Ruined by Murder Addicted to Love

By Ronald Joseph Kule

Mystery-romance novel, 292 pages, softcover. 

Millennial Carlos Almarón struggles past the devastating and unexpected loss of his recent lover, who dumped him the night he was to propose marriage to her. Unable to bring him back to battery, most of his Manhattan jet-set friends abandon him. Three women aim to help his recovery fo

• Language: English
• Publisher: KuleBooks LLC
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781735240213

Ronald Joseph Kule

In his words, 'Internationally published author, biographer, novelist, and ghostwriter sounds fancy, but I'm simply a professional author with skills and a mission to write entertaining, uplifting stories for my readers' enjoyment. People tell me, 'You paint emotional pictures with your words.' Well, I write what I see in front of me, adding imagination where it improves the story. Growing up in a cramped household, competing for personal space among seven brothers and sisters, two parents, (most times) at least one good hunting dog, and a score of kids living on our block, I learned how to hold my ground, at times from a perch 30 feet up in my favorite tree in the woods behind our house. Born in Bogota, Colombia, of Polish-immigrant coal miner and blue-blooded Colombian-Chilean parentage, Kule came to appreciate ethnic values and cultural differences by observing the disparate social classes and living conditions of Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, the 48 contiguous American states and Hawaii, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, England, Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Russia, mainland China, Barbados, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent directly. His heritage paint-brushed wanderlust onto his life canvas: he has performed speaking engagements in 17 countries. He laughs often and can experience a panorama of emotions just for fun, but he prefers making other people smile, laugh, and generally feel happier after having met him or read his books. If you curl up with one of Kule's books and find yourself breathless, provoked, inspired, changed, and feeling like you just undertook an important journey that left you more than satisfied, he will consider his work as the author a success. The author's home is in Clearwater, Florida, but his passport yearns for more national stamps, and his bags can be packed at a moment's notice! Because the author also enjoyed a successful sales, sales management, and sales-training career spanning 39 years, he wrote up his successful actions and a uniquely different approach to selling in his acclaimed sales book series, LISTEN MORE SELL MORE.

Book preview

PREFACE

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. In The Old Man and the Sea, I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough, they would mean many things.

— Ernest Hemingway, 1954

Like all games, the game of love has winners and losers. Carlos Almarón yearns to know true love but nearly drowns in its wake, crushed by a lover’s dismissal that almost breaks him beyond fixing. His checkered past rears up like a rogue wave, leaving him awash in painful memories brought on by nightmarish daydreams. Almarón’s struggle to regain moral clarity and lost honor leads us to discover that love may not be what satisfies most. His foibles cause his terrible situation, perhaps just like ours. Still, he vows to overcome his self-created obstacles, despite considerable attached emotional baggage.

On the other hand, Carmela Ariana, Almarón’s lifelong platonic girlfriend, suffers a gauntlet of sexual vicissitudes arguably more difficult than his, yet survives. Her residual memories force open floodgates of private desires not unlike our own, which almost prevent the fulfillment of a lifelong dream she never knew she had inside: everlasting love.

Like for us, history is context for Almarón and Ariana. Their friendship stands the test of time, but tomorrow, that great unknown, brings unexpected changes.

If finding true love means having to let go of valuable fixed ideas and the unwashed effects of past bad behavior, Almarón and Ariana discover not only what love is but also how trusting each other long enough might help Cupid.

Every man and woman seek the kind of romance these two hapless people crave. Everyone faces the same omnipresent choice to rise above the fray and win at love against all the odds or fail in the attempt.

Almarón’s and Ariana’s winding road to Cupid’s timeless embrace takes them, and the reader, by surprise, time after time!

***

(DISCLAIMER: Carlos Almarón, Carmela Ariana, and all other characters and scenes within the pages of the following story are fictional. Any resemblance to people, circumstances, and events in real life are purely coincidental.)

* * *

RUINED BY MURDER,

ADDICTED TO LOVE

Chapter One: Recovery

Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex.

— Andreas Capellanus, De Amore (1186 - 1190)

The romantic culture of 12th-century courtly love not only reignited Carlos Almarón’s lost passion but also embroiled him in uncomfortable, emotional tugs of war, which boiled over. Standing and slamming shut the hefty reference book on the library table in front of him, he screamed, ENOUGH! and flung both arms up. His wiry, millennial, six-two frame stretched toward the gilded ceiling of the august building that had become his second home, Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue library.

