Absolute Jay episode one part two

Absolute Jay a soap opera episode one part two

Absolute Jay: One

From Disappointment to the Pie House


Two: Shade Tree and Flowers


When David and Sabrina married at the age of 17 both their parents had begged them to wait, but seeing the inevitable marriage they gave into their children and blessed the wedding. Not just emotionally but financially. Each side of their families offered the young couple cash enough to get settled into their home and feed themselves for a few months. David and Sabrina with their self-control and focus managed to save enough of that seed money to start Shade Tree Auto the next year. At the age of 18 David toiled night and day in a little shop with minimal assistance and few tools, until he gained enough word-of-mouth business as an honest and efficient repair shop. He had even been featured in the Houston Chronicle twice as "the little shop with a big heart." Finally with enough crew and enough tools, he made a good living, and still felt a huge since of pride every time he walked into his shop.


Before Sabrina got ill she toiled beside her husband, working the phones, greeting the customers. People of all sort stopped in just to say hello to her. Her husband never tired of watching men and women, children and animals, melt into her joy for life. Some simply called her Angel.


While the shop was still his pride, it was now his grief's tomb. At home, with his daughter he could imagine life still. His daughter looked like her mother. Her voice even had a tone that reminded him of Sabrina. Through his daughter, it seemed, Sabrina lived there at home, so he didn't need to grieve for her every moment. But the shop only held echoes of Sabrina's voice and she came as a ghost in spoken memories from simple acquaintances who remembered her charity and good humor.


The worst of those memories at the shop was the beautiful memorial laid out by her customers and friends in front of the shop on the day of her death. It was a beautiful nightmare that David could never purge from his memory. The parking lot and shop driveway had been covered in flowers and cards and wreaths, some giving their love and praise to Sabrina the kind-hearted, some simply to Angel. He had maintained some reason and sanity for his daughter's sake while his wife died and after, but when he had passed their shop covered in love for his wife, after her funeral, he had lost himself to his grief. He couldn't remember her funeral. He couldn't remember holding her hand as she died, for a week. But for a week after her death he couldn't get the image of their shop covered in eulogy and heart-filled funeral decor. The bigness of her life was proven there where so many needed to say goodbye. That image still surged like an electric jolt now and then, when he was at their shop.


Now everyday, he had to work there with out her, letting the pride she had for him and what they had accomplished drive him on, while she blessed and haunted the place. While he watched and sometimes resented a different woman greet his customers and make arrangements to repair their vehicles with integrity and decency.


The woman who had taken over Sabrina's role at the shop did it well. David expected that she would. Sabrina had found Jackie herself, and asked her to work at the shop. For some reason, unknown to David, Jackie did more than take care of business. She gave his daughter advice on such things as her period and he could only speculate about what more. She also brought David lunch, checked up on them during dinner time, befriend his little brother and got to know his parents on a first name basis. His mother, he found out two years earlier, called Jackie just to chat from time to time. And while he appreciated her efforts to help his business and family, he resented her assumption of intimacy with him.


She made him feel ashamed at times with her closeness, with her assumed position. Mostly because, like his wife, she was easy to love, open and warm, and most shaming to him, is that she was physically attractive to him. He caught him self on occasion staring at her from across the room. He thought of himself lifting her straight black hair and kissing her soft umber skin. Like his wife she had a beautiful innocent round face and strong dark eyes, that looked wise and mischievous. She wore little makeup and kept her lips soft and pink. She was small, but her lean muscular body could make warrior poses on purpose. But only seconds into his fantasy of touching her with his rough, often greasy fingers, and his lips he felt a disgust that started as nausea in his belly and worked its way up through him to turn his face red and hot.


Most days, he tried to avoid her.


She saw him walk into the break room to take his lunch. He usually ate alone, and after his crew had all had their breaks. She saw him digging in the pizza box delivered an hour earlier. She walked in while his back was turned to the break room door. "I know you don't want cold leftover pizza. Jay must have slept in this morning. You gonna have to learn how the kitchen works one day." She laughed.


"Ah, I'm not too picky."


She pulled a couple of containers out of the mini fridge and popped one of them in the microwave. After two minutes she brought them to the table. "Roast beef and potato salad sound good?"


He smiled at her as she dished the food onto a paper plate. "Smells delicious. So I know you didn't cook it."


"You right about that. I haven't learned my way around a kitchen either. My daddy made it. He cooks for an army. I'll be eatin' roast beef and potato salad for the next three days."


"So how you been?"


"I'm good. How 'bout you and my girl?"


"She informed me this morning that you had a special conversation with her. Thank you for that." David briefly touched Jackie's hand.


"I should have talked to you first, but you make it a habit not to talk to me, so I had to take it upon myself to do it. 'Cause I know you weren't going to, and her aunts still call it the curse."


"I'm glad you did."


"You mind if I come by this weekend and take her home for a slumber party. I need a chick flick buddy."


"She would like that." David looked down at the potato salad and mashed it around with his plastic fork. "Tell your dad he is still the A-number-one chef."


"I will." She put her hand on David's shoulder. "I'm gonna leave you alone to eat in peace."


David never realized that she felt a bit of shame, too, when she looked at him and wanted his rough hand to move from her cheek, over her breast to her belly. There was so much more that they shared, but never found the courage or the words to enlighten the other. She left the room. He didn't turn around to stop her while he ate another hot meal from her father's kitchen.