CHAPTER 7
L’Orange Café in Phoenix
Her name was Laurie.
I walked into the L’Orange Café, which locals simply called “The Orange,” bypassing France. It was the hotspot for lunch on the near north side of Phoenix, a magnet for the tony Scottsdale crowd, where women outnumbered men two to one. Open and airy, it was a retail store disguised as a deli and the “it” place for young affluent adults and wannabes. As usual, three to four cars were lined up in a holding pattern in the middle lane on Fortieth Street, waiting for the next parking space in a lot that was usually jammed all day long. It was a beehive of activity, both inside and out. And, it was the kind of place where a single guy could get a cup of really good coffee, a glass of fresh carrot juice (my preference), or an exotic tea and plunk down at one of the small tables on the periphery of the main room, read a paper for an hour, and bump into friends, all this while enjoying the scenery. I was that guy. I walked in mid-morning in mid-week in mid-March, with The New York Times tucked under my arm, an iced tea in one hand, my cell phone in the other and grabbed a table for two by the front windows. It was my favorite time to read the paper and, of course, occasionally check out the chicks. I couldn’t help the latter; it’s what guys do, one of our involuntary mechanisms for survival. (And don’t tell me women don’t check out guys!)
I paused after perusing the front page, then inhaled, stretched, and reveled in my personal happiness. It was a perfect day, and it was about to get even more perfect. A very attractive blonde, all tanned up in an all white tennis dress took her place at the end of the coffee line about ten paces from me. If I were inclined to stare, she’d be the bull’s-eye. Well guess what? I was inclined to stare, and she caught my stare like an easy pop fly in the glove of a major leaguer. Our eyes locked, she smiled, left the line, and without taking her eyes off me, walked right up to me. I’m thinking how perfect is that? Maybe I was about to get to know her.
She stood inches from my table. The air was suddenly charged with a billion electrons of possibilities, but none that included the possibility that she knew me; however, “Hi Tom!” came off her lips like an old friend.
I returned her “Hi” like an old friend, dragging my greeting a few extra beats. Internally, I was stunned that she knew my name and even more stunned that I didn’t know hers. She gave me the kind of “Hi” that says I know you—and I like you. “What was up?” I silently asked myself. I didn’t recall ever seeing her before. How could this be? I screamed internally, as the neurons fired up the memory.
“It’s been a while,” she said, standing over me. I stood up. It was the polite thing to do, but it was also a stall, which I was hoping would buy me two seconds.
A millisecond later, while on the rise, I was thinking that maybe she meant years and years and years ago because I couldn’t place her, so I smiled and said the only safe thing, “Yeah,” while my memory rocketed down memory lane in search of any flag that might say to me, “Look here for a clue!”
She followed up with a very sweet, “Exactly a year,” offering me a time frame that might help. Good to know, I told myself, which was indeed good, other than the fact that my short-term memory didn’t appear to be working. At least she wasn’t from some scene in the distant past, out of some story that I really didn’t want to recall. All this ran through my brain in another millisecond, as she flowed into a follow-up to her follow-up:
“I’ve seen you around town a couple of times,” she said, “and once at the club a few months ago, but only in passing. I guess I didn’t have time to stop.”
Three more milliseconds passed. The Club? I probed my inner self, searching for the answer. The possibilities were coming at me faster than the speed of light. The Club? More information. She’s a member at my tennis club? I didn’t recall seeing her there. No trigger there—dammit. She must live in my neighborhood—another opportunity for a link—as my mind raced up and down and all around a five-mile grid, like a drone predator on a hot tip for Bin Laden. I was looking everywhere, looking for any visual cue that could be linked to her identity. Nothing. More milliseconds. My thoughts raced in search of other mnemonic links—anything to put a name to such a perfectly beguiling face. Who?—please! I begged my memory bank: Who is this drop-dead gorgeous woman, and what is her name? All this inner anxiety, and I still hadn’t hit the wall of embarrassment, but it was coming up fast. I don’t think she was on to the fact that I still couldn’t place her, though that moment was surely on its way, like a bullet train. Only a blink away.