Leaning forward, he rested his weight upon his two locked arms and pressed his closed fists into the tome’s leather cover; head bent down, his salt-and-pepper hair flopped past his closed eyelids. He sighed.

Librarians rushed to shush him. Stolid glares from bookish patrons of all ages, and both genders bore holes into his reddened skin.

Ignoring the onlookers’ commotion, and his feelings, he picked up his weathered, brown-leather valise from beside his chair and placed it on the solid wood surface in front of him. Gathering his yellow pads and multi-colored markers and pens, he stashed them inside the bag before slinging it over his left shoulder and walking away.

Two security guards kept eyes on him to the tall, main entrance doors. They watched him push one door open hard and depart.

Outside, late-afternoon shadows cast across the library’s campus like a fly fisherman’s line and leader in flight. The angle and sharp reflections of sunlight glinting off the windows of nearby skyscrapers made Almarón shield his eyes from the glare. Moving across the lawn at a steady clip, he ignored the cloudless blue sky above him.

The memory of his would-be fiancé flashed past his eyes when a sudden flip of female hair directly in front of him slowed his pace to a halt. Suddenly grief-stricken and miserable, he shuffled across the remainder of the quaint park in the same manner that he had muddled through in recent, unfocused weeks. He stopped at the curb under a bus stop sign. Within minutes he was aboard a crosstown bus taking him east toward the United Nations campus and the adjacent Turtle Bay neighborhood where he lived.

***

Earlier days at work always had excited Almarón, but the apathy of his current morose condition ensnared and engulfed his thoughts. His recent translation work for influential U.N. clients lacked his usual spark of enthusiasm, and their speeches suffered from the loss of his formidable talents, sending aides to complain about him to his seniors.

Because Almarón handled a multiplicity of languages more ably than his peers, despite his recently altered, odious manners, his status as the most-gifted talent on a roster of skilled translators and speechwriters working with international ambassadors and their attachés weathered the storm.

His superiors noted his changed behavior, and not in a good way. Among themselves, some questioned his fitness to retain his sensitive position. Yet, despite the reports and his heavily-charged symptoms, a majority of his managers voted to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. They gave him the benefit of the doubt that he would snap out of his doldrums. After seeing his behavior worsen, their concerns deepened. Once a fortnight passed without apparent upward changes, his prolonged depression lit their fuse, and they placed him on an indefinite leave of absence, mourning their loss just the same.

***

The humdrum of food shopping, laundry chores, and other domestic errands agitated Almarón most days and nights when he was in better shape. In this disheveled state, he neglected his hygiene and domestic duties altogether.

In time, his doorman dropped whispered hints at him whenever Almarón passed by in the lobby to and from another restaurant-cooked meal. The uniformed man gestured at Almarón’s noticeable weight loss and burgeoning body odor.

Man, you sure you don’t want someone to pick up and drop off your laundry ... maybe do some food shopping for you?

Oblivious to his worsened condition, Almarón declined to comment, but the other man persisted, thinking his charge might need a mood changer.

Man, I know people who can fix you up. I mean, if you want to feel better, I know people. You feel me, man?

Almarón’s impatient, sideways glance told the doorman his suggestion had not fallen on deaf ears. His defiant one-finger salute registered a negative response.

Rather than cop some street substance or visit a shrink and pick up a prescription that might make him friendly but also more vulnerable—both came with a long list of side-effects—Almarón returned to his apartment and dropped out of sight for several weeks. He ignored the social invitations stuffed into his lobby mailbox and the other mail piled up by the obsequious doorman at his apartment door.

By-invitation-only dinner parties and SoHo art gallery openings were must-attend events in Almarón’s line of work. To not be seen regularly at these soirees guaranteed less access to outside work. Such work brought wealthy, private clients capable of dropping large direct deposits into bank accounts and delivering prepaid, private-jet excursions to exotic locales—not to mention access to gorgeous, world-class women with exotic tastes for entertainment.

A roster of credentialed, affluent jet-setters and their female attachments had fattened Almarón’s smartphone directory. On one password-protected app, he kept a discreet, second list of names and contact information of the women he liked most. The good life he had tasted with a number of these beauties on several occasions came without strings attached. Unfortunately, in his present state, the company of these familiar faces elicited from them only hard looks, suppressed hostility, and resentment.

