The Chrysalis

by Deneen, Brendan

  “Hey!” Tom shouted, voice alien to his own ears. The entire car went silent. The harasser’s head swiveled toward Tom; the guy’s eyes were red and confused, but focused enough to be dangerous. An animal caught in the act of killing, drunk on bloodlust. “Leave her alone.”

  “What did you say to me?” the man slurred.

  “Leave her. The fuck. Alone,” Tom repeated, more quietly.

  The young woman glanced up at him, then quickly looked away. Energy crackled in the train car, the kind of electricity that builds moments before a physical altercation.

  “Wait,” the other man said, a smile blooming on his giant, puffy face. “Wait … you’re that loser who’s always standing alone on the Springdale platform.” He stepped toward Tom, thrusting his chest out, his free hand curling into a fist. He’d probably been striking this same bully pose since high school, maybe even earlier.

  Up close, Tom saw that the guy was bigger than he’d thought, but he didn’t give a shit. His blood was pounding in his ears. His skin was tingling. He was excited.

  “Yeah…,” the tall guy said. “Always standing by yourself, staring at people like a fucking retard. Is that what you are? A little fucking retard?”

  “Walk away,” Tom responded, his voice barely above a whisper but clear in the silence that had fallen over the car.

  The man licked his lips, took a deep gulp of his beer, chuckled, and then swung a meaty fist toward Tom’s face. Tom saw it coming, like a grainy slow-motion video, and leaned back slightly, allowing the drunk man’s hairy fingers to pass within millimeters of his nose.

  Off-balance, the man gaped wordlessly, shocked that his much smaller adversary had been able to react so fast. Tom pulled his own arm back, then unleashed and planted his fist on the man’s cheek. It was easily the most powerful punch Tom had ever thrown. The feeling of the skin of his knuckles splitting open with the impact was nearly orgasmic. The tall drunk staggered back and slammed into the bathroom door, denting it, his eyes rolling back as he slid, semiconscious, onto his ass on the floor of the car. Somehow, he held on to his beer, which spilled all over his pants at the impact. Tom stood stock-still, breathing evenly, as a smattering of applause broke out.

  “About damn time,” someone murmured.

  Thank you, the young woman mouthed. Tom nodded in response and walked casually back to his seat, which miraculously was still empty. He plopped down and stared ahead, his mind blank. When the conductor appeared, Tom flashed the monthly digital pass on his phone without looking up.

  He continued to stare at the seat in front of him while people in the car buzzed about what had just happened, while the conductor discovered the drunk passed out on the floor and called for the cops to meet the train in Newark, while the young woman he’d helped shot him a grateful smile when she got off. Lost in a dull, pleasant fog, Tom saw and heard none of it.

  * * *

  They clinked their glasses of expensive red wine and took tentative sips, smiling at each other, eyes sparkling.

  “Oh man, that is delicious,” Jenny said, putting down her glass. She grabbed a roll from the bread basket and slathered it with way too much truffle butter.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for you to be drinking?” Tom asked, savoring the flavor of the wine. In a good mood, he had splurged for a fifty-dollar bottle, something he’d never done before. He’d topped out at about twenty dollars until now. But why not? He felt the pain radiating up from his busted knuckles and he loved it. A celebration was in order.

  “Well, Dr. Miller said that I shouldn’t but I’ve researched it and found totally conflicting reports. I think a glass of wine now and then is fine, as long as I don’t go overboard. Trust me, I’d love to pound this entire thing and then polish off the rest of the bottle … but one glass with the ginormous dinner I’m about to inhale? I think the baby will be fine.”

  Tom took another gulp and watched Jenny as she attacked the piece of bread, her entire body going slack with pleasure at the taste of the fancy butter. This was the first time they’d been out to a nice restaurant since … hell, he couldn’t remember when. Maybe back when they were first dating and he was trying to impress her, even though he couldn’t really afford to do so. He had pushed his credit cards to the brink of extinction during those early days.

