S2/01. Trash Talk

1.1 Linda West
Spring 1998, The Rattlesnake, Oasis Springs

Linda hesitated to enter the bar. Frank had invited her to join him at the Rattlesnake whenever she felt like having a drink, and she had followed his invitation more and more frequently, until their meetings had become a habit. Not only Frank, but also his friends, Paolo, Marcus, George, and Dina, who were other regulars, had welcomed her warmly, and Linda had begun to wonder if she could consider them her friends too. During these evenings she had probably learned more about baseball and football than in the whole rest of her life. 

Everything had changed two weeks ago, when Mae had abruptly decided to leave for San Myshuno. Apparently, Rosa's husband had had the same plans on the same evening, and in Oasis Springs all hell broke loose. Rosa had always treated Mae with a strange curtness, and she’d declared Mae and Francesco's common departure as final proof that the two had run away together. Rosa's friends, who had always disregarded her constant jealousy, now agreed with her, and joined in condemning Mae at every occasion.

Linda knew of course that Mae had feelings for Francesco, but her sister was still deeply hurt over how it had ended between them. Linda was more than convinced that Mae had no intention to pursue Francesco again, and not only because Mae would never make advances towards a married man. However, this was the only defense Linda had for her sister, as Mae had asked her to keep silent about her confessions, but apparently no one could be convinced.

All of Oasis Springs' Bedrock Strait had hounded Linda to confirm her younger sister's depravity. When their efforts with Linda proved to be fruitless, their attitude towards Linda herself had shifted from genuinely welcoming to curt civility, and they’d started to question Mae's jilted husband instead. Herbert was another regular at the Snake's Nest, and typically overlooked by the group; until his wife had up and left him.

Herbert didn’t have anything interesting to add to the rumor mill, but he seemed to readily agree with the gossip. He and his newfound friends indulged frequently in searching for clues that Mae's affair had been going on for a long time, and could have been detected if they'd just paid more attention.

Strangely, Herbert's spirits lifted more than one would expect at the prospect of his wife having cheated on him.

Much to Linda's disappointment.

Fair enough, her sister's head-over-heels departure had been quite a shock for Herbert, despite their marriage having cooled over the last few months. Mae had been keeping their communication minimal since she’d left, and he still might have no explanation for her sudden departure, but Linda had expected Herbert to know his wife better than that.

The only person who was completely unfazed by all the gossip was Frank.

He was the reason she came to the Snake’s Nest again, despite having mixed feelings over her welcome among the locals. So far her social needs had been satisfied enough by occasional chats with her friend Delilah, and the bi-weekly gatherings of the local group she volunteered with to tend to the community garden. That said, she and Frank had met frequently, and she’d become so used to his company after a long day in the laboratory, that she noticed she missed it.

Conversing with Frank was so effortless. Though he was an engineer, and only superficially familiar with microbiology and plant chemistry, he could follow Linda’s thoughts and explanations easily, and she often found his practical viewpoint quite valuable. Aside from debating about "nerdy stuff", as Paolo once called it, they talked often about anything and everything else.

And Linda did not find it dreadful.

"You going in or not?" A familiar voice startled her, but she could hear the smile in Frank's tone. 

"Uhm... well-" she mumbled, "I'm not sure if I'm still welcome here." She tried to smile back.

"It's a bar," Frank smirked and held the door open for her, "everyone who pays for their drinks and doesn't start a brawl is welcome."

He was right. She probably worried too much.

Not long after they received their beers and had barely started debating about the possibility of a new mission to Sixam, Paolo, George and Marcus joined and they had to postpone their discussion. Soon they only talked about sports and Marcus' prospects to join a football team with better chances for the national cup.

Naturally, Linda could not add much to it, but she’d never minded if they spoke about something she couldn’t participate in, and was content enough to listen. She probably just imagined that the three other men deliberately tried to exclude her. However, just when Frank had left with them for a match of foosball, Dina approached her, and Linda did not imagine the woman’s furious countenance.

"What are you doing here?" Dina demanded with open hostility.

"Why, I am enjoying a glass of cold beer." Linda refused to lose her composure over a possible misunderstanding.

