Exes

by Max Winter

  “That’s right,” said Jake. “I forgot about that.”

  “Huh.” I took a pull off my empty beer.

  “Well, we’ll just have to listen to the news—see what’s going on,” said Hannah.

  “Yeah,” said Jake, remembering something to his left. “There are no metaphors.”

  I didn’t know what he meant. So I said, “But this is real,” just to keep the conversation going.

  Jake thought about it for a while—like three, four seconds—which I thought was generous of him. “Yes,” he said finally.

  “You gotta figure it’ll burn off soon,” said Kathy.

  “Yeah, I hope so,” said Jake. “That beer looks good. I think I’ll go get myself one.”

  “Grab me another while you’re at it,” I said, setting my empty down on the coffee table. Kathy shot me another look. She was also slapping one shoe up and down on her foot and bouncing her leg—I could feel the flesh and muscle vibrations coming through the couch cushions. It was kind of open, her shoe, so you could see her whole foot almost—like a goddess sandal. Then it struck me how brown and smooth it looked, like a caramel. Her foot is basically nude, I thought. Someone could just reach out and touch it. Does anyone ever touch the nearly nude foot of a lady while making a point? Is that how you let her know that you do want to fuck? By lightly touching her foot while looking her in her eyes and saying something strong and kind? I grew up in a house where no one really touched, so I don’t know how these things work.

  Kathy had been spending a lot of time outdoors lately, with Bob. Strolling and running behind his stroller, pushing him down the street like a snowplow or that iron skirt-looking thing on the front of an old-timey train. I really wish she wouldn’t run against traffic. Lately I hadn’t been looking at Kathy all that much. I could barely even recognize her. I watched her leg bounce up and down and realized I was getting hard, so I tugged at my shirttails and crossed my legs. Her real-life anger didn’t usually make me feel sexual. That light beer had gone to my head like medicine. I felt like a boy again. And she just looked like some pissed-off girl, and not my wife. It was the most specific desire I’d had for her in almost two years. Plus, there was all that movement and friction.

  Just as he was about to leave the room, Jake turned around. “Anyone else need anything?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” Kathy said, still bouncing that leg.

  “We’re all set,” said Hannah.

  “Hey,” I said to Kathy.

  “How do you like your Diaper Genie?” she asked Hannah.

  I reached out and touched Kathy’s foot, and she crossed her legs the other way, just out of my reach. My timing sucks, I almost said aloud. Sometimes I’ll blurt out the answer to a question Kathy asked me months ago, like she just asked it or, even worse, to one she never even thought to ask.

  After dinner, the girls put the boys down: Alex in Jake and Hannah’s bed, still, and Bob in what would someday be Alex’s crib. Jake and I smoked cigars on the patio. They were good—not Cuban good, but close. I had picked them up in Tampa right before Bob was born and had been saving them for a special occasion. Jake and I used to smoke Swisher Sweets back in high school, so it felt good and familiar to be sitting there blowing smoke rings into the night.

  “So, Jake,” I said about a minute or two after I became aware of the silence.

  “Yeah?” Jake asked through the cigar in his jaw.

  “Nothing, I guess. Happy birthday?”

  Jake laughed. “Good old Slepkow,” he said. “You’ll never change.”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to make my laughter sound like Jake’s.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Mark.”

  “Me too.”

  “It’s hard not to worry. About the future at least. Most things are only going to get worse.”

  “I thought this kind of thing was supposed to make you realize how lucky you are.”

  “Not when you stop and think about how other people really are. This is about things I can’t control. I’ve got to be clear-eyed.”

  “I can see that.” I didn’t know what else to say, but figured it was the kind of time where I should say something helpful. Supportive. “Babies are basically wild animals,” I said. “But helpless. Bob doesn’t even look up when you say his name.”

  “Truth is, I’m angry all the time. I’m always a bad choice away from losing it entirely.”

  I wasn’t sure whose choices he meant—his or someone else’s—so I just listened. Maybe listening could help.