  Jenny looked absolutely beautiful. She didn’t need makeup, but when she did wear it, she looked different and exotic to him. The splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks sparkled in the candlelight. She had curled her hair slightly and wore it down. He realized it had gotten longer recently.

  He wanted her right now.

  Having to wait through an entire dinner, maybe dessert and coffee, and the twenty-minute trip all the way home … he wasn’t sure he could stand it. The new dress she was wearing that allowed for her baby bump only made her hotter.

  He drained his glass and refilled it, a few bloodred drops spilling onto his fingers. He licked off the errant wine and smiled at his wife, who watched him with an amused expression on her face.

  “All right, fine,” he said. “One glass. But if our kid comes out with three eyes, I’m blaming you.”

  “Fair en—Jesus, Tom, what happened to your hand?” The bruises and cuts on Tom’s knuckles had caught the light as he brought his fingers to his mouth. A few nearby diners looked over, annoyed, at Jenny’s sudden outburst.

  They’d read in a review that this was the kind of place where people expected near silence from fellow patrons. They’d both cracked up at that while they were getting ready, shouting at each other from room to room, pretending to order ridiculous dishes from a faraway waiter.

  “I … uh … scraped it trying to move some stuff around in the basement. It’s still pretty crazy down there.”

  “Let me see,” she insisted, and Tom held out his hand. She took it gently, running her fingers over the wounds. “Ouch … you should put some antibiotic on this.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said. “Things have just been so hectic. I feel like I don’t even have time to breathe.”

  “Right?” she said. “It’s like … I wake up, blink a few times, and then it’s time to go back to bed. I don’t know how you’re doing it. You’ve been coming to bed so late—you’re getting, what? Four or five hours of sleep a night? I can only imagine how much coffee you’re drinking at work.”

  “I actually haven’t had that much lately. Kind of gave it up,” he said, still surprised by the fact. But he was getting his morning jolt down in the basement these days.

  Jenny stared at him, obviously incredulous. “You’re insane. If I were getting four hours of sleep a night, I’d be showering in coffee. And the fact that you gave up cigarettes cold turkey? I’m proud of you, Mr. Decker.” She took another small sip of wine. “This tastes incredible. You may have to get a restraining order between me and this bottle.”

  Tom laughed and freed his hand from Jenny’s, grabbing a dinner roll. He glanced at the kitchen. Their food was taking forever.

  “How’s the studio coming along?” he asked.

  “Great!” she said. “I can’t wait for you to see it. I should be able to open sometime in the next couple of weeks. The floor needed some work but it’s all fixed now. One of Victoria’s friends owed her a favor and somehow got it all done for free! And I ordered a couple of those giant green exercise balls that you think are ridiculous, and a bunch of weights. Everything’s secondhand but basically brand new, and nothing was too crazy expensive. I mean, I’ll probably be training bored housewives and out-of-shape, middle-aged businessmen. I don’t think anyone is going to question the age of my equipment. Unless it’s totally falling apart! Which it won’t be. I’m thinking about calling it Spring Forward Fitness. Because we live in Springdale. What do you think?”

  “I like it,” Tom said, smiling. “Maybe you can whip me into shape…”

  “Ha! Fat chance … Ooh, here comes the food!”

  The waiter, an older man with slicked-back white ha
ir, had arrived with two huge plates. But the Deckers’ excitement diminished when he set them down. There was a tiny amount of food in the middle of each massive platter: delicious-looking, but barely more than an appetizer portion at most restaurants. Jenny had ordered the fish; Tom selected beef tips in some kind of red sauce, simply saying “bloody” when the waiter asked how he wanted the meat cooked. The waiter hadn’t seemed amused, but the steak looked undercooked to perfection regardless.

  “Fresh pepper?” the server asked.

  Tom shook his head and Jenny said, “No, thank you, but can you bring a lot more bread, and some relish? And mustard? And mayonnaise?”

  Both Tom and the waiter cocked their heads at her, and she offered them a sheepish grin. “What can I say? I have weird cravings. Pregnant lady prerogative.”

