The divorce was messy and scary and awful but Catherine fucking did it. Go, Catherine.
It was after midnight when she had the idea to hop on a plane and visit Marco, her college boyfriend. She’d been through enough in life to know that ideas after midnight can be real hit or miss. So she waited. She had patience. There was plenty to keep her busy.
Catherine had thrown herself into work at the design firm since she’d moved out of their San Diego apartment and signed the papers separating her from her ex with all legal necessity.
The firm was busy. There were half a dozen new projects on her plate. Catherine was afraid. Not of the work, of herself. Of her thoughts while having any downtime. So she worked. She worked from the moment she arrived at the downtown office and then often ate her dinner there. The thought of going home to the empty space triggered an anxiety that she didn’t know how to process. Her therapist said that working was a good coping mechanism. But, like all therapists loooove pointing out, there is a healthy balance for everything. His insights were both helpful and annoying. Being accountable while being torn apart is a fucking tough rock to climb.
By March, she was pale, exhausted, and feeling stale like forgotten toast. That’s when, after too many flaccid reruns of Frasier, she revisited the Marco idea. Now look, Catherine didn’t have any grandiose ideas that Marco was the one who got away or anything like that. Their college relationship had been positive, fun, just super happy times, but if she were being totally honest with herself, she’d never fallen for him the way she’d fallen for her ex-husband. So why was he now creeping up into her brain? Well, first, because he was right there in her inbox.
Marco had been there for her during every step, every excruciating fight, every uncontrollable cry, and even the messy aftermath of her divorce. He knew her at her best and at her worst. The only thing was, he wasn’t in San Diego. Nope. After college, (and, everyone who knew him at the time thought this was super random,) he moved to what was then Czechoslovakia.
He’d been vague about what he’d been up to, but Catherine knew him well enough to sense that his life contained quite a bit more excitement than her own. Our heroine was convinced that she needed an absolute balls-to-the-wall adventure to get her out of her funk and into the next step in her healing process. The step where she could come back to herself and find out who she really was. She was ready to embrace the part of her heart that danced with loud music, whose eyes sparkled around bright colors, and whose soul knew how to love with utter abandon. That was the person she’d been before she met her ex. And the therapist said that she couldn’t blame him for draining it out of her, but, well, she fucking did.
Blink. Blink. Blink. The black line on her laptop screen waited impatiently for her to type something brilliant. But, it wasn’t coming. Why the pressure? She’d emailed Marco a hundred times over the past year. Sometimes blurry-eyed wine-drunk after crying her eyes out to her one-eyed Chihuahua mix, Sonny. Marco had always replied with humor, kindness, and a level of respect that her writing honestly did not deserve. But, this time was different. Catherine could feel the shift in her agenda bubbling in a part of her that she hadn’t thought about (or waxed) in a very, very long time.
The cursor continued to wink in her face as if her email knew a secret. It was as if the stars had already aligned with some kind of irrefutable destiny and her future was just waiting for her to catch up.
Do I just come right out and say it? She asked herself. Like, write, Um, I want to come visit you and have the same hot sex that we did when we were 22?
Really, what was the point of beating around the bush? (Yep, there’s a joke here.)
So, she emailed him.
It was 8:00 in the morning for Marco. He still hadn’t gone to bed yet when the little envelope icon blinked on his phone. The message from Catherine read,
I’m ready to come and have some fun.
His answer was a simple… Yes. Which is how Catherine ended up on a Continental Airlines flight with butterflies in her stomach and lingerie in her bag.
The airline miles from Catherine’s thriving business proved worth their weight in long work hours, upgrading her to the business class seat where she had reclined into the perfect champagne-sipping position. Like everyone else in America at the time, she was carrying around but not reading The Divinci Code. She couldn’t follow the chain of events. Did one experience in life really dictate the next one? The way Dan Brown’s writing insisted that it did wasn’t jiving with her own path of personal healing. Her therapist did not want to talk about The Divinci code. So Catherine scrolled through the eight-inch plane screen to see what kind of distractions were available 30,000 feet in the air. She picked something familiar but fell into a dreamless sleep before the opening credits had wrapped.
Eastern Europe had never really called to Catherine before this trip. She’d backpacked around Central America and even climbed Kilimanjaro. She’d volunteered on an organic farm for a summer in New Zealand and worked as an assistant to a high-powered producer in Manhattan. She’d been all over the place but nothing prepared her for stepping off of the plane in an ex-communist country that had only been wall-less for 15 years.
In her champagne haze and attempt to travel ‘light,’ Catherine wheeled her over-stuffed carry-on suitcase down the ramp. The terminal itself looked like it had been poured out of concrete. The round pillars loomed upwards forty feet into the air and their crumbling facade seemed to suggest that they were actually (and possibly failing) at holding up the ceiling. The agonizingly old floor looked as though a parade of tanks had made their way through the airport at one point. She stopped, looking for a sign to direct her to the exit. Within seconds, two enormous, shaved-headed men in grey suits approached her.
