Plus One

by Christopher Noxon

  Alex started to protest, then sighed. “Okay, fine. You’re right. But I’d hire you as my right-hand man, to work with in the shop, okay? You’d hook me up with some Sammy’s Salves? All these guys could use a skin-care regimen, am I right?”

  “Seriously.”

  It was after dark and the movie was almost over when Figgy came through the door, lugging a pile of scripts and a bundle of mail. Alex started to get up, then thought better. “Hey!” he called across the room.

  On the screen Clint had just tossed El Indio’s body into a wagon overflowing with corpses. “What in God’s name is this?” Figgy called.

  “It’s only the best Western ever,” Sylvie said, squeezing Alex’s shoulder.

  Figgy dumped her stuff and then came over the couch, leaning down on the arm. “What’s for dinner?”

  Alex looked up at her blankly, the question of food not even occurring to him until now. “I dunno—what is for dinner? I can put some fish sticks in for the kids, and maybe we can just do soup or something?”

  She rolled her eyes and sat down at the island. “Soup? Seriously? I’m exhausted and starving. And we need to talk. I’ve got news.”

  “Really?” Alex said, tugging the blanket up to his chin. “Can I just sit one more sec? I’m not feeling so hot. Those tacos last night ripped me up inside. I’ve barely gotten up from the couch all day.”

  Figgy looked annoyed. “That should be all cleared out by now, shouldn’t it? Have you called the doctor?”

  He crossed his arms under the blanket and held onto his sides. The tugging feeling in his groin was back, mingling with a narcotic bleariness. That last Vicodin was maybe not the best idea. She headed over to the fridge, swinging open the door and blocking her view—he had a quick window in which to somehow get rid of the now-soggy bag of soybeans jammed between his thighs. He got up quickly, tucked the bag under his shirt and headed for the bathroom.

  Closing the door behind him, he splashed a handful of water on his face, then pulled out the bag and weighed his options. Stashing it here didn’t seem wise. He had to dump it. He tore the bag open with his teeth and poured the contents into the toilet—the hard green pellets splashing as they hit the water, a good approximation of the sound that a man in his supposed condition should be making. Figgy had been home for two minutes and already here he was, a dope dealer ditching his goods when the cops came calling. He balled up the wet plastic and buried it in a wastebasket.

  With that taken care of, he pulled down his pants and slid the jock strap down his legs to check himself. Everything looked fine—at least no bigger or more bruised than when he’d gotten home. Then he noticed it. Inside the front section, in the divot of the little pouch, were three irregularly shaped blots of brownish red.

  His jock strap was bloody.

  And all at once, he was back in Las Vegas on that thrifting holiday with Figgy, horrified by his gruesome bargain-bin discovery. He remembered holding up the bloody jock strap and inspecting it, baffled at what sort of circumstance could have produced such an atrocity.

  Now he knew. He was the stranger his younger self could not even begin to contemplate.

  He stepped out of the jock strap and sat down on the toilet seat, hanging his head and dangling the offending item from his index finger. He sat there for a while, elbows pressing down on his knees, head spinning. Outside the door, he could hear the TV back on, that same heinous sitcom laugh track booming through the house. Figgy was calling out to him—where was the shrimp curry she’d brought home the night before? Had he eaten it? A few more minutes passed. Why wasn’t the printer working? Sam needed to print out hand-cream labels—why wasn’t it working? Could he finish up in there already? She really needed to talk.

  Alex sat very still, his eyes clenched closed. As long as he stayed put in here, he’d be okay. Let her sort out dinner and the printer. He’d just stay here until his head stopped spinning.

  “What is that?”

  He lifted his head. Figgy was in the doorway, eyes cast on the elastic in his hand.

  “Can’t you see I’m in here?”

  “I do see that. What’ve you got there?”

  Alex swiped his hand to the side, stashing the strap under his armpit. “Come on! I leave you alone when you’re in the bathroom.”

  “I lock the door. This door is open. And you’re sitting here hiding something. What are you hiding?”

  Alex closed his eyes and took a moment. Then he pulled the strap from beneath his arm, looped one side around his thumb and flung it at her. She grabbed it out of the air and turned it over, her face a mix of horror and confusion.