  “Last week I was out front with Alex,” he said, “and some douche in a BMW tears past us at, like, forty at least. Inside the community. So I jumped in my car and sped after him like a cop. Left Alex alone on the lawn. He could have crawled right into the street.” His voice cracked a little. Just a hair. It might’ve even been the cigar. No more beer, and it was still hot. “Hannah was out shopping.”

  “Did you catch him?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I yelled stuff out my window, but I’m not sure he heard me. He was on the phone. I just want a little justice, you know? It doesn’t even matter how small. A minor victory, even. It would be like food or water to me at this point.”

  “Me, I get angry in the park, mostly. And sometimes just before bed.”

  Jake pulled a dead dandelion from a crack in the bricks and threw it into the bushes. “You’re a lucky guy, Slepkow.”

  He said it like he was mad at me. “What do you mean?” I said.

  “You’ve always been comfortable not knowing stuff. Me, I’ve got to know every last thing. I’m almost never surprised.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “This is the first time I’ve been surprised since college.”

  “Coming down was Kathy’s idea,” I said a little too quickly.

  “Not about that, you idiot. About Alex.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

  We finished our cigars without talking.

  The guest bed was soft and queen-size. At home we had a firm king. The air-conditioning was on full blast, so we even needed a blanket. It was central air, and we couldn’t turn it down. Under the covers, Kathy’s legs felt smooth and strong. Her back was to me, but we were right up against each other for a change. Normally, she didn’t like to touch when we slept, but like I said, the bed was small and we were cold. I rolled onto my back. I took my penis out of my boxers and held it in my fist.

  “How was your run?” I asked. She had taken a quick one after putting Bob down. She seized every chance.

  “It was all right. I only did three miles. I’m falling way behind on my Ironman schedule.”

  “Oh.” I had a hard time talking about exercise with Kathy. I could feel her impatience in her shoulder blades, which felt like scissors. She was wearing her sleeping tank top, which had nursing stains the size and shape of large, weird-shaped areolas, but it didn’t mean she didn’t want to have sex. For her, sex is no big deal—like exercise, she says. “It makes me feel better about myself,” she says, “but it also needs to fit into my schedule. And I’ve already signed up for a lifetime membership.”

  I tried to think about how her foot had looked before, in front of everyone, but couldn’t focus. I sniffed my fingers. Cigars.

  “I stink,” I said.

  Kathy laughed. “You smell like an old man.”

  I held my penis some more, but it wasn’t getting any harder. “I should probably shower,” I said, tugging quietly.

  “I got lost coming back here,” she said. “All the streets look the same.”

  Just then the A/C clicked off, and right away the room felt like a crawl space. I could hear news coming through the wall, from Jake and Hannah’s bedroom. They had it on soft, but the walls were thin. Jake coughed once. A short, dry cough, like he was forcing it. I wondered if they would hear us. But Kathy never really got all that loud, so I tightened my grip and thought ab
out her getting lost and winding up in someone else’s house. What if nobody minded and things just went from there? A real free-for-all. A jubilee! Of course, she would have to shower first and borrow some clothes. The wife would have to be the same size. I could imagine it if I focused but also kept things a little blurry, like with Magic Eye. I’ve never been what you would call creative, and sometimes I worry that TV killed what little imagination I might’ve had. But with some effort I could see her and someone else’s wife, who was cute enough, on a couch taking turns with a basically realistic cock attached to a guy with no face and definitely no asshole. He was nobody’s husband. He was just some guy, and nobody asked any questions. They just made the most of it. They were all happy and just the right amount embarrassed. And finally I was about to roll over and follow through when I realized that my left arm had fallen asleep. I dragged it out from under the pillow, and it fell over the side of the bed like dead meat. I started rubbing it to try to wake it up, and right away I lost my sexy thoughts and my hard-on because I can only do one thing at a time. Kathy, her back still to me, went back to being my wife, who hadn’t been fucked by me or anyone else in, what, ten months? People say she’s out of your league like it’s a good thing.