"Oh, cut the crap," Dina sneered, "No one wants you around here after what your sister did to Rosa. And Frank's just too nice to tell you that face to face. Fuck off."

For a brief moment Linda was left speechless at the other woman's rudeness.

  

"Very well," she said then. "I will not bother you further. Thank you for your honesty." She managed a curt smile, put a bill under her glass on the table, and left the bar.

Outside, she stopped to take a deep breath of the fresh night air. It had cooled down in the last hour, and she shivered a little, though she didn’t know if it was from freezing or from anger.

She'd scream if there weren't those few guests standing and sitting in groups in front of the bar.

Frank's friends were such- such boneheads! It was not Mae's fault that Rosa had married an unreliable man! And how did it have anything to do with her and Frank's friendship?

Linda wondered if those people really expected her to trash talk her own sister and lie behind her back to be accepted by them. She shook her head in disbelief at the presumption.

Whatever, Linda would certainly not impose herself where she wasn’t welcome. She took another deep breath and tried to shake off the sudden sadness that came over her at the thought of having lost someone she’d never hesitated to call a friend. 

"Dina was way out of line. I'm sorry." Frank's voice was unusually soft.

Linda was a little surprised that he’d noticed her absence so quickly, and that he came out to look for her.

"You do not need to apologize," she said. "I am sorry for barging in between you and your friends. I do not want to cause trouble for you."

Unexpectedly, Frank laughed. He put his hand on her arm and led her to a nearby bench. The warmth of his touch on her skin made its way into her heart, and her sadness evaporated.

"I don't believe for a second you ever caused trouble," he smirked.

After a short, uneasy minute of silence, Frank turned to her with a serious look, "They're not bad people, but they're pushing it too far now."

Linda was still frustrated about Dina's impertinence, but in a way she understood her. "They are standing by their friend. It is actually quite admirable." 

"It's not if they don't realize it's bullshit what Rosa is feeding them."

Frank's impartial position in this whole dispute had always puzzled Linda a little. She was grateful for his faith in her and Mae, but she wondered how he could be so sure.

Frank must have read her mind. "I had my fair share of experience with Rosa." His smile got a grim touch. "She's a great friend, but possessive jealousy brings out the worst in her. Not as if that makes him any better, leaving his wife with a baby like that."

"You must have known her for a while," Linda guessed.

"We met in college," Frank said, but didn’t elaborate. "Why keep an affair a secret after the damage is done? Doesn’t make sense, and it would’ve probably come out by now anyway."

Mae had been to Oasis Springs twice since she had left to make arrangements for her divorce, and her move to San Myshuno. Of course she’d heard the rumors too, and she’d asked to see Rosa for a few minutes to clear the air between them. Rosa now stayed often in Bedrock Strait with her friends, close to Herbert's house, and so Mae met her there.

However, their conversation went downhill quicker than anyone anticipated.

They had barely talked a few civil sentences before Rosa went on the offensive, first verbally, then physically, attacking Mae.

It took Frank some effort to pull Rosa off Mae, who got away with some scratches and a few less hair strands.

Linda hadn’t been there, but Mae had raged about it with plenty of colorful language before breaking down crying, then sipping on another cup of chamomile tea.

"Have you heard from Rosa's husband?" Linda asked Frank, but with little hope. "He certainly has to solve his own business, and he could help clear Mae's name, too."

"Nope," Frank said, "that jackass disappeared from the face of earth. Rosa hasn't heard from him since, and god knows why she acts all worried about him. She'd rather be mad at him than waste her energy on leading this witch hunt against Mae without proof. I mean, Mae is no angel, it was really low how she dropped her husband, but looks like no one cares about that. And now you're dragged into this bullshit too." 

Linda was touched by his concern for her, but something irked her. "Are you suggesting it would be better to stay in an unhappy marriage to not hurt one’s partner, rather than to give both parties a chance for a fresh start?" She asked, and she found herself having sympathy not only for Mae, who she had seen wither in her marriage, but also a tiny bit for Rosa's disconscient husband, who may have suffered under Rosa's jealousy too, despite finding it unforgivable that he seemed to not care about his child.