  The waiter mumbled, “Let me see what I can do,” and skulked away with a vague air of having been insulted.

  Jenny looked at Tom and wrinkled her nose in unintentional disgust. “Don’t wait for me,” she said. “You don’t want all that blood to dry up.”

  “The blood is the best part,” he said, shoving a forkful of meat into his watering mouth.

  * * *

  The bathroom was fancy as hell and smelled like an upscale floral shop, with soft piano music playing from unseen speakers.

  Jenny had just peed—she felt like she was peeing every five minutes these days—and was washing her hands and staring at herself in the mirror. Even though the pregnancy sometimes made her feel as if she were an alien living in her own body, she felt good tonight. Great, in fact. She wasn’t a huge fan of makeup, but she liked the way it looked in the bathroom’s light. For a second, she thought she saw something crawling on the wall behind her and turned quickly, but there was nothing there. She laughed at herself and turned back to the mirror. Apparently, she still had cockroach PTSD from living in the city. But she had been seeing weird things lately. She figured it must be the pregnancy, but none of the books she’d read mentioned anything about hallucinations.

  She sighed and grabbed a cloth hand towel from the nearby basket, drying her hands. After tossing the towel into an already-full disposal basket, she looked into the mirror one last time. Smiling, she ran her fingers through her hair. The way Tom had been looking at her all night made her feel gorgeous and sexy.

  As she exited the small unisex bathroom, one of several in a hallway at the back of the restaurant, she was surprised to find her husband waiting for her, a serious look on his face.

  “Tom? Is everything okay?”

  By way of an answer, he moved forward and gently pushed her back into the bathroom, stepped in after her, then shut and locked the door behind him.

  “What … what are you doing?” Jenny asked.

  Tom didn’t say anything, and for a second, his wife was filled with fear as she stared into his eyes, eyes she suddenly didn’t recognize. Was this another hallucination? She backed up against the sink as he moved slowly toward her. He kissed her mouth softly and whispered, “You are so fucking beautiful,” into her ear.

  A wave of excitement washed across Jenny’s body as Tom gently lifted her up and onto the sink and pulled down her underwear, staring into her eyes the entire time. They had drunkenly joked over the years that they should fuck in a public place someday, but they’d never even come close to actually doing it before.

  “What if someone hears us?” she gasped.

  “Don’t scream, then,” he whispered, even quieter, and then he was inside her, moving slowly and unbelievably gently. She closed her eyes. Buzzing from the wine and the gourmet food and the feeling of being fucked by the love of her life as smugly serious people dined a few feet away, Jenny leaned her head back against the mirror, shock and pleasure overwhelming her.

  “Oh my God, Tom…,” she whispered as he put his arms on the wall behind her and pushed harder. She bit down on her lower lip, afraid that she actually might scream.

  It was the slowest, most quiet sex they had ever had. And very possibly the best.

  MONTH FIVE

  The first month of her fledgling workout studio was going even better than Jenny had hoped. There was only one other place to exercise anywhere near their smallish town, and it was one of those mega-franchises that was the size of a cruise ship and cost an average person a month’s salary for an annual membership. Its huge indoor pool was a big drawing point, admittedly, but ever since some kid had experienced a phenomenal bout of diarrhea in there—info that quickly went viral—membership had allegedly dropped at a drastic rate.

  For now, Jenny was doing “pay as you go,” instead of making people sign contracts, and customers seemed to love it. Word of mouth was high, and the local free weekly newspaper had even run a front-page feature on the studio, including a photo of a beaming Jenny inside the newly refurbished space. She had asked that they shoot her only from the shoulders up, and thankfully they had complied. She wasn’t hiding her pregnancy, not that she really could at this point, but she wasn’t exactly broadcasting it to potential clients either.

  So far, no one seemed to mind having a pregnant personal trainer. A few women, moms themselves, had admitted that it actually made them feel a bit more comfortable when working out. Regardless of the reasons, Jenny’s little studio was a hit in the making.

  Of course, Victoria had warned her that most start-ups launched in a big way, then tended to fizzle. The key was to keep the momentum going.