  But I’m trying to be a good husband and father. I really am. A few months after Bob was born, we talked about the husband part. I said I wasn’t ready yet, and she sighed. “That’s okay. But still. I’m right here.”

  “I waited twenty-three years, what’s a couple few months,” I told her, like it was a joke. But she didn’t take it like one. I said I was tired all the time and needed to be a good father more than a good husband right now.

  “Why can’t you be both?”

  “I can try,” I said. “But father’s more important.”

  “They’re both important,” she said. “I’m right here now, Mark. But I might not always be, okay? Do you understand?”

  After Kathy’s father died, even with the settlement, her mother had a tough time of it, and so did Kathy and Kathy’s brother. They moved around a bunch: Oxnard, Tacoma, Mobile. And Foster was worst of all. But they had family there, and that’s what mattered at that point. Plus it was cheap. Her mom’s car, when she even had one, was always a mess, and that drove Kathy nuts. Gum in the ashtray, nuts on the floor, maps everywhere. The way Kathy keeps her car, if there were nuts on the floor, you could eat them, no problem. At home, you could serve soup from our toilets. “We’re keeping things straight and clean for Bob,” she only had to say once. We split the work. She handles the bedrooms, I get the kitchen and the living room, and we alternate bathrooms. She cooks all the meals, though, because my tongue is pretty much always burned. But I set the table and clean up after and load and unload the dishwasher correctly. I also put things back where I found them and always pick things up off the floor. Our house is so well kept that even a guest would know where the stamps are. Not that we have guests, but still. We make a good team.

  Around three o’clock or so, I gave up. Kathy wasn’t exactly snoring, but she wasn’t not snoring either. Plus, past a certain point you’re better off up and about, doing things instead of lying down trying not to think about stuff. I don’t ever have too much on my mind, but it can keep me up all the same, and that night, for some reason—maybe seeing Jake, maybe not being able to fuck my wife again—I got stuck thinking about a bunch of things I wish I hadn’t done or said or thought. Sometimes I’ll just lie there and watch it, like a terrible movie that’s always on.

  So I got out of bed and balls-of-the-feet sneaked downstairs to Jake’s den to watch some cable. I flipped through the channels, but there was nothing good on—fishing, shopping, movies that were almost over—and that’s when I saw all the DVDs piled up underneath the TV. Kid’s stuff mostly, same as us, all the Baby Elmos and Beethovens and Einsteins. Then I thought to look for some porn, but no dice. Jake must’ve stashed it someplace special. No NC-17s either, not even the unrated European kind. So I skimmed through the R’s and even the PG-13s, reading the rating criteria—Language, Intense Situations, Child Endangerment, a Sexual Conversation, a Scene of Peril, and all kinds of Violence: Medieval, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Domestic, and even Zombie, but none of the good Rs: no Sexual Situations, a Sex Scene, Nudity, Scenes of Graphic Nudity, Full-Frontal Nudity. No Brief Nudity, even. But who am I to judge? At our house, we only have the kind of movies with more than one ending, where you can’t even remember if you’ve seen it or not. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t hate when Kathy falls asleep first.

  I was just about to give up and watch Rear Window—Jews love Grace Kelly like we love golf and hotels—when I noticed a plain red envelope peeking out of the rubber-banded flat-screen manual. I opened it up and saw that it was labeled wedding video: unedited. I hit mute, slipped the disc in, and fast-forwarded through the ceremony to all the drinking and dancing and hanging out.

  “Oh,” I heard a little bit later. I looked up to see Hannah in an open, then closed robe, sleep-haired and slitty-eyed.

  “Yes,” I said, hitting pause and yanking up my boxers. The elastic waistband snap made us both wince. My fist was full of t.p.

  “I heard noise,” she said, and looked at the TV screen—which was paused on a shot of Kathy in this great dress I only half remembered, and that she looked like a stranger in—then away, then back at me, then at the floor.

  “Can’t sleep,” I said.

  “It’s hard sometimes.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Mark.”

  “I—”

  “Mark . . .”