This was the early 2000s. Catherine owned a card-deck-sized Sprint flip phone with only a domestic calling plan. She had Marco’s number saved and his address written on the inside of The Divinci Code. He had told her he was “sending one of his guys” to pick her up. These must be… “his guys?”
“We bring you to the bar,” said the one with the scar creeping up from the corner of his right lip like Batman’s Joker. “Marco meet you there.”
She knew that she didn’t exactly have a choice and she should probably follow Shrek along willingly. Besides, he knew Marco’s name. That was comforting, right? Catherine assumed that they would get into a car and drive into the city. She thought that maybe these guys would walk her into a pub where Marco would be pacing in a suit but no tie, finishing up a work call, thrilled to see her, and would order a couple of beers like they did in their collegiate days. Welp, she was wrong.
Catherine doesn’t know how far she walked. She does know that even if you’d put a gun to her head, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to Gate 24D. Shreks One and Two guided her down a long hallway, eerily littered in dying fluorescent light. At the end of the hallway, there were three unmarked steel doors, one on the right, one on the left, and one with a coded keypad in the center. While Shrek One typed in a series of numbers resulting in a dozen high-pitched beeps, Shrek Two turned Catherine to face the direction she’d come from, treating her more like a high-value spy than a slightly hungover post-divorcee looking for a cocktail and some peanuts.
When Shrek One had succeeded in opening the door of truly elephantine proportions, Catherine was led down another hallway and another, each one creepier and more dimly lit than the next.
Every time she tried to talk with either or both of the towering Oafs, she was met with grunts, silence, or a head shaking so subtle, that it could have only been taught by someone who doesn’t mind killing people. The knot in Catherine’s stomach tightened, like one of those mops she’d seen during a late-night, insomnia-fueled Home Shopping Network marathon. And just when she thought she couldn’t get any more stressed out, a final door swung open to reveal the last place she thought she would be at 3:00 on a weekday afternoon.
The olfactory wave that crashed over her was the mix of heavy men’s cologne, vodka, sweat, and the undefinable scent that all bars have. The place, like the tunnels that got her there, was windowless. The colored lights mounted on the low ceiling bounced off too many disco balls to count. She could feel the vibration of the oonst-oonst-oonst music loosening up her recent dental work. Catherine reached out to Shrek Two to steady herself, at an utter loss for words. She didn’t have the time to find any. Because, as if on Hollywood cue, he appeared at the door, arms outstretched, embracing the stunned American traveler in a warm bear hug. Marco was Marco. Exactly how she remembered.
He thanked the two Andre The Giants and took Catherine’s suitcase and computer bag, handing them off to a skinny man whom Catherine hadn’t noticed. With a smile that could have melted the iron curtain, Marco led Catherine to a velvet-covered corner booth, waved a waitress in what looked like full Vegas Showgirl attire over, ordered what she assumed were drinks, and then turned to Catherine with more attention in that moment than she’d felt from her ex-husband over the course of a decade.
“You made it,” he didn’t seem surprised or impressed, just pleased with her presence.
“Yeah,” Catherine gratefully accepted the cocktail from the woman dripping in forty pounds of sequins, “but I’d made peace with the fact that I was going to die in a Czechoslovakian tunnel.”
Marco seemed surprised, “What, you’d rather sit in traffic?”
Catherine let this one go. Marco hadn’t described any of this in their lengthy email exchanges. What were his ties to this country? She’d known he’d gone to an American boarding school, somewhere in New Hampshire, Connecticut? She’d thought his parents were in Toronto. But Catherine’s cerebral detective hunt was cut short by Marco’s incredible charm which was the one thing that didn’t surprise her. They sat at the booth for hours, drinking vodka and eating the freshest caviar that Catherine had ever tasted. There were oysters, champagne, steaks, and more vodka. As her grip on reality loosened to a gentle squeeze, Marco swept her, quite literally, off of her feet and onto the dance floor. And this was no ordinary dance floor.
It rotated. The DJ stand hovered in the corner as the black circle below moved in slow circles. The lights flashed like pounding heartbeats from every corner of the room. Catherine felt underdressed in her black leggings and AC/DC t-shirt but that seemed to be the furthest thing from Marco’s mind. He held her, twirled her, dipped her, accepting shots from the skinny man with the luggage who always seemed to be close enough to provide a drink but distant enough to never get in the way. At one point the shot glasses were replaced by a silver dish containing two yellow pills. Marco just grinned at Catherine, placing one in her hand.
“Let’s have some fun,” is what she thought she heard him say over the intense vibration of the music.
Now, please don’t get worried, nothing happens to Catherine. She loved to party. It had been years, literal years, since she’d been able to fully let go and enjoy herself, to allow her mind and body to exist in a place that was completely pain-free. Also, these drugs were insane. The night or afternoon or evening or whatever fucking time it was, was absolutely incredible.
