Last Couple Standing

by Matthew Norman

  “Mr. Butler,” Luke said, “why were you with—”

  There was a knock, and Luke stopped talking, because Scarlett Powers was standing at Mr. Butler’s door. “Hey, guys,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Scarlett,” said Mr. Butler.

  She stepped in and stood over Luke.

  “Um, I’ll be with you in a minute. There’s a chair down the hall, across from Mrs. Miller’s office, if you wanna sit and wait.”

  “Oh, yeah. Okay.” She didn’t move, though; she just stood there, looking at them.

  “No, it’s cool,” said Luke. “We can talk later—like, tomorrow or whatever.”

  “Luke, no. Scarlett, seriously. Come on.”

  But it was too late. Luke sidestepped Scarlett and took off.

  47

  “Well, that was pretty rude,” said Mitch.

  She was already sitting in Luke’s vacated seat. “I knocked.”

  “Luke and I were talking. You could clearly see that.”

  “Not my fault he just jetted like that,” said Scarlett.

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure it was.”

  “You ever notice how scared they all are of me?” she said. “I mean, am I really that terrifying?”

  Something was up. He could tell. Like Luke, she was acting differently, too. She usually projected total confidence, but she was flustered and upset now, sitting across from him with her arms crossed.

  “It’s typical, though, right?” she said. “Guys are scared of women who don’t give a fuck. We’re a lot harder to control.”

  Mitch suspected that Scarlett was right, and that this, minus the f-word, would also make a pretty great college essay. On the wall behind her, next to the clock, hung a poster of Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules of Writing. His eyes fell on the second one, his favorite: GIVE THE READER AT LEAST ONE CHARACTER HE OR SHE CAN ROOT FOR.

  “How can I help you today, Scarlett?” he said.

  She looked at his open door. For a moment, it seemed like she might close it. Thankfully, she didn’t. “So with, like, office hours,” she said. “We can just talk, right? It’s not like it has to be about just class? That’s sanctioned, right?”

  Mitch was now officially scared—embarrassingly so, in light of the girl’s new working theory on men. He was an English teacher, so he was used to his students unburdening themselves to him with personal things. But this was Scarlett Powers. “What’s on your mind?” he said.

  She held her iPhone, clutching it in her lap with both hands. “Has Mrs. Butler said anything about me?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Butler?”

  “Yeah. Your wife. She’s my therapist. Was my therapist. I don’t know.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m aware that you and she work together. But we never talk about…”

  Her eyes were watering, tears threatening to spill over. Mitch was no longer afraid of her, and he felt like a shitty teacher for having been, if even just for a moment.

  “I’ve had a really bad week,” she said. “And I’m feeling very sad.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, okay. I’m sure she’s at her office. Do you have her number there? Maybe I could give her a—”

  “She dumped me,” said Scarlett.

  “She…dumped you? Why would she—” He stopped himself. His wife saw a few of the students at school—four, in fact, including Scarlett. Jessica thought he should know who they were, just in case, but he knew nothing else, and he wasn’t supposed to.

  “Our relationship’s been…compromised. That’s what she said. I know too much.” She held his gaze.

  “Okay.”

  “Listen,” she said. “Mr. Butler, I’m almost outta here. There’s only a few weeks left, right? And, I’m actually graduating this time.”

  “I know. Congratulations.”

  “So I’m as good as gone.”

  “Well, we still have some books to get through after 1984, but, yeah.”

  She looked down at her phone. “So maybe we can speak, you know, freely?”

  That fear from earlier was beginning to return. She was upset, clearly, but the intensity radiating off her caused him to roll his chair back a few inches. “Well,” he said, “I think that all depends.”

  “Mr. Butler, I know.”

  “You know?” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You know what?”

  She flushed at the neck. Blotches of crimson disappeared into the collar of her white uniform shirt. “Like, are you gonna make me actually say it?”

  “Scarlett, I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

  “I know about you and Mrs. Butler. About your thing. Your arrangement or whatever you guys’re calling it.”

  The assorted arteries and veins in his neck that carried blood up to his brain tightened. “How would you…Did she te—”

  “I saw her. With a dude. Her, like, other guy. And now she doesn’t want to be my therapist anymore. But I really need to talk to her. I need her to help me.”

  “A guy?”

  “It was an accident. Like, total Smalltimore bullshit. Wrong place, wrong time. At this house.” She stopped to look at her phone again—a long text message. And then her eyes filled. A tear crested one cheekbone. “Mr. Butler. Do you think I’m a psycho?”

  “What?”

  “Like, do you think I’m too crazy to be with? Like, not worth the trouble?”

  “Scarlett, where did…” There was no use in asking her this, or anything else. She was crying.

  “Can you do me a favor?” she asked.

  The metal box was opening again. His face was getting hot. “What, Scarlett?”

  “Can you maybe ask her to take me back?”

  48

  Luke would’ve gone home immediately, but first he took a detour to the restroom to berate himself for running out of Mr. Butler’s office like a complete spaz when Scarlett showed up.

