CHAPTER 6: DRIVEN TO MADNESS

“I can do it to you, you know,” Peyton said. I was sitting at my computer reading my email.

“Do what,” I said, pausing.

“I checked her into the loony bin,” she said, laughing. “She had no say. It was my word against hers. I could do it to you,” she said again.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, getting annoyed. Our computers were on opposite walls of the office. We essentially sat back to back. I turned away from the spreadsheet to look at her. She was instant messaging someone on AOL and smiling at the screen.

“About Morgan,” she said, her fingers dancing on the keyboard. This was a woman who could not type a business letter. Or rather refused to. With a flourish like a pianist wrapping up a concert she hit the “enter” key and sent the message into the unknown.

“You had Morgan committed? The woman who helped raise your daughter?” I was incredulous. That was a tad ungrateful, I thought.

Unbelievable. I had run into Morgan a couple of months ago at a 7-11 once when Isabelle was out with me. “That is her,” Isabelle said with a sly smile, peering over the Fritos. Then she sidled away to the cooler and grabbed a three dollar can of Starbuck’s Espresso.

“Don't they have any nail polish remover in here?” Isabelle asked rhetorically, examining her long lavender nails. She moved on to the glow in the dark jewelry near the check out counter.

I had no idea Morgan was such a mess. She must have been about 35. Very tall and painfully thin. Her hair was dyed unnatural black. Her torn black tee shirt was studded with safety pins. The outside seams of her worn black jeans were strung with plastic barbed wire so her skinny thighs and bony knees poked through. Black lipstick. Short broken black nails. She was with a short fat bald butch in a torn black muscle shirt who was studded head to toe with piercings and painted with tattoos.

Wow. Not the Morgan I’d spied in some of Peyton’s photo albums.

Peyton continued. “She was a whore. When I went to work each day -- and damn, at that time I was working so hard -- Morgan would invite all the guys in the complex over for a party. They came with cigarettes, beer, wine coolers. More than that. They would hang and laugh by the pool for an hour or so. Get buzzed for the real party. And then it would move inside for the prick party. She brought them all in our house.” She sneered.

Peyton told me her police officer neighbor had informed her of Morgan’s indiscretions one evening after one of her late nights. She said he was really frank. Butting in only because he could see Peyton was holding down the house and clearly getting exploited.

“He said a half hour before I got home, she would clear them out. Party’s over.”

“So I decided to fix her. Fix her good.” she said.

She was looking at me like I was the one she was threatening to “fix good.” I cringed.

I was sitting very still and listening to her every word closely, watching her eyes darken. Watching the anger take over. I was actually afraid to move. She herself was starting to sound just a little crazy. Certainly on the edge. Would she be that manipulative, that hurtful and turn on me? She seemed like such a child most of the time. But then children tended to be hurtful. Hurtful sometimes just because.

Granted, Morgan was not playing fair. She was promiscuous, from my one sided perspective, lazy and deceitful. She was clearly taking advantage. (Of course, I did not know the whole story.) Peyton said she worked a 40 hour week at an uncomfortable job. But put Morgan away? Take away her freedom and her rights? Imprison her with lies and laugh about it? I was learning a lot about my new lover. Yes, more than I wanted to know, but things I definitely needed to know to keep myself safe and whole. This woman, Peyton, who said she wanted to take care of me. Keep me near her. Keep me safe in a nice new clean home. Give me whatever my heart desired. She was frightening. She was twisted. At the very least, she was manipulative. She had to know she was scaring me.

At the very most, she was perhaps dangerous. A threat to my freedom? Here she was comparing me to the ill fated Morgan. And I hadn’t been deceitful. Hadn’t cheated. I am not the type. Was not a liar. I knew all this. I know myself. I was truthful. Peyton seemed to have other ideas. She doubted me. Or needed to threaten me and control me. I had to be careful. I had to be alert.

But perhaps this story was not true at all. I saw Morgan just a few months ago at that 7-11. Granted, she was a far cry from her original self. She appeared to be way out in left field. But I also knew Peyton had a need to tell tall tales. To blow up every incident around her. To glorify herself. Be interesting. Be newsworthy. It was obvious every time we hooked up with her old friends. But be powerful and frightening? I took a deep breath. Maybe. I sighed and tried to look over her shoulder at the computer screen. With a click, she it disappeared and was replaced with a photo of her beloved dog.

“Well why would you want to do that to me?” I asked. Oh yes, she still had my attention. But I was trying to remain calm and conversational. I did not want her to know I was afraid. I was concerned she would feed on that and run with it. And I could see she was dancing on an edge of a magnificent manic high. Yes, I needed to be cautious.

“Because I can,” she said. Peyton smiled that charming smile that drew me in months ago with those perfect neat white teeth. A charming, boyish smile.

“Because I can, and there would be nothing you could do about it.”

At that moment she whirled around in her chair to face her computer, shutting me out with her back. She was done with me, I guess. Well, for the moment anyway. She had said her piece and had had an effect.

“You've got pictures!” chimed AOL cheerily from her speakers.

I did not need to wonder what the pictures might be. Peyton was always sharing the pictures I had taken of her in New York with the general public--well, a specific cross section of the public: the young gorgeous female segment of it. She was gathering up the pictures the young hot bloods sent in return.

I took a deep breath, suffocated the jealousy, and convinced myself that perhaps I shouldn’t be jealous at all. I would leave her to the masses. Her following. And I was confident that they wouldn’t give her what she needed. Well maybe they could in the short term.

But I was convinced they could not give what I had promised her in the long run. I was convinced I had something to give that these child-women did not. And it turns out that I was right.