"Don't you think Mae should have maybe tried to work with Herbert on their marriage a bit longer before giving up?" Frank asked instead of answering her question. "I don’t know everything that went on between them, but it didn’t last very long."

Linda had to think a bit. Naturally, she would have agreed with Frank, but the fact that a single moment with her ex-lover had been enough for Mae to dismiss her marriage? After the two years Mae had spent with Herbert, nine months of them married, Linda wondered if Mae had ever loved Herbert at all. Perhaps it had been, rather, a marriage out of the need for a place to belong, to feel safe and loved, and it had gone awry in an unexpected way as Herbert made Mae more uncomfortable than happy over time.

Linda concluded it would be better not to try and forcefully fix what may have never been there.

"I think they were not right for each other," she said.

Frank raised an eyebrow, he didn't seem content with her reply, but he didn't pursue the matter any further. 

"I just don't see the point," Linda continued, her mind drifting to another person who she hadn’t thought of in a long time, "why would someone want to stay married to a person they do not love? This man I used to date, he said that his wife and he did not love each other, but he also insisted he would not get divorced. I am not particularly sure if it was because of his children, I never had the impression he was very fond of them. He rarely talked about his family."

Linda spoke more to herself than to Frank, and while she was evaluating Alejandro's sense of duty as being motivation enough to not divorce his wife with four children (and a stepchild), her speculations came to a sudden halt when she noticed the utter bewilderment in Frank's face, and – possibly a trace of disgust.

"You... you had an affair with a married man – a father? Of all people?"

She felt her cheeks flush with burning heat. It was one thing to be called out by her sister, they had that type of intimate relationship where Linda allowed herself to talk freely about these kinds of topics, but admitting her indiscretion to Frank raised a level of discomfort worse than she could have imagined.

"Wow," Frank said after a short break while he visibly gathered himself. "And here I thought I'm talking to Miss Innocence herself. I think I might have to rethink my concept of the world."

For the first time, Linda felt like she needed to defend herself to him, and it was a very unpleasant feeling.

"I'm not proud of it," she said, "but it was not me who wrecked his home. If I had refused him after I learned about his family, I could have hardly stopped him seeing another woman. Neither would I have been able to convince him to divorce. We were not that close, and we never wanted to be." Linda remembered the nonchalance with which Alejandro had told her about his marriage after she noticed his ring. It was probably their third or fourth meeting, and Linda was intrigued to know what sort of person this man was, while at the same time relieved by the implication that he would probably never expect her commitment to their relationship.

  

"Wow," Frank said again. "I would understand if you were, let's say, crazy in love with him before you found out, but this... this is cold."

Frank’s blatant disappointment stung deeper than all the treatment Linda had received these past two weeks. "I do not understand," she said, though she was desperately trying to, "how my involvement made anything worse for that family."

"Probably it didn't," Frank said. "You just picked up another woman's trash. I didn't think you could find a spineless cheating jerk like that attractive enough."

Linda never had seen it from this point of view. In a way, Frank's disapproval made more sense now, but what could she have done better? "Do you think I should have tried to contact his wife after I found out?"

Frank shifted in his place, then shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows if his wife knew that that marriage was wrecked. I guess it would’ve been best to just stay out of it. Including the affair."

"Oh." Linda said, and she finally understood. It was just a moral-related problem, and therefore not solvable with logic.

For a while both sat in silence, and for the first time, it was a rather uncomfortable one.

"Don't you wanna come back in?" It was Paolo who interrupted.

"Nah. It's late, I gotta go home," Frank replied and stood up. 

Paolo shrugged his shoulders. " 'Kay, see ya," he said and returned to the bar, acting as if Linda weren't there. 

Frank made no attempt to leave, though, he played with his fingers, then tucked his hair back. He looked a lot more tired than a few minutes ago. "Good night, Linda," he finally said, half avoiding her eyes.

"Good night, Frank." 

"I'll call you," he added.

Then he walked away.

Linda stayed on the bench, unsure if she should have said something else. She had the impression the last few minutes may have profoundly changed her relationship with Frank, and it worried her.
Certainly she never had expected her affair with Alejandro to have this kind of consequence.