Frances III

For a chronolgy, read previous posts about Frances first. Or read this one. Suit yourself.

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Look, I’m man enough to admit my feelings. People tell me I’ve got a tough exterior. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But I know as a matter of self-preservation I can’t give my heart away to every gal that turns my head for a moment or two.

I think I learned this lesson in High School. I learned it from a girl named Anne. I had a huge crush on her. So did half the guys in my class. It didn’t work out. That’s when I learned to deal with pain of the heart variety.

And that brings me back around to Frances. I can honestly say I never treated her poorly. That’s right, even when I wouldn’t be her butler and fetch her drinks. I didn’t treat her poorly. Come to think of it, that’s probably why she liked me. She couldn’t order me around. Something inside her insisted on testing every man that came along. To pass the test on the superficial level was to fail the test in the big picture. Is this making any sense?

We spent the next couple of days at sea. They were wonderful days, full of intimate conversation, melancholy remembrances, speculation about the meaning of all things. We talked politics, we talked religion, we talked sex, we talked family. We talked about everything and rarely agreed. And it didn’t seem to matter. We laughed at our differences. Our hearts had connected in a way that don’t often connect between human beings.

Well, I’m sounding all sentimental and that’s not my intent. I’d rather describe the days around Crooked island, swimming the reefs naked, laying out in the sun, drinking rum at Pittstown Point. Making love day and night.

We eventually made it around the entire island, but then only had time to make the sail back to Georgetown. The conversation that last day is the one I remember most clearly.

“Packer?”
“Yeh?”
“It’s coming to an end, you know.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“What, you’re going to quit your job and we’ll move in together, have two kids and live happily ever after?”
“Yeh, sure, something like that.”
She paused and looked out across the starboard bow at the glitter of the sun off the water.
“There’s things you don’t know about me.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“So tell me, Packer, where do you think I work?”
“Consider this, Frances. I met you in Alexandria, you were a representative for an electronics contractor, but you couldn’t talk very convincingly about your job.”
“Oh, I couldn’t? I never heard that one before. I think I was quite convincing.”
“Which is as much as a verification for my theory.”
She grinned, “Keep going, Packer.”
“Something about what you know and how you carry yourself, where you live and who you pretend to be. I put you with the NSA. Maybe an analyst, more likely a runner.”
“A runner?”
“Yeh, not exactly an agent, but someone who gets around, knows things, gets other people to talk.”
Her gaze broke mine and she looked around the boat, as though she were making sure we were alone.
“You’re good, Packer. I’ll give you that. I knew you were no fool, but even at that I may have underestimated your powers of deductive reasoning.”
“But you’re not telling me that I’m right or that I’m wrong.”
She smiled, “Of course not. But I don’t have to, do I?”
I merely shook my head.
“Packer, I’m going to be gone for a month. When I get back, we’ll talk.”
She was silent. I was silent. My hope was that we would talk about domestic tranquility. That we would talk about true love and what true lovers would do to escape the madness of the world and fall into each other for eternity.

The trip to the runway was bittersweet. She refused long good-byes and quickly prepared the Beech Baron for takeoff. I loaded baggage and checked fuel. She rechecked the fuel anyway. I expected nothing less. In the cockpit, engines running, ready to taxi, she looked my way one last time. I’m certain she winked before she powered up the engine revolutions and took the runway.

That was 17 years ago. I’m still waiting for that talk. To this day I have not given up on her return. I have spent a great deal of time trying to track her down, trying to determine if she lived or died. Nothing. I never had a good feeling about it.

A man can tell when he has made a connection. Frances still haunts my thoughts. She didn’t just dump me and disappear.

The final chapter on her has not been written.


Faithfully submitted,
Teddy Packer