Mouse Trap, Part 3

It was way too hot to be heading out for this morning’s workout, yet I did, survived the workout, was melting my way back to the unit, crossing the parking area, then paused to take photos of that new repaving job melting away in the hot sun.

Not properly sealed, I was expecting the lousy job to not last but this melting in the hot sun is wild.

So, anyway, a car came down the drive honking at me.

It was Meat Man.

He paused, rolled down the window, began throwing kisses at me then said, "Happy 4th".

"Happy 4th to you as well, you bad boy, and congratulations", said I. "I hear you’re engaged", and then I put on a faux sad weepy face and said, "Did I miss my chance?"

His face fell, he looked discombobulated, like WHAT!?, turned his face away, down — quickly thinking about what I’d just said, I guess. Then he got his composure back, turned his face back towards me as I continued to ask in a singsong sorrowful poor me tone, "Did I miss my chance? Awwww did I miss my chance?"

He then smiled, said "No, you still got it" and drove away without further ado, but I’m sure what I said, whether true or not (which I doubt) is going to mess with his head — like what does she know ..... who she been talking to?

Homegirl is gonna laugh her arse off when next I see her, tell her what I did.

I also ran into Head Maintenance Guy this morning, but earlier as I was heading to the Pain Cave.

He had a smirk on his face as he greeted me with "It’s getting hot".

I read the smirk as his face as laughing at me, feeling like he’s in control, got me by the per se.

Why?

Assistant Maintenance Guy is on his honeymoon in Cancun, which means HMG is all we have to rely on, for a week or so, and I had to submit yet another workorder.

I'd sensed weeks ago that the oven was about to fail as it wasn't reaching proper temperatures. It died on Thursday.

Burners still work, just no oven and even though its hotter than hades, I still do use the oven to roast veggies, salmon, bacon and the broiler for toasting s’mores.

So HMG is strutting around, smirking, thinking he’s got me at his mercy, by the per se — inconveniencing me until he gets good and ready to address the workorder.

Guess he doesn’t realize, in his illusory sense of self, that I and others have been working around his incompetence for years.

"One monkey don’t stop no show", as my momma used to say.

I’ve already learned how to make candied walnuts and roast veggies in the air fryer, crisp up bacon and make tostada shells in the microwave and I’ve ordered a mini counter broiler for s’mores, et al.

I can wait for a Real Appliance Technician, or as close too as we get around here when Assistant Maintenance Guy returns from his honeymoon, or even longer if I have to. So the hold HMG thinks he has on my per se is just another one of his illusions.

As I was dropping off the request for a Real Plumber, I'd overheard staff talking about AMG getting married.

So, when he came up to fix that issue, I’d gotten into conversation with AMG about the upcoming nuptials.

Male 47, he’d never been married before, and is marrying a female 67.

"You’re marrying a cougar", said I.

"Yes and proud of it", said he.

I loved that.

He said his friends were giving him grief about it, whereupon he'd outlined to them all the things she does for him, asked his friends if their girls did the same for them — like when he got home tired from a hard day’s work, she’d rub his feet, and they had to admit their girls wouldn’t do that for them, which pretty much shut them up.

"Yes, you’d better marry this one", said I, because there are few and far between that would baby him that way.

As I recall, having dated younger men after my divorce, they were fun to hang with for a time, but could become tiresome due to their childish nature, need to be babied, so didn’t last long with me.

Such was the case with Melvin, fresh out of the Army in his mid-20’s when I was in my 30’s.

It was the 70’s when life was all about no strings but, unbeknownst to me, Melvin wanted strings and had been consulting his friends (my friends, our friends as we all ran in the same circle) as to how they felt about him marrying an older woman, a divorcee, with children.

Now, I didn’t know this at the time we were an item. It was after I’d moved on, and we were just friends, that he told this to me.

My thought was HOW DARE YOU! ... THE NERVE! to have such a discussion with his/our friends on the assumption I was interested in marrying him, that I’d have said yes.

