QUANTUM OF SOLACE

by David W. Landrum

Sossity Chandler tried to clear all of her former husband’s things out of her house in the first month after her divorce, but now and then she came across items that belonged to him. She found articles of clothing, tools, magazines, once a pack of condoms, once a pack of gum that she knew Kathleen Farisi, the woman he had formed a liaison with, liked; but more often she found books. David taught English and owned hundreds of books. Like most literature teachers, he hung on to every volume he bought, no matter how remote the chances of his ever reading it again. Almost daily Sossity came across his books on shelves and in drawers, stacked in corners of closets, fitted in boxes in the garage and basement.

Seeing these relics of his presence upset her. After four months she ordered her housekeeper to do a thorough search and purge of the house and garage of all books belonging to her ex-husband. Mary was efficient, and in a very short time she rid the place of David’s reading material. One night, though, after the children were asleep, Sossity noticed something between the mattresses and box springs of her bed. She reached under and came up with a paperback, corners turning up, pages brown with age. It was For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming.

She remembered this particular book because she had teased David about it. He often read in bed, but it was always some great work of literature. When she saw him absorbed in a James Bond novel she laughed.

"You’re really slumming," she said.

He did not look up from the book. "This is good stuff," he said.

This was one of their last nights together before the blow-up—before she discovered he was having an affair, before her life unraveled, close to a year ago. It would have been the last book he read in the house while they were still married.

She looked at the volume. In the center of the cover was a nude, fifties-style woman lying prone, her breasts visible but no nipples showing; a figure on a motorcycle supplied the circle where one missing nipple would be. On the left of the cover, a tropical bird sat on a limb, and above it all stood the title. She sat down on the bed and opened it.

Sossity thumbed through it. It was a collection of short stories. Her eyes fell on the story, "Quantum of Solace." She tried to remember her high school Latin. Amount of care? Sum of peace? She racked her brain, and then her eyes lit on the term in the story itself, on page 93: "James Bond said, Quantum of solace—the amount of comfort. Yes, I suppose you could say that all love and friendship is based in the end on that."

She flipped back to the first page and read the story.

After she finished the story, she could not sleep. She resisted the urge to drink. Reading this tale of a marriage-gone-sour stirred the muddy waters in her soul. Avoiding memories would not do, she had learned painfully. You had to go through them. Alcohol did not help you navigate those treacherous waters. She thought of getting her guitar out and playing—a thing she often did when stressed—but she did not want to wake the children. She simply lay down on the sofa and looked into the darkness.

The house was three years old. It was big, though not ostentatious. Beside the main section for the family were several guest rooms for band members and visitors, and a banquet room (they called it) besides the intimate family dining room. Downstairs was a gym and recording studio.  She stared up at the ceiling and remembered the day she had found out about David’s infidelity.

She had noticed inconsistencies in his explanations of where he had been and how he spent his time. At first she wrote these off to his tendency toward carelessness in keeping a schedule or knowing the precise details of his day-to-day routine—David often confused things in this manner, an attribute she put down to being a right-brained literature professor. But the stories became more disjointed and she caught him in several outright lies. This troubled her. It troubled her even more when she discovered that most of the inconsistent accounts related to Kathleen Farisi.

It seemed impossible, but when she set up some stratagems to test the truth of the things he told her, he failed every test. She perceived he was lying. Again, his lies always involved times he might have spent with Kathy. Sossity grew frantic. She called her two closest friends and asked them what she should do. Both said, in this case, because it might involve his getting her money, she should have him trailed by a private investigator to get hard evidence if he was indeed being unfaithful.

The private investigator only needed two weeks to accumulate all the evidence she needed for conclusive proof. She tried to hold back tears as he showed her photographs of David and Kathy.

The final night, David came home late. The children were in bed. The house was empty. She had told Jason, her security guard, to go home but also asked him if he could fix the lights in the living room so they would not come on. The lighting system could be controlled from a master switch. When the house was empty, different rooms were programmed to come on at different times. Jason knew the system well and used its capabilities to override the switches. Sossity sat down in the dark living room and waited.

When he came in, he tried to turn on the light.

"It won’t work," she said.

She heard the door close and a few footsteps.

"I can’t see a thing."

"You’ll get used to it."

He took three more steps, bumped into something, and stopped.

"I’m over here," she said. "Where have you been?"

He took longer to answer than he normally would have. She sensed he had begun to suspect something.

"I had to work late," he replied.

She waited a long moment, then said, "David, how could you do this to me?" She paused then went on. "Of all the women in the world—of any woman you might have started something with, why did it have to be her? Why my best friend? Do you hold me in that little regard? Do you have that much contempt for me?"

A long silence followed. She clenched her teeth, determined not to say more. Let him answer, she thought; she would remain silent until he spoke.

"I don’t know what to say," he finally answered.

"Get out of here," she said. "I don’t want to see your face. That’s why I had the lights disabled. Dustin will call you tomorrow. I told him to file divorce papers."

