[Steven Lyle Jordan]

4: Pete and the Ex

“Okay,” I admitted, “I can’t argue about the view.”

Pete smiled as he handed me a cold beer. “Huh? Huh? What’d I tell you?”

We were on his apartment balcony, four floors up. Immediately below us was the complex pool, and even in the middle of the day, there were a few honeys hanging out there, mostly lounging by the poolside in their Brazilian bikinis. Beyond, there was a clear view to the bay, a park, which I found out later was Centennial Park, and the beach beside it. Pete’s place was on Coronado Island facing east, so you could actually see the San Diego skyline across the water from there, which, since I didn’t know San Diego, was about the last view I would have expected to see from dry land.

The beach on our side of the bay was small, but incredibly beautiful. From there, I could see even more honeys hanging out (in every sense of the word) on the beach, and walking about on the sidewalks in flimsy sarongs over their bathing suits that barely made it legal for them to go out in public.
I turned away from the balcony and took a suck at the beer, and considered the apartment. It was a big place, a two-bedroom unit, with the bedrooms on the opposite sides of the unit for privacy. The kind of place where people love to entertain, or vacation, or just get away to have sex close to, but not actually on, the beach.

“How did you get this again?” I asked Pete.

“Gail,” he answered. “The settlement has this place paid for until the end of the year. Great digs, huh?” he swept his arms out to encompass the place, and I noticed now that it was a bit sparsely-furnished, as if most of the furniture had gone with Gail… wherever she was.

“Yeah… capitalism sucks,” I said. “And what are you gonna do at the end of the year? Are you even working?”

“Hey, one thing at a time,” Pete said. “First, we have to fix you up! Some time spent in town will be just the thing. You have baggies?”

“Huh?”

“You know, a swimsuit! And none of those speedo things, it just sets off the girls. In a bad way, I mean.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “I didn’t think to pack any…”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Pete said, “we can get you fixed up…”

He was interrupted by a ring from the doorbell. Pete crossed the balcony, the dining room, the living room and the foyer, and opened the door. From the balcony, I watched as the opening door revealed a woman, just a head shorter than Pete, wearing a flowery minidress and high-heeled sandals that showed off her kickin’ body and incredible legs. Her hair was long and brown, and hung on her bare shoulders in attractive ropes. She smiled at Pete from behind oversized sunglasses.

“I thought that was your car outside. Sorry to bring you the bad news, babe… but I’ve come for the Cuisinart.”

Pete returned her smile and, as jovially as you can imagine, said: “You little b***h. Come on in.”

This was Gail.

Pete’s ex-wife sauntered into the apartment and turned towards the kitchen, apparently not seeing that Pete had company. Pete followed her, looking to the balcony and waving me to follow him. As he walked, he was saying, “Are you at least gonna leave me the steak knives, babe? And maybe a whisk?”

“Not sure I can trust you with steak knives,” I heard Gail say from around the corner. I finally reached the kitchen, where I found Pete watching as Gail was knelt down in front of a cabinet, her upper body completely hidden inside the space.

“Wow,” I said, “those cabinets must be deep.”

“You kidding?” Pete said. “I could hide her in one, and no one would find her for days.”

I’d seen Gail stiffen when she heard my voice, realizing it wasn’t Pete’s. As Pete had cracked about stuffing her inside the cabinet, she had eased herself out, her arms wrapped around a blender that God himself must have made on the eighth day, and stood slowly up. She tilted her head down, so she could see me over her sunglasses, and after a moment, she smiled and put the blender on the counter.

“Well, hello, Mike! Long time, no see!” She came over to me and gave me a big hug, which surprised me a bit. I looked over at Pete, but he didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by his little brother getting a hug from his sexy ex-wife.

“Uh, yeah, you too, Gail,” I said finally, when she let me go. “I didn’t expect to see you, since Pete said—”

Before I finished, Gail turned to Pete and said, “You better not have told your brother I died, like you did that car salesman, or so help me—”

“Not me,” Pete said, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I only told the salesman that because I knew he wanted to hit on you, and I was trying to spare you the grief!”

“He might have been nice, you know,” she said.

“Girl, he sold used Corollas,” Pete asserted.

Gail paused, then shrugged with her eyebrows. “Point taken.”

“So,” I said when I finally had the chance to speak again, “I guess you two aren’t exactly beating each other up over this divorce thing.”

Pete shrugged. “Naw, not really. It was more of a professional disagreement than anything else.”

Gail nodded. “Specifically, he didn’t like that I had a profession.”

“That’s not true!” Pete said quickly. “I just wanted to travel some, that’s all.”

“Some,” Gail repeated, then looked at me. “Like, for a year, on a boat… that he wanted me to buy! When I told him I couldn’t leave my job here, much less would I buy him the boat he wanted, he turned into a whining a-hole for a solid year, and I finally said, ‘enough is enough’.”

I stared at my big brother, trying to imagine a year of his whining. Actually, it wasn’t hard. “And you drove her out over that? What kind of a moron are you?”

Pete shrugged. “The free spirit kind of moron,” he said. “Anyway, we’re still friends and all. But this way, if I get the travelin’ bug, I just go.”

“So why haven’t you gone anywhere?” I asked.

Pete grinned sheepishly. “Well, right now, I’m a little low on travelin’ funds, so I’m—”

“Looking for work again,” Gail finished for him, giving him a wry smile.

“Hey, that computer store gig was the pits,” Pete said. “The employee discounts are crap at BuyMore!”

Gail shook her head sadly, then turned to me. “Well, hopefully, with the more level-headed brother around, you’ll be able to get your sibling back together again.”

I frowned. “Then again, maybe not.”

Gail immediately saw the tension in my face, and the playful banter fell away. “Is something wrong? What happened?”

“Well,” I explained slowly, “I got thrown out of my job and blackballed in Baltimore.”

“Which isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds,” Pete put in. “Or… sounds worse than it is… or something…”

“I’m between jobs now, too,” I went on, ignoring Pete.

“Weren’t you doing web design?” Gail asked. “How do you get blackballed out of that?”

“Influential clients who like to blame others because it’s easy,” I said. “One of them had a DOS attack, and decided it must have been my fault.”

Gail had hung out around computer geeks like me and my brother long enough to know exactly what I was talking about. “What kind of moron blames a web guy for a denial of service attack?”

“The powerful enough to get people blackballed kind of moron,” I replied sadly.

“That really sucks,” Gail said, and Pete nodded sympathetically. After another moment, she put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, don’t fret. You’re a smart guy. You can do web design anywhere, you certainly don’t need to stay in Baltimore for that. You’ll get a new job going.”

Then she took her hand away, and turned back to the uber-blender. “Look, guys, I gotta go. You two take care of each other, don’t do too much crying on each other’s shoulders, and I’ll catch you later.” She wrapped her arms around the blender and cradled it against her chest, and started out of the kitchen. Before she passed, she stopped and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Chin up, smart guy.” Then she left the kitchen.

As she passed Pete, he called out, “No kiss for me?”

“No, but you can bite me,” she shot back amiably.

“Just let me know where and when,” Pete grinned as she walked out the door, using a shapely leg to pull the door closed behind her. Pete continued to grin at the door, until he turned my way and saw the incredulous look on my face. “Oh, shut up. C’mon, we have to get you some baggies.”