Chapter-- 

Don't get the impression that Mona was my woman or some such nonsense like that. She flitted around and went where she felt like it. You have to say things to her to keep her interested in you.

I don't know if Rasputin was in love with her or not. She didn't like the idea of he keeping "a harem" as she called it althought I wouldn't call it that. Some women saw him as the guy with the most power and they wanted some of it. That's the bottom-line fact. He was not an attractive guy, Mona told me that. "He's an aging lumberjack with bad teeth." That's how she described him. But, there were times I saw them together, away from everyone and it appeared to me they were on their honeymoon. I can't describe it any other way? I wasn't jealous but I felt a strange pang as though that time should be spent with me. Then I would laugh because I knew there would come a time when I would leave and my time with them would fade to dark. So, I reasoned, why get involved?

You're right I did get involved.

She had teased me enough, swim naked with me and all. And she always had this suggestive string of words that would spring something loose in me. But the nail never got hammered down so to speak. They told me she was that way and blamed it on killing all those chickens but I knew to much to believe that. Some of them had the belief that animals like chickens were the reincarnations of bland people. Not evil or bad persons but those who were scarred back into some womb and never came out. But, souls nonetheless and whenever Mona chopped on the heads off she would unleash the bland spirit and it would infect the whole place. Some people blamed their depressions on it and said she had a bad spirit in her.

I didn't believe a word of it but it did get me thinking. "Why would a petite thing like that like to chop the heads off?"

I told her she was a warrier in a past life, maybe a Viking woman who had been betrayed by her man or even Boudica who killed 80,000 Romans and Brits in Londinium and Verulamium and who mysteriously disappeared even though she put a scare into Nero. She shrugged her shoulders and said sure. She would fight for her freedom. She didn't want to hurt anyone but if they were going to hurt her.....I couldn't pull down any more historic types at that moment but I noticed a slight smile from her.

It didn't give me the key apparently. I would observe her and Rasputin together. They were like old friends. Brother and sister. It seemed strange to me that I didn't see much passion between them. In the great calculus of love they had come to some arrangement, I could never figure it out.

Age has convinced me that only a woman who inspires me is worth it. I know it isn't true, certainly for many guys, but for me she had to draw out that meaningful love without which there is nothing but fear and destruction. She didn't have it. No, Mona was not a muse but a kind of female guide into what-the-woman-is-today. I couldn't tell you because a young man doesn't discriminate all that much. There she is, suddenly, in the room that had been a boy's fort. Life changes and by the time a guy gets knocked around a few times he's in the arms of the possessive cow he was supposed to be with, fated from the beginning. But Mona narrated the story of the women I was in and among and brought me to some greater understanding.

David Eide
January 24, 2014