Then I blinked, and out of the deep recesses of my cerebellum, all the memories of her came back. Yes, the memories whooshed in like a tsunami—now fully materialized! I had one date with her last year, like she said. It was a real date—you know, a special evening, a dinner at T. Cook’s in the Royal Palm. It was all coming back. Oh yeah, I was out to impress her that night, and as it turned out, the evening was the beginning of a nightmare, which included giving a deposition to her lawyer. Yessireee, it all came back to me, and it was ugly. I couldn’t remember her at first because I’d worked so hard to forget her. Trauma and fear for my life aided the process. And just then, the walls came tumbling down, and the tsunami piled the detritus right on my beach.
Without skipping a beat, having dodged the bullet of forgetfulness, I said, “Hi Laurie, what a nice surprise! You look terrific!” I buried my lie with my subsequent observation of truth. It wasn’t a nice surprise going down memory lane. It was an unforgettable night with her that I tried to forget! It was a night full of promise that quickly turned into a night full of peril.
Our date a year ago got off to a rip-roaring start the minute I pulled out of her driveway. The conversation flowed as if we had rehearsed a script again and again. Not a beat was missed, not a moment left empty, and each of us was unknowingly saying just what the other hoped to hear. I don’t remember the valet opening our doors at the Royal Palm’s front door, so enthralled were we with each other. We were talking away, deep into every word. Time was timeless, and we were spellbound. I don’t remember paying the bill when we were done either—not until the sting of triple digits on my credit card statement popped up two months later—but I must have, since no one stopped us when we got up from the table.
We didn’t take the main walkway toward the exit, the one with the fountain boulevard leading to the foyer. We sought a different path, any path that would take us to the first place we could grab a few minutes to be alone, secluded, and enveloped in our own secret garden. That happened to be a quick right, then a left. The Royal Palm is a bit like a maze of tall hedges, ancient walls, and small nooks with benches in front of working fireplaces. It wasn’t difficult to find a secret garden, when there were so many of them. Once on our own, we embraced, and our lips met in a collision of two heat-seeking missiles, and with deep kisses, we communicated everything that had been unsaid over dinner. After a few minutes of being lost in each other, we pulled apart, with unspoken promises, and opted for a walk to the foyer and a return to civilization and the public eye. It was a very hot vignette, one that was far too short for my liking.
The valet brought my car around in two minutes. Launched in romance, Laurie and I took off for The Sanctuary, which was on the other side of Camelback Mountain. It was a hip hotel and spa with a cozy bar that feeds into my favorite outdoor terrace—all flagstone, torch lit, bounded by soaring palm trees, and sitting on the edge of a steep gully, high enough to have a heavenly view of Paradise Valley, the moneyed enclave of Phoenix.
About thirty minutes into a conversation on the candlelit terrace, I excused myself to go to the restroom. Minutes later, as I was walking out of the men’s room to return to Laurie, I collided in the doorway with some drunken, mop-headed, and disheveled guy, who was not at all apologetic and seemed downright nasty about the collision. Not interested in any kind of confrontation, I sidestepped him with my own muttered apology and turned toward the terrace. It seemed like just a stupid accident, caused by his sloppy footwo
rk and apparent rush to get into the men’s room. But I was wrong about that, as I would discover a minute later.
When I returned to Laurie’s side, she was in tears that were barely discernible, but she was unmistakably distressed. This couldn’t be good, but I had no idea what might have happened in my absence.
“Laurie,” I said softly, taking her hand in mine, “what happened? What’s wrong?” I looked into her teary eyes and waited for her to speak, without the faintest idea of the reason for her distress. Many seconds passed. I waited patiently.
“It’s that creep,” she managed a throaty whisper in reply. “He’s here.”
I furtively asked, “What creep? Who? Where?” I was suddenly alert and tuned into the sudden increase in my heartbeat and an internal call to battle stations. My eyes discreetly scanned the terrace, looking for someone with a menacing profile. I saw no one that fit my imagination. Laurie said nothing.
I asked her again, “What creep?” while wondering truly what was going on. I followed it with, “What’d he do to you?” This was not good. It stripped away the ambience of the terrace, all of it. Romance had fled. This was not a line of questioning I had envisioned taking at The Sanctuary. I waited. My questions were simple. They only needed a moment before they would be answered.
She looked around. “I don’t see him, but he was here.”
