Sonja…Are You a Friend? ©2013

By Dee-Dee Diamond

Some stories beg to be told! They are not for inspiration…there is nothing fair or sacred about them…but they are true.

When first I met Sonja, it was thru our husbands. They were garment center business acquaintances/friends. Usually, these type dinners are evenings of forced politeness, sprinkled with mundane chatter, between fork-fills and too much alcohol. This is what I expected. Our spouses were engrossed in the subtly of producing Italian inspired menswear, while conspirators about female episodes, they shared. The guys didn’t think we understood. Sonja and Kurt were a handsome Manhattan couple. Al and I were suburbanites.

I almost felt like a country bumpkin, she looked so elegant, serene, until she whispered in my ear,” Fuck ‘em! the “Smartasses” sitting across the table, don’t think we got their number. We ignored them while Sonja and I found the funny bone in each other. As we chatted away, we found a mutual love of travel, adventure, and mischief. We were often alone, since our spouses are frequently, on the road or in Europe for “business”. Both of us had grown children away from home so we were free… Our husbands were taken back to see us so genuinely fond of each other. Sonja and I made a luncheon date for later that week.

She graciously drove out to Long Island to meet me for lunch. What a lunch!

Over pink Cosmopolitans she brazenly made me party to her confidence.

Sonja and Kurt had been illicit lovers. Sonja had been a divorcee with a young daughter when they met. Kurt was married with a son. After months of their passionate liaison, Kurt decided he no longer wanted to go home to Sheila, his wife. He divorced her against her begging him not to.

When his wife heard he would be marrying that “cunt”, Sonja, who she blamed for the destruction of her home, she threatened to kill herself.

Kurt and Sonja married as soon as the speedy divorce came thru.

His wife Sheila was found dead of a self-induced sleeping pill overdose when she heard. Their son found her when he came home from school.

This is how their ill-fated marriage started out with guilt, and 2 children. Can you imagine? The fact that neither trusted one another now, nor could bear the hate of Kurt’s son who lived with them…. it became a living hell.

Soon the once passionate lovers wanted out!

Today she out rightly confessed, “Kurt and I were secretly divorced, but living under one roof for… appearance -sake and finances. I have little money on my own, thus I depend on him for our lifestyle”.

I listened to my new friend intently. What a scary story and to think I was a wife whose husband was about to leave me… jolted my passivity.

I was now silently planning my survival. I would give myself permission to find a love, that would cushion the loneliness, in my future. I certainly would NOT kill myself for any unfaithful lout!

To the contrary, I was determined to live and love.

After our lunch, while I was a still bit drunk, I booked a trip with my travel agent friend, for a Europe/Middle East package trip.

Sonja and I would frequently speak over the phone to meet now and then.

One evening in January, Sonja called, “Dee-Dee please travel to Israel with me, in June”.

“Sorry I can’t make plans, at that time, since I’d have some business scheduled at that time.

“I really wanted to see Israel” she whined, knowing I had been there, recently and had a great experience.

The phone rang back that same night, it was Sonja, again.

“Dee-Dee, since you couldn’t give me an answer, I told my mother I’d take her. She has never been, (like me)”, then she asked, “Please tell me which hotel I should stay in while in Tele Aviv, being as I’ll be alone evenings…after an early dinner, with her she is 82, after all.”

Immediately I suggested she book The Tele Aviv Hilton.

“Sonja, it has a cozy friendly lobby. The sofas face one another so its contusivem for strangers to make conversation. Also, there were many businessmen staying there.” This I knew would make this hotel perfect for her. BUT I COULD NOT PREDICT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!

After the long flight from JFK to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, Sonja and her elderly mom, Ruth, were exhausted.

They checked into the bustling hotel and after seeing to the Bellhop, they entered the empty elevator. Abruptly, its door re- opened when a man pushed in his arm to get in their cabin.

The gray-haired gentleman apologizes but explains that he is too weary, from his trip, from Toronto, to wait for another elevator to arrive.

He, Jack D. from the Canadian Liquor international Company, looks at my friend, Sonja, the flirt, and asks her to join him for cocktails, at the lobby bar. (Gentleman that he is), Ruth was also invited, but politely refused.

About an hour later, Sonja and Jack meet for drinks.

Jack tells Sonja “I am legally separated from my wife, of thirty years for only, 3 weeks, now. She has fallen for a younger man”. My fortuitous friend cannot believe her “Mazel”!

Jack D. was literally what girls dream about. Handsome and rich… did… I say rich!

That encounter in The Tele Aviv Hilton made me “a Cupid-Extraordinaire”.

Sonja and Jack got married and lived happily ever after….in their penthouses in Manhattan, Toronto, and Israel.

After she married…she forgot she ever knew me.