman was standing, front and center, no more than 10 feet in front of him. She faced him, clad in a green dress and the necklace that Cassie now wore, with her hands on her hips. She had silver hair and was older, but not elderly. Kind of like a taller version of his grandmother.

“Nevermind who I am — who do you think you are?” the woman countered, stern in her appearance and delivery. “You think you can just abandon everyone — and throw away everything?”

Shawn cowered to the ground, feeling completely broken. “There’s no one to abandon. It’s just me now.”

The woman’s tone softened considerably. “You are too young to realize what you have and what you don’t have.” She took off her necklace and put the necklace and pendant round Shawn’s head. “Wear this close to your heart, Shawn. You will remember this moment, the precipice from which you stood firm. From this moment forth you will listen to your heart and do what you need to do to be happy. It may be difficult, but in the end you and everyone around you will thrive”. She then looked him in the eyes, placed the palm of her right hand against his face, moving downward, closing his eyes.

When he opened his eyes, she was gone. Simply vanished. He spent ten minutes searching around for her, listening to anyone walking through the tall grass or breaking small sticks on the ground in the woods. Nothing but chirping of songbirds.

He retreated to his car and drove back home, undoubtedly knowing that he had succeeded in passing the lowest spot in his life. His guardian angel was real and he would never be alone again.

Back at the Diner

Zak smiled across the table at Cassie, who was visibly shaken, staring seemingly across the room to nothing in particular. Her narrative was non-linear and convoluted, just a word mash of different thoughts memories and emotions all jumbled up into an ill-thought-out presentation. The alcohol had waned so it was of little excuse.

There was a pregnant pause as the air cleared. Zak, in his moderate voice, broke the silence with a laugh. “So, she didn’t bring you pizza or anything to eat?”

“That’s how I could tell she wasn’t my grandmother. That lady would have brought enough to feed an army!” Cassie countered, smiling and laughing for the first time in an hour.

With the air much lighter Zak inquired, “So… that’s when you decided to transition?”

She paused while staring at the table. The word ‘transition’ took her by surprise. She thought she was finally passing, in fact passing quite well; the word shot a hole in her confidence. She looked at him and he was not phased with the topic — she simultaneously felt exposed, and since Zak was still there and warm, and kind of loved.

Cassie relaxed her arms and responded. “That’s when I decided to deconstruct my life.” she quietly chuckled. “well, deconstruct wasn’t hard since my life was already broken into numerous pieces. More like that’s when I decided to gather everything up and try again.”

Zak smiled as their eyes met. “Please don’t take this the wrong way” Zak formed air quotes with fingers on both hands, “but you appear to have put things together quite nicely. And you do look stunning in that dress -makeup notwithstanding.”

Cassidy didn’t mind the compliment from Zak. Zak didn’t fit the model of the men back at the club, nor did he have a sour air about him. She knew something probably few if any other people knew- a certain trust forms with vulnerability. Perhaps…

At that moment Cassidy, who had been sitting on the bench facing the door to the diner, looked up and saw a man rushing quickly toward her, with two other men following behind. The leading man had on a black leather jacket that had been ripped twice. He looked vaguely familiar. Obviously drunk and upset, the man grabbed a soda bottle from one of the tables near the door and raised it over his head in a threatening manner.

“Hey trannie, I thought I would find you here” He stopped at their booth, briefly staring at both of them. Cassie and Zak had already stood up, although Cassie was frozen, unsure if she needed counter the man or could simply run. Without further comment the man swung the bottle at Cassie, who lurched out of the way, resulting in the bottle missing her face by a few inches, dislodging from the man’s hand and smashing onto the floor. Cassie instinctively swung at the man’s head, which was a complete miss since the man was already in the process of hitting the table and collapsing to the floor, blood splattering against both the booth and the adjacent wall, pooling on the floor.

Cassie, in shock over the events of the last half minute, looked at Zak, who was equally stunned.

Continued in Part 3…

— nova grace ❤️