Ronnie hiccoughed and rubbed at his eyes, wishing that everything would just go away; not just his problems with his work, the car, the plumbing, and his wife (ah, yes, the wife!) but everything. The whole damn world, magically flushed down a drain, leaving behind pristine white porcelain that sparkled in the starlight.
He took another swig from the 10-year bottle of whiskey in his hand. After the first swig, he knew that he should probably stop, and after the second, he was certain that a third would be a bad idea, after which he stopped caring, and then started aggressively not-caring. He didn’t care that it was meant for guests, didn’t care that it was noon, and certainly didn’t give a fuck that anyone in his two-bit flat might see him staggering about and cussing out his wife.
Hell, he wanted them to see him in this sorry state, see what this harpy of a woman with her gaudy pearls and designer handbag bought with his money had reduced him to!
He turned on his heel abruptly, nearly falling, and saved himself by catching the dining room’s table. The irrefutable evidence of his wife’s misdeeds mocked him, sneered at his brokenness.
It was so obvious! It should have been so obvious!
A logbook with row upon row upon row of strangers’ names in it.
A veritable collection of beautifully-taken black-and-white photographs that showed a woman’s derriere in assorted lewd postures: in one of them, she straddled a tubby man, with a single hand crossing her right buttock to brace herself on his leg. In another, she was reaching down to guide a man’s enormous member into her gash. The contrast between her pallid skin and his ebony body was shockingly erotic to him, even when viewed thruogh his current pall of rage. In yet another, the ass he desired so much was being hefted by a set of hairy, sinewy forearms, much larger than his own. The moment of penetration was clearly displayed, with her well-oiled right buttock gleaming in the camera’s flash.
She was smart, he admitted to himself, not a single one of these showed her face turned to the camera.
All this, he could have looked past. All this, he could have disregarded. But for the final, damning piece of evidence, he could simply have pretended that the woman in these pictures was not the woman that the letter informed him she was.
Ah, yes, the letter, written in a hand so small that it was practically apologizing for its existence. His eyes scorched through line after line, disregarding apologies, explanations, confessions of guilt and heartfelt pleas for his understanding and forgiveness, and skidded to an end at the final paragraphs that broke him as a man:
I‘m so, so very sorry that I couldn‘t be the woman that you wanted me to be, the woman that you thought you were marrying. You deserve far, far better than this, but what is done is done; all I can do is tell you the truth. I wish that I had had the courage to come up to you and be straight with you right on day one, after that first time, but I just couldn‘t. You looked so happy, and my heart was just full, so full of love and delight for you! For the first time, you were happy, and I did not want to ruin that.
Against all odds, at all costs, and whatever the price, I wanted to preserve that smile… and I suppose it was you who ended up paying that price. I deserved to get caught – but you didn‘t deserve to have to catch me.
Yes, I have made mistakes, many of them, repeatedly and willfully, but now that everything is out there in the open, I want to do more than just apologize: I want to make you a new offer: Our old marriage is over and done with, so will you make a new one with me, the real me?
I‘m going out to get the chocolate-glazed bagels you love so much from Goode & Pendall. It is a pathetic attempt to buy my way back into your good graces, but be sure that it is but one of many to follow 🙂
Love,
Your apologetic, regretful, penitent, and (dare I say it yet again?) loving wife.
Tyra
She had a way with words, that was for sure. He reached out to tear the piece of shit letter up, and was startled by the wailing of a toddler in a next room.
Ah, the brat. He could have forgiven her everything but for the fucking brat.
A surge of irrational hatred for the child gripped him, followed by a wave of shame so strong it felt like a religious experience.
The child was blameless, period. He got his iPhone out, fingers fumbling on its cheap made-in-God-knows-where cover, and called for their babysitter to take the child… God, he couldn’t bring himself to say it, and yet he had to…his son away.
Bloodlines don‘t matter, his own voice rang mockingly in his ear. How he wished he could go back in time to grab his past self by the collar and shake him about.
Hey, you idiot! Wise up! Your wife isn‘t who you think she is! This happy family of yours was just a fucking fantasy!
God.
Their babysitter lived two floors down. She had whinged on the phone about being made to get up on an offday, but shut up in double quick time when he promised her triple pay up front.
Baby whisked away, safe and sound. His eyes wandered over the artifacts of the shared life they had built together. They all seemed like rubble to him now. Meaningless junk. That broad, dopey smile of hers on the staycation they had had in Central Park… was it a lie? That knowing look in her eyes at the entrance to the New York Metro… had it been an act?
His unseeing eyes slid over plates and photo frames, crystal memorabilia and wooden souvenirs, finally coming to rest on a small, unassuming safe.
He walked over to it, spun the correct combination, and opened it. The seductive gleam of gunsteel whispered to him, called to him, promised him a quick and easy solution to all his miseries.
A revolver was a man’s gun. A Smith and Wesson was a man’s man’s gun. And a 500 Smith & Wesson special was a man’s man’s man‘s gun.
With this weapon, you only needed one bullet to fly true. He opened the revolver’s wheel, slid in a fat cartridge, and slammed the wheel back in place.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click!
Tyra sighed and put the black-and-white polaroid camera down. She examined its black-and-white reproduction of the vase on her kitchen’s countertop, decided that there was no point in procrastinating further and wasting film by trying to get the analog camera’s focus just right, and placed it in her handbag, alongside her lipstick, vogue, nail varnish, mobile phone, and the thousand other tools of a modern woman’s kit.
Just stepping into the elevator outside her apartment felt like a betrayal in and of itself. The chill, refiltered, and deodorized air that washed over her felt like a dragon’s carrion breath.
As she rode it down to ground floor, she took a deep breath, clenched her fists, and shouted with all the fire and fury she could muster, “he wanted a whore… so he’ll fucking get one! Fuck yeah! He wanted a whore, so that’s what I’ll be! He wanted a whore, so he’ll-“