  The laugh track boomed from the TV.

  “It’s a jock strap,” he said. “A bloody jock strap. Isn’t that hilarious? Just like the one in Vegas! Except this one has my blood on it. How hilarious is that?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What—you got snipped? When?”

  “Today. And it’s clipped, not snipped. Little titanium clips—like NASA uses.”

  Her arms went slack at her sides. “You just… got a vasectomy? Without discussing it with me? And you were just going to keep it a… secret?”

  “Yup.” He bent backward, exposing his bare thighs and mottled abdomen. “Nothing to discuss. My body. My choice.”

  Her arms crossed and mouth fell open. He waited for the hollering, the screaming, the anger. Instead, she did what she never did: laughed, her shoulders heaving in deep convulsions. “Oh, you poor little shit.”

  “What? What’s so funny?”

  She reached into her pants pocket and pulled something out, then tossed it at him. He caught it in one hand. White plastic. Purple tip. Little window. Plus sign.

  “Too late, daddy.”

  Thirteen

  They didn’t have it out right away, not with the shock of the strap-stick exchange still reverberating through the house like a blast of thermonuclear energy. Alex got into some pajama bottoms and managed to rustle up some dumplings and green beans for the kids while Figgy retreated to the bedroom to pack for her trip to Baltimore in the morning.

  He got the kids down and headed to bed with a fresh bag of frozen vegetables. Corn this time. Much manlier. He lay atop the covers, starfished across the king bed. Figgy stepped in from the bathroom, a froth of white foam on her lips. She pulled a toothbrush out of her mouth and twirled it like a baton. She started to say something, stopped. Recalibrated. Started again.

  “Seriously, what the fuck?” she said at last. “Who does this? Who goes sneaking around behind his wife’s back to get a vasectomy?”

  Alex propped up on his elbows. “I was being responsible,” he said. “I don’t know what happened with your pills—but at least I was being responsible. Some actual family planning? Accident prevention?”

  She clamped her mouth down on the toothbrush. “Who said it was an accident?” she mumbled. “We’ve talked about it. Over and over. We never ruled it out.”

  “We never ruled it in. The last time all you said is you wanted to start trying. I never actually agreed. This is something you negotiate. You have good-faith negotiations.”

  Figgy wiped her mouth with her sleeve and rolled her eyes. “You want to talk about good-faith negotiating? I’m supposed to negotiate with a guy who just had… secret ball surgery?”

  Alex plopped back down on the pillow and adjusted the bag. “You just haven’t thought this through. Going from two kids to three—we’re outnumbered! I can barely keep a man-to-man defense going—how are we supposed to go zone? Have you forgotten everything? The pumping, the screaming, the explosive doodies? I can’t do it again. I just can’t.”

  “I’m sorry—what else are you doing exactly?” she said. “I’m sorry if my pregnancy interferes with your punk-rock memoir.”

  A screech like a tea kettle sounded in Alex’s head. “I told you, it’s a novel. And yes, this does interfere. It does. It’s bad enough that I’m trying to work with Rudolfo and Rosa and the FedEx man barging in every five minutes
. Now what? I’m just supposed to put all that on hold?”

  A droplet of toothpaste flew from her bottom lip. “I swear to God, Alex—you sure complain a lot for a guy with no job, a nanny, and a writer’s studio in a solarium.”

  The tone in Alex’s ears rose to a screech. “You wanted this house! And now—what? Another show, another baby, more and more and more! Are you so fucked up about turning forty that you think getting pregnant will make everything right?”

  “So what am I supposed to do, exactly? Get an abortion? And then go back to work so I can continue supporting the family I never see?”

  She wheeled around and went back into the bathroom, kicking the door with her heel as she went.

  Alex sat up and craned his neck toward the doorway. “Can’t we at least talk about options? I mean, it’s not like you’ve got moral objections.”

  He could hear her spit into the sink, crank on the water, and splash it on her face. “Not going to happen.”

  Alex flopped back on the bed. That was it—nothing more to be said on that subject. About all things related to Figgy’s uterus, Alex was entirely, ideologically irrelevant.

