19 - The Visitor

"I'm think I'm going to have to quit." Cammie said to Steve as she handed him an order slip for two mochas and a biscotti. She hadn't meant to blurt it out like that; she should really have waited until the cafe was closed up, or at least until Steve had a quiet moment; then taken him aside and broke it to him gently. But she had never been one to hold onto bad news, or tear off a band-aid slowly, and she spoke as soon as it occurred to her that it was something she would have to eventually do. He did not take it well, freezing in mid movement, his hand a mere inch away from grasping the slip of thin paper than Cammie proffered to him, her untidy hand scrawled across it in blue ink.

"What?" he said in disbelief, ignoring a customer who stood at the counter. Steve put one hand to his chest and almost immediately began to get teary.

"Is it me? Did I do something wrong? Do you need a raise? Because I'm strapped here, you know that honey." He took deep breaths between certain words.

"Oh no no no, Stevie," Cammie rushed to placate him. "It's not you at all, it's really me." She was overly conscious of how much she sounded like she was breaking up with him at this point. "I just ... I've got so much going on. It's a matter of time, really."

Steve eyed her suspiciously, with a hint of mistrust. "Have you found another job? Are you cutting and running?"

"No! No, I just thought I might, y'know, get into education, maybe go traveling or something, not right away, but sometime soon."

Mainly as a product of her constant complaining, and how little he paid her, Steve knew well enough how much money Cammie had at her disposal. "Did you have a rich uncle who died or something?" He asked.

Cammie sighed, but realized she had to invent some kind of story to explain her new circumstances sooner or later, and, like the band-aid, it might as well be the former. The only problem was, her mind wasn't moving quickly enough to make up the requisite undisproveable details on the fly.

"Yeah, ah, something like that, family troubles. Don't want to get into it really, sore point you know, but, yeah, could mean, some ... new opportunities, you know?" She shrugged self-consciously and bobbed slightly at the knees with a grimace, hoping her lame story would pass muster. It didn't, but Steve knew well enough to stop asking questions. He stepped forward and rubbed her arm gently.

"Is everything okay honey?" He asked, at the same moment that customer who was waiting to be served got the message that it was unlikely to happen anytime soon and went back to their chair.

Cammie wanted to brush the question off with nonchalant 'yeah', but to her surprise found her eyes welling up at his expression of concern. She tried to brush them away, but it was clear to Steve that something was wrong.

"What is it?" he said with concern.

"Oh," she said through the tears. "I broke up with Lock."

"Really sweetie?" Steve enfolded her with his long skinny arms, giving her a hug and a squeeze. "That's terrible. Are you okay? What did he do?"

"Oh," she said, trying to sniff her tears back into their ducts. "nothing. I just wasn't feeling it, y'know?"

Steve rubbed her back and then let her out of his embrace. "Yeah. You've seemed a little bit out of sorts lately. I thought it might be something like that."

Cammie was grateful to have found an excuse for her distress, but at the same time she was slightly saddened that the opportunity to unburden herself of her worries about Anthony, the proposal, the suicide, the inheritance, all of it; had passed. She would have welcomed the chance to talk about it to somebody, anybody. Having to live with the entire situation in her head was robbing it of context, of sanity. There'd been so many times when she hadn't been able to tell if the situation she was in was completely logical on one hand or totally insane on the other. Or perhaps the reason she was so afraid to talk to someone about it was because they would tell her that it was insane, and the opportunity for her to change the direction of her life would pass her by. Maybe it really was too crazy to hope for?

"Do you know when you want to finish up?" Steve said, breaking her from her momentary reverie.

"No," she said, wiping the skin under her eyes with her fingers and, finding them unabsorbent, reaching for a napkin from under the counter to finish the job. "Nothing's set in stone. Not too soon, but soon."

"Okay, whenever you want. And if you want to go part time that's cool too. Whatever you need. You'll still be back for coffee, right?"

Cammie couldn't express her appreciation for his unquestioning kindness. "Thanks." was all she could muster. "I appreciate it. I'm sorry."

"That's fine, no worries. We'll talk about it later, okay? Let's get some of these mochas out, shall we?"

"Okay." she sniffed again, smiling at his efficient happiness. She'd miss him, if things unfolded as she hoped they would. Her mind jogged through several thoughts at once, from the proposal, to Anthony, to Lachlan, to walking on the beach, to getting the text message from Steve, which prompted her to say:

"Oh, did you send me a text the other night? About a message?"

"Oh yeah." said Steve, putting ground coffee beans into the giant silver unit that would eventually produce the mochas. His tears had passed as quickly as they had arrived and he spoke in an utterly normal tone of voice, as if nothing had occurred. "A customer came in, a lady, nicely done, just asked if she could find you. Left her name and number."

"Oh yeah, what was her name?"

Steve thought for a moment, his head cocked still while his hands worked the machine in front of him. "Uhm, can't remember, I wrote it down somewhere." His head swiveled about the kitchen as he looked about for the piece of paper, but then he looked out over the counter into the cafe proper and his eyes lit up. "You can ask her yourself actually, she just came in."

Cammie turned her eyes towards the door to see a woman in her mid-forties, at least as far as Cammie could tell. She was well dressed, in a red and black summer frock that looked inconspicuously expensive. She was looking at Anthony as she entered and must have read their expressions and placed them in context instantly, as she walked directly up to Cammie and held out her hand over the counter.

"You must be Cammie." she said in a clipped, softly accented tone. "I'm Alison."

Cammie took her hand suspiciously, the name ringing about in her mind, unable to immediately find a place.

"Uhm ... hi? How can I help you?"

Alison continued quickly: "I'd really like to talk to you, alone. Now, if possible, after your shift ends if not."

"Regarding what?" Cammie said, still perplexed.