At first, Almarón’s friends and acquaintances had worried about his health, seeing him in such a devastating condition. When he failed to heed their admonishments to snap to and move forward with his life, most moved on without him. Eventually, all but one shunned him.

The parties, the projects, and the people he knew didn’t matter to Almarón anymore. Except for keeping up a minor façade and sporadic maintenance of socially acceptable manners upon chance meetings, he had stopped showing up at most of the functions.

If I can’t have my relationship with my Emily, then what is there for me? he constantly thought to himself, determined to mope around sad-eyed and depressed.

***

Not until Almarón began to want to climb out of the bottomless emotional pit he had fallen into, did he listen to Alice Mumfrey, the one friend still willing to help him, whom he’d known for years.

With understandable reasons of her own—she was trying to move past the recent, expected passing of her husband—Alice decided she would stay by Almarón’s side until she pulled him back up to a working semblance of his usual self. When no one else cared about Almarón’s welfare, she offered her time and attention to him.

You know I understand you, Carlos. You know I’m feeling empty inside, like you, having just lost Jack, but you really have to give me some sign that you will at least try to come to grips with this. Are you up for this, Carlos?

Alice stood in front of him on the edge of a friendly crowd packed onto a roof-top patio festooned with multi-colored party lamps swaying overhead and tossed by night breezes that swirled far above the noise and bustle of Manhattan’s East River Drive. She had badgered him to meet her there this evening enough that he did show up, albeit unshaven and slightly unkempt. Now, she accepted the slight tilt of his head as a tacit agreement that he wanted her help, that he would allow her assistance.

The nod was the first positive sign of a potential recovery that she had elicited from him in weeks.

I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ Carlos. I’ll expect to see you at my place in the next day or two.

He just turned away and looked nowhere across the vista of Manhattan’s nighttime skyline.

***

Within the week, Alice and Carlos sat across from each other in the second-floor living area of her renovated West Side apartment. They babbled for a while, and then she invited him to discuss the sequence of events leading up to his girlfriend’s breakup with him. However, when he approached the mere thought of how Emily Lagano had tossed him, a torrent of tears released.

Alice stood up, changed her position, and, sitting next to him, offered the solace of her shoulder. She waited in silence until he recovered enough to say something.

I’d like to return alone to my place, Alice. I’m sorry.

Separating from her and the couch, he walked to the stairwell.

Are you sure you’ll be alright? she asked as he descended the stairs to the street.

He never replied, but he closed the door gently. He appeared not to be of any danger to himself, at least until tomorrow, when they would meet again.

Outside, feeling numb, Almarón walked several blocks in the general direction of Turtle Bay before he hailed a cab that took him back to his tower residence.

Back in his apartment, he crawled under his bed covers and slept for a long time.

***

At their next meeting, Almarón managed to string words into sentences for Alice.

Where do I begin, Alice?

Whatever comes to mind, Carlos, tell me about that.

He hesitated and then said, Well, today, my mind takes me back years. What I think of first, for some reason, is playing the piano. He looked up at her.

Go on.

After first making sure that I learned the keyboard, my father let me tinker with the instrument however I wished. I experimented almost every day after that. I encouraged myself enough to reach a proficiency that satisfied me. Once I reached a public-performance level of expertise... he paused, … that was enough for me.

Why did you stop?

My recitals delighted my father and mother and their friends well enough, but their pleasures were not my concern. I didn’t care what they and the others thought about my playing. Why should I? I played for my pleasure.

He looked up again to see if she was tracking with him, and, seeing that she was, he continued.

I satisfied myself at the time. I played the piano well enough for me. I also found that I could pick up a song once and play it. That has never gone away from me.

Alice, impressed, offered a hand toward the baby grand that sat in another part of the room, which he ignored, and she continued to listen.

Years passed, and, as my body grew older, I turned to team sports. I performed well enough in football and schoolyard games like tetherball, but I preferred to read books and listen to and create music. I also began to exercise a growing passion for creative writing.

You knew, then, that you wanted to write? she interrupted, impressed again.

