So he should have taken a bow and made his exit, but he’d apparently used up all his rational thoughts for the evening. The beer sloshed downwards, flooding the chambers that held his personal code, and submerging the humiliating memories of certain women that he would, if sober, have gripped tightly to dissuade him from acting foolish.
“Sounds rough,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. “Are you married, or…?”
“No, I’m a single mom.” She made it sound like the most important and righteous thing in the world. “Trying to raise my little boy. He’s my world, but he’s a handful, too.”
“The father…?”
“He’s a Marine. We were married a few years, but it didn’t work out.”
Of course. Why hadn’t he considered that sooner? This area was a wasteland of shattered relationships. There was Camp Lejeune over in Jacksonville, and the air station up at Cherry Point, both belonging to the Marines, the most idiotic branch of the military. Between these two bases, there were enough gullible hayseeds for pretty much every woman who wanted one. Being hayseeds, they didn’t know how to handle themselves when money (and its camp followers, women) came their way. After they got pulled into marriage and had a few kids, the wife invariably decided to leave them, to their bafflement. Thomas could easily recall the empty machismo certain Marines had spewed as they tried to convince others that they were the ones who’d actually done the dumping. It was pathetic, like a child trying to convince his parents that he’d beaten up the school bully, when his bloody nose and blackened eye clearly told a different tale.
The rational voice made one last gasp, telling Thomas to run away and save himself, but the chambers were flooded, and the voice was soon drowned.
“Where’s your kid now?”
“He’s at my mom’s. I came down here for some me time. Nothing too special, just had a few beers over at the Peppy Pepperoni.”
“Love their subs.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Silence. Kara’s car remained tilted sideways, the flat tire sitting a few inches off the ground. The lug wrench lay there. A cloud stumbled in front of the moon.
“Well, what are you doing the rest of the evening, Kara?” Thomas finally asked. “Because I’d love to spend it with you.”
He was surprised how directly and modestly he’d said those sentences. He wasn’t grinning mischievously or braying like an alpha male pick-up artist. He’d spoken like a man of integrity and chivalry. (Then again, the beer could have been inflating his self-estimation.)
It did have an effect on Kara, however, so maybe he really had done something awesome. She smiled for the first time, and looked very, very pleased. But, like a typical woman, she wasn’t going to give in that easily.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Maybe I should head home. And I’ve just met you, so…”
“Oh, come on. Don’t play hard to get. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “I’ve had some bad relationships lately — you know? I have to be careful.”
“You won’t have one with me,” Thomas said, in what would turn out to be one of the least-prescient sentences he’d ever utter.
“Well — if you promise to be a gentleman.”
“I promise.”
“OK, you’ve convinced me,” she smiled. “What do you want to do?”
It was the last smile he’d get for some time.
Now Thomas fiddled with his phone, wondering if he should call Kara. He looked up at the stars, then east to the blinking lights on the sea buoys trailing off into the ocean. Every fifteen seconds, the beam from the Cape Lookout Lighthouse flashed in the darkness. Even though it was no longer a crucial navigation guide, Thomas still felt the lighthouse’s power and majesty, and was humbled by its age. Mariners in times past had lived and died by that swiveling beam. It always filled him with pride, as if he’d help construct it himself.
He looked up and down the beach, to the cottages and mansions lining the shore. Most of them were dark; it was December, and tourist season would not be here for months. Despite this, the houses didn’t look depressing; they looked somehow more stately, more at ease. During the summer, people roared in from all over the country, paying $3,000 or more a week to stay at these cottages. Every house would be lit then, like little festive amusement parks. During the winter, the horde departed, and the houses rested, and there was a nice solemnity to the beachfront at night.
He watched as the lighthouse-beam winked by several more times, still wondering if he should call Kara. It would be perfectly fine to stand here and enjoy the glowing lights, listen to the murmur of the ocean, and look at the looming beach cottages. But he dialed the number. She picked up after the second ring.
