He became aware of the music then, some syrupy love song seeping out of the speakers, and what was it? Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart at his worst, hyper-inflated love delivered in a whisper, as manufactured as a pair of shoes or a box of doughnuts, and here was this couple sucking the breath out of each other, and what was he doing here, what was he thinking? He was drunk, that was what it was. And he hadn’t had anything to eat, had he? Eating was important. Vital. He had to eat, had to put something on his stomach to absorb the alcohol — how else could he get behind the wheel? Drunk driving on top of everything else. He pictured it: the cuffs, the cell, his corner in the teachers’ lounge deserted and Ed Jacobsen, the principal, wondering where he was — not a phone call? Couldn’t he even have called?
The thought propelled him up off the stool, down the length of the bar past the stupefied sports fans and the clinging couple and the bartender with the haircut like Rob’s, You have a good night now, and out onto the street. He stood there a moment outside the door, patting down his pockets, wallet, keys, cell phone, taking stock. The air was dense and moist, fog working its way up the streets as if the streets were rivers and the fog a thing you could float on. He could smell the ocean, the rankness of it. He thought he’d go to the next place, get a burger and coffee, black coffee — wasn’t that how it was done? Wasn’t that taking the cliché full circle? That was how it had been in college after he’d gone out cruising the bars with his dormmates, lonely, aching, repressed, gaping at the girls as they took command of the dance floor and never knowing what to do about it. A burger. Black coffee.
He started down the street, everything vague before him, trying to think of where to go, of who would be open at this hour. Things glittered in the half-light, the pavement wet, trash strewn at the curbs. A single car eased down the street, headlights muted, taillights bleeding out into the night. Neon thickened and blurred. He made a left on the main street, heading toward a place he thought might be open still, a place he and Laurie sometimes went to after a late movie, focused now, or as focused as he could be considering the whiskey and the hammer beating inside him, reverberating still, when a woman’s voice cut through the night. She was cursing, her delivery harsh, guttural, as if the words were being torn from her, and then there was the wet clap of flesh on flesh and a man’s voice, cursing back at her — figures there, contending in the shadows.
He wanted to call out, wanted to defy them, bark at them, split them apart, get angry, get furious — there they were, just ahead of him, the woman lurching into the man, the man’s arms in dark rapid motion, their curses propulsive, shoes shuffling on the concrete in a metastasized dance — but he didn’t. There was a suspended moment when they felt him there and they switched it off, in league against him, and then he was past them, his footsteps echoing and the curses starting up behind him in a low seething growl of antipathy.
How he made it home he couldn’t say, but he remembered standing at the door of the car fumbling with his keys on a street so dark it might as well have been underground and feeling the cell buzz in his pocket. Or thinking he felt it. He kept it on vibrate because of teaching, because of class — the embarrassment factor — but half the time he never felt it there against his skin and wound up missing his calls. Which was why he had to check messages all the time… but it was buzzing and he had it in his hand and flipped it open, the only light on the street and a dim light at that. Rob. Rob calling.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Todd, hey, bro — you okay? I mean, I been calling for like three hours now and I’m worried about you, because I mean, it’s tough, I know, but it’s not like the end of the world or anything—”
“Rob,” he said, his voice ground down so that he barely recognized it himself. “Rob, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.”
“Good. Because screw you. That’s my message: screw you.” And then he’d turned the phone off and thrust it deep in his pocket.
—
When he came in the door the house was silent. There was a lamp on in the hallway and the nightlight in the kitchen was on too, but Laurie, in her meticulous way, had turned off all the rest and gone to bed. Or so it seemed. He moved slowly, heavily, his breath coming hard and his feet working as if independent of him, far away, down there in the shadows where the baseboard ran the length of the hall and conjoined with the frame of the bedroom door. If she had a light on in there — if she was up, waiting for him, waiting for what came next — he would have seen it in the crack at the bottom of the door, the tile uneven there, treacherous even, shoddy workmanship like everything else in the place. Very slowly, he turned the handle and eased the door open, wincing at the metallic protest of the hinges that needed a shot of WD-40, definitely needed WD-40, and then he was in the room and looking down at the shadow of her where she lay in bed, on her side, her back to him. It took him a moment to see her there, his eyes adjusting to the dark and the stripes of pale trembling light the streetlamp outside the window forced through the shades, but very gradually she began to take on shape and presence. Laurie. His wife.
He saw the way she’d tucked her shoulder beneath her, saw the rise there, the declivity of her waist and the sharp definition of her upthrust hip. He’d always loved her hips. And her legs. The indentation of her knees. The way she walked as if carrying a very special prize for someone she hadn’t quite discovered yet. He was remembering the first time he’d ever seen her, a hot summer day with the sun arching overhead and her walking toward him with a guy from school he liked to hang out with on weekends, and he didn’t know a thing about her, didn’t know her name or where she came from or that they liked the same books and bands and movies or that her whole being would open up to his and his to hers as if they had the same key and the key fit just exactly right. What he saw was the sun behind her and the shape of her revealed in silhouette, all form and grace and the light like poured gold. What he saw was the sway of her hips against the fierce brightness of the sun and the shadow of her legs caught in the grip of a long diaphanous dress, her legs, sweet and firm and purposeful, coming toward him.
He remembered that. Held that vision. And then, as quietly as he could, he pulled back the covers and got into bed beside her.
(2011)
The Night of the Satellite
What we were arguing about that night — and it was late, very late, 3:10 a.m. by my watch — was something that had happened nearly twelve hours earlier. A small thing, really, but by this time it had grown out of all proportion and poisoned everything we said, as if we didn’t have enough problems as it was. Mallory was relentless. And I was feeling defensive and maybe more than a little paranoid. We were both drunk. Or if not drunk, at least loosened up by what we’d consumed at Chris Wright’s place in the wake of the incident and then at dinner after and the bar after that. I could smell the nighttime stink of the river. I looked up and watched the sky expand overhead and then shrink down to fit me like a safety helmet. A truck went blatting by on the interstate and then it was silent but for the mosquitoes singing their blood song while the rest of the insect world screeched either in protest or accord, I couldn’t tell which, thrumming and thrumming till the night felt as if it was going to burst open and leave us shattered in the grass.