"From the Hallway"

We’d made an agreement not to bring anyone home during the rest of our time together in the house. I had been staying late at work just to avoid the awkwardness of the situation. But when I came home Tuesday, I quickly realized that Jen had her own way of dealing with our split. There was a jacket thrown over a chair in the dining room. The back of the jacket had a Teamster logo with the three-digit number of some local union. The name Ray was stitched on the front. I immediately heard both of them in our bedroom—our former bedroom. Ray was doing a great job and so was Jen.

As I ascended the steps, nearing the bedroom door, it got louder. They’d made no attempt to be discrete. The hallway was strewn with clothing. Jen’s bra and thong were clumped together near the baseboard, as if they’d been pulled off her body in one sex-hungry grab. A skirt, a blouse, a ragged pair of jeans, and a faded Burlington football tee also lay in the hall. The door was ajar, and I peeked in, unnoticed. Ray’s fake-tan ass drove in and out between Jen’s thighs. Her head was tilted backward and her small teardrop breasts jelled to the sexual rhythm. They switched positions: Jen would only climax when she was on top. After one last contemptuous look, I turned away and stepped back over their trail of lust in the hallway.

I paused at a picture of us on our vacation last summer. We were in a lovers’ embrace, smiling as wide as the canyon behind us, but her eyes seemed distant. Everything was right, except for those vacant eyes. I’d suspected her of cheating once. She’d picked me up for lunch one afternoon. I kissed her, but she tasted odd—not like bad breath or nicotine, but something else. I’d forgotten about it by the time we finished our food.

In thinking about it now, I’d never known who Jen really was. Once I saw Ray’s jacket, it made sense. It took me an instant to figure her out, and all the questions I’d never asked were answered. Even now, when it wasn’t cheating, it was callous entertainment for her, like everything else in our relationship. Then something snapped.

Jen had forfeited her end of our agreement and therefore had chosen to give up everything else as well. Ray—he was a nobody—some random union rep who’d caught her degenerate eye. He didn’t know shit about our situation; shouldn’t have to. I’d give him that much. But that was no excuse. Both of them were accountable.

I decided to take a drive up into the hills, watch the city lights take over the dusk. Before leaving, I turned on the two front burners on the stove just enough to let out a soothing hiss to drug the air. After everything was over, Jen would likely go downstairs for a glass of wine, something she always did after sex. If my timing was perfect, she would walk down the hall with a lit Virginia Slim between her fingers and have one final moment all to herself—a very lonely one. If I got lucky, I would have a front-row seat from the lookout at the south bluff.

And I was lucky. The blast ricocheted off the hills, concussed in my ears. I stayed there for a while, well after the sirens. The distant smoke from the valley began to soak in the city lights; it had a campfire fragrance with hints of drywall, Formica, and clothing. After the last of the hazy, hollow breeze that carried the end of it all I drove away but made no attempt to evade the possibility that I would be caught. If I did go to jail, I hoped they’d let me keep our vacation picture.