I keep thinking back about the poem she wrote during that brief lull earlier this month, about the angels and vampires, and though I know who the vampire is, the angels escape me.
The more I think about it, the more I regret throwing our former temporary boss under the bus with her. He truly adores her; I’m certain he was one of her angels before I betrayed him.
She claims she never lies, and she said she told him nothing about what went on between her and I prior to my meeting with him in the park.
Thinking about it, I believe her. He looked very upset when he and I talked, though it was hard to read from his silence at the time.
Her reaction later when I emailed her was more revealing, especially when she asked why I was ruining it for her with him.
He does fit the description of one of her angels, kind, and patient enough to work out the Morris Code combination that would unlock her door.
He has helped her, guided her through her dealings with her New York stalker, taking for granted all she claims about her one-time boss from New York, when I’m much more skeptical.
He sees her as vulnerable, in need of protection, an admirable idea except she’s stronger than she lets on, and I can’t get passed the feeling she is leading him on.
I hope not. If anyone is vulnerable in all this, he is, someone who aches to be a mentor, and if there is a way to get passed his defenses, it is by being needy herself.
He has a desperate need to be needed, and she seems to play off that, allowing him to help her when she clearly is the least vulnerable of the three of us.
I feel intensely sorry having taken this away from him, feeling less like the vampire she portrays me in her poems, but like a serpent in paradise, who just opened his eyes and for which he must be cast out to make his way in harsher world – although for all his worldliness, he is extremely naïve, and will likely remain blind to it all – an odd observation almost opposite of what I first thought when I envisioned him as cold and calculating (which he would like to be) when he is really someone almost frantic to be seen as important. This is not to say he’s free of manipulation; he’s simply too obvious when he tries it.
I don’t think now as I originally then that his advice was self-serving when he said I should keep my distance from her.
“Don’t go near her unless someone sends you there,” he said.
I’ve also come to believe she divulged nothing about me to him prior to my meeting with him in the park (it would not be in her best interest to do so) and he was taken by surprise when I talked with him – answering the old Watergate questions of “what did he know and when did he know it?”
Clearly her advisor when it comes to her New York stalker, has he also become her advisor in regard to me or does she rely on some other angel such as the man Tom called “RR?”
What makes me suspicious is the email I received from her stating her “terms” which repeated almost word for word the advice he gave me in the park and later.
If I did not follow her terms, she said she would file charges against me of stalking.
It became clear she was attempting to build a case against me, even though many of the incidents she cited were simply efforts to make peace with her, including the bottle of wine I left on her desk, an emailed apology, and a random remark made to the office gossip when I got asked why I was bringing in the wine, and poems I posted on my blog never sent to her directly, none of which mentioned her by name. She said she did not want me to lose my job or face charges and would refrain from doing so if I refrained from any additional conversations with our former temporary boss, in or out of the park, and if I maintained a professional distance.
Since I had stayed silent for the most part since May – with the exception of my meeting with our former temporary boss in the park – distance, professional or other wise was not a problem.
These were reasonable requests since she clearly felt injured by the information I had already disclosed, and in some ways, her gesture was merciful – although in reality, she has as much to lose by having the whole thing become public since this thing seems to involve more than just three of us, but one guy from graphics, one of the company’s owners, and maybe others.
If this is just a stepping stone in her career path, as the company gossip claims she said, then she could ill afford to have the whole thing thrown into the open.
I misread the terms the first time and had to email her a second time with my acceptance.
But it was clear, she had not drafted this by herself, in particular the part about her sending off all of her “evidence” to the Public Safety Director in one of the towns she worked – something our former temporary boss had suggested for her when dealing with her New York stalker.
Still, I took her threat seriously, more because of our former temporary boss than her. I had injured him and that made him dangerous.
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