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“Leo?” My partner was unexpected today. Still, I shared the business with him and had no good reason for not wanting to see him. “Sure, send him in.”
Immediately my office door opened, and Leo stepped inside and shut it behind him. “Elijah,” he greeted me.
“Hey, Leo,” I replied. “What’s up?”
“Just, um, a little personal concern, you might call it.”
I wrinkled my brow, not knowing how to take that. “Concern? What are you concerned about?”
“To be honest, you,” said Leo.
“Me?”
“Yes,you.Elijah, you kind of haven’t been yourself the last week. You haven't been by the house at all. You usually at least call and talk to Sarah, but we haven’t heard from you.”
“Wearerunning a business, Leo,” I said. “I have busy times, just like you. It’s not that strange.”
“That’s what I thought at first. But then Sarah mentioned you’d dropped by, but wouldn’t say anything about it. She usually has something to say about what you two talk about, but she clammed up about this last visit. When my wife won’t talk, and you come over to the house and I don’t get to see you, it makes me wonder.”
“It was just something personal,” I told him. “Just between brother and sister, that’s all.”
“Well,” said Leo, “when my wife won’t even discuss the fact that her little brother came over to the house, it makes me think there’s something going on. So,isthere? Is something going on?”
This was really not a conversation that I wanted to be having with my brother-in-lawormy business partner. But, it wasn’t as if I could just throw him out of my office. Leo was family and part-owner of my business. Our lives and livelihood were intertwined.
So, I answered in generalities. “Look, it’s just something from my past that I thought was over and done with, that I’m going to have to get some final closure about, that’s all.”
He scrunched up his brow, which was not a good look on him with his dark, heavy eyebrows and straight, thick, dark hair. The gesture made him resemble a movie villain. “Your past?” he reacted. “Yourpast?”
“Yes,mypast,” I sighed. And with that, we were crossing all the way over into that territory that I didn’t want to discuss.
Leo said, as if I needed to hear it, “You know,yourpast is not something any of us want coming back.”
“I’m aware of that,” I replied, already tired of this conversation when it had barely gotten started. Leo knew all about my past. My sister, being married to him, had naturally told him chapter and verse about exactly what it was that he was marrying into.
“I mean,yourpast meansthat guy,” said Leo, again stating things that I seriously did not mean to be reminded about. He had only heard about those things. I was the one who had lived them. “And, nobody wants anything to do with that guy. My sister wants no part of that guy.Youshould want no part of that guy.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I don’t want any part of that guy. I didn’t ask for him. He just got in touch with me unasked-for.”
“Well,” said Leo insistently, “can you make sure he knows nobody wants anything to do with him? Because I don’t like seeing Sarah upset.”
“I don’t like seeing her upset, either. But, she’s my sister, and there are some things I want to talk to her about. I asked her to keep it to herself because…” I had to be careful about the way I put it, “I knewyouwouldn’t be too thrilled about it, either.”
“You’re right, I’m not thrilled,” he said. “But you know, Sarahisproud of you and happy for you, for the way you’ve been handling your life lately. And, I’d like her to be able to keep feeling good about things.”
“So would I,” I told him.
We had a good visit after that. Leo really was a good man. My sister really had married a better man than I was once used to associating with. There were better people in my life now. One of them, I’d be seeing later in the day.
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The fact that it was my “leg day” at the gym seemed a bit symbolic. There was nothing I would have liked better than to kick my present problem right out of my life. As it was, there was nothing for me to do but work out.
When I arrived, Ben was busy with another client who looked as if he needed all the help he could get. I could tell this new guy was new to working out. Not to be judgemental, but he wasn’t showing any muscle definition yet, and Ben was instructing him on working one of the pull-down machines for his arms and shoulders.
Ben noticed me walking in — he never missed a thing that happened in his gym — and looked up while having the new guy start a set of reps. I mouthed,Just needed to get in a little extra workout,so as not to disturb the guy on the machine. He read my lips and nodded a greeting, and I ducked into the locker room with my gym bag.
Emerging in my standard workout gear, I went right for the leg machine and pumped my legs up and down on it as feverishly as I would pump my buttocks up and down on top of a woman, which I hadn’t done in a while, come to think of it. The complication of Kane returning to my life had made me forget everything else except for work, including how long it had been since my last “workout” with a member of the opposite sex. That was Kathleen, and the reason we broke up was that she couldn’t deal with my past — the past to which Kane belonged, which I’d done everything to separate myself from.