The woman took a moment to reassess the situation given Cammie's evident lack of knowledge, and then restated herself.

"I apologize. I'm Alison Raymond. I'm Anthony's wife."

Cammie's mouth fell open with a small "Ah."

*

They sat in the garden behind the cafe a short time later. There were no other customers sharing the space with them. Cammie's shift was yet to end, but Steve, sensing that this woman and Cammie's unexpected announcement were somehow related and important, had given her the rest of the day off. Cammie looked over Alison's shoulder and saw him running to and fro from the kitchen to the clients in order to fill all the orders, and then returned her gaze to assess the woman before her.

Alison was not how Cammie had imagined her from reading Anthony's letter, but then, she supposed, she'd never imagined her very precisely, never had reason to. In person she looked somewhat harder than the caring mother Anthony had described. Alison said nothing immediately, so Cammie figured she had better get the first word in.

"Look, I don't know how much you've heard ... " she started, before Alison immediately cut her off.

"I haven't heard anything other than getting a call from my lawyer that Anthony was trying to get married again. He managed to obtain your name from the certificate, and here I am. It's not legal you know, your certificate. You can't get married twice. It's utterly invalid."

Cammie was confused by Alison's purpose here, and she wanted to establish the context before going any further, so she tried again for information:

"Look, if you think I'm after his money ... " Alison again cut Cammie off with a harsh barking laugh, short and sharp.

"Listen, I feel sympathy for you dear, I really do, but I'm here to tell you: There's no money. No marriage. No insurance scheme. You're not the first girl he's done this to."

"Done ... what to?"

Alison looked at her with a mixture of pity and derision. "The scam, the whole thing. The business about wanting to die, wanting you to save him. He's done it before, at least three times, that I know of. I can't judge you, of course. I'm just as guilty. I think I was the first to fall for it."

"Fall for it? Wait," Cammie's mind was reeling. She'd always considered the possibility that Anthony had been lying, but not that she was confronted with it, she was flabbergasted by the scale of it. "are you saying your kids never drowned?"

Alison's face went hard. "There were never any kids. He's childless, as am I."

Cammie felt her fingertips go numb. "What the fuck is going on?" She said, the first tendrils of a headache stroking her frontal lobes.

Alison?s' expression softened and she reached out a hand onto the table in front of Cammie, as if to hold her hand, had it been there. "He's a fantasist, dear. He makes things up. Believes them himself, from what I can tell. Ridiculous things, and they seem to be getting more and more extreme. When I met him, it was cancer. He had cancer, I was a trainee nurse, and I fell for his lies. He kept them going for years before I rumbled him, and even then only after being confronted with unassailable evidence. And when one reality is torn down, he just moves on and creates another."

"What?" was all Cammie could think to say. Her brain could hardly process the magnitude of the lies. Lying about dying kids. About wanting to die himself. It was beyond cruel.

"I'm so sorry you had to be caught up in this. As I said, you're not the first, if that makes you feel any better."

"But ... why?"

"He creates other worlds for himself because he's terrified of this one. If he can convince himself that he's in a different world, where he is the victim, and convince other people, young women, that they're in the same world, he find it easier to interact with them. It's his way of ... " she smiled sardonically. " ... well, it's his way of courting."

"He was courting me?"

"Or hitting on you, seducing you, whatever you want to call it, he was opening a door to his world, and inviting you in. Once you're inside, once you're internalized the lie, you carry on perpetuating it yourself."

Cammie held the sides of her head with her hands, as if you stop it from exploding.

"That's fucked up."

Alison could only smile, a small, sad smile that Cammie recognized. "It is indeed. I'm sorry, but you should tell me where he is, and then stay away from him."

"You don't know where he is?"

"No. Every time he does this, I have him committed, but he's not, despite all appearance, a severe case- and can get released on his own recognizance after a short while. You're lucky really, I managed to find you before things got too far. It's always a struggle finding him, but I always think about the damage he's doing, and can't live with the idea of just letting him run free to ruin someone else's life like he did mine. The marriage can be annulled, is already, technically. You're not fully immersed in his world yet, are you?" She looked at her sideways, and asked again: "Are you?"

"He was never in danger? He doesn't want to die?"

"I don't think so. He's never hurt himself before. He just wants sympathy. It's Munchausen's Syndrome, as much as anything else."

"But, the ladder, the car. He's come so close."

"It may seem that way, even to him, but it's unlikely that he's genuinely suicidal. If he wanted to go, he's had ample opportunity, has he not?"

"I don't believe it."

"You don't believe what?"

"Everything. I don't know what to believe. How can I trust you?"

Alison looked taken aback. "You can't believe him."

"Do you have any proof? A photo of you and he together? A marriage certificate?"

"Not on me, but yes, I can supply it. Why do you need it? Surely you can't believe what he has been telling you, about his children, about me? Whatever he has said, it can't be true."

"But you don't know what he's said!" Cammie said with surprising violence. With Anthony's truth removed, she felt she could not trust anything that anyone said. All of reality seemed up for question, except what was right in front of her own eyes. She stood up and backed away from the table. "Something's not right. Why are you still pursuing him? Why don't you divorce him?"

"The divorce is in progress." Alison said with some anger. "I still care about him, for all he's done. He doesn't know that he's doing wrong, he just does. Who else will look after him? After you? And girls like you?"

"This is bullshit!" Cammie screamed, her eyes welling with angry tears. Steve, hearing her yell, rushed from the kitchen, a cafe full of staring eyes behind him, and opened the door.

"Is everything okay back here, Cam?" he said through the open door.

"It's bullshit! Stay the fuck away from me!" She yelled at Alison, then ran through the doors past Anthony, and past the cafe's lounge full of curious bystanders. She ran through the front doors of the cafe and, Alison calling after her to come back, was gone.