Love in the Last Frontier, Part 1

Right in the middle of one of the most important meeting of my life, one that had literally hundreds of thousand dollars written all over it, my god damn phone started vibrating on my hip. I ignored it and continued on listening to what the hopefully new client wanted for the rather large amount of money they were talking about offering me and my company.

I am a free lance photographer and an artist who has managed to combine my two talents into a one of a kind, new media that represents the artist in me in the form of photographic imaging. I do landscapes mostly, although I have been known to stray into other subjects on occasion, but my landscape work is what brought these people to the table to discuss the possibility of this very large set of works that they want commissioned and now this damn phone will not shut up with its constant vibrating. I looked down at my phone and I saw the numbers “911”.

I looked at Neal and politely interrupted his explanation of the magnitude of the project so I could ask him if it would be alright to see about this consistent nagging call that was driving me crazy. He indicated that it was fine and that he would take himself and the rest of his team out for a 15 minute break to allow me to take care of this apparent emergency.

I knew the number by heart because it belonged to my “kind of daughter” who lived with her mother out in southern California. I say “kind of daughter’ because she was never my daughter at all. I just raised her from the time she was born until her mother and I split up about 6 years later. That was 12 years ago but I still feel a deep love for this girl. I’ve seen her through many a hard time and I was sure this was another one coming up.

“Hey Chloe, what’s up?” I asked in my best nonchalant voice when I really wanted to yell at her for her insistence interruptions.

“Oh Chris I’m so scared,” she said in a panic.

“Slow down and tell me what’s wrong,” I told her.

“It’s Bud, Mom’s new boyfriend. I think he had plans for me and I don’t think I’ll like it very much,” she started to explain.

This caught my full attention and as I sat up straight in the chair with the phone held tightly against my ear, I told her to go on.

“Well you know Mom is down at the bar working and Bud is here with me and we’re all alone. He’s always had his eye on me and it gives me the creeps when he looks at me and sneers. Well, this afternoon he’s been drinking a lot and I think that he’s drunk. I’ve gone to my room and locked the door but every so often he comes to my door and tries to turn it and then leaves. He’s done that four or five times and the last time I heard him say very softly, “Come on Chloe, open the door and find out what a real man has for you.”

“Did you try and call your mother at work?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah, that helped a lot. She told me to go ahead and open the door so she could get some sleep tonight,” she said in a sarcastic voice. “Oh no, I think he’s back! Oh help me Chris, what should I do?”
She was almost hysterical at this point so I told her to settle down and listed carefully.

“First of all, take a chair and wedge it under the door handle. When you’re finished come back to the phone,” I told her. I waited on the other end as I heard her yell out “Go away Bud!” and then I heard the sound of a chair being stuffed under the door knob.

“Okay, I think that I’ve really pissed him off now,” she exclaimed. “Oh no, he’s trying to push his way in!”

“Get out of there!” I yelled to her. “Chloe? Do you have any money, any cash on you?”

“Yes about twenty dollars is all,” she said in a real panic now.

“Grab it and take a cab to the airport,” I instructed quickly. “Now listen carefully. Once you’re there, go to the United ticket desk and ask for assistance. I’ll have a ticket waiting for you there under your name. Be on the first flight out of there okay.”

“Chris, where am I going?” she asked in confusion.

“Well, here Silly, where else would I send you?” I jokingly answered. “Now call me as soon as you get your ticket, okay? Now get the hell out of there through the window and run for a cab.”

I met Julie, Chloe’s mother, when she was 9 months pregnant with her daughter in a photography class in Minnesota back many years ago. She was so much fun that I befriended her and saw her through the delivery of Chloe, being right there by her side watching the miracle of birth first hand. I brought her home to live with me because she had no other place to go and with a new baby and all, I thought that it would be okay.

Well, a couple of years later, I thought that we were in love so I proposed to her and was shocked when she turned me down. But that didn’t stop me from loving this beautiful woman that I wanted to be married to, so I hung on for a few more years and then one day she told me that she was moving out to California to seek her fame and fortune. I guess that I knew it was coming all along, so when she told me I wasn’t surprised but it ripped my heart out when she also took her daughter with her.

Thinking back on that time, I have often wondered if I had hung on to Julie just so I could be around Chloe. I was the only father that she knew and the bond between us was unbreakable it seemed. But at the tender age of 6, Chloe left with her mother, out of my life, and moved out west. I was devastated for the longest time but my art work took her place in my heart and soul as I submerged myself into it with abandonment.

I never heard from Julie again, except when I was the only person who could get her out of trouble, which seemed like a lot these days. But Chloe was another story entirely. I called her on her birthdays and holiday and since the advent of personal cell phones, we call each other just to chat many times. I have seen her through starting her period to her first time making love and making sure that she was on some form of birth control. I’ve talked her out of situations that would make a real father cry out of agony, to congratulating her on her first ever gallery show. I must have had some influence on her because she is an accomplished photographer in her own right at the tender age of 18.

Now she is on her way up here to Minnesota to stay with me for the summer before she starts into college; I hope that’s all anyway because that client I was meeting with earlier, just hired me to do a full year’s work of photography and the client just happened to be the State of Alaska. I was awarded the position of being the Official Photographer for the State of Alaska under contract to photograph the state in all of its unbelievable beauty. I was honored but overwhelmed with anxiety at its daunting responsibility. I’m going to take photos of the entire state to be shown around the world and I was all of a sudden very nervous.

Although I have been rather successful in the photographic and art circles, having many gallery shows throughout the United States and sales in the thousands, this is my first really big commission and I didn’t know that I was up to the task. But I had graciously accepted the commission, so now all I had to do was perform.

I drove out to the airport and waited outside the security gate for my ex-girlfriend’s daughter to come down the aisle, where everyone meeting someone was waiting. I kind of hung out near the back to take a look at my house guest for the summer because it had been a couple of years since I last saw a picture of her and I didn’t want her to think that I couldn’t recognize her. Besides I wanted to check her out a little to see just how she had turned out.

I saw her coming out of the gate into view and she was in her jeans and tee shirt and that was it. I forgot about her having to go through security at the airport and I was sure that she would have some tales to tell me about that. She was as easy to look at as I remembered but my gosh she was short. I hadn’t thought about it that much but she was a spitting image of her mother; long blonde hair, blue eyes, kind of short with a great petite little body. Yup, I couldn’t miss her anywhere and just then she spotted me.

I came out around the group of people waiting for their loved ones to receive a flying hug from this stranger that I was welcoming. She grabbed me by the neck and buried her tears into my chest.

“It’s okay now Chloe, you’re safe now. You must have been terrified in your own house but I’ve got you now. No one can ever hurt you again,” I told her in the most reassuring voice that I could muster. “You’re alright,” as I continued to smooth down the top of her head with my gentle caressing touch. “You’re alright.”

I walked her out to my car with my arm wrapped around her shoulder, never uttering a word until she had had her cry. “It was more of a tension release than anything else,” I thought, “because of all the trauma she had endured over the last 4 hours or so, the poor kid must be emotionally drained and hungry to I bet.” So I started thinking of how to get her over this ordeal and suggested that we stop and catch a bite to eat.

We stopped at a chain restaurant and ordered something to satisfy this poor girls growling stomach so I began to ask her just what happened back at her house.

“Oh Chris, I was so scared. I know that if he could have somehow forced his way into my room, he would have forced me to have sex with him.