Yes, he answered in passing, continuing his trend of thought, ... and, later, in college, I studied law and discovered glider sailing. I made sure that I earned my pilot license. After that, I obtained other licenses to pilot small aircraft.

A wry smile appeared on his face.

I have even jumped from airplanes with my skydiving friends hundreds of times, when not piloting, of course.

Wow, she whispered, meaning it in a way that would encourage him to keep speaking.

Whatever I cared about, I took up and learned well, but only as long as my interest and satisfaction lasted, never longer.

With that, Alice informed Almarón that she was obliged to honor another commitment, and she begged her leave for the day.

Nonetheless, throughout several more meetings, she and Almarón developed a two-way dialogue that made progress.

Carlos, what happened to the girls in your life—the women, I should say? Alice asked another day, getting back to a salient point in their discussion.

Almarón paused and looked at her for several seconds. Tears welled up in his eyes. He looked away to his right, toward the tall window panes that permitted the grayed light of a wintry day to stream into the loft. Pensive, he stared at the barren branches of the trees that lined the street and thought in any other season they might shower the room with splashes of color that Emily would like.

Just as Alice was about to prompt him, he turned and looked her way before dropping his head toward the floor and answering.

Casualties. I’m sorry now to say. My chimerical whims wasted many girlfriends. Too many. In my defense, I must tell you, their losses were unnoticed, unintended consequences. My lack of real caring for anyone but me was the cause. I didn’t see it that way, then, but I know it’s true now. I’m not too proud of that. I jumped in and out of love so many times in my 22 years after college before I met Emily.

Carlos choked up, unable to continue. He bit his lip and looked away at the gray again.

Alice, perturbed, pensive, stood up and walked to the kitchen area that was part of the open design of her apartment. Taking two small plates from a cupboard and placing it on the counter, she turned and opened the refrigerator. She reached in for two plastic packets, Black Forest ham and Swiss cheese, along with a jar of sweet pickles and another of Grey’s mustard. Turning to the counter, she laid the goods there, opened the larger container, drew out a few of the gherkins, and put them on the plates with the ham and cheese slices. She then spread the mustard on the ham, layering the Swiss on top and assembling each combination into rolls. After pouring two tall glasses of cranberry juice, never saying a word, she put the drinks and sandwich plates on a colorful, handmade tray and walked back to the couch and coffee table.

Nice tray, he said.

It was a wedding gift from friends in Mexico. She put down the tray.

Carlos, this would be a good time for you to eat something.

He picked up a roll-up and ate in silence.

Neither spoke a word as they ate.

With food in his belly, Almarón opened up, Alice, do you know that delightful feeling of falling head-over-heels in love?

She nodded.

I loved that. I still do. That changes me in ways that feel good to me.

She could see that his attention was distant as if he were looking at old memories.

He continued, "The women who got involved with me... they suffered. I loved and craved that feeling of being in love because it made me feel important. That was my goal at the time. Not deliberately, just, looking backward, I see that it was my goal back then.

The women I’ve known—beautiful, intelligent women—were so vastly different, one from the other. I felt like a new man with each one of them. As much as I liked playing with my manly garage toys, the scent of a woman and her moves—the mystique of a beautiful woman’s body, her curves, her style and beguiling manners, her secret parts —turned me on. I was addicted. I pursued my addiction relentlessly, motivated by my selfish desire for personal satisfaction.

Now he was looking more in her direction as he spoke. He saw that she was uncomfortable as she shifted her position on her couch.

Believe me, Alice, before losing Emily, I would never have been able to tell you that. I was not able to look at what I was doing; let alone tell you. I was blind.

She stood up, walked to the windows, and looked outside.

Snow flurries swirling in the air, not sticking, caught her eye as she listened to him relate to her how sensually, intellectually, and emotionally he had found safety in the shadows of any woman’s company.

The blood that coursed through my body and soul, he explained, … accelerated whenever I found a woman that I could entice to spend time with me and to love me. Once I conquered her, I was ready for another.

Tears welled up and threatened to fall from Alice’s eyes. She shifted so that he couldn’t see her emotions from where he sat. Wiping the betraying drops away, she covered with, I’m listening. Please go on.

He continued, For me, there was no better feeling than a woman at my side, pleasing or pleasuring me. I would display my prowess from in a glider, behind the wheel of my racing car, on a dance floor, or in bed, but only so she would stay with me. With my arrogant pride, I would make a woman feel alive in my presence just to feel the competence of my eventual conquest over her. And to keep her glued to me until my heat diminished. Then, I would leave her.

