Chapter One: Polina

 

I did not know what to say.

I did not know what to do.

I did not know who I was anymore.

The blood drained out of my legs so I could not go screaming down the street, and then be arrested as I attacked the first cop I saw, hoping that he would do something very American and empty the clip of his gun point-blank into my brain pan.

So, luckily, I just sat there, frozen to the very wet and very cold metal of my coffee cafe chair, under the canopy where my life started, and now where suddenly my life had ended.

And then things got weird.

As I tried to focus my eyes through tears, through sweat, and the throbbing vein in my throat - that I could actually hear pumping blood into what was left of my brain - and there it was, again.

A letter.

Inside the Financial Times.

I had not moved since the earth leaped up and slapped my ass flat into this hard metal chair. Not that I had much meat on my bones (pardon the pun, but I am not laughing), but I was fairly certain I was oozing in droplets through the ribbing as my fat melted away from my bones.

And I was fairly certain that I was still alive.

I could swear that I was breathing, and that damn thump, thump as my heart refused to stop, no matter how hard I prayed that it would. I did not really mind the idea of dying, as long as there was no heaven. The idea of hell did not bother me so much, as I had lived so long at their front door I even knew the bouncers by their first names.

So how did that note get into the Financial Times? On the table right in front of where my eyes should have been.

As the world seemed to stop spinning long enough for me to reach out and grab the paper, I read the note, mostly by accident, as I had intended to throw the thing away from me as far as I could.

But there it was, and God help me, I read it:

 

Polina

"Yes. It is me, you were looking whole your life.

You were waiting for me, for my lips, for my hands, for my body.

I was waiting for such person as you are direct and open with big heart.

What do you want to know about me?

Polina"

 

My heart was now pounding. Am I scared? Am I dying? (again, that hope. I do hate that word: hope)

Am I terrified that the invisible woman I have built my entire life around had suddenly gone mad?

Let me see: I just hoped that my invisible girlfriend, whom I have never met, was not insane.

I had just been pulled apart and reassembled by ghosts.

And it seemed that I was reliving my life because I suddenly realized that I was BACK in New Zealand!

If it had been a life worth living in the first place, I would have been delighted.

As it was, I was trying not to be sick.

Okay, this could be going a lot better.

I wish I had the money for a hooker. Several hookers.

Why am I here?

Oh, yeah. That's not a conversation I want to have with myself!

Oh, good! And now, I'm talking to myself.

As the blood begins to make its way back into my legs, and the throbbing sound in my neck dropped below the level of street traffic, I found a pen, somehow, in my pocket, and started to write:

 

Jefferson

"I hope with all my heart that it is you.

I have been looking for thirty years for my perfect women. Are you one of them?

All I want is to have my perfect, beautiful women in my bed, my life, my reality, every single day of my life forever.

I want to be inside of you every single day, and in my heart forever.

Do you really want to be with me a several other equally bright and beautiful women every day for the rest of our lives?

Do you really want to share your love, your body, you heart, your mind, you soul with all of us together.

Do you really want me inside of you, and to be my home, my heaven, my joy, my everything?

Married forever, together forever, sharing lives, children, grandchildren.

Sharing the future together?

Once we are together, we will never be apart.

Is that what you really want?

It is what I want, with all my heart and with all my soul.

Jefferson"

 

How to I start my entire life over again with the same invisible woman? Or, is she a completely different invisible woman?

An invisible woman.

As I stared at the note, back safely tucked between the unreadable pages of the Financial Times, I figured, do I have a choice?

And so I tried again.

Maybe if I survived the headaches, the heartaches, the blood loss, the crying (yes, I still could do that, damn all ideas of hope), the endless sleepless nights, the loneliness that stares at me from the future like a tunnel with no end, maybe, maybe, maybe I would understand what the hell is going on.

Nah.