Read Online Orchard Grove by Vincent Zandri - Free Book Online Page A

another way.
    Her face beamed with big brown eyes and perfect luscious lips.
    Checking the time on her wristwatch, she said, “I have to get up early for school tomorrow. No slack for the teacher’s aide.”
    “I’m hot for teacher,” I said.
    She laughed and placed her hand on my forearm, giving it a squeeze.
    With that, I paid the tab, and we took off for my downtown Albany writing studio.
     
    We weren’t through the door before we were undressing one another. We barely made it to the bed where we spent the next couple of late night hours rocking and rolling and loving one another’s bodies even though we barely knew one another’s first names.
    By the time the clock struck midnight, she was getting dressed again. I signed a copy of Break Up , my one and only published novel for her, inscribing it, “With love.” Four months later we were married by a Justice of the Peace in the white-marbled city hall on State Street in downtown Albany. Susan finished grad school and continued to teach pre-school while I kept up my daily writing routine like a man possessed, but only managing to sell my scripts to indie studios while the major outfits continued to shut me out. Oh well, I knew the situation wouldn’t last forever. That as long as I was swinging the bat, eventually I’d nail a homerun again.
    What all this meant of course, was that I wasn’t making nearly the money I had been in LA, but what the hell, this was Albany and living in this city of less than one hundred thousand souls wasn’t nearly as expensive, or sunny, or glamorous. Christ, you couldn’t even find a decent restaurant in Albany. But what was important was that Susan and I were building a life for ourselves, having slapped some of the indie movie cash I’d managed to hoard away down on a ranch home in the sleepy, but oh so stable suburb of Orchard Grove in North Albany. Humble beginnings for sure, but it was also an idyllic time too when you really thought about it.
    But the idyllic turned out to be a flash in the pan. Or perhaps not a flash but a slow roast.
    After nine years of marriage, nothing bad had penetrated the invisible fortress we’d managed to build around ourselves. Trust ruled the day, meaning we didn’t go around seeking extra-circular affairs, unless of course, getting together with some friends for a little wine, dancing, and swapping counts which it most definitely does not (swapping is consensual and sensual). We did not argue over money since we had enough coming in to pay the bills plus more than enough left over for some vacation time in New York City, Cape Cod, Miami, and even a two week trip through Italy and France as a belated honeymoon five years back. We drank responsibly, and did not do drugs other than the occasional recreational weekend stuff when the friends popped by or we visited them. We did not suffer from depression, or food addictions, or even allergies. No boredom, no sad pillow talk of shoulda-coulda-woulda . Not even sickness had managed to snake its way into our lives. We also did not get pregnant even though we did not consciously try to prevent a child from coming into our lives. It simply didn’t happen, and on the occasions I tried to talk with Susan about it, she shrugged the whole idea off as something that would happen if it was meant to happen. Case closed.
    In a word, Susan and I were happy with our lives… Happier than most anyway.
    Until recently… over the past year… when even the contracts with my indie film companies began to dry up and we had no choice but to turn to selling pot to make ends meet. Unless, of course, I was willing to give up my writing for a proper job. I had always run as a man who wrote scripts, and I was convinced that I was just going through a sales slump was all. That eventually it would pick up. I was writing, and that’s what counted.
    But then the Cavittos moved in next door, even the writing stopped.
    From the looks of it, whatever was left of Susan’s