  Is there some magical age you reach in life, he wondered—like twenty-five or forty—when you find that you’re able to make it through an entire day without totally embarrassing yourself?

  “You are a complete tool,” he told his reflection in the mirror. And then he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and headed for the parking lot, which was where he found Scarlett.

  He stopped when he saw her. She was sitting on a bench by the bike racks in the junior/senior lot, staring off into space.

  “Oh shit,” he said.

  He could try talking to her, of course. He could take a shot at redemption. But, being a complete tool and all, the odds of him saying something nonspastic were slim, so he made another break for it. He was nearly to his Jeep when he heard his name.

  “Hey you,” she said. “Luke.”

  He turned and acted surprised to see her. “Oh. Hi again.”

  “Do you think I’m a complete fucking bitch or something?”

  “What?”

  The lot was half-empty. Students who didn’t have extracurriculars were gone.

  “Why’d you bust outta there like that?”

  “I don’t know. You looked like you had something important to talk about.”

  She looked over toward the baseball field. There was a metallic ping of a bat hitting a ball. “Is that your car?” she asked.

  He’d spent half an hour before school that morning figuring out how to take the ragtop down, and now he was glad he had. Parked there in the lot next to a couple of Hondas, the Jeep looked like something out of a commercial. “Yeah,” he said. “Just got it.”

  “It’s dope,” she said.

  Luke absorbed her compliment, willing himself not to say anything stupid in response. No one had ever told him anything that he had or did was dope.

  And then she said, “You’re gonna give me a ride home, okay?”
r />   * * *

  —

  He closed his eyes when he let off the clutch to pull out of his parking space, because if he stalled he’d have to immediately kill himself.

  His life was spared, though, and the Jeep rolled forward smoothly, as planned, and then he drove as slowly as he reasonably could toward the exit, in the hope that someone—anyone—would see him leaving school with Scarlett Powers beside him.

  She fiddled with the stereo until she found what she wanted: a classic-rock station. “So, like, can I smoke in this thing or what?” she asked.

  Luke told her yes, not because he wanted her to smoke in his new car but because he would’ve said yes to anything she asked him, without exception. Glancing over, he noticed that her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. She lit her cigarette with a little purple drugstore lighter and blew smoke out into the world.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She wiped at her eyes quickly, like she was pissed at them. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “So, where’re we going?”

  “What?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Oh. Head up Falls Road. Just keep driving. It’s a ways. I’ll tell you when to turn.”

  They rode in silence for a while, listening to power ballads. Every stoplight, of which there were many, was an emotional roller coaster for Luke. Waiting for green lights gave him a chance to look around and see people seeing him: a dude in a cool Jeep with a hot girl. But then, when the lights turned green, he had to deal with the clutch and first gear and the prospect of stalling.

  He turned off Charles Street and headed toward Falls Road.

  “So you, like, live by them, right?” she said. “Mr. and Mrs. Butler? They’re your neighbors?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Right next door.” He slowed and steered around two cyclists. “How’d you know?”

  Scarlett shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Heard someone say it once, I guess. People know stuff. Left on Falls here. Get in the right lane and get around all these morons turning at the arrow, or we’ll be stuck here all day.”

  In the city, Falls Road is as congested and annoying as any other street in Baltimore. In the suburbs, though, it opens up into a scenic highway through horse farms, like you’re time traveling. Luke shifted into fourth gear, and then fifth, and the Jeep hummed. He’d never driven it this fast before.

  “So, yeah,” she said. “They’re weirdos, by the way.”

  “Who? The Butlers?”

  Scarlett flicked her cigarette butt out into the passing foliage and grabbed her hair to hold it against the wind. “I know they seem pretty chill. Like, the hottie shrink and the English nerd extraordinaire? Perfect little couple. It’s all an act, though. Trust me. They’re as fucked up as anybody.”

  He thought of his mother walking slowly up their sidewalk in the dark. “What do you mean?”

  She looked at him gravely. “Sex stuff.”

  “Sex stuff?”

  “Yeah. She’s fucking some bartender. Young guy in the city. Hot—like, hot hot. Like, half her age. And Mr. Butler? I don’t know. Who knows what that guy’s into?”

  Two brown colts lifted their heads and watched them as they sped by.

  “You never know what’s going on behind closed doors, dude,” she said. “Nothing’s good. Everything’s fucked. Turn left up here, at the sign.”

  Luke downshifted into third, then second, which was a rougher transition than he wanted it to be. He turned in to a neighborhood he’d never seen before. They drove by an ornate sign on a brick façade that read THE WOODS OF EAGLE RUN and then by a long expanse of perfectly mowed grass. Sprinklers misted the lawn and pavement. Beyond that, a series of enormous houses sprang up, each surrounded by towering trees.

  “On the right,” she said. “The gray one. With the Maryland flag.”