I didn’t say anything. Even with another glance around the terrace and through the glass sliding doors into the bar, I didn’t see anyone that struck me as a creep. Then the light bulb went on. The creep she was talking about was the creep who had run into me in the doorway of the men’s room. That creep was Laurie’s creep.
I leaned into her. “Does he have long unkempt hair—dirty blond?”
No reply, but a sniffle.
“Kind of a stocky guy?”
Now a slight nod from her and a whimper: “You saw him?” she asked.
I easily pictured the creep who ran into me. “Yeah, that guy,” I muttered, as if talking about some sludgy banana slug stuck on my shoe. I get it. I now realized that he ran into me intentionally, trying to make some kind of statement, a show of misguided machismo. A sicko. I looked around again, now knowing exactly who I was looking for, and I didn’t see him.
“Yeah, I saw him,” I replied. “He bumped into me when I was leaving the men’s room.” I paused for a reaction. A look of alarm flashed across her face, and she looked at me for some kind of understanding. But I didn’t know enough to understand.
Laurie looked at her hands folded in her lap. “He’s my ex-boyfriend. He won’t leave me alone. He scares me.”
With as much sensitivity as I could muster, because I didn’t want to sound like I was talking down to her, I asked, “How long has this been going on, Laurie?”
“Six months. He follows me all the time. He won’t leave me alone.”
This was definitely not good. It was not good for her and—trusting my instinct for self-preservation—I’m thinking it might not be so good for me either. Clearly, the bastard is confrontational.
“He follows you all the time?” I paused again and whispered to myself, “That shithead!” before looking into her eyes again. “Listen, Laurie,” I said, “this guy is stalking you. He might even be dangerous. Seriously, I mean it.” To emphasize my concern, I repeated myself, “He could be dangerous. You can’t take this lightly.”
I let it sink in and then reminded her, “He ran into me on my way out of the men’s room. I think he meant to. He was making some kind of territorial statement.”
That registered with her: “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, “I just treated it as an accidental bump.” Yeah, I thought to myself, but now I get it. I was now convinced that this guy was totally weird—trying to give me a message. What? I guess the message was, “Stay away from Laurie.” I wondered all this to myself. Laurie was looking at me now, both eyes wide open and locked on me, taking in this news.
I glanced around, double-checking if he was around, knowing now who I was looking for, then I looked into Laurie’s eyes and solemnly said, “Laurie, this guy’s totally weird. You should go to the police,” and I followed that up with an emphatic, “tomorrow.”
She nodded in agreement.
I waved for the check. It was time to go, but I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t feel like dropping her off at her place. She was very upset, and the idea of her being alone didn’t make sense to either of us. She needed to regroup, and I could give her some comfort, but I knew solving this problem was beyond my skills. The guy clearly was a problem, and knowing that was enough for me to opt out of going to some other public place that he could go to as well, somewhere he could make a scene, do something ugly, or maybe even hurt someone.
I put my arm around Laurie’s shoulder, as we walked out to my car. You can bet my radar was up for the Creep, but I didn’t see him or anything suspicious around my car or near it or anywhere in the lot. As I pulled out, no other car moved, and no one was tailing us. I turned down the hill, off the property, and I knew of only one place to go, mostly by the process of elimination. I couldn’t think of anything else but to offer Laurie a real sanctuary, momentarily anyway: my place. I suggested we could relax there for an hour or so, work through her distress (and mine), and then I’d take her home. She was okay with that, as we both recognized that the alternatives weren’t as appealing.
Fifteen minutes later, we drove through my community’s security gate near the Biltmore Hotel and turned right, into my circular driveway. My one-story contemporary home was well hidden from the street by a twelve foot hedge. As we walked inside, my arm was once again around Laurie’s shoulders, but the sparks we shared earlier that evening were gone.