  She came back in, face flushed and T-shirt splattered. “You think I’m having fun? You think I like working all the hours I do and trying to be a halfway decent mom? You think I like missing Sylvie’s recital and Sam’s performance thing? How do you think I feel when these Pines moms call asking about play dates I have no idea about? You think I want to go schlep off to Baltimore just so we can afford to send our kids to that ridiculous school?”

  Alex straightened out and tucked his legs under the covers. She walked over to her bedside table, squirted some skin cream on her hands, and began furiously kneading her arms and neck. “You’re right—I’m forty,” she said. “And this is my last shot. Bought two. Got one free. It doesn’t matter how it happened. What matters is that I’m having it. I’ve got resources—I can handle it with or without you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Figgy wrapped herself up in the covers and turned her back. “I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning. I can’t do this. We’re done.”

  Alex closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, his chest roiling. We’re done?

  • • •

  She was up just after six the next morning, Alex waking to the sound of the buzzer as she opened the back gate for her ride to the airport. He propped himself up on one elbow and watched her. She knelt at the side of the bed, yanking on the zipper of her suitcase. Her mouth was set in a hard line.

  “Have you got Puffy?” he asked. Puffy was their name for the green, down-filled parka she complained made her look like a parade balloon. “It’s freezing in Baltimore.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “I’m up. You want eggs? I’ll make eggs. Like the husband in Fargo. Before Frances McDormand went out in the snowstorm?”

  “Eggs—ugh.” She heaved down her on her elbow, compressing the bag as she tugged at the zipper. “Not a good idea for me right now. I’ll grab a yogurt at the airport.”

  He sat up and stretched, then reached over to touch her arm. “Fig, you don’t have to go, do you? You hate production. Let Dani deal with it. You’re always saying how great she is on set—you stay here. The timing couldn’t be shittier.”

  “I can’t not go. The studio’s already annoyed I haven’t been out for pre-production—I have to be on set. I can’t run it from here. And maybe we need some time.”

  As she closed the bag and stood up, Alex’s fingertips landed along the soft skin on the inside of her arm. The handle of her bag locked into place with a snap. She sighed and squeezed his hand, hair falling over her eyes. Her face was in shadow and featureless, impossibly distant. “It’s three weeks. I’ll get things running, set the tone. We can figure things out from there. I’ll Skype with the kids at night. I left a list of appointments and phone numbers near the computer. Call Anne-Marie about plane tickets—I’ll send for the kids in a week, when it calms down a little. Send them with Rosa.”

  Alex let go of her hand and squinted up at her, trying to catch up. “Send the kids… to Baltimore? With Rosa? What are you talking about?”

  “The guy’s waiting,” she said. “I gotta go.”

  She swiveled around and headed out the door, the plastic wheels of her bag crackling against the hallway floor.

  • • •

  After a call to Rosa telling her she was on kid duty, Alex cut himself off from all contact with the outside world. With the drapes pulled tight and the house phone left off the hook, he slept for six hours, then roused to gobble another two Vicodins and a bag of mint Milanos. Before dozing off again, he summoned a gauzy image of Miranda backed up against his minivan, moving in close, the softness of her throat shadowed in the streetlight. They hadn’t touched since that night, but he now imagined every inch of her, fixating on the curve of her neck and the divot at the base of her spine, a pang of shame registering in his chest as he tugged at himself, the stinging from his balls prohibiting any progress toward climax. He was curled into a ball humming an old TV jingle over and over again when he realized his cell phone had been buzzing on and off for the last hour or so. He rolled over, the soggy bag of corn thudding onto the floor, and picked up his phone. The caller ID read HUCK.

  “Mhff,” Alex said.

  “You don’t answer my calls anymore? I’ve left you like eight messages.”

  Alex put the phone on speaker and dropped it on his chest. “You remember that commercial for the Gap?”

  “The Gap—what?”

  Alex shut his eyes and sang out the melody that had been looping in his head all day. “Fall into the gap,” he sang. When Huck didn’t respond, he sang it again, his voice falling into a breathy croak on the long last note.

  “Alex? You okay?”

  “You remember that ad, don’t you?”