"The kids?"

"I’ll tell them something."

He did not leave.

"What are you waiting for?"

"I want to answer your question."

"Answer."

"It’s because she needs me."

Sossity did not reply, but David also did not leave.

"And you don’t think I need you?" she asked after a while.

"I didn’t think so."

"You were wrong, David. I do need you—or I should say I did. All of that’s changed now."

Her eyes were getting used to the dark. She sat facing away from him and did not want to even look at his outline in the shadowy room.

Her cell phone rang. It was Daya.

"Leave," she repeated, getting her phone out.

He shuffled his feet, turned, walked to the door, and exited the house.

As she lay on the couch and in the same room in the same darkness, she remembered the aftermath. She called her parents and sobbed and cried (her father was consoling, her mother faintly censorious). She called her youngest and closest brother, James, and Lydia VanLant. Lydia, who lived in Chicago, promised to come and see her. James was coming as well. Two days later she told the children. They did not understand. Her daughter Cheryl asked why they didn’t love each other—and was it her fault? Sossity felt like her heart had been ripped out. As the divorce proceeding started, she sent the children to stay with her parents. One night, after Lydia had gone to sleep, Sossity drank hard liquor until she passed out. Lydia found her and, when she noticed her erratic breathing and could not revive her, she woke James, and the two of them took her to the emergency room.

The alcoholic poisoning almost killed her. She spent the rest of the night barely conscious with an IV in her arm. Finally her body was able to metabolize the alcohol. Of course it made the papers, and news of her troubles became a feature of the celebrity gossip sites on the internet, television, and newspapers. The headlines read, "SOSSITY CHANDLER’S LATEST CELEBRITY MELTDOWN."

After that came the unfortunate DUI and suspension of her driver’s license for a year—which made more grist for the gossip mill—then her behavior at court when the verdict on custody rights was announced, then her statements at the news conference the next day. Now things had stabilized. She thought of David and of the quantum of solace.

He asked for nothing in the settlement. David made a good salary as a tenured professor. He had enough money to live comfortably. After they split, he and Kathy moved in together. She also had an income, though as an adjunct professor she did not make as much as David. They simply filed no-fault and let it go at that.

But she thought about quantum of solace, the amount of care she had given him. In the Ian Fleming story the main character ruins his wife, undermining her finances, leaving her with debt, depriving her of even the smallest amount of comfort. A grey light showed in the sky outside. She stepped through the front door. The air felt chilly. She shivered and looked around her front yard. Dew lay thick on the grass. Four rabbits hopped warily twenty feet or so from her. Birds sang their first song of the day.

In the early aftermath of the divorce she reverted many times. Even after getting a scare from alcoholic poisoning, she went on drinking binges, flared up in public, and made statements she wished she could retract. The news agencies loved it. The gossip columnists reveled. Her promiscuity soon became legendary. She plunged into the celebrity circuit of New York, LA, London, giving concerts and going to bed with whatever rock singer or movie star came on to her—and most of them did. When she flew in to San Francisco to begin a concert series, she got a call from Daya.

"You need to come to my home," her friend said.

"Why?"

"You need to get your life back on course, Sossity."

"Can you do that for me?"

"No, you can only do it for yourself. But I can give you a good environment to do it in, and maybe I can help you too."

She consented. After a short tour of California—three weeks of performing, drinking, and screwing—she came to Daya’s place on the north coast.

Her stay there was salutary. She lived with Daya and Mark for two weeks. Her children were with David, and he would only allow her the contact with them that had been stipulated in their separation agreement. She could call them once on weekends, and that was it. Daya said Sossity needed to focus on her inner self. She needed to get in contact with her inner person.

"Daya, I’m not into New Age talk. I don’t pray, and I don’t meditate. How can I get in contact with my inner self?"

"Silence," she answered.

Sossity began a regimen of silence. She slept in the family house, had breakfast with Daya, Mark, and their children. After that she and Daya would go to a near-by yoga class. By 10:00 Sossity would end up in a small cabin on their property where she would spend the remainder of the day.

The silence drove her to distraction at first. Her mind raced. She talked to herself. She could hear the sea in the distance and the sounds of nature. The only thing this is doing for me is boring me, she thought the first day. The next day was better. By the fourth day she had leaned to enter the silences.

At first, too, memories cascaded into her awareness—painful memories of her mother’s religious fanaticism as a convert to fundamentalism and the strife in her home as family members took sides on the issue of religion. She recalled the ugly scene with her father when she announced she was dropping out of college to become a singer. She remembered her friend Cheryl’s murder (she had named her daughter after Cheryl Carter). Other things loomed up as well. When Daya came to get her at sunset, Sossity was in tears.

"This is what happens," Daya said. "You’re penetrating your subconscious, getting past your ego, and all the pain you hold inside is flowing out. But it will all go out soon and you’ll connect."

"Sounds like a lot of New Age claptrap," Sossity replied grumpily.