“Hey,” she said flatly.
“Hey, Kara. What’s going on?”
“Oh, the usual. Busy doing what I have to do.”
At the parking lot where they first met, Kara had had a lot on her plate. Apparently that plate was never depleted. There was always something, even if that “something” was a chore so minuscule most people did it without thinking. Kara could turn a five-minute dish-cleaning task into a taxing hour-long affair. She would wet the sponge and put some Dawn Springtime Radiance dishwashing fluid on it, but then she’d feel she needed to check on little Grayson. Grayson, who’d be on his bean bag watching some bright bit of inanity on Nickelodeon, would tell her to leave him alone, she’d just been in ten minutes ago. Then she would get irritated, and scold him in her mild, unintimidating manner. Then she would need to pee, but when she sat down she would find out she needed to poop too. Then she’d return to the kitchen, and clean one dish, but then she’d wonder about the mail, so she’d walk outside to the apartment complex’s gray metal mailbox, and retrieve two identical catalogs from Bed Bath & Beyond and a sheet of coupons from Burger King. Once she returned indoors, she checked on Grayson again, who sighed and buried his head in his bean bag. Then she would clip the Burger King coupons and throw them in her Coupon Container, which was a plastic container designed to look like a flower-covered Winnebago. Finally she would clean the remaining three items in the sink, and claim the thankless task of dish-washing had taken her an hour.
And this was a normal day at home. At work — she worked fifteen hours per week as a gas station cashier — she suffered greatly. Customers were rude, and her boss was always flirting with her. She did the work of five people, but was never appreciated. Thomas doubted all of this, and tartly pointed out that she didn’t need to work anyway, since child support, alimony, and “loans” from her parents seemed to cover all of her expenses. Kara replied that she wanted to work out of pride, that she wanted to pull her own weight. Thomas said he wished he could only work fifteen hours a week and get by, and Kara countered by saying those fifteen hours felt like fifty, especially since she was away from her darling child. Thomas rolled his eyes, and changed the subject.
Thomas wished he was immune to Kara’s uninflected statements about her hectic life, but he was not. Every time she said she was overwhelmed or tired, he ground his teeth.
“Well, got any time to hang out?” he asked peevishly.
“Hm.” A long pause to check her mental schedule. Thomas mockingly imagined what she was thinking: three hours to brush her teeth, two hours to change into her pajamas, one hour to turn off all the lights in the apartment.
“Well? Yes or no?”
“No, not tonight. Grayson’s been feeling a little bad today. I’m going to stay in and keep an eye on him.”
He’d heard this many times before, and he didn’t buy it. Thomas had encountered the five-year-old on three occasions, and on none of those occasions had he seemed like a sickly child. He was clear-eyed and intelligent, and, Thomas had to admit, he actually had just the right amount of energy. He bounced and hollered, but not so much that it exasperated the adults around him — except Kara, but Thomas believed that if Grayson uttered only one sentence a day, it would still be exasperating to his mother. For his part, Grayson seemed to regard his mother as a helpless creature who by some twist of fate and reproduction was his caretaker. He’d talked to Thomas in a strangely direct and grown-up manner, and when Thomas had said something obviously banal, he’d rolled his eyes and found something else to do.
Thomas suspected Grayson’s non-existent infirmities were just excuses Kara used when she didn’t want to see him. He also suspected there was another man (men?) in her life. She had unashamedly answered text messages while they were lying in bed naked, and he found it hard to believe they all came from her mom, as she claimed. Her Facebook page was also littered with cryptic posts from several men. Not that Thomas was jealous — but he still wanted to get laid at least a few times a month.
“OK, that’s fine,” he replied huffily. “Call me sometime, when Grayson isn’t near-death.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I just haven’t seen you in two weeks.”
“So?”
“So? Isn’t that a fairly long stretch of time?”
“It hasn’t felt like it. But I guess that’s because I’ve been busy.”