The therapy of “my place” began working immediately. Laurie seemed to perk up, and her eyes were dry. I pointed her in the direction of the living room and told her to make herself comfortable. With my hand still on the door handle, I scanned the view out the door. “Fuck the Creep!” I said to myself, for making me check my own yard. No one had followed us and no one that I could see had driven through the gate after us. That I actually looked warily out the front door really pissed me off. I closed it, saw Laurie seated in the living room, and called out, “Be there in a minute,” as I went into the kitchen. That guy not only creeped Laurie out, but now he was creeping me out! The question then occurred to me: Do I want to get involved with this woman? It’s not like stalker stuff is basic baggage. It could mean danger. I hate the element of danger in dating. “Dammit!” I muttered to myself, poured two glasses of wine, and without further delay, sought out Laurie in the living room, where she was sitting in silence.
Laurie and I barely sipped from our wine glasses. I let her talk a bit about her history with this guy. I learned that they had dated for about a year, that he was totally infatuated with her—clearly the jealous type—and that he’d become physically abusive early on in the relationship. She ended it two months ago and told the guy never to call her again. She said that he calls her every day at her office and every day at her home, and he won’t leave her alone. Why, I wondered, does it seem that beautiful girls pick the worst guys to date? What’s that all about? And suddenly, I see red flags popping up all over the place in her handling of this guy. He was a nut case, and she should have gone to the police a long time ago.
We sat next to each other as the minutes passed, not quite face to face, which seemed to make it easier for her to tell her story, as she stared ahead, maybe at my bookcase, maybe at nothing—probably at nothing. Eventually, she had enough of talking about him, and frankly, so did I. We slipped into mindless chatter about the beautiful room we were in. Finally, she calmed down, and with a solid hour already spent in the soft lighting of the room, we were ready to call it a night. The episode with the Creep had killed our ardor for each other, replacing it with a crude reminder that there are sick people out there.
I drove her home, walked her to the door, and we sha
red a light kiss on the doorstep, but no one got swept away. I stood still outside a moment after she went in, fully alert, just off the door, and waited—for what? For a scream? After a minute, I got a sense that she was safe. My car was the only one on the street. No other cars were moving, and no other cars were even parked on the street, which was a good sign. So, I concluded the Creep wasn’t in the neighborhood, at least not at the moment. I drove home, disappointed over the evening’s outcome and disappointed that the romance was killed so quickly and unexpectedly and in such a disconcerting way. I wondered when I’d see her again, and a little part of me wondered if I should see her again. After all, I’d been given sufficient notice that I was interfering with someone’s plans.
A half hour later, I was in bed, reaching to turn the light off on my bedside table, when I suddenly heard something that wasn’t right. I held my breath and went totally motionless, with my radar suddenly turned on. Nothing pinged. I was just jumpy. I hit the light and fell back onto my pillow. Not more than five seconds later, I heard the noise again, and this time I knew what it was as soon as I bolted upright. Someone was on the roof! It was footsteps that I heard above me, the thudding of feet walking across my roof. This was not good. I leaped out of bed and ran out the sliding glass door, into the darkness of my interior courtyard, and looked up to the roof that was over my bedroom. Immediately my eyes locked onto a silhouette of a man. It was the Creep; it had to be. It was his build, and I recognized the mop-head of hair. I don’t think he saw me, even as I ran back into the house to call 911.
Less than a minute later, I heard a siren but no more foot steps. Moments later, a cop car with lights flashing pulled into my driveway and hit the brakes hard. I barely had time to put trousers on. Then another squad car made the scene. The Biltmore area is very upscale, so the cops are always nearby, thankfully. They stayed on the property for twenty minutes, maybe more. It was hard to say how much time passed with all the excitement. One listened to my story and got a description of the Creep, while three others canvassed the yard, to no avail. A lone tree alongside the backside of my house had given the Creep an easy way to get up to the roof. What looked like footprints at the base of the tree confirmed the cops’ theory of access. But he was gone now.
The squad cars left. It took a while for my heart rate to come down. An hour later, I climbed back into bed. Ten minutes later the phone rang. Maybe it was the police checking on me? When I answered the phone, the other end of the line was silent. I knew someone was there, and I knew it wasn’t the police. I said “Hello” a second time and waited. My curiosity had me hold the phone against my ear for another half minute or so. Then a male’s voice—slow, low, and threatening—said, “I know where you live.”
I replied, “You sick bastard” and hung up. Sleep wasn’t going to be on the docket, at least not right away—maybe hours away. I fixed some soup in the kitchen and returned to my bedroom for a little late-night TV.