So, anyway, not long after we were no longer an item, I was told of his engagement to another girl.

The boy was anxious to get married, start a family I guess.

Okay. Whatever. Good for him. Meant nothing to me.

But then, even though I’d long moved on, he began calling me — at home, at work, telling me about the conversations he’d had with friends when he was thinking of proposing to me, that he didn’t want to marry this girl he was engaged to and that "If you marry me, I won’t marry her".

"Not interested, I don’t want to get married", but Melvin wasn't hearing that. The closer it got to his wedding day, the more he called, begged, pleaded.

On one call he was saying how he was always thinking of me when he was with her, yada yada yada. I don't recall my side of the conversation, but it would have been along the lines of we were long ago done, I wasn't thinking about marrying him or anyone else, if you don't want to marry this girl then be honest, tell her, break it off. A coworker at the other desk, hearing my side of the conversation, said, "If anyone told his fiancé about what he's saying to you, she’d not believe it".

I knew that. If I’d tried to warn her or told one of our friends to warn her, he’d have spun it as my being jealous, trying to break them up, so I ignored his pleas, went on with my life right up to when he had me added to the guest list at the wedding.

Yep, I got an invitation to the wedding.

Did I go?

Yes.

Why?

Why not?

It was a party, an adventure.

I was surrounded and catered to by a group of our friends — probably the same group that dissuaded him from marrying an older woman, a divorcee with children, but inasmuch as marrying him was out of the question in the first place, I didn’t hold their input against them.

After a time at the reception, I got tired and went home.

Shortly after, there was a knock on my door.

It was the groom.

He’d left his own wedding reception.

After seeing me with that group of friends, then not seeing me and asking someone where I was, he wanted to make sure I’d gone home and not gone off with one of the boys.

He stayed at my place for over an hour and then proceeded to call me every day from his honeymoon.

I later also learned that not only did he leave his reception but that I was pictured all through his wedding album, as he kept instructing the wedding photographer to take photos of me until the photographer said he only had so much film, that he could either "follow the bride around", take photos of her, or "follow this other woman".

On one of those calls from the honeymoon, I’d asked how he explained his absence from his own wedding reception.

"I didn’t" said he. When Debra had asked where he'd gone, he said "I told her to don’t ask me about where I go, what I do".

With our having the same friends, and Melvin still being a friend of sort, I was privy to see how that marriage went.

The fact that he disappeared at his own wedding, and then told her to not ask about what he did, was grounds enough for Debra to walk away, but she didn’t.

I never told any of our friends about the "If you marry me, I won’t marry her" so Debra never found out about that. She didn’t even know about all the other ways he disrespected her during their marriage, which things he recounted to me as he continued to call or drop by for years and years and years and years, having finally given up the idea of our ever being an item again and just needing to talk/brag about his adventures with other women, complain about Debra and her family, right up to the day when he went to a wedding, didn’t take Debra, returned home to find Debra, the kids, all the furniture gone.

She left him, filed for divorce.

I applauded her.

He had the nerves to be bitter, bash her, whereupon I told him how I felt about the way he’d treated her all those years, that I was grateful to have not wanted to marry him because I could have been her.

Inasmuch as I’d never judged or criticized him before, he had a few choice words about how "disappointed" in me he was, how he’d now "lost respect" for me, as if I cared because I'd long ago tired of his keeping in contact.

I reiterated that I knew the truth of what went down because I was there to witness how awful he'd treated Debra, that he’d gotten what he deserved, asked him to not contact me again, and that was that.

Last time I saw Melvin must have been around 15 years ago, when I was in Long Beach for something or other, ran into him as I was walking down Ocean Blvd.

His mom had passed, his only other relative — a brother had passed, Melvin himself had lost his job due to an issue with drugs, he was pretty much an unhoused person on the streets, said Debra and the kids were in San Diego. He was still bitter, somehow blaming Debra for "ruining his life".