Monogamy. Part 1

MONOGAMY.

WILLIAM R. EAKIN.

I waited for her, tasting her: almonds, a faint bitterness, coffee-tastes from the earlier morning, the biting peppermints of toothpaste. Finally she came into the room with the silver tray of espressos and cream, kissed me before she set it down with the gentle aloofness of our marriage, then served. There were clouds of coffee aromas in the room now: the midmorning ritual had its own proper incense, strong like chocolate.

She said, "You've been distant again, these past several days." And instead of sitting down as she almost always did, she went to stand at the open window, pus.h.i.+ng even further back the heavy, Tyrian purple curtains of my library. A thin light streamed down on her face from the east.

I didn't say anything. I knew if I responded, we would start into it. I didn't even want to like her anymore.

She said, "You've been seeing a lot more of the other women lately."

I fought against a squirm, watched her with the Stoic expression of a seasoned poker player, chose a spoon and stirred. I saw her in profile and was amazed at how just ten years could age someone who had been so young. She looked a great deal like her father. It figured: the old man dominated our lives; our whole situation was his fault anyway, the fault of the wedding gifts: the property and money, the other gift. I never really even thought I would use it: I was enamored of the girl, wrapped up in the lace and flowers of the wedding and the honeymoon and seven truly good months.

And then, after months when I admittedly grew a little tired of it and her breath seemed stale and things settled into everyday weariness without the magic I married her for, I used his gift and started thinking of him as my best bet at salvation, the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d; we really did belong together to some fraternity that bound married man to married man. "I don't want to get into it tonight."

"You have been with them," she said gently, more to herself than to me.

I thought of them as other lives, lives not consecutive but simultaneous.

"You grow more and more distant and however many bright moments we've had together over these ten years, most of them are gray and dull, and it's because you've stopped having feeling for me."

It was true. I replied with ba.n.a.lity: "But I do love you."

She shrugged. I knew she would. We'd had lots of conversations like this and frankly I didn't care anymore, and I didn't care if she cared. There were much better things to do, much more exciting people to be with, who didn't go stale, like bread left out in the air, in only seven months. There were people out there who were interesting for years and maybe forever; who met my needs. She walked to her chair and sat to drink coffee. We looked out across the dusky library through the window and watched the stillness of the birch grove.

A blue flash: the blue of sky, and of the ocean rus.h.i.+ng by. The salt wind blasted over the winds.h.i.+eld. I put on sungla.s.ses and s.h.i.+fted gear. The Austin-Healey rumbled, then purred like a kitten into overdrive. It was winter in southern Florida, but the place knows no seasons. It was hot enough for muscle-s.h.i.+rts.

Now I saw oranges; I handed one to Madhur. She giggled; she always giggled, something I would never have expected from someone with a wasted Ph.D. in physics or a penchant for knife fights. Oranges were all we could afford for lunch, with the Glenlivet scotch. I rammed the gas pedal and the bug-eyed Sprite danced through the traffic of Oceanside Drive. Some old woman honked and I refrained from flipping her the bird, but when she honked again, I fingered the double-barreled sawed-off at my feet, my head raging, until Madhur squeezed me right where I was most likely to respond, and my head cleared, and I made the car lurch forward and leave the woman, so close to her own road killing, far behind in the maze of traffic.

"You get wrangled up about everything, ole Jack. You need to learn to control it."

"To h.e.l.l with it," I told her, and I took the bottle and fueled rage with burning water. I didn't look at her. The bruises I'd given her were almost gone, almost imperceptible against her dark skin; the worst were hidden under the shades anyway, but I could see them too well. No remorse, of course, but I could see them all the same.

She giggled and said, "All we need are the pigs to come down on us now with all that cash and paraphernalia and c.r.a.p; ole Jack, if you get us knocked up just because you can't drive, then I'll slice your throat, okay? While you sleep." I sneered at her, knowing she was only half-serious, and rammed up the volume of the stereo. The techno-strains pumped into the roar of wind. We exited the freeway without changing speed, and hurtled through the ma.s.s of housing projects to the dilapidated, wh.o.r.e-infested pit of a neighborhood where people like us lived. The s.h.i.+ny, spoked wheels of the Austin-Healey screeched and we were in front of the white, two-room plank house on Elm Street.

Madhur giggled and looked at me and I knew excitement flashed through her brown eyes even though they were hidden behind dark plastic; I felt the adrenaline pulsing from her pores. I could smell it, simultaneously clean and dirty like the sweat she worked up when we ripped off a place, when we were criminals together, when we came home to s.e.x and violence and a warped love on piles of green paper. That we'd done earlier. This time we were a little more cautious, until now, when there no longer seemed any sense in it.