  “—it’s my wife.”

  “And this is Jake’s den.”

  “Yes.” I hit stop, and that blue DVD logo came up.

  “There’s a guest bathroom.”

  “I know.”

  “Back to sleep.”

  “Me also.”

  “Close up, okay?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Good night, Mark.”

  “Please don’t tell.”

  “Mark, good night.”

  “Please?”

  The fire went mostly out at some point overnight, even though it was still smoldering a bit. But the news said that all the bad poison had burned off and the air was safe to breathe again. The girls went shopping with Alex and Bob, and Jake and I drove into Baltimore. It was a one o’clock game, so we figured we’d grab an early dinner down by the wharf afterward. Maybe get some of those crabs you crack open with hammers. I’ve seen those on TV.

  The Angels won 6–3, but the only really interesting things that happened had nothing to do with the game. First of all, some fatso in the bleachers gave the Angels’ right fielder—Tim Salmon, who’s a real juicer, you can tell—a hard time all afternoon, calling him a jerk and an asshole and a cocksucker. By the bottom of the fifth he had run out of things to shout, so he goes, “Hey Salmon! Nice cocksucking cap, you cocksucker!” And, in between pitches, Salmon turns around and says, “What! My cap?” and points to it like, what the fuck are you even talking about. I liked that. It seemed human.

  The other interesting thing was at the top of the sixth inning, when a huge plume of thick black smoke floated past the park. It must have come from the tunnel where that train derailed—a big black jellyfish of a cloud with a tail like a jellyfish might have if it were a monster in D&D and made out of evil smoke instead of whatever jellies are made of. Other jellies? We both saw it in the sky at the same time.

  “Oh, man,” I said, pointing. “I hope it doesn’t come down here.”

  “Christ.”

  But it just kept slowly floating by until it was out of sight, like a balloon some kid had let go of, back before people worried about owls and large fish dying.

  There was a lot of traffic leaving the stadium. We sat there on the highway with the windows up and the A/C cranking, moving ahead a car length or two every other song. To our left was a white stretch limo. Someone had painted MICKIE’S BACHELO
RETTE PARTY! on the side in what looked like lipstick.

  “Get a load of that,” Jake said.

  “I thought they just had showers.”

  “Not anymore. Now they all go wild. Get drunk, hire strippers. Eat penis cake.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  Pretty soon the limo’s back windows rolled down and a sloppy-eyed woman wearing a lei poked her head out. She was screaming and waving a bottle of that stuff that tastes like lemonade but messes you up real quick. The car in front of us started honking. It was filled with big-backed college dudes in baseball hats. They rolled down their windows and leaned outside.

  “Whassup,” the driver yelled, like the guys in the beer commercial.

  “Whassup,” the woman yelled back, and disappeared into the limo. About a second later, though, her ass was sticking out the open window. Then she hiked up her skirt and gave us all an eyeful. She was wearing one of those thongs, so it was her whole ass pretty much. The guys started cheering.

  “Wow,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “That’s an ass, Mark. They’re for pooping and sometimes even sex.”

  “Everybody’s been making fun of me my whole life. But now I thought at least you’d knock it off, with what you got dealt.”

  Jake gripped the steering wheel tighter. He had put one of those braided leather covers on it, and it crackled in his fists. We inched up a few more car lengths, keeping pace with the limo. Then three more windows opened and three more bare asses appeared, all in a row. The guys were going nuts, screaming and clapping and honking their horn. They leaned out of their car and started chanting, “SHOW YOUR TITS!” like it was spring break or Mardi Gras or something. Then the first woman—the one with the lei—popped out of the moonroof. She waved her arms and blew the guys in the car ahead of us a great big kiss. They started chanting even louder, and the woman winked and swayed back and forth. Then she pulled up her tank top and flashed her tits. They were tan, except for where the cups of her top would have been if she’d had one on, which reminded me of the ’80s. Then she disappeared back into the limo. The driver of the car leaned hard on the horn, a long, moaning honk that the guys moaned along to.