“You always are. There’s always something on your plate.”
She ignored his sarcasm, if she even detected it. “Yes, there is. And you don’t want to date, so…”
As usual, the “d” word made Thomas sweat. He’d been very careful, very precise, in his dealings with Kara. The first night she’d come back to his apartment, Thomas had made it clear, in between foreplay, that he was not looking for a girlfriend, nor was he going to be some girl’s sugar daddy. He wanted a friend-with-benefits, nothing more. (Actually, he wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend, but he’d never date a single mom — he told himself.) Kara, fumbling and slurred of speech from the Stolichnaya she’d guzzled, had said that was fine, and then she’d gone down on him. Thomas felt like a king as he watched Kara’s mouth slide along his penis. He would get sex from this woman whenever he wanted, and not be burdened by an actual relationship or see his bank account depleted.
But the king’s castle was soon besieged. Kara would want to go out to eat, and then she’d manipulate him into paying the bilclass="underline" “Do you mind? I just had to buy Grayson some new clothes.” Thomas soon nixed that activity, reiterating that he was not a meal ticket. He was also embarrassed to be with her in public, since she always looked so sloppy and always treated servers, sales associates, cashiers, and other low-tier workers with scornful abruptness. (She didn’t seem to consider that she was also a low-tier worker.) Kara had possibly pouted when Thomas had put his foot down, but it was hard to tell. Her emotions were sometimes difficult to analyze; it was like trying to distinguish between the bricks on the side of a building.
She didn’t “pout” for long, though. Next, she started asking for commitment instead of money, though Thomas suspected money would be asked for once commitment was obtained. She floated the “d” word around: “If we date, I can fit you into my life easier, because I know you’re there for me. Not like now, when we’re… whatever we are.” Thomas reminded her that they’d agreed to just be friends-with-benefits. Kara said that things changed. Thomas said he wasn’t going to raise another man’s child. Kara said she didn’t expect him to, but it would be nice if he could babysit from time to time. Her mom babysat Grayson all the time; wouldn’t it be nice to give her a break? Thomas said he would never babysit any child — ever. Kara said he was being mean and irresponsible. Thomas asked her why he should be responsible for other people’s children… and so it went.
But the castle’s walls held. Thomas was proud of himself. In earlier years, he would’ve succumbed to every blandishment a sex-dispensing female threw at him, but he’d become tougher over the years — to a degree.
Instead of continuing the siege, Kara had withdrawn her forces and sought out other castles to plunder. Apparently she’d found some. She made herself frequently unavailable, and Thomas felt like their non-relationship was fizzling. Still, if he could get with her a few more times…
“No,” he replied, “I don’t want to date. I’ve made that clear, yet you keep bringing it up.”
“Well, we can’t go on like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t.”
“Nice reasoning.”
“Look, Thomas, it was fun for a while, but I’ve got a lot on my plate. I need a man in my life who’s willing to help me. You just want to make love to me.”
“You just wanted sex, too. We agreed about all this the first night we hooked up.”
“Yeah, well, things change.”
The conversation bored him. It was the same argument, even the same words. He looked to the east, to the Cape Lookout lighthouse shooting bravely into the night. He looked out at the black ocean, so vast and mysterious. The beach cottages sat there, empty and content. The sea buoys seemed to be bobbing guideposts to some strange, enchanting island kingdom. And here he was, forty years old, trying to get sex from a chubby girl with the personality of a rock. The lighthouse beam rolled by again, and this time it seemed to pause a moment, like a cyclopean god fixing him with a disapproving eye.
Thomas sighed, but there was a weary sort of happiness mixed in with the exasperation.
“Alright then,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”
He hung up before Kara could reply, and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. It buzzed once after a few seconds, meaning he’d received a text message. It was likely a poorly-spelled missive from Kara trying to convince him to get back on the hamster wheel. He ignored it, and gazed out into the night.