Catherine doesn’t remember what time they got back to Marco’s apartment. But, she does remember the black, armored Mercedes taking them there. She remembers the guards standing at the entrance to the building, the ornate gold-painted woodwork in the elevator, and the blinding modern decor of the living room. Everything was metal and black and heavy and immaculate. The sheets on his bed felt like they’d been pulled so tight that someone’s life depended on it. She hoped it didn’t.
The tall ceilings in the kitchen suspended a chandelier that looked like it had been “borrowed” from a European castle. And the shower? Water came in from all sides, all angles as if she were The Little Mermaid thrusting herself on the beach, the waves crashing against her body in all directions. It was safe to say that Catherine had never, ever been in such an over-the-top and luxurious space, even if it wasn’t exactly her taste. She was a designer for high-end Los Angeles clients too, so this was saying a lot.
The four days with Marco weren’t a blur. They were a never-ending series of events that seared into her brain. Now, Catherine is not going to pretend that she was quick on the uptake here. It took her at least 36 hours, of which she’d slept possibly a total of four, to realize that Marco was full-on a member of either some kind of really corrupt government organization or he was in the fucking mob. What was wild about this time was that there was no easily accessible internet, so, no way to know for sure.
Just go along for the ride, Catherine told herself while splashing cold water on her face. She was alone in his bathroom, her head spinning from the nonstop party.
This is what you wanted… right?
She wrapped herself in Marco’s oversized robe and crawled back into his bed.
“There is a fabulous new club opening tonight,” Marco told her, lying in the crisp white sheets, his muscled body romantically draped in what she hoped was a faux fur bedspread and not a real fucking polar bear. It was her last day. She knew she needed to get home. Sure, she was going to miss the crisp champagne and caviar and honestly ridiculously amazing sex but, well, this was not exactly the rejuvenating trip she needed. Catherine was now a different version of Forgotten Toast.
“Could we just, like, chill today?” She asked her very powerful lover. “I’m kind of done with the club scene. I’d really like to just relax.”
Marco popped up as if someone had stuck his groin with a cattle prod. That was his energy… It was exhausting.
“I know just the place.” He picked up the phone next to his bed and yelled a few directives at whoever picked up.
“You are going to a spa.” Catherine felt her body melt just hearing the word.
Oh god, a spa. That was exactly what the exhausted, hungover, and broken-hearted Catherine needed. Literally nothing sounded better than a massage, a sauna, maybe a hot tub, and a lot of cold water. Maybe they would even have some sort of Eastern-European version of Gatorade and an Egg McMuffin. These were the subject of Catherine’s thoughts as she found herself exiting the black Mercedes and led into an enormous stone castle in the middle of what seemed to be Fucking Nowhere.
The place was dark and fragrant with eucalyptus. And that’s where the similarities with a San Diego Day spa stopped.
With no words spoken, Catherine was led into a changing room. A woman who looked kind and grandmotherly in white scrubs and a hair bonnet instructed her in no uncertain terms to get completely undressed and follow her. Our heroine was exhausted, dehydrated, and a little sore from her morning bed session. The Grandma did not care. Soon, Catherine found herself alone in a tiled room with no one, but the grandma blasted with freezing cold water from a spigot that felt as powerful as a fire hose. And then the grandmother turned it off, grabbed her shoulders, and dunked into a trough full of ice.
Catherine then lay on a wooden bench and was pelted over and over and over with real tree branches from a large man until her skin was red and raw. She was eventually picked up and plunked into a tub of water so steaming hot that she swore her ass was literally melting off of her bones. All of this while being paraded around from room to room completely butt-ass naked when all she wanted was a back rub and a Gatorade. There was no relaxing. There was no rejuvenation. There wasn’t even a glass of water. This may have pushed our naked and dehydrated friend over the edge.
At the end of her “spa day,” Catherine felt like she had been completely drained of everything that made her human. Thank goodness, because her physical state made it much easier to leave.
On the plane ride home, after a passionate goodbye to Marco and a wince when he hugged her tight, Catherine felt herself begin to shake. Maybe it was all of the adrenaline leaving her body. Maybe it was withdrawal from vodka and ecstasy. Maybe she was just really, really fucking tired. She didn’t know.
One thing she did know was that life in San Diego was exactly as exciting as she needed it to be right now. She was fine with her work and her one-eyed dog, her walks on the beach, and her farmer’s market. Yeah, there weren’t pills and bodyguards and wild sex, at least, not yet, but Catherine had the very adult realization that she needed, right now, to be in control of her life and her time. And Marco was not the person who she would ever call ‘The Man Who Got Away.’ He was the man most likely to be beheaded or something insane like that. But, she’d gotten a great story out of it and closed the door on wherever that tunnel could have led.
Their email relationship petered out. Sometimes, Catherine will send a message just to make sure he’s still kicking. As far as she knows, he is. And, she still hasn't finished The Divinci Code.
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