  Alex could remember the exact moment when he’d first seen that TV commercial. He’d been eleven, maybe twelve, alone in his red-checked flannel pajamas, sick with a viral infection. Much later, recounting the episode with a therapist, he blamed his inappropriately intense response on a 102-degree fever and anxiety over the whereabouts of his mom. He’d been running the same high fever for two straight days when the Gap ad had triggered something akin to a psychotic break. The images were horrendous enough, a big phallic cartoon needle-and-thread flying frantically through space, careening over undulating mountains of blue denim. Then there was the melody of the jingle itself, the way it plunged down, dropping into an impossibly low register—hearing it for the first time, he’d felt a flurry in the pit of his stomach that grew into a full-body quake. He was teetering over a void, an eternal darkness, an infinite chasm. When his mom came home after her weekend away, he was trembling in the corner of his room, dehydrated and delirious, face slick with tears.

  “Fall… in… to… the… Gap,” he sang again now, that same deep-down flurry overtaking him again. “How was that even an ad? Can you believe they sold jean shorts with that horror show?”

  “Seriously, Alex? You get up right now and put on some clothes. No chinos either. I’ll be outside in twenty minutes.”

  • • •

  Huck ignored Alex’s feeble protests and drove west to the Davies. After splitting with Katherine, he had practically moved into the club, partly for the emotional support of the boys at the bar but also to establish a claim on the club as his domain during the reshuffling of their marital assets, financial and otherwise.

  “I shouldn’t be out in public,” Alex said as they saddled up to barstools under the gnarled branches of what looked like an old-growth olive tree. He felt greasy and rumpled. A few tables over, four guys in suits were swirling amber-colored alcohol in bulbous snifters.

  “Come on, homes—it’s a tequila tasting!” Huck said, raising two fingers to a passing hostess, who beelined past their table without a pause. “Small-batch shit from Jalisco. Infused with peppercorn and yopo plants—loaded w
ith DMT, same stuff the Incas snort with bird bones. Mixed up in a cocktail called the Mystic Sombrero. Shit’ll put a pretty golden halo on everything, make all your hurt go away. You need this.”

  Alex shrugged and squinted up at a string of white lights in a low-hanging branch overhead. He imagined what it took to get this tree up here, thirty stories up. He pictured a two-prop chopper hoisting the tree over the rooftops, the roots bunched in a bulging mesh sack, the trunk spinning in the wind, long, feathery leaves scattering on the sidewalks below.

  Huck craned his head around the room, then ducked down and motioned for Alex to come close. “I tell you about my thing with Cruise?”

  “Cruise Cruise?”

  “He’s between movies right now. Sits in the lounge, reads the paper, chugs smoothies. So last week I’m sitting right across from him and I figure—why not? He’s a member, so am I, what the hell. So I lean over and I say, ‘So Tom—I gotta ask: What’s the deal with Scientology?’ ”

  “You said that? Seriously?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He looks me up and down, shakes his head and just goes, ‘You’re not ready.’ ”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. You’re not ready. Then he goes back to his paper.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know, right? What do you wanna bet Paul Haggis wrote him that line?”

  Alex perked up as another waitress passed their table with a tray of cocktails. She reached the foursome of suits then went into a crouch. Alex zeroed in on a crease in her tweed miniskirt and watched it bunch up over a pair of sheer gray stockings.

  “Figgy’s gone,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Flew out this morning. New show in Baltimore. Said she’ll send for the kids in a week or so. Send for them—that’s how she put it.”

  “And you’re what—bummed? You wanna go to Baltimore? You’re kid-free, wife-free—you should embrace that shit.”

  “I guess.” He knew he should embrace that shit. But somehow, the thought of sending the kids with Rosa to visit Mommy on the set of her new TV show felt terrifying. It felt like a whole new reality. One in which Figgy’s life kept right on going, busy as can be, all her responsibilities and needs attended to—while his life froze. Rosa would pick up the slack with the kids, Anne-Marie would help out with house duties, Zev would help Figgy work out her early-stage pregnancy hormones—and soon everything Alex contributed to the Sherman-Zicklin clan would be… subcontracted. She had the cards. She’d keep working, keep earning, keep being the same tough, anxious, hard-charging, powerhouse she was. But Alex? What became of the husband-of?