  Good old Vic, Jenny thought as she cleaned up the studio after having finished with her last client of the day. She used to consider her sister a buzzkill, but Victoria had been full of shockingly good advice when it came to her new business venture. It was nice to have someone watching her back so closely, even if the advice was sometimes a bit too harsh.

  As she walked over to the front window to turn over the OPEN/CLOSED sign, she was surprised to see someone in the doorway, the late-day autumn sunlight streaming in behind him. It took her a second to recognize Chad, the good-looking, divorced neighbor she had last seen at her house the night of the big party. Today he was wearing casual work clothes: a white dress shirt with several buttons undone at the top of his hairless chest, and formfitting khaki pants. And a very expensive-looking pair of black dress shoes.

  “Hey, Jenny,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No,” she laughed, pushing a couple of errant strands of hair behind an ear. “It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting anyone else today. You looking for a personal trainer?”

  “Hmm,” he said, his face taking on a faux thoughtful expression. “I came in to say congratulations on the big opening. I never thought I’d be getting an aggressive sales pitch.”

  “Aggressive?” Jenny responded, meeting his expression with mock outrage. “That was nothing. If you want aggressive, I can show you aggressive.”

  Shit, she thought, am I flirting?

  Chad put up his hands. “All right, all right, you win. I know better than to mess with a small business owner. But seriously, Jen, congrats. The place looks amazing, much better than the comic book store that was here before. I mean, I’m not sure if you ever came in here back then, but that guy who owned it was a real creeper.”

  He laughed and Jenny said, “You done with work for the day? What do you have, bankers’ hours?”

  “I wish. I had to cut out early to pick up my son and take him to a doctor’s appointment. He has this mild cough that won’t seem to go away. My ex is away on a business trip, unfortunately. It’s not easy to keep our separate schedules straight, let alone make sure our kid is on time for all of his appointments and practices.”

  “It’s nice that you’re still on good terms with her.”

  “Yeah … it was just one of those things. Dated in high school, got married too young, realized we barely knew each other.” An immediate silence filled the room. Jenny studied her sneakers until Chad chuckled nervously. “Sorry about that. It’s been a long week. I’m looking forward to getting
huge ice cream sundaes with him after the doctor.”

  “That sounds fun,” Jenny said, smiling up at him. “Don’t let me hold you up.”

  “Oh, you’re not. I have a few minutes to kill before he gets out of school, and I saw that article on you a couple days ago. Very impressive. I just wanted to say hi. Haven’t seen you since that rager you threw a couple months ago.”

  “Ha. Yeah, that was crazy. It’s a good thing our house was already a mess!”

  “It wasn’t a mess at all. You … it looked really nice,” he said.

  It got quiet again as they stared at each other. Jenny could feel sweat rolling down the back of her neck and along her spine, giving her goose bumps.

  “Well, anyway,” he continued, “I’ll get out of your hair. Good luck with this place. Not that you need it.”

  “I’ll take all the luck I can get.”

  “Fair enough. And who knows?” he said, stepping outside. “Maybe I will need a personal trainer. The holidays are coming up, and I have a major dessert addiction. I do love my sweets, Jen.”

  He flashed a closed-mouth smile at her as he closed the door.

  After a minute, Jenny let out a long sigh and laughed to herself. Chad’s energy was so relaxing, so calming. Totally different from Tom’s, who had such a short temper lately. She assumed it was the stress of the new job, the work still needing to be done around the house, and the impending baby. Still, sometimes she felt as though she didn’t even know him, and sometimes his anger scared even her.

  She shook these thoughts out of her mind, then flipped the sign with a bit more force than she had intended.

  * * *

  Tom was nervous as hell. In all the time he and Jenny had been together, he’d never spent any time alone with Victoria. Had actively avoided it for the most part, in fact. It wasn’t a secret that his sister-in-law had never really approved of him, and it felt obvious to Tom that she thought Jenny could have done better, which made this lunch invitation all the more puzzling.