Synchronicity II (English / Spanish)

(continuation of Synchronicity I)

Note to the reader: all the events in Synchronicity I & II are real; the names of some of the "guilty parties" have been changed to thinly veil their identities...

... so back to 1999....

I had just begun working at my college, replacing a rather rotund 58 year old man who was retiring to be with his much younger wife, nearly 20 years his junior. In the course of his finalizing his retirement, he learned that his wife was leaving him, not for another man, but for another woman. His paperwork for retirement was processed, filed, and the search for his replacement was underway. Luckily for him, he really didn't need to work much anyway, since he had a hearty inheritance and had invested carefully too. Still, his bitterness for his predicament is plain and plainly understandable. Needless to say, he didn't warm up to me right away either, since I, at a mere slip of 27, decided to do everything differently from how he had done it for 30 years.

The fact that his wife had left him for another woman did seem important at the time, but as luck would have it, it came back into the picture. Beyond his divorce, the poor man was also in poor health. Indeed, it seemed like his health and his marriage were on parallel courses into the depths of hell. He married, for the second time to this younger woman, and on their honeymoon in Jamaica, he had a heart attack. While enroute to the hospital to see him, his wife was mugged by nasty tourist hating thugs. They did return home, however, and managed to conceive a child.

Now let us fast forward to 2001 when Lady X and I traded apartments. I moved into my new flat and found Sandy cleaning the place up. Lady X had left in such a hurry that she barely picked the place up, and there was grime and muck all over. Sandy asked me upon my arrival for an early trip to check the place out, "Did you move some of your things in already?"

"No," I answered," Why?"

"Well it looks like Lady X left you about 40 batteries!"

It was true; in the vegetable crisper were around 40 batteries of every shape, size and voltage you could imagine. In addition, she left 25 hand towels, a drawer full of feline veterinary supplies, a clove of garlic and a bowl half fowl of dried up catfood.

After I had moved in, I heard that my predecessor, whom I shall call from here on in, Don Melón, had suffered another heart attack. Additionally, he was going blind from diabetes. I was talking to my secretary Dale about his sorry state, and I mentioned that the divorced, which had not yet been finalized, must also have been playing havoc on him, emotionally, and physically.

Dale nodded her agreement, and added, "Yes, and can you believe that his wife, Doña Endrina, ran off with that Lady X?"

"Lady X!" I exclaimed in disbelief. "You don't mean the same Lady X who used to work here part time."

"Yup, that's the one," Dale said. "She used to come in here all the time and everytime something worked out the way she wanted she would throw her hands up in the air and scream, 'Hallelujah!'"

Sure enough, that was one of Lady X's trademark gestures. It also occured to me then that Sandy had also mentioned the name Doña Endrina in connection with Lady X in passing. Now it was clear. Lady X left Sandy's flat not to be closer to work, which I never took to be more than a tissue of lies, but to shack up with Doña Endrina, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of my immediate predecessor! Considering how bitter he was when I took over his job, could you credit how much more bitter he would be if he ever knew that I was also living in the flat of the woman who stole away his beloved Doña Endrina? And That Lady X, what a woman! Besides Doña Endrina, apparently she was also entertaining two other women, one of whom was a former dean of my college!

This tale now moves forward in time to 2004. By now Lady X and Doña Endrina have bought a minor mansion together in Rexford, one of our chi-chi-er suburbs. Lady X inherited a small wad of cash, and Doña Endrina was herself fairly well healed. With them lives Doña Endrina's and Don Melón's love child Dulcinea, and as I recall, at least two standard poodles and two mau cats, one of which bit Lady X on her middle finger one day, after which she arrived at a day long church function fours late with a large, long pink plaster on it which forced her to wave her middle finger at us all day long.

One day a couple months ago, Lady X announced in church that she was going through a difficult transition: an older, ailing family member was moving in with her and her partner. Now I knew that Lady X didn't have any other relative's left, so that just left Doña Endrina's family. I put my RADAR up and began searching for answers; my intuition was prodding me to posit that the person moving in with them was in fact none other than Don Melón. It seems absurd to consider the possibility, but considering the other bizarre interconnections in this story, it seemed more than plausible.

It took me a couple months to unearth the truth. Confronted with a direct question, Lady X would surely have fabricated another semi-believable story and quite possibly fobbed me off. After discreetly chatting with several members of church, one finally had the true identity of the "older" family member. It was indeed none other than Don Melón! Older is an overstatement. Indeed he is older than Doña Endrina, but younger than Lady X. Evidently while older men didn't appeal to Doña Endrina, older women did.

Sadly the poor man is dying of heart failure, and his days are more narrowly numbered than many of us. Still one must wonder what would drive a man in his state to want to move into a house with the woman who left him and the woman who stole her away. On one hand one can discern a kind of Christian charity on the part of the women, or unrequited guilt; apparently not a day went by that Don Melón didn't telephone Doña Endrina: the thick binding of codependence must not have been broken when the divorce was finalized. And he, what is he after? Is he only seeking the succor of friends and loved-ones, altho one must use the terms sparingly in this context, or is there something more passive-agressive going on?

These answers are yet to be revealed, and surely shall be in the fullness of time. In the meantime, we can sit back and muse about the tangled webs these characters have weaved.