He had been working for the phone company doing phone surveys (like I did at Phone Survey, Inc.) Interestingly enough, I had applied for that same position with the phone company and was offered a job, but since I had found work with The Doctors Group by the time they called me, I declined the position. When I lost that job a week later, they wouldn't hire me.
Rid had a problem holding onto jobs. Just a few months earlier, he had started working at a brand new Burger King that had just opened up. I have no idea what happened there, but at the phone company, he said that his boss had asked him what the three pat responses were and he wasn't able to answer. Apparently, he had been given some sort of homework assignment and was supposed to be able to come up with the response. However, he said that the night before, he had been working as a volunteer EMT and got in a situation in which he witnessed a little girl dying in front of him. He said this was all he could think about was the look on that girl's face and he didn't have time to bother with the assignment. (I don't know if the EMT story is true, but if reciting the three pat responses takes less than ten seconds, he could have easily learned that in the five minutes before he started work.)
He was still permitted to hang around the workplace after he had been dismissed. He told every one of his former co-workers who would listen the same story. After awhile, we left. Rid just wanted to spend the day hanging out. He asked if he could apply for a job where I worked. I told him we were always hiring. He met the office manager and filled out an application, but he never got hired.
This happened to be the day that Tim Burton's "Batman" movie came out, so we decided to go see that after he had finished the application. We had missed the first show of the day, so we ran down to the movie theatre and bought tickets for the next show. We went out and got something to eat, came back to my apartment and waited to leave for the movie. When we were about to leave the lobby of the apartment building, I noticed that the mail had come. I opened my box and got the shock of my life when I saw I had a letter from Chez.
I had last spoken to Chez in February when I called her on Valentine's Day. (I didn't send a card or anything.) The conversation was rather somber. She didn't sound real excited to have heard from me. Not once did she say "I love you," or any other expression of affection. She didn't tell me if anything was going on with her. I have a feeling there may have been other people in the room with her, but I didn't realize this at the time. I figured that she had perhaps met someone else in school and was dating. I felt like she was coming to accept that she was outgrowing the crush she had on me and that we probably wouldn't be together in the long run. When I got off the phone, I actually thought that would be the last time I would ever talk to her. I considered myself being let off the hook.
But when I got this letter, I found out I was so wrong. In case you can't read from the photo above, it says (parentheses surrounding names indicate alterations I made to the letter in the picture, stars indicate foul language that I did not edit out of the photo):
"Dear (Fayd), So how's life? Mine's real S****Y right now. I'm going crazy. I know this letter comes as a surprise. But I decided it was about time I wrote you. I can't take it anymore. Living in this house sucks. (Kiz) moved back and everything’s going to Hell. I just got grounded for a week (from everything!) They still treat me like I’m a (f****n’) kid. It’s pissing me off. And then you. I don’t hardly ever get to talk to you and you never come down here so I can see you. My parents are being a******s about everything. Like the other day they told me, “Why don’t you just move out. Go move to Denver with your so-called boyfriend.” I got mad…”
(It’s interesting to note that this was written by a 17-year-old girl. Notice how everything is properly spelled and punctuated. That was the quality of American education just 25 years ago.)
The remainder of the letter reveals that her parents were thinking about coming to Denver for a vacation during the last week of August, but they hadn’t decided if they were going to take the kids. She also mentions that if she got to go, they wouldn’t do a lot of running around all over town to try to find me. She indicates that her parents were starting to not like me very much because I wasn’t keeping in touch and they were trying to get her to go out with a friend of Perd, her step-brother.
I told Rid about how she hated Marz, how she had gotten into fights with her before she met me and that she once said something about killing her. (I guess I didn’t mention that in the previous posts.) While we drove to the movie theatre, Rid read the letter and attempted to analyze it. He said, “Well, she obviously wrote this while she was angry. She’s just acting like a typical teenager who’s frustrated at everything. But you know what you need to do? You need to watch the movie ‘Play Misty for Me,’ because this situation is a lot like that. After that, you need to watch ‘Casablanca.’ And then, you’ll be completely confused!”
But I really didn’t know what to do. I was more worried about the last week of August, when she might show up at my doorstep. It would have been real easy for her to find me because she had my address. Even if she didn’t have a street map of Denver, she would have been able to figure out where I lived because the maps on the backs of the Denver Metro Area phone books only had the location of a few streets. It was mostly the major ones, like Broadway and Colfax, but for whatever reason, Logan (which is only four blocks from Broadway) was on there. All she had to do was pick up a phone book. I just KNEW she was going to show up when Bez was visiting me in the apartment.
Rid and I went to the movie. We saw a long line for ticketholders, so we figured that was where we needed to be. When they let everyone in, it turned out to be the line for “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” Our show had already been let in. If it weren’t for me having to stop and read that letter, we would have gotten to the theatre earlier and had better seats. We had to sit down way in the front and all the way on the right side. That meant we had to filter the entire movie through our left eyeballs. We still had a good time at the movie. I don’t know why, but Rid didn’t realize until a few weeks later that we had seen “Batman” on the first day it came out. (Bez had already gotten to see the movie at a preview screening with her mother.)
I drove Rid back home. I have no idea what he told his mother later. All I knew was that if Phone Survey didn’t hire him, he was going to have to go looking for a new job really soon.
Chez never did show up knocking at my door. I don’t even think her parents came to Denver. I’m pretty certain that even if they didn’t bring the kids, they still would have sought me out to have a little chat with me. That wasn’t the last I heard from her. She wrote me a couple more times before the end of the year. I was aware that her 18th birthday was looming around the corner, but I didn’t even try to call her. I just didn’t know how or what to tell her. I knew that no matter what I did, it would break her heart, so I took the cowardly route and did nothing. I regret treating her that way and wished I’d had the decency to treat her like a human being instead of a hedge.
But the strangest coincidence came out of this. Rid had mentioned those two movies he recommended. In 1992, I was living in San Diego and working for a movie theatre there. I noticed in the TV Guide that the movie “Play Misty for Me” was going to be on HBO at 2am. I had never seen it before, but there was no way I was going to stay up that late to watch it, so I set the VCR to record it.
The next morning, I watched it and enjoyed it. I then had to get ready to go to work. I was actually going early because we had a press screening and I wanted to see that movie. I took my shower, and as I was fixing my hair in the mirror, I thought about what Rid had said three years earlier about watching “Play Misty for Me” and…
…I suddenly realized that the press screening I was going to was for the 50th Anniversary re-release of “Casablanca.” I stood there stunned for a few minutes. I couldn’t believe the circumstances that led up to this. I mean, for HBO to happen to be running that movie, for me to happen to notice it was going to be on, because I didn’t watch that much TV nor looked at the TV Guide, AND for my theatre to have scheduled “Casablanca” for the press to see all on that same day. I felt like it was destiny.
And it did kind of turn out to be destiny, but in ways I never expected. I’ll be getting to that MUCH later. As usual, my story with Chez has not ended.
But I do have a footnote. After watching the movies, I called and told Rid about what he had said three years earlier. He had no recollection of saying that.
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