The Liberation of Andrew Weber

By Bentley Johnson

Cast back into the dating pool, Andrew Weber is ill-equipped to handle the treacherous and confusing waters of the American singles scene. From Craig's List to bars, and ultimately to the liberated women he meets, Andrew's comic adventures, full of missteps and misunderstandings, will leave you laughing out loud until he learns that love is a funny thing--and often quite humorous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bentley Johnson
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370988471

Book preview

The Liberation of Andrew Weber

By Bentley Johnson

Copyright 2016 Billy J. Tidwell

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

Prologue

The Consecration of Andrew Weber

After thirty years of marriage, Andrew Weber finally fell in love.

Aware of the people in the pews, Andrew tried not to look nervous but after the year he'd had, getting remarried so soon seemed like a horrendous idea. And he didn't need witnesses to his humiliation. Yet here he stood in front of the congregation, asking the preacher's blessing.

In the second row on the groom's side, his ex-wife, Sally watched Andrew, a sly smile on her face. Andrew wasn't sure if Sally would give her blessings, but at the moment she wasn't putting up any protest, and to him, that said a lot about Sally's turn around. Only last week, she'd come to him with contrition in her heart, and fool that he was, Andrew forgave her.

Sally smiled at him. For thirty years he'd shared a home with that woman and barely knew her there towards the end. Within the last year, he'd wanted her dead at least three times.

If only, he thought, wondering why he'd invited her.

Even with the doors open, the hot, spring day made the small, country church muggy inside. And as his waiting grew longer, stifling. Andrew removed his light, gray jacket and draped it on the corner of the dais. He scratched at the collar of his white shirt to relieve the chafing from his blue and gray-striped tie. Where was she? She shouldn't be taking this long.

In a moment of dread, Andrew convinced himself that she'd run away. Another horror he couldn't take--to be jilted and miserable on this day of all days. Tomorrow was his birthday. Where was she?

If she don't show, I don't know what I'll do really, he mumbled to Robert, his best man. Had she run away, Andrew wouldn't blame her.

Just do what's natural, Lloyd, Robert offered in a whisper.

Andrew's best friend of thirty-six years still called him Lloyd, though that wasn't his name. Began as joke on everyone else's joke, as soon as he told someone his name, they immediately said, I bet your middle name is Lloyd.

It wasn't. Andrew's middle name was Jerome. Nothing as extravagant as Lloyd. He wasn't a Lloyd. He had no Lloyd in him.

Everyone made the Lloyd connection immediately though Andrew had only a vague idea who Andrew Lloyd Webber was; he thought he wrote musicals.

For a man who had lived fifty-three years on the planet, you would think Andrew would have acquired some general knowledge of the world around him, if only through osmosis, but Andrew's knowledge was of physical things, not facts.

He couldn't tell you, though he had voted for him, that Barack Hussein Obama was the forty-fourth president of the United States, but he could tell you how to tear down a four-barrel carburetor on the fifty-five Chevy. Maybe even blindfolded?

Andrew had a phenomenal ability to remember such things, and people often called him on problems they had with their old cars, just to get his advice. In the small town he lived it, in the world of old cars, Andrew Weber was a living legend. In the rest of the world, he was a little lost.

But, then, rebuilding cars wasn't Andrew's primary work, more like a first love that wouldn't pay the bills. (Hell, he couldn't even use it as a hobby lost on his taxes.) He paid the bills as an engineer. But for the last twenty years, he'd always had an old car in the garage of his house working out a problem, whether it involved how to find a new fender for a 67 Chevy SS or how to rebuild a 302 engine for a 70's Ford truck.

Andrew had knowledge but he wouldn't have won at Jeopardy.

Although, right now, he felt like he was on Jeopardy. Nervous, waiting on an answer he had a question about.

Where was she?

Growing ever more nervous with each passing second, all the trials from the previous year came back to Andrew and considering what he had to go through to get here, she had better not ditch him. He'd kill her if she did.

Chapter 2

One Year Earlier

The Circumscription of Andrew Weber

One year earlier, Andrew Weber thought he was happy. But happiness is relative; to a man on death row, happiness is a room on cell block C.

Not that Andrew had been on death row. He'd gotten thirty to life and paroled in thirty for bad behavior.

The letter of pardon waited on the table below the stairs in a plain, white envelope with Andrew written in big cursive letters on the front. The poisoned pen left beside it.

He recognized the writing--Sally's, his wife. And at first, Andrew didn't pay it much mind. The envelope on the table wasn't unusual; Sally often left similar notes over the years. Andrew, the bank called. Call them back. Andrew, working late. Get takeout. This one seemed no different.

He opened it and unfolded the stark, white sheet within.

It read:

Andrew,

After careful consideration, I have decided to leave you. Don't look for me, you won't find me because by the time you read this I'll be in Aruba, working on my tan.

