The novel ‘A Woman between Two Men’, with an Albanian-American Theme, is authored by Carrie Hooper and Skifter Këllici
Chapter X
Wilma was making lunch when the doorbell rang. The ringing persisted until finally, she ran to the door and opened it. She cried out with surprise when Mary burst in as if she had escaped from a pursuer. Wilma was even more surprised by her pale face and hollow, bloodshot eyes. Her hair was disheveled as if she had had a torturous night. She wore the same skirt and blouse Wilma had seen on her the previous day. That had never happened before. Usually, Mary changed her clothes every day, sometimes twice a day.
“What happened to you?” asked Wilma.
Mary collapsed onto a nearby sofa, sighed, and stared at Wilma as if she were in a frenzy.
“Tell me what happened,” said Wilma.
She had a bad feeling.
“Did someone attack you last night on your way home from work, and God forbid, kidnap you and try to rape you? Did you escape from him?”
She waited anxiously for Mary’s answer.
“No one kidnapped me,” Mary mumbled, misty-eyed. “I let myself be taken by someone, and my ardent desire for him made me give myself to him.”
Wilma’s eyes opened wide.
“Mary, what are you saying?” she half-whispered, looking at her in horror. “You’re delirious. You’re talking nonsense.”
Mary forced a smile.
“No, Wilma. I’m not talking nonsense,” she said, and burst into tears.
Wilma sat next to her on the sofa.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Mary opened her trembling lips and stammered, “I gave myself to Kreshnik.”
She was exhausted and pronounced each word with the immense effort of a dying person.
Flabbergasted, Wilma put her hands on Mary’s head.
“I gave myself whole-heartedly to him even though I didn’t want things to go that far. I only wanted to see him and encourage him to stop his criminal activities before something bad happened to him. But I ended up committing a sin.”
She burst into tears a second time.
“I don’t know how I’ll face Charlie. I don’t know how I’ll explain this catastrophe to him,” said Mary. “It was like Kreshnik made me forget everything else. He seduced me and wore down my resistance. He couldn’t have been more handsomely dressed. He had also cut his hair and shaved his beard. He came, as he said, to apologize for his cursed poems which were the cause of all this trouble. And, silly me, instead of shaking hands with him, I invited him out for a coffee. I felt sorry for him.”
Mary closed her eyes and continued, “Then, as I told you, at the cafe, his stories about parting lovers left me speechless. And when did he tell me those stories? Right before we said good-bye! Did he plan to do that? No. He heard Chopin’s “Farewell Waltz” on the radio and remembered the story of his love affair. Then, he remembered a poem about separation by a great Albanian poet. There’s no doubt about it, he’s a smart young man, and he spoke so beautifully. He could hold anyone’s attention. I, too, fool that I am, fell into his trap.”
Mary let out a sad sigh.
“Charlie, on the other hand, only talks about his study of cybernetics, the greatest science of the twentieth century, its laws, peculiarities, methods, and technical applications. He says more sophisticated machines will replace human workers. After all, scientists are making more and more discoveries.”
Mary knew she was not being honest with her friend. Indeed, Wilma considered the word “trap” a fabrication. It was Mary’s love for Kreshnik which had driven her to go to bed with him. Wilma suspected that Mary’s pledge to erase Kreshnik from her memory resulted from her anger which would fade as footprints in wet sand disappear at low tide.
Mary dried her tears with her burning hands and tried to regain her composure. After she thought for a moment, she shook her head and said, meekly, “It’s no use lying to myself. He wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t thrown my arms around him. I let him cover me with kisses. I, too, kissed him with fiery passion while he carried me up to his room like a kitten. It’s my fault, not his.”
And once again, tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Poor Mary!” said Wilma to herself. “It’s useless for her to think she will forget him. She contradicts herself.”
“One thing from our night together will remain etched in my mind,” Mary continued, lost in thought. She closed her eyes. “It’s hard for me to say this, but I feel I must.”
She turned purple, hesitated, and motioned with her hand as if she had changed her mind. Then, as if she feared someone was there who shouldn’t hear her words, she lowered her voice.
“Don’t call me loose, hysterical, or whatever name you wish, but I had real sex for the first time in my life with Kreshnik.”
Wilma looked at Mary with surprise.
“In other words, I truly felt the pleasure of sex. I never experienced that during any of my youthful flings, not even with Charlie.”
Mary turned even more purple.
“I feel ashamed. I want to bury my head in the sand, but I have to say that Charlie’s fire dies immediately like a spark in water. Kreshnik was different. He took me to unfamiliar places. It was out of this world. Maybe he loves me.”
“It was love,” said Wilma to herself, and recalled how the same thing had happened to her in a hotel room when she and Ralph first met and fell in love. She, unlike Mary, had had the courage to share her feelings for him. Ralph had smiled. “I feel the same way,” he had said. “It’s all because of love. When a man & woman love each other, they kiss just as passionately after they make love as they do beforehand.”
With those words, he had embraced and kissed Wilma just like he had a few minutes before when they had been in ecstasy.
Wilma did not know how to console her friend who suddenly got up, picked up her bag, and left.
Kreshnik lay in bed, holding the sheets as if Mary still slept beside him, when his cell phone rang. He answered it reluctantly and heard Dolores’ voice. She began to lecture him in a mocking tone: “Forgive me, Nik. You were probably still asleep. After all, you were up late last night. But your boss, Max, informed me that he needs you to come to his office immediately.”