A half hour later, the phone rang again. I picked it up. Again, he was there, but he wasn’t saying anything. But I did. I said, “Look I know who you are. Stop calling or I’ll do something about this.” I hung up, wondering what I meant about doing something.
A half hour later, the phone rang again. This time I didn’t answer it. This was beyond annoying. It unnerved me. The soup was gone, but the TV was still on. I’d be watching for another two hours before going to bed, annoyed as hell. Finally, my eyelids became too heavy to hold up. I went to sleep, believing that I’d think of some way to deal with this crazy person in the morning.
I called Laurie right after breakfast, anxious to hear how her night went and if she was feeling any better. She said her night was uneventful. She seemed to be okay, until I told her about my night with the nocturnal visit and the subsequent phone calls. She was now fully committed to the urgency of going to the cops. Also, with my insistence, she would meet with a lawyer and get some kind of restraining order. I wondered if I should get a lawyer too. My interest in her was quickly waning. I could see that dating her was going to be complicated and maybe even dangerous.
That afternoon, I told my contractor the story. He was finishing up an extension of my patio and overseeing the final stage of a new lap pool. He was a tough guy in every way, an ex-marine with tattoos on his biceps. “Semper Fi” was one—the only one I could read. He asked me if I knew the Creep’s name. I said yes—Laurie had told me that morning—and I told him that I even had his address.
“Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll go over there with a few of my boys, and we’ll break one of his legs. We can do it tonight. You want that?”
My eyes popped wide open on hearing that. “You gotta be kidding!” I said in disbelief, not ever thinking that breaking the Creep’s leg might be an option, but I could tell that he was serious. He wanted to help me. He liked me and took my plight seriously. While a thought like that never would have occurred to me, there was a little dark spot in my mind that liked the idea. But no. I told myself—be real. No way.
“Really, you could do that?” I asked, more out of surprise that he would make such a suggestion than out of any real interest. My contractor took it as an expression of real interest.
“Damn right!” he said, in a tone that told me he was thinking I was about to give him the green light to pay a little visit to the Creep with my compliments.
“Wow,” I said calmly on a slow exhale, “I really hadn’t thought of that as a possibility,” which was true, of course. I hadn’t, but now the option was right in front of me.
“Well?” he said, “I’ll do it if you want me to.” He looked right into my eyes, waiting for a reply, like he was hoping I’d say yes.
I actually wanted to say yes. “No,” I said firmly. “That’s crazy. I couldn’t do that. I mean… The guy’s a nut, but not that. I’ll figure something else out.” I paused. “No,” I repeated. “Don’t worry about it, but thanks anyway.” Then I walked away, leaving him with some last-minute instructions for the patio and the pool.
That night, well after midnight, my phone rang and woke me up. It only rang once. After that, he called three times, about thirty minutes apart. I left it alone, like a snake coiled to bite, knowing that I had a broken leg in my back pocket. No friend would have been calling me after midnight. It must have been the Creep obsessing. I made a mental note to get Laurie on the legal trail the next day to put the clamps on this guy and, if possible, to include my name on a restraining order. He actually scared the crap out of me. With his rooftop behavior, I was convinced he was deranged. After a while, I went to sleep, thinking about breaking his leg, maybe both legs.
The next day, in the middle of the afternoon, Laurie called to tell me she had spent the morning with a lawyer. I was supposed to go down to the guy’s office and give a deposition. I did that as the day ended. And with it, my interest in Laurie ended. I called her up that evening and told her I gave a statement. I said I was truly sorry that she had to go through this mess and that we probably shouldn’t go out until it was cleared up. She needed more help than I could give her, and I didn’t know if I had heard the last of it from the Creep. None of that sat well with me. I don’t think dating should include depositions, at least not after one date, if ever.
I never called Laurie back, and I never got another call or visit from the Creep. It was best to get that unnerving episode behind me. I didn’t realize how successful I’d been at putting it out of my mind until I bumped into her that day at The Orange, a year after our one and only date. At that meeting, she told me that she had married her boss four months earlier and moved to the far north lip of town and that her life was good. That was it, and then she returned to the coffee line. The Creep was obviously out of her life—and out of mine, just like she would be when I walked out of The Orange.
∞