We’ll Meet Again Someday

Audra put her Kindle down in her lap and gazed at her sleeping husband beside her. She watched him sleep for a few minutes, then placed her Kindle on the nightstand by the bed and quietly left the room. Emma’s room and the master bedroom were at the front of the house. The guestroom and bathroom were in the back. Just last year, Emma had expressed a desire for the back room, insisting she’d rather have the stairwell between her and her parents instead of her closet. In the end, however, the girl had decided to remain in front because that room was bigger. Audra entered the bathroom and closed the door, keeping the light off, and crept over to the window. She peered down at the guesthouse below. The lights were still on, though she was unable to see inside the room with the blinds drawn. She gazed downward for what seemed like quite a while, and eventually the lights went out. Audra returned to bed, not conscious of the slight smile that played upon her lips. She lay still for a while, staring into the darkness until she fell asleep, dreaming of the long, dark-haired girl who’d impacted her life in ways no one else ever had, and whom she’d never forgotten. Down below in the guesthouse, Riana couldn’t sleep. Instead, she found herself tossing and turning and doing what she’d done many times over the last fifteen years. She was trying to figure out why Audra hated her so much. She’d been the only staff member to give her trouble at the apartment complex. The maintenance guys and the other two ladies who worked in the office, Pauline and Judith, were as friendly as ever. She had lived at the apartment complex for ten months. All had been fine for the first five months, but then, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, Audra began a campaign of bizarre behavior. She said and did the strangest things—things that annoyed and frustrated Riana to the point of moving to another complex, although she mainly moved because the complex was noisy. She’d left Massachusetts to live in Arizona, feeling that there was nothing for her in New England and that she’d reached a dead end in life. She’d needed a change. Mark, a gay guy she’d grown up with, had moved to Phoenix the previous year. She first joined him in his studio apartment, which was in the complex Audra managed. About ten days later, she moved into an identical ground-floor studio two buildings away. Mark, who looked as gay as she did not, worked as a waiter, while she was on disability through her father. Ellie, an older woman on the other side of the complex, was also on disability. The reasons were obvious and definitely not similar to her own. They’d met at the pool one stifling hot day, and at first Ellie seemed like a nice, ordinary lady until she began to have strange mood swings and even delusions. The claims of the FBI putting petroleum jelly in her cooling and heating vents were enough to drive Riana away. She felt bad for Ellie, of course, but she couldn’t help her, and she didn’t need any additional problems either. Ellie had serious emotional problems, and everything was such a crisis to her. Riana knew she could do better than that for friends. She’d been on probation at the time for making prank phone calls back east. Because she was too broke at first to afford phone service, the probation officer she’d been assigned to upon moving to Arizona contacted the rental office, thus infuriating her. She’d even called the probation department from Mark’s phone and blasted the officer for it. “No one here needed to know I was on probation! If you wanted to get ahold of me, you should have come to my door, not the rental office. I gave you my exact address and apartment number.” “You weren’t home or didn’t answer the door when I came by to see you, Miss Brennan,” the PO said. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because I’ve thought about it and have decided to drop your case altogether.” “Why is that? Too large a caseload?” Instead of answering her, the less-than-kind officer said, “I’m sorry, but you simply don’t have the blessing of residing in Arizona as far as I’m concerned.” “Well, obviously I do, since I have written permission to be here and I haven’t violated any of the terms and conditions,” she said defensively, and with a little more confidence than she actually felt. “So you can drop my case all you want, but you cannot have me extradited—certainly not for some petty misdemeanor such as this.” “That’s up to Massachusetts.” No, it’s up to me, she told herself later on as she tried to calm her nerves with a hot bath and a cup of raspberry tea. She’d been made to be where she didn’t want to be enough times in her life, and she’d had enough. Unless they literally kicked the door in and carried her off to the airport, she would not return to that cold, snowy, humid, miserable state, much more liberal or not. She continued to stress about it for a while, nonetheless, but no one came to chain and shackle her off to Sky Harbor Airport. Instead, her original probation officer back east, Sheila, simply had her mail in monthly progress report forms, letting her know where she was, what she was up to, and so on. She’d had problems with a few other residents at the complex aside from Ellie, either due to her refusal to acknowledge their advances or on account of their hate for lesbians, but she’d also made a few friends along the way. They’d drifted apart over the years, and she sometimes wondered what had become of them. One was a guy named Randy, who had really liked her. She liked him too, but only as a friend, and friends they were until Randy decided he needed something more than that. There were Tonya and Tara, two eighteen-year-old besties from Ohio. Tonya was an exotic dancer; Tara, an aspiring artist. She didn’t see much of them, but it was true that Tonya had inspired her to take a shot at dancing, which she’d done for just under a year, having been sick of scraping pennies. The disability payments simply hadn’t been much. It was also true that Tara had given her many drawing tips, although drawing was just a hobby she hadn’t been into for years. Once she met Amberlyn, who had gotten her addicted to computers, she’d spent less and less time on other things like drawing and playing musical instruments. The only other people who stood out in her mind in a good way were Mary, a woman with cerebral palsy, and Kara, who was from Michigan. Kara was a homely-looking but outgoing person whose boyfriend disappeared upon learning of her pregnancy. Riana had babysat Kara’s ten-month-old daughter, as well as her sister’s son, who was just a few months older. Kara was bisexual but mostly preferred men. This was all well and good as far as Riana was concerned, because she