A somber shadow covered Kreshnik’s eyes.
“What time?” he asked, coldly.
“He didn’t give me an exact time. He almost chuckled. I know you’re probably tired. That happens when lovers meet. But don’t delay.”
Kreshnik detected a note of revenge in Dolores’ voice.
“That dirty bitch!” he said to himself as he hung up the phone.
Kreshnik sat across from Max in his office. Max had neither greeted him nor invited him to sit down.
“Nice story you cooked up last night!” he fumed.
Drops of saliva hit Kreshnik’s face.
“You promised me you wouldn’t go after women who even seduce the devil. Isn’t that right?”
Kreshnik froze as he imagined what would happen.
“Then, just a few hours later, your promises went out the window. You played me. You followed a woman and after you went to a cafe after midnight, you took her to your house. You two started kissing outside. Not to mention what you did with her in bed!”
Max’s face darkened.
“This was Dolores’ doing!” said Kreshnik to himself.
“Am I talking nonsense?” asked Max.
Kreshnik did not answer.
“Anyway, I’ll forgive your shameless lie,” Max continued. “Do you know why?”
A disgusting smile crossed his face, and he motioned for Kreshnik to sit across from him.
“Because if you had not met that woman, spent what I’m sure was a pleasurable night with her, and then lied about it, you might have woken up in a holding cell.”
Kreshnik winked, took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, and started smoking it.
“You smoke, too?” said Max, “Without asking my permission or offering me one. I thought you’d quit. Or are you smoking because you feel stressed and don’t know what to say?”
“I smoke once in a while,” said Kreshnik.
“Anyway, every cloud has a silver lining. If you had gone to that house on State Street at midnight and picked up the drugs which you were supposed to bring here, you and several others would have been dead meat. I might have gotten caught, too. Unbeknownst to us, the police put up roadblocks and thoroughly searched several cars not only in Sacramento but elsewhere.”
He paused briefly, lit a cigarette, then continued, “So unfortunately, we have to wait a few days, maybe even longer until this wave of police searches and raids dies down. I feel bad. I’m not earning the money I thought I would, and you’re not making anything, either, are you?”
Kreshnik shrugged his shoulders.
“You poor thing, you haven’t said a word until now because you’re ashamed,” he chuckled. “You couldn’t say anything if you tried.”
With those words, Max motioned for Kreshnik to leave. Then, he sat at his desk.
Offended, Kreshnik left his boss’s office. What could he do? In any case, he was glad he had avoided capture by the police, more specifically, by Ralph Kallagan, by meeting with Mary. Though deep in thought, he saw Dolores, dressed in a black skirt, looking even more seductive. Her mocking eyes penetrated Kreshnik.
“Have a nice night with your lover,” she said with hate in her eyes, then closed the door.
When he heard those words, Kreshnik understood everything. From the moment he had spurned her advances, Dolores had asked one of her disgusting reptiles to watch his every move and had passed on the information she had collected to Max Cooper. Kreshnik recalled having seen a man in the cafe where he had encountered Petrit, in the cafe where he and Mary had talked around midnight, and even at his house as he carried Mary inside. Perhaps he had seen the same man at all three places.
At first, he wanted to return to Max’s office and tell him Dolores had done this because she wanted revenge and was obsessed with him though he was not interested in her. However, he remained silent. That wretched woman wasn’t worth the worry. She had Max under her spell, and he believed her every word. She would tell him Kreshnik had seduced her. She was not above sending someone after him to shoot him in the back. (Continues)
Click here for Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20, Part-21, Part-22, Part-23, Part-24, Part-25, Part-26, Part-27, Part-28, Part-29,
________________
About the Authors
Carrie Hooper was born and raised in Elmira, New York. She has been blind since birth. She received a B.A. in vocal performance from Mansfield University, Mansfield, Pennsylvania. She went on to receive an M.A. in German and an M.A. in vocal performance from the State University of New York at Buffalo. After completing her studies, she spent a year at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden as a Fulbright scholar. Carrie currently lives in Elmira, New York. She taught German, Italian, and Romanian at Elmira College. She has a passion for foreign languages and in addition to the languages mentioned above, she is also proficient in Swedish, Spanish, and Albanian. Music also plays an important role in Carrie’s life. She teaches voice and piano lessons, gives vocal concerts, plays the piano and organ at a church, and sings in a community chorus. Carrie not only loves music and languages, but also enjoys poetry. She has published three books: “Piktura në fjalë” (“Word Paintings”), a bilingual collection of poetry (Albanian-English), “My Life in My Words”, and “Away from Home.” She has also translated texts from Albanian and Romanian to English.
Skifter Këllici was born in Tirana, Albania and received a diploma in history and literature from the University of Tirana. He worked as a journalist, scholar, and sportscaster on radio and television. He is the author of several novels and nonfiction books, including the children’s books, “Memories of the Old Neighborhood” and “In the Footsteps” as well as the historical novels, “Assassination in Paris”, “The Murderer with the White Hands”, and “September Disaster.” He wrote the screenplay for “In the Footsteps” which won a special prize at the International Children’s Film Festival in Giffoni, Italy in 1979. He has lived in Boston, Massachusetts since 1999.
[The book ‘Disastrous September is being reproduced in episodes with the consent of the author]