"Stick with it. You’ve got another week."

Sunday she began to understand. The memories did not overwhelm her. She felt still, felt settled and confident and peaceful. She understood now what Daya meant by being in contact with herself. It did not mean she would communicate with an inner voice and encounter her inner child. It simply met the clutter—thoughts, emotions, pointless self-talk—cleared, and she felt once again in contact with who she was and what she wanted and believed in. She called Daya on her cell phone and told her she did not want to come back to the house that night.

"I’ll bring you some blankets and a sleeping bag," she told her. "I’ll leave them outside your door."

Sossity slept peacefully that night. In the morning she went to the house for breakfast.

She spent the next three days in silence. She began some simple meditation techniques. When she came back to the house at night she played guitar.

And she wrote songs. She felt the return of the creative impulses that had seemed to have gone dead. Later, those same songs would skyrocket to the top of the charts, selling more than any of her previous hits.

The last day, which was warm, she stripped down to her underwear—then took them off and spent most of the day naked. She and Daya had planned to take a walk along the beach together and watch the sunset. Daya showed up early. Sossity blushed.

"Sorry. I felt like being naked today. I’ll get dressed."

"Why?" Daya asked. "No one is going to see you here. Walking naked along the beach is a rush—I know because I’ve done it quite a few times. And it shows that you are at rest with yourself now. Come on."

The two of them walked. Daya, barefoot, wore a long print dress and white blouse with a shawl over her shoulders. Sossity wore nothing. They walked quietly beside the ocean and watched the sun set—the most beautiful show of color and light Sossity could remember. Daya gave her the shawl to wrap up in on the way home. It was cold after the sun set.

Since then, she remembered, standing on her front lawn, things had not been perfect. She had broken down at times, gotten drunk, felt desolation and despair—but never for long. Her life had started to come back together. She had done a successful tour. Her new albums and new single releases were selling in the multiple millions. She had added Jergen and Lydia to her band. She could even cope with memories of David.

And now, the Ian Fleming book made her remember him. And the story gave her pause.

Two days letter she got a call. The caller ID identified her former husband. When she answered she heard his voice for the first time in months. He was angry.

"Sossity, what the hell is going on?"

"I don’t know. You’ll have to explain yourself."

"Don’t get pissy with me! You know what happened. They came and towed my car this morning."

"Your car, David? I think they showed you whose name is on the title."

"You gave me that car! It was mine!"

The car in question was a vintage Volvo 1800S. He had seen one in an old movie with Roger Moore, remarked how cool he thought it looked, and Sossity had sent her personal assistants out to search for one and buy it for his birthday. He loved the car and took meticulous care of it.

"I own it," she said. "It’s in my name, and I’ve decided I want to drive it a little bit. You have your own money. Go buy yourself a new car."

A long silence came. She could feel his anger.

"So this is what you’re going to do now?"

"It’s just the beginning. I knew you would call after they took the car, and that’s good because I wanted to tell you this myself. I want you out of the house by Friday. You’ll find the house is also in my name. It belongs to Sossity Chandler Productions and not to you, and I’m taking it back."

Again, a long pause came.

"You said I could live here."

"I did, but now I’ve decided I don’t want you living in my house."

They had bought the house before their marriage. David had a job in Grand Rapids. To preserve his independence, Sossity decided she would not live in LA or Nashville or New York, but rather in her old home town and try, as best she could given her celebrity status, to be a part of the local community. It had been a challenge, but it had also had given her a publicity angle to play. They lived in the house until the one she lived in now was finished. They had kept the old place and used it for guests, band members, and people from her business organization who came to Grand Rapids.

"You said I could live here. That gives me some legal rights to the place."

"It gives you absolutely nothing, David. I don’t quite remember saying that to you. And even if I did say it, I own the house and I want you out. You can take me to court if you so desire—but I can hire better lawyers than you can, and I can keep appealing and keep paying them and let’s see how long you can pay a lawyer on what you make teaching at State. Maybe Kathy still has the lease on her apartment. Maybe you guys can move back there."

"Why are you doing this?" he asked after a moment. His tone was flat.

"I read a story in a book. It’s by Ian Fleming. The title is Quantum of Solace. Do you remember it?"

His silence told her he did remember it.

"Anyway," she continued, "I own the very clothes on your back. I’m not going to take your clothes, David, but Dustin will give you a list of the things I am taking. We bought them all through my management company. I own the company, so I own all that stuff. And I’m coming for it. And there’s not a damned thing you can do to stop me."

She waited for a reply. He did not speak, though she could hear him breathing.

"You know, David," she said, "you really shouldn’t leave your books lying around."

And with that she hung up the phone.

David W. Landrum teaches Literature at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. His fiction has appeared in many print and online journals, including Amarillo Bay, Dark Distortions, Loch Raven Review, Aethelon, and The Cynic OnLine. He edits the online poetry journal, Lucid Rhythms, www.lucidrhythms.com.

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