  He pulled into her driveway and rolled slowly up toward a mansion—easily one of the biggest houses he’d ever seen. “Wow,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “A couple of the Ravens live on this street. See that one with all the plants? That’s the kicker’s house, I think.”

  Luke said the kicker’s name, and Scarlett nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

  She let her hair go, and it fell over her shoulders. She’d slid her Sperrys off during the drive, and now she put them back on. Other than that, she was perfectly still. “I wish everyone didn’t hate me so much,” she said.

  There were no lights on in the house, and no cars in the driveway. No flat-screens flickering or dogs jumping at the window. Nothing. “People don’t hate you,” he said.

  She looked at him, and then out the windshield. “Yeah they do.”

  The radio was playing too loudly. A commercial for reasonably priced gutter cleaning. He turned it down and shifted into neutral.

  “They think I’m crazy and that I’m a bitch.”

  He wanted to tell her that they didn’t, but they kinda did. “Well, I don’t,” he said.

  “My boyfriend dumped me last night,” she said.

  “You had a boyfriend?”

  Scarlett nodded. “Yeah. For like a week. He was my first one.”

  “You’ve never had a boyfriend before? You?”

  “I’m not a girlfriend kinda girl, I guess,” she said.

  “Did he go to our school?”

  She laughed. “Fuck no.”

  “Oh. Right. Why did he dump you?”

  Scarlett took her phone out of her backpack. She opened her text messages and started reading out loud. “ ‘You’re a lunatic. And you’re not nearly hot enough to be as big a psycho as you are, by the way. Nowhere near worth it. I’m fucking done with you. For fucking real. If you ever come near me again I’ll mace your ass and call the police.’ ”

  “Jeez,” said Luke.

  “He misspelled psycho,” she said.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s tricky. The silent p and all.”

  “Since he was my boyfriend, and since he told me how fucking crazy he was about me, I asked him if I could move in with him after graduation. I’m totally over my parents. He said that might be a little too fast, and then he laughed at me, like I was an idiot. So I got pissed at him and kinda trashed his room. And while I was trashing his room, I found a pair of underwear that wasn’t my underwear. Really slutty. Like, a thong. And so I broke his window with a hockey stick.”

  Luke nodded.

  “Reasonable, right?” she said. “Like, they have guys who can fix windows. What’s the big deal?”

  “Well, psycho or not,” said Luke, “you’re, like, basically the hottest girl I know in real life.”

  Scarlett looked over at him again. She didn’t smile, exactly, but for a moment her face looked less sad. “Thanks for the ride,” she said. “Your Jeep really is dope.”

  He watched her climb out with her backpack, which was as big and oppressive and weighed down as his. She walked up a cobblestone path to the front door. He put the clutch in and shifted into reverse and prepared himself emotionally for having to back out of her long, sloping driveway.

  “Hey, Luke,” she called.

  She stood before a big red front door, next to a flowerpot. She set her backpack down and lifted her shirt, flashing two glorious breasts. They were gone before he even realized that he’d seen them.

  When she went inside, Luke stared at the door. Then he stalled the Jeep.

  49

  They were out of Golden Oreos.

  When Mitch opened the cupboard and discovered this, it hit him like a genuine tragedy, and his knees nearly buckled. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.

  “I know,” said Jessica. “We gotta put them on the list.”

  They didn’t have an actual list of the things they needed, like something committed to paper. It was just a m
ental list, and it was full of holes and countless missing things.

  They were in the kitchen again, in their respective spots. They could’ve mixed things up—maybe gone to a restaurant or a bar for such an important conversation—but having kids is sometimes like being held in a minimum-security prison, so there they stood. The kids were in bed, the house was mostly dark, and he’d just finished summarizing his conversation from earlier that afternoon with Scarlett.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “I was fully content to never talk about this again. To just close the book, you know.”

  “Same,” she said. “Which isn’t great. If we were my patients, I’d say we needed to talk about all of it. Dig into the details. Explore how each of us feels. A full emotional inventory.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “Are there any schools of thought that encourage patients to bottle everything up until they die?”

  She told him that there wasn’t, and then they played a quick round of Let’s Move to Fenwick. There was no income tax there, which was nice to talk about because it had nothing to do with what they were talking about.

  “Looks like we’ve got some pretzels in here,” he said. “And some of the kids’ Goldfish crackers. It says they’re ‘flavor blasted.’ ”

  “I’m good,” she said.

  This is a funny expression, Mitch thought, because she, he—everything, in fact—seems far from good. He walked away from the cupboard and back to his spot: leaning against the kitchen counter across from her. “So,” he said. “What were you doing there? When Scarlett saw you?”

  “I went there to break rule number two,” she said.

  “Which one’s number two?”

  “No repeats,” she said.

  His heart felt as if it had dropped to a lower spot in his chest—somewhere a heart shouldn’t be, jammed against a minor organ, a spleen or appendix or something. The word affair came into his mind, its letters all jagged and sharp like barbed wire. “I guess that’s what the dress was for, then.”