Four Friends

He turned slowly. Gravely. “No, Sonja. I’m leaving. I’ve rented a place. I’m sorry, Sonja. I’m moving out. I just can’t do this anymore.”

“Do? This?”

“The candles. The tinkling music. The little waterfalls. The bland meals. The way-out-there philosophies on destinies being altered by where people put the goddamn red candle. I just want a normal life.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, laughing nervously. “You’re just teasing me again...”

He took a breath. “This is no joke. I can’t take it. I feel like a fucking Chia Pet, constantly fed and groomed. I don’t want you in charge of my sleep patterns, my cholesterol. I take goddamn pills for my cholesterol. It’s not necessary for me to eat grass. My home life is intolerable. Seriously, Sonja—if you want to do this for a living, have at it. Knock yourself out. But I’m through.”

“But where will you go? What will you do?”

“What will I do? Spill food on my shirt and let the dry cleaner get it out. We haven’t had an adult conversation in years. It’s all you telling me what to eat, what to wear, scolding if I want a drink, going on and on about my fucking chakras. I managed fine never knowing I had chakras!”

“But we have sex at least twice a week,” she said, remembering everything Gerri had said about her deteriorating sex life with Phil.

“We have sex exactly twice a week. Tuesday night and Saturday morning. And you want the truth? I couldn’t care less. Sex isn’t the problem, and frankly, it never was. Not even before I met you. But I can’t be in this kind of relationship. It’s loony. I want to come home and turn on the football or baseball game, eat bloody red meat on a TV tray, spill on my shirt, fall asleep on the couch, wake up tired and hungover once in a while.”

“George—”

“You’ll be taken care of, don’t worry. I’m sure your heart’s in the right place, but if I come home to candlelight and spa music one more time, I’m going to snap. We’re not right for each other, Sonja. We’re not. I don’t want you to make me last so that every day of my life feels like an eternity. I’m miserable.”

“But you’ll be alone! No one will care about you!”

He thought about that for a moment and said, “I know.” Then he zipped his bag, hefted it and walked out of the room. He turned at the door. “If you need me, just call my cell. I won’t abandon you, but I have to stop this now. Before I go totally crazy.”

“But, George,” she cried, running to him, grabbing his shirtsleeve. “You want me to change? I can make changes! We’ll compromise!”

He just looked at her. “Sonja, you can’t change this. And you haven’t heard a thing I’ve said in ten years. You need to just carry on, be yourself and let me go.”

And then he left.

* * *

Gerri walked out of her house at the crack of dawn, holding her coffee cup. Andy emerged from across the street at about the same time. Sonja had not been early; Gerri made a mental note to thank her for that. Sonja was go, go, go all the time; she seemed to see it as her mission to keep her friends in shape, moving all the time. Gerri and Andy met in the middle of the street. “Where’s little Mary Sunshine?” Andy asked.

“Sleeping in?” Gerri asked with a short laugh.

BJ came out of her house down the street and the women waved at each other. BJ began stretching for her run while the other women wandered up Sonja’s walk.

“We could sit on the planter box, finish our coffee,” Andy suggested.

“Yeah, but I’d rather get this over with,” Gerri said.

“You doing okay?” Andy asked.

“Ach,” she said with a noncommittal shrug. “I think I’m doing what all women in this position do. Half the time I want him killed, half the time I just want him back.”

“Bryce must be a real loser,” Andy said. “I’m pretty miserable, but I don’t want him back. I just want the kitchen finished and some energetic young stud to come over a least a couple of times a week, then leave quietly.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Andy laughed at her. “Really? You’re just bitter. Not that I blame you, but I hope you can work this out. I love Phil. I know he has to be punished, but I love him. If I didn’t love you more, I’d take him off your hands.”

They approached the door. “He watches himself brush his big, beautiful teeth, splatters all over the mirror and everywhere. He snores like a locomotive and farts in his sleep. He blows his nose in the shower and poops three times a day.”

“Oh, he’s regular, that’s good. That’s one of the things I’ll be looking for in a man,” Andy said with a laugh. Then she knocked on Sonja’s door.

“Knowing what you know, you could not have a man like Phil.”

“Sister, if I could get a man down to one infidelity per twenty-five-year marriage, I’d think I was queen of the universe.” Andy knocked again.

“I’m not ready to laugh about this yet,” Gerri informed her. “Where the hell is she? She’s usually pacing outside my door at least five minutes early. Hit the bell.”

“I don’t want to wake George. He doesn’t get up before six.”

“I wonder how he gets away with that, being married to the hyper one. Ring it, anyway.” When there was still no answer, Gerri pounded on the door. “What the heck,” she muttered. “Andy, see if you can see in the garage windows, see if there’s a car in there.”

Andy handed off her coffee cup and jogged to the front of the garage. She had to jump up and down to get her eyes up to the windows in the garage door. Then she stopped and turned toward Gerri. “Just her car,” she said. “You think they went out for a whole night somewhere?”

“She would’ve scheduled that with us three weeks in advance,” Gerri said. Then she pounded again and yelled, “Hey, Sonja! Sonja, come on!”

“They’re not home,” Andy said.

“She would’ve called. You know her—she’d pull herself off the operating table and call to say she’s running a little late because of major surgery.” She pounded and yelled again.

“You’d better get in there,” a voice said from behind them. They turned to find BJ standing on the front walk. BJ shrugged. “She’s never missed a morning. She’d never be a no-show. She’s relentless.”

Andy and Gerri exchanged looks, knowing how true that statement was, wondering for only a split second how BJ, who didn’t know them at all, would read the situation so accurately. So quickly.

“Don’t you women have keys to each other’s houses? Because something’s gotta be wrong. If she’s not in there, maybe she is in the hospital. But you’d better find out.”

“What could be wrong?” Gerri asked herself as much as the others.

BJ shrugged. “I don’t know. But she’s wound a little tight.”

Again, Gerri and Andy exchanged glances. Then Andy bolted across the street to get the key to Sonja’s house that she kept in her desk. She ran back across the street, leaving her front door standing open.

Gerri opened the door slowly, peeking in. The house was still. Quiet and dark, all the blinds drawn. She stuck her head in and called, softly, “Sonja? George?” Then turning she said, “I don’t think anyone is home.”

Suddenly BJ was there, brushing past them and striding purposefully into the house. She paused in the great room, looked right and then left, then headed down the hall toward the bedrooms. Gerri and Andy followed a bit more slowly, unsure if searching the house was the right thing to do, even under these circumstances. Then BJ yelled, “In here!”

Whatever visions Gerri and Andy might’ve had as they raced to the master bedroom, nothing could have prepared them for what they found. Sonja sat on the floor between the bed and the bureau, her back against the wall. She wasn’t wearing her usual perfect, colorful walking togs but rather a skimpy little outfit, the type she’d wear to her yoga class. BJ was kneeling in front of her, then backed away as the other women came closer, letting them in. Sonja’s hair was limp and stringy, her face red and damp as if she was sweating, her eyes glassy. Her breath was rapid and shallow; she was hyperventilating. She almost smiled when she saw her friends, but instead, put one of her hands out toward them, showing nails gnawed down so severely they were nipped into the skin, pink and sore. “I bit them all off,” she said weakly.

“Sonja! What’s the matter?” Gerri asked. “Are you sick?”

“I’m okay,” she said. “I just need to move pretty soon. I have to get up,” she said, yet made no effort to rise.

“Maybe she had a seizure or something,” Andy said.