Susan

I met Susan through a mutual friend the first year I lived in Colorado.

Through my 22-yr old world-seasoned eyes Susan seemed young, but at 19 she was already a generation or two beyond any daydreams I had about catching up. Even in a ski town notorious for glamour, conspicuous wealth, chemical excess and sexual indulgence Susan was a maelstrom ... a femme fatale who fractured men's tedious egos by becoming bored and simply glancing away.

Not that she was either the prettiest nor the most physically attractive, although even by Aspen's mile-high standards she was certainly more than attractive enough. Susan was simply the most alluring and also the most dangerous ... a raven-haired succubus in heels and designer jeans who compelled stammering men to make ridiculous offers of cash, furs, vacations or jewelry for her attention ... who'd later shrug off their affection with indifference.

I knew firsthand of more than a handful of examples, and they were all pathetic.

Am I painting too colorful a picture? No, I am not. Susan not only burned bridges ... she set fire to the luckless men (and women) trying to cross them.

Despite our friendship, Susan and I moved in different social circles. I was a security guard and bank janitor; she was the quintessential party-girl whose name and face were ubiquitous across the most debauched party town in the Rockies. I never heard any lies or exaggerations about her ... probably because I already knew every thing I heard was true.

I knew the stories were true because Susan would tell me herself, often answering questions with a sad smile and a shake of her head, starting off with "Joe Joe Joe," as though pitying me for volunteering my ears for the sword.

We were friends in a town during a time when there was no such things as "going out," dating or "getting serious." Either two people were having sex , about to have sex, or they hadn't met. Emotions and commitment were never any part of the Aspen equation.

We ran into each other outside The Ute City Banque late one afternoon just as the twilight brought one of the first snowfalls of the season. The flakes didn't fall, they floated and swirled like silk tufts riding invisible currents through the streets.

Susan brushed away the snowflakes from my face and frowned a half-smile. "Look what's happened to your hair."

Susan left for several months soon after that; I driving her to the airport and thinking I'd never see her again. It's supposed to be bad luck to take pictures before a flight but I did anyway, though the two pictures disappeared before I remembered they were important.

Susan moved back the next summer and lived in Basalt, a 20-minute ride downvalley by bus. The first stop inside the city limits was outside my window below the filthy room I rented at The Agate Lodge, a tumble-down of a 1940s-era motorcourt locals referred to as "The Maggot."

Even though it meant adding a 10 minute walk to her trip, Susan stopped by and visited for an hour or so on her way to work (by then she had the occasional day job) at least once every week. But other times she had the day off and we'd walk five blocks past the gingerbread houses into town and spend afternoons at Say Frommage! or Horsefeathers over coffee and croissants ... hinting and remembering our secret that one day we'd run away (because no one else could put up with either one of us) and disappear together in Paris.

Eventually she'd check her watch, promise we'd see each other again soon, hug goodbye and walk out the door ... leaving most of the testosterone universe quivering in her wake.

Susan set the Gold Standard for telling men "Yes" but meaning "No" as her eyes flashed like razors through fantasies and expectations. Even though she told lies and broke promises as easily as the sun rises and sets Susan promised me one thing, and she kept her word.

Almost ... she tried to anyway, but it was probably my fault she didn't follow through.

We'd vowed to each other through the years that should one of us get trapped into becoming engaged to anyone else, the other one would show up ahead of the wedding on an idling Harley outside the church... representing a last avenue of escape that meant, "It's still not too late ... you don't have to if you don't want to."

Susan had a dark, adventurous no-risk-is-too-great personality that thrived on adrenaline and hinged on self-immolation. One night while a snowstorm raged outside we sat together by the fireplace in my apartment, Susan told me more than I wanted to know about her past and her upcoming "plans" ... and finished by saying she'd known all her life that she'd never live to be thirty. But thirty was 10 years away and impossibly too blurred to imagine.

We stayed in contact with cards and phone calls across 10 states after we'd both finally moved away, though there wasn't always much exciting to talk about ... after Aspen, conversations about her job, the insufferable heat in Arizona and her ongoing health problems (which may have been code for Rehab) felt like shadows trespassing across our city of lights.