I know a letter is a terrible way to break up with someone, especially after thirty years of marriage but I can't face you for this. I couldn't bear to see the pain in your eyes. See the tears from a man I've considered strong since the first day I met him. I don't want that scene. Or to humiliate you with my joy.

But going on with the farce that was our marriage seems, to me, a far greater crime. I find intolerable the life we now live. We plod forward in this robotic dance we call living, and each day, the walls close in on me like a cage.

But really, Andrew, we both knew this day would come; only you're too hopeful to accept that we've grown apart these last few years, and well, I guess this is where we split.

But you need an explanation. I owe you that much. Do you remember all those nights I've been spending at the gym? Well, I haven't. I've been spending them with Jack Kitchens. If you don't remember, he owns the car lot on the highway, near the Sonic.

But we met at the gym, and started talking one day and well … now we're in love.

Please don't hate me too much, Andrew. I didn't plan this. It just happened. But I can no longer deny my feelings for Jack.

Love, Sally.

Andrew read it again and then looked up at the smooth, white ceiling twenty feet above his head and surprised himself.

He sighed; a sigh of deliverance, a sigh one does after the bus misses plowing you down by inches, the kind of sigh that has been welling up in your soul for years and only the end of things produced.

Andrew didn't want to sigh; he wanted to scream, yell at the heavens for taking his wife away, (Like she had died or something.) He wanted to really trash things and get trashed, but he didn't feel it.

He really didn't know what he felt--except relief. Sally had left him, for Jack Kitchens of all people. But that would explain her not losing any of that weight.

He stopped in the hallway and put his left hand on carpeted stair steps, pondering what had went wrong. What had Jack given her that he hadn't all of these years?

After several minutes of standing there in careful thought, Andrew concluded that she hadn't left him for Jack's looks; Jack was bald, short and stocky. And certainly not for his money, since Jack had also gone to through a divorce and the cleaners respectively, the year before last. So it had to be ….

With his thumbs, Andrew pulled out the waistband of his slacks and perplexed, stared down into the semi-darkness of his pants. No, he thought. Couldn't be. It had to be emotional. As Sally's husband, Andrew wasn't giving his wife the warmth and love she felt she needed. It had to be that.

And for that Andrew let out another sigh.

He stopped again, wondering if he was divorced already. Could you have a divorce without the other party being involved? He had a dozen unanswered questions right now and every one of them only Sally could answer, and she was living it up in Aruba.

Andrew took off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack in the hallway, like he had every day for the last twenty years. He took three steps and turned into their spotless living room, done in white, the furniture in dark hardwoods. Sally had insisted.

He stood there still mystified. If she had wanted a divorce, why had she insisted last year that they remodel the living room? But he didn't ponder on that for long.

He had to admit, they had been running on autopilot these last few years. Work, come home, eat, and go to bed--a weekly routine. On the weekends Andrew puttered around the house, or watched football on Sundays--when it was in season. About once a month, they would go see a movie and eat out, normally a buffet. A cycle they ran through year after year that turned into a rut for them both. Had she fallen in love out of mind-numbing desperation?

He crossed the room and opened the liquor cabinet and poured himself a double-finger of Jack Daniels, Old number Seven.

He winced as it went down and stood there looking out the bay window, past the lacy, white curtains offering a hazy view on the sides, but framing the green lawn beyond. Someone walked by but Andrew didn't see who, lost in thought really, still undecided on how to proceed or respond to the note.

If Sally were here he might have a proper response; something she would expect of him. Perhaps yelling and then, maybe pleading for her to stay, until Sally did what Sally wanted in her adamant brusque way she'd treated him for that last twenty years. Quickly but with finality walking out the door. Was he still in her will?

Andrew shook his head, trying to clear the shock from his mind. He was a slow thinker, a plodder; he worked his way through a problem inch by inch, piece by piece, until he understood it and then, Andrew would work out its solutions.

But this wasn't an engineering problem. He couldn't plug in some number and be married again. He couldn't erase this and add that, and balance the weight of things until it came out right.

No, the emotional pit he was sinking into didn't require that kind of solution. It required feelings and actions.

Perhaps he could call Sally on her cell phone? Surely, she had kept that?

But that might smack of desperation. And he wasn't desperate. Let Jack handle the mental minefield that had been his wife. Like the aftermath in a Godzilla movie, where Sally went you noted the carnage and destruction in her wake. Well, maybe not that bad but bad enough.

He gulped down the rest of the whisky and poured another.

He winced as it went down and stood there trying to find the proper response to a love that had died long before they buried it.

At least, she didn't try to bump me off, he thought gratefully. Nowadays, many people saw that as the solution to their problems, as if signing a death warrant was easier than signing a piece of paper.

But he wouldn't mind bumping her off right now.

He studied the letter a moment longer. It was such a sterile letter; maybe it exemplified what their marriage had become? But then, Sally was a legal