Alice’s blood boiled, but she didn’t let him see her anger, which she let simmer as he continued.

After he revealed details of some of his disjointed and disingenuous attempts and failures at sexual and romantic liaisons, he admitted that all along, deep down, he had wished for the one glorious lover who would stay forever by his side.

Alice, I want ‘forever,’ that feeling of forever, as much as I want to keep breathing. Failing either, I know that I will die.

Unsettled again, Alice moved around the room to handle the upset that his words caused her. She inhaled deeply and let the air out slowly. Under the guise of cleaning up their lunch, she fussed with the plates and glasses, put them on the tray and took them back to the kitchen. She put the items in the sink and deliberately rinsed them one at a time, before placing them into her dishwasher—all the while paying close attention to his ongoing discourse.

I didn’t see this then, but each breakup stung me worse than the one before..., he continued, ... each tore off another piece of me, as well as the broken lives and loves of those I left behind. The emptiness behind each departure and defeat left me feeling a little more insane, if only for a few days or weeks, despite my belief that I was living a charmed lifestyle.

Unnoticed by him, Alice’s cheeks reddened from the blood rising to a boil in her veins just below the surface of her skin.

He went on: "If a new objeto de amor was not immediately forthcoming from the dance floors of the clubs I visited, I went home sad. After I closed my door and locked the deadbolts, the silence that I faced alone was intolerable. For me, solitary time was hard ‘downtime.’"

She seethed at how he turned his words regularly back to himself; how he disregarded the emotions those women with whom he had engaged must have felt. She held back no longer, but she didn’t lash out with anger, only sarcasm, at first.

Now that Emily has dumped you and the tables have turned on you, you’re asking yourself, ‘Why?’ Is that right?

Startled, chastened, he whispered, Maybe.

So, just-desserts are your punishment this time? The spin is on you, isn’t that it? She lit into him.

Pretty much, he replied with resentment as her tone and volume rose.

The Grim Reaper of Love comes to your doorstep, and you don’t like it one bit, is that right?

I suppose you could put it that way, Alice, but I was the victim there. I hadn’t intended what happened. You must realize what went down was uncomfortable for me.

He lifted his head, pointing his chin north of horizontal just a little too far for Alice, who was swiftly moving toward him. As he finished those last words, she stopped right in front of him and slapped him hard across his cheek.

His face turned crimson and hot, where the harsh imprint of her open slap hand-etched his skin. He was shocked into silence.

She apologized immediately, I’m so sorry, my friend. I didn’t mean to do that.

No, Alice, he mawkishly replied, I probably deserved that.

Not long after, the ensuing pregnant pause between them collapsed into a hug, and they both cried their eyes out—he for the reason of his smarting flesh wound; she because recent life-changes had weakened her resolve and lowered her defenses.

Outside, the sun’s light dimmed, darkening the room. After Almarón departed, Alice turned her attention to her workspace downstairs in her darkroom.

Alice’s brownstone was a high-ceilinged affair held up by old brick walls laid bare of multiple layers of paint and drywall that earlier tenants had plastered and painted on them. The open-floor design of the living space created an earthy aesthetic that complimented the dark oak flooring, and her carefully selected furniture pieces. Her collection of Erté sculptures on display reflected her fondness for Art Deco. On her walls, large prints and originals by Georgia O’Keefe offset her own—Alice being a first-rate photographer with works featured in several galleries up and down the island.

Meeting with Almarón on the kitchen/dining/living level of Alice’s townhouse, not within the intimate settings of the other floors—her bedroom upstairs, the home theater den on the bottom floor—probably was for the best. There were photos on her dresser and side tables too personal to show even a close friend like Almarón.

On the other hand, the current condition of Almarón’s living quarters was more than any woman, even Alice, would ever tolerate or want to see. For months, he had not kept up any of the routine dusting and vacuuming required to keep a Manhattan residence decent. Unattended to, dust balls had gathered and accumulated in the corners of every room and on the many bookshelves. Worse, a coating of finely ground, cinder-like material—the sooty byproduct of industrial chimney stacks located here and there throughout the city’s boroughs—coated every horizontal plane.