We stayed friends even after that tense, borderline hysterical midnight call she made telling me she felt abandoned, accusing me of being selfish, saying I'd turned my back when there was no one else, and that she wished she was dead. She slammed down the phone in incoherent tears asking why didn't I care, adding she'd never bother me ever again.

Susan didn't keep her promise on that one, not by a lifetime.

It took a several months without contact before I wanted to hear from her again, but even that episode passed and eventually we were back in touch, though I can't remember who made the first healing gesture.

We hadn't seen each other in five years, but the afternoon I told her I was engaged Susan's voice seemed uncertain and offguard as she managed, "Then I'll be there on the Harley." By then the bright lights of Responsibility and Reality had dimmed Aspen's glitter and I told her No Susan, not this time.

"You're sure?"

Over the next few weeks Susan called more often, whimsically but always pleasantly closing, "Are you sure?" The truth was that my ex-wife bought none of my assurances that Susan and I had never been lovers nor had we had any sort of physical relationship at all ... yet women are expansively intuitive and perplexingly focused on maintaining their domains. When it came to Susan she wasn't having any of it. She didn't even want Susan coming to the wedding.

Telling Susan she wasn't invited was hard, maybe at that time the hardest thing I'd even done. Despite everything I've mentioned so far I could tell she was hurt, and hurt deeply ... probably because rejection and closed doors weren't something she was used to.

I never heard from Susan again.

A few months later I got a phone call I didn't see coming. After confirming it was actually me he was talking to, the caller identified himself as a detective for a sheriff's department in city in a southwestern state, and began asking a series of uneasy questions including-

Did I know Susan?
How long had I known her?
Where had I been during the past six months?
When was the last time I'd seen her?
When was the last time we'd talked?
Did I have any idea why the last thing she'd written in her day planner was "Call Joe ASAP"?

He couldn't share details from the ongoing investigation but Susan had been murdered, found dead in her trailer outside Phoenix. Worried friends had called the police after they hadn't heard from her over the weekend. Later I learned Susan had been stabbed to death, that the police had a boyfriend/suspect who'd confessed, but some technicality about Miranda warnings rendered his confession inadmissible.

Susan was 29 years old.

The suspect had the same first name, the same first letter in his last name that I do.

I knew Susan's mother but didn't know whether to call with condolences. It seemed too much like saying, "It's terrible ... but are you surprised?"

A few years later I was divorced and got a phone call from the friend who'd been Susan's best friend who'd introduced us more than 10 years before. She'd called to tell me some of Susan's personal belongings, papers mostly, had been released to her through the police. She wanted nothing to do with Susan, not even in death, but before destroying Susan's effects she asked if I wanted to have them instead.

A few days later the package arrived by mail, an odd collection of Susan's papers still folded in a plastic bag.

Years, literally, passed before I could open and actually touch what I saw inside. The first thing I opened was her address book and as I thumbed through it the entries, snapshots of names, rumors and newspaper stories flashed back in detail.

And there was my name, with the old Aspen phone number and address, opposite the name, address and phone number of a suspected coke dealer who'd been machine-gunned to death in his Aspen driveway. I remembered the name because she'd told me about his parties. And there were a few names you'd probably recognize, too.

I've never been big about hanging on to photographs, memories, scrapbooks or reminiscenes. I've looked several times since then but can't find one picture of Susan ... nor a birthday, Valentine or Christmas card anywhere. Not so much as one letter remains from the stack Susan sent me through the years.

They've all vanished, disappeared, probably intentionally included and thrown out among the refuse that began accumulating the day someone saw my reaction to hearing, "Just tell her she's not invited. It's my wedding ... why is that so hard for you to understand?"

I wish I knew how Susan and I changed or at least affected each others' lives. But I don't know. Hopefully she knew I was her friend and never forgot. I don't want to think she ever felt scared or abandoned again ... that I'd turned my back on her one last time.

I've wondered what our relationship would be like today if things had gone differently. But there were already a thousand different If's by the last time we talked ... without even starting on the afternoon she never showed up on the Harley.

And there's no point wondering what made her decide that was the time she ought to believe me.

It's Just A Playlist, after all
All Through the Night - Donna Summers
Sunset People - Donna Summers
My Baby Understands - Donna Summers