LOST LOVE
By Duncan
I follow Gene up the steps to the entrance doors.
The steps lead to the Brick Yard, a hotel and restaurant on the grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Gene wants breakfast. And he wants me to join him.
Gene is a salesman for a respected home builder on the west side of Indianapolis. He is very good at his job. What makes him good? He convinces people that his price for a newly built home is worth the extra money.
Gene sits in a model home all day and waits for anyone to walk in and ask questions. “Are you looking to buy a new home?”
I am a mortgage loan officer, but I’m really a salesman. I want him to send his customers to me so I can finance their homes. Gene welcomes the company. Even if I’m a salesman. We talk about the economy, interest rates, customers, and management of our respective companies. We become accustomed to each other.
My job is to get to know as many Realtors as possible on the west side of Indianapolis. That’s my territory. Gene invites me to his Sunday morning coffee clutch, a group of Realtors and Builders that have breakfast at Bob Chapman’s Silver Fountain Restaurant.
Interior of Bob Chapman’s Silver Fountain Restaurant.
The restaurant is a little tired—it’s on its last leg, so to speak. I walk through the front doors and look for the group. I’m welcomed to their table. I’m introduced to the group, and I order breakfast.
I pick up the last quarter of my toast. I held it in my hand, and everyone at the table, including me, noticed a dead cockroach on the toast plate with its legs in the air.
I called the waitress over and pointed to the cockroach.
She looked at the plate. With ‘savoir-faire,’ she said,
“No extra charge for the meat, Honey.”
The group moved to Sambo’s the following week.
Years pass. Gene was having a tough time in life. He lost his marriage, and I was not in good shape either. As Rodney Dangerfield might say,
“I’m alright now, but last week, I was in rough shape.”
I was licking my wounds from a failed second marriage. A Realtor friend, Beth, caught wind of my dilemma. She owned a condo that needed a renter, and I needed a place to rent. We decided we could help each other. The street name the Condo was on was Cornucopia Drive. Beth said,
“As a single man, Mr. Duncan, Cornucopia is perfect for you. Cornucopia means horny-a-plenty.” She had a twinkle in her eye.
Honestly, I was not ready for a bachelor's life. I decided to hide from the world and hibernate in this rented condo. Divorce equaled pain. And you don’t have a divorce by yourself. Women also equaled pain. I needed to stay away from women at all costs. No women, no pain.
I decided I needed a major change in my life, so I responded to a newspaper advertisement needing a public speaker. I was leaving the world of finance and plunging into a new, uncharted direction. I was hired as a public speaker. My job was to go to small towns and perform a weight loss seminar. When I was hired, I was told that the workshop also provided hypnosis.
“Who will I be working with?”
“What do you mean?” The owner asked.
“Who will be doing the hypnosis part of the seminar?”
“You will! We will teach you how to hypnotize.”
I was in front of 60-100 women five nights a week. All of them were desperate to lose weight and held on to my every word.
After the seminar, there were always a few women who needed to talk with me, and they would tell me this was their last hope for losing weight. Yes, I would lower the lights in the second half of the seminar and perform hypnosis on the entire room.
After a year on the road, the paychecks started to bounce. I was burned to a crisp and ready to do something different, so I parted company with the workshops and seminars.
I was having lunch with Gene Denny when I came off the road. He said there was an apartment in his building for rent. Why don’t I rent the upstairs apartment on the right? Gene was renting downstairs on the left. The rent would be a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than the condo.
I looked at the place and decided that I could save about $2,400 a year in rent. I moved to Speedway, Indiana. This means Gene and I are living in the same four-unit apartment building. We certainly got to know each other's trials and tribulations.
Gene and I would have breakfast two to three times a week. His favorite place was the Brick Yard. As we entered the building, Gene would grab a free newspaper at the front desk, and we would walk the long hall back to the dining room, which overlooked Pete Dye-designed golf course. The dining room was quiet unless it was May in Indy. We would grab a corner table for an unrestricted view of the golf course.
I was reading the paper one morning. Gene tapped on the newspaper. I dropped the left edge of the paper slightly and looked over the newspaper at him.
“What?”
“Put the paper down and talk to me.”
I hesitated and looked at him for a few seconds. He needed my attention. I didn’t know why, but he wanted to talk. I responded sarcastically and said,
“You want to meet on Thursday? We can pick out the furniture.”
Gene was in no mood for comedy. I folded the paper and placed it on the chair next to me at the table.
“I’m lonely; I made a mistake. I want to call Marilyn and see if she will have dinner with me.”
“Well, then pick up the phone and call her.”
“I don’t want to be turned down; she doesn’t want me.”
“You don’t know that! What’s the matter with you? Are you serious? You want to get back with your wife again?”
“I’m tired of living alone. She won’t even take my phone call.”
“Have you called her?”
“No.”
I looked at Gene as he looked down at his empty breakfast plate. I had no words for him other than I could toss the typical raw raw stuff. The raw, raw be-a-man stuff wasn’t what he needed this morning.
My job as a friend was not to judge him but to listen, to allow him to show his underbelly and be vulnerable in front of me. He was going to tell me his deepest and darkest secrets. He was a man with flaws and had to admit his flaws to someone other than himself.
He was a terrific salesman; I never knew him to not close on a real estate transaction. He loses his confidence when he is talking about Marilyn.
“Has Marilyn remarried?”
“No, my son says no.”
“Has she got a steady boyfriend?”
“I don’t think so … no.”
“So, is she living alone?”
“I think so.”
It is easy to tell other people what to do with their lives. You may hit a brick wall when trying to talk to yourself about what to do. I did not offer any advice. I just listened and finished my coffee. We left the restaurant; Gene was quiet when returning to the apartment.
That night, I decided to try the dating game again. Before I left the building, I stopped by Gene’s apartment to check on him. I wanted him to know I would get out there and give it another try. Maybe he should, too?
Gene was excited. Tonight, his grandkids were coming to see Grandpa. He was in a great mood, happy. I wished him luck with the small ones and told him I would see him later.
On the way home, about 10:00 PM, I was returning from my date. There was no connection. She had her baggage, and I, of course, had mine. It was easy to tell early in the evening that it was going nowhere.
It was raining as I got close to home. I noticed police cars ahead, their red lights flashing. Then I saw an ambulance with its emergency lights on. I pulled up to my apartment building. Gene's front door was standing wide open. Police and medical people were moving in and out of his apartment.
I walked into the apartment; a policeman stopped me. Gene’s son, standing in the living room, told the policeman I was okay being in the room. His son also told me,
“Brace yourself, Steve. Gene is in the kitchen.”
I walked very carefully back to the kitchen. Gene was on the floor, covered by a white sheet. How should I react to this? How am I supposed to feel?
I thought he would get off the floor, take off the white sheet, and tell me this was a joke. My insides kept yelling at him, Get up! Get up! He didn’t move; my eyes wanted him to move. He didn’t. I still remember how still he was on the floor.
Several weeks later, at the funeral, I felt someone gently pulling on my left sleeve. I turned, and it was Marlyn looking up at me. She was dressed very professionally. Her hair was fixed, and she was wearing light makeup. She was beautiful.
“Hi, Marlyn. I am very sorry for us being at this place today.”
“Me too, Steve. Could I ask you a question?”
“Sure, anything.”
“Did he ever say anything about me?”
I caught my breath. I wasn’t sure how to answer.
“Yes, he spoke of you often.”
“Do you mind telling me what he said?”
“He was very proud of you and wanted to ask you for a date.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He was afraid of rejection.”
“Steve, I’ve been waiting for two years for his call.”