"Okay, let's go see it," I said. She smiled like a girl. It had been only the second time in our two-year marriage we'd had real money, made a real haul, and we'd kept each other from it for a day to let the steam dissipate. She pulled the keys from the ignition and was on her way up to the concrete front steps. I came after her, pulling my sawed off after me, and carrying it mechanically against my leg.

The piece felt warm to me, warm because it had rested on the warm floorboard.

But the warmth was the same as when it was fired pointblank against the pulsating chest of the old security guard of the Branch Bank at 1st and Oceanside. And my fingers against the double triggers had the sensation of having just pulled and released. I tried not to think about it, tried to think about the money. But even before I reached the door I was feeling the sensation again, looking down and realizing I hadn't cleaned the old man's blood from the barrels.

She managed the working plantation and I taught part-time at a local college. In the quiet mornings together we drank espresso and sometimes did business. Now when she handed me the plantation's monthly financial report, her hand quivered.

The quiver startled me. She never did that.

"Are you all right?" I asked her.

She looked at me stonily with her gray eyes.

"Things aren't all that bad, are they, Laura?"

She didn't respond.

"Is it money?" I looked down at the report and saw that things had never been better. It was us. "Do we have to? Do we have to fight? Can't we just -- just once have a nice cup of coffee and relax and go over the business and -- and not fight? Does everything between us have to be so d.a.m.ned dramatic?" I closed my eyes: I really meant so boring. And surely she felt that, too.

I opened my eyes and she said, "Did you do it just then? I mean just now?"

"No, I didn't do it, just now." I couldn't help sneering.

"You closed your eyes like --"

"I'm still here, right?" I found this kind of interrogation increasingly irritating.

"It's hard to tell, sometimes."

That was the beauty of the technology, of course. I smiled at her, almost involuntarily, with a taunt. Over the years, our very bodies had learned to irk each other; little digs were so much a part of us that they were unconscious, second nature. Irritability, too much caffeine, too many years.

"You know we're skating our way to a divorce."

I looked at her and shrugged. "Things aren't that bad between us. Really. It's not like we have knock-down-drag-out fights, right? I mean, we're hospitable, right? Even if we bicker continuously. It's not me, you know, who's always so gray and --"

"Stop being so nervous and defensive."

"I'm not being defensive."

"Look at you -- guilty, that's what it is."

"I'm not feeling guilty," I protested. I heard something in me say to get the h.e.l.l out of the place.

"You are. It's written all over your face." I tried to make my face innocently smooth.

"I'm not. Really. Not a f.u.c.kin' guilty bone in my body."

She grasped my arm. "Don't do it. Stop doing it -- so much."

"Doing what."

"d.a.m.n it, Will, you've got to stop it."

"What, will I go blind or something? Have I ever neglected you? Ever not been attentive to your needs.?"

"d.a.m.n it, you're married to four other women."

"Just fantasy -- nothing wrong with fantasy."

"Four other women. It's not just fantasy."

Get the h.e.l.l outta here. And I did.

GREEN: It was a summer night but green neon spilt onto wet pavement from the icon above the Green Garuda Lounge: a man holding a martini gla.s.s alternating with a bent pink bird that was supposed to look like an eagle, transforming from mortal into eagle, I supposed. An immigrant Kasmiri family owned the place; at least they could fix a good drink. I shook the water from my feet and pa.s.sed underneath into the dark bar and sat at our booth; forest green naugahyde seats squeaked against my slacks, and I ordered a stiff Salty Dog. I waited, it seemed for hours, and finally she came, covered in a trench coat. I was on my third then, and bought her one.

"So Lily, how was the show?" I asked. She did not remove the overcoat. Not enough underneath to do so.

"You need to drop the perturbation in your voice," she said. Hers was husky, deep for a woman's.

I looked at her and tried to see through the darkness into her eyes: hazel, sometimes green like the bar; I thought once we married, I'd be able to see directly into them, but I never could. I thought marrying her would be rescuing her, me with the s.h.i.+ning armor. Another dead end. This was my place, this Green Garuda. I never went to hers: at least, I had not been there since we started dating, and finally married. I could not believe I allowed her to continue to dance. I hated her for it.

She sipped the Salty Dog.

"Why don't you skip the next show --" I started. I'd asked her thus numerous times. I'd pleaded with her. I already knew the answer.

"What, and get booted out of the Kit-Club? Don, let's don't get into it. If you don't stop this heavy-handed stuff when we meet, I --"