hadn’t been attracted to Kara at all. She adored her bubbly personality, but that was the extent of it. Kara wanted to become a cop once her daughter got a little older, something Riana thought she would be good at. Kara looked like a cop, and while she was a toughie, she was also fair and friendly—not the type likely to use or abuse any authority allotted her or to become caught up in any sort of corruption. As she lay there remembering Kara, she hoped that even though life wasn’t usually what one planned it to be, Kara had still managed to reach her goals and dreams. In early October of 1992, she moved to a second-story studio directly behind Mark. She was glad to do so, not just to be closer to her friend, but because she had hated the people in the first building. The guy above her had walked like an elephant, while the guy next to her wanted to get in her pants. Being as obnoxious as most young people tended to be, she and Mark had harassed Ellie, the elephant walker, and the self-appointed Romeo with a barrage of prank phone calls. This was especially easy to do now that she had her own phone again. In return, she received a voice message full of threats and delusions from Ellie, which she ultimately used as ammunition against Audra, despite how little good it ended up doing her in the end. All Audra had done was shrug and say, “So those are the people you just don’t have anything to do with.” Just a few weeks later, Audra announced that she would first have a meeting with Mark, and then with her. “Why do you suppose she wants to meet with us separately?” Riana asked Mark on their way to the office that pleasant autumn day. “I don’t know. Maybe so we can’t get our stories straight first.” “What stories? Could this really be about the prank calls?” “Who knows? Just deny knowing anything about it if it is,” Mark said. “Of course I will,” Riana assured him. Mark had spent roughly fifteen minutes in Audra’s office while she waited out in the main office. Audra then called her into the office as soon as he emerged, so Riana hadn’t been able to question him about their so-called meeting in advance. She tried to read his expression, but he was gone before she had the chance. These days, she’d never put up with the kind of bullshit Audra had put her through. She’d have said and done things much differently. Yet back then, she’d been naive, and Audra had sensed it and taken advantage of it. She took a seat in front of Audra’s desk and tried not to fidget with discomfort. She almost felt like she was back in grade school again, sent to the principal’s office and about to be scolded and punished for stealing her classmate’s snack or pushing someone down or something like that. She expected to hear about the prank phone calls, and she did, even though she didn’t understand why the tenants they’d pranked would go to Audra about it in the first place. Audra was just the complex manager, not their mother. Did they expect her to spank her and Mark? To ground them and take away their phones? What she didn’t expect to hear about were the vandalism accusations. Thanks to the probation officer contacting the office, which Audra had eagerly mentioned, it was automatically assumed that whenever anything bad happened, she was behind it. This was why she had been angry at the officer for contacting the office—not because she gave a damn about what people thought, but because she knew fingers would be pointed at her when something went wrong. Audra also informed her that she’d no longer accept packages brought to the office that weren’t in her name, which she sometimes preferred not to use. “But that’s not against the law in any way,” Riana had tried to reason, but it was to no avail. Audra ended up doing her a favor in the end by spiting her this way, however, because any packages that weren’t in her name were then delivered straight to her door, making it more convenient for her. Another surprise from Audra was that the seemingly friendly girl who had happily shown her the studio she was now in before she moved into it had complained about her asking to see it once she knew she was to move into it as soon as it was vacant—or so Audra had said. “Why did she agree to show it to me if she had a problem with it?” Riana had countered. “She didn’t have to let me in, Audra.” But as time passed, Riana didn’t believe the girl had ever complained. She believed Audra had seen her going to see it or heard about it somehow and had used that as one more thing to beat her over the head with. The final issue was over Riana supposedly trying to get people’s phone numbers at the pool and in the laundry room so she could invite them up to her place. “People don’t understand your friendship,” Audra had said, and as soon as she’d said that, Riana knew Audra was implying that Riana was looking for people to hook up with. What, did she look desperate or something? Or did she just assume all gays and lesbians were? Audra further confused Riana with contradicting statements, such as admitting she didn’t know her in one breath, then insisting she was lonely in the other. “Get out more,” she told her. Then, “You ought to stick to yourself more often, don’t you think?” “Do you not have anything better to do than overstep your boundaries as a complex manager by telling me how I should live my life?” Riana had asked. “You’re meddling in affairs that don’t concern you in the least, Audra.” Audra gave a sarcastic smile, then said, “Well, Riana, just keep in mind that I know what you’re up to and where you go. And if I don’t, I’ll always find out about it somehow.” “Wow. I should be flattered that someone cares enough about me to spy on me,” Riana told the control freak. “Am I out of here or what? I’m not going to play games with you.” What she didn’t tell Audra was that if she were about to be evicted on the grounds of discrimination, she wanted to know about it as soon as possible so she could start fighting back, even if she was destined to lose in the end. If she at least tried, however, it might protect others in the future from the same ordeal. “I don’t know,” Audra said in a matter-of-fact tone. Silence filled the room. Audra leaned back in her chair and played with a pen while her arms rested upon her desk. A faint hint of a smile appeared at the corners of her lips. Was it some sort of smug satisfaction she was feeling? Was this actually fun for her? “Well, let me know when you’ve figured it out,” Riana said, rising from her chair. “Meanwhile, please keep out of my business. And don’t worry—I’ll be sticking to myself more often if the people here are going to be so vindictive and phony. Am I dismissed now?” Audra nodded toward the door, that faint smile never leaving her face. If anything, it seemed to grow a little.