by Chad Kultgen
Holly goes to a tiny fridge in the center of the room and pulls out two beers. She hands me one and then sits on her bed. The room is incredibly small. I haven’t been in a dorm room since I was in college. I can either sit on the bed with Holly or sit at one of the two tiny desks at the foot of each of the beds. I say, “You mind if I sit on the bed with you?”
She laughs and says, “Uh, no . . . go ahead.”
Carly says, “You guys want some?” and extends the bong toward us. Holly doesn’t hesitate. She says, “Hells yeah,” and takes a huge rip before extending the thing to me. I smoked pot a few times in college, but I haven’t since, and even then I was kind of bad at it. Beyond that, I immediately fear Alyna smelling weed on me when I come home. Yet I reason that the damage is already done—I probably smell like a dispensary just from being in the room—and I don’t want to seem like an uptight old guy to Holly, so I say, “Yeah.”
I light it up and inhale a cloud of weed smoke that makes my mouth look like a window in a burning building when I cough it all back out. The girls laugh. My eyes are watering and my throat is burning. I take a quick swig of beer and start to feel high almost immediately. Holly pats my back and says, “You okay?”
I lean back on her bed and say, “Yeah. I think so. I will be.” I laugh. This feels good. I look around her room. No posters of Katy Perry or Twilight. She has a poster of Christopher Hitchens with a halo above her bed and a poster of a band called Crystal Castles by her desk. The Hitchens poster surprises me and instantaneously buys back any of the vapid things she’s said or posted on her Facebook page. There are a few scattered pictures of people I assume are her family. I hate Miller Lite, but the one I’m drinking tastes amazing.
She puts her hand on my chest and says, “Hey, really, thanks for the ride. My sister can be such a cunt sometimes.” It feels good, in a way that’s sexual and nonsexual at the same time. It makes me wish I’d had a pothead girlfriend in college, or at any time in my life really. Everything is so comfortable.
I say, “No problem. Thanks for . . . this.”
She says, “For what?”
I say, “I don’t know,” and we laugh again.
Carly says, “So what do you do, dude? Are you like her boss or something?”
I say, “What do I do? What do I do?” I can tell I’m beyond high. The words make too much sense to me to make any sense at all. I say, “What do any of us do?”
Carly says, “What in the fuck are you talking about, dude?”
I say, “I’m not her boss, really. No one is. She’s an intern. So I guess maybe, actually, everyone is her boss.”
Carly says, “Dude, you’re fucked up.”
I say, “Yes, Carly, I am fucked up.”
We spend the next hour or so talking about the universe and the possibility of alien life and parallel dimensions. When I ask about Crystal Castles, Holly plays some of their music and I find that I like it a lot. I don’t think about Alyna or my kids at all as we leave their dorm room to go get frozen yogurt at a place on campus. I buy their frozen yogurt and we sit down to eat it. There are a few other kids in the place eating yogurt, too. I wonder if everyone in the place thinks I’m Holly’s dad.
When we finish, I walk Holly and Carly back to their dorm room. Carly goes in by herself, leaving me and Holly outside. Holly says, “Thanks again. This was actually pretty fun.”
I say, “Yeah it was. Thanks for the beer and the . . .”
“Weed?”
“Yeah.”
She laughs. “Anytime.”
We hug again. This time, even more than the last time in the parking lot, feels like the end of a date. We linger at the end of the hug, a little longer than the last time, looking at each other for a few seconds. She knows I have a wife and kids. I think she wants me to kiss her. I want to kiss her. I don’t. I say, “Okay, see you tomorrow,” and I give her one more quick little hug before I walk back to my car without turning around to look at her.
On the drive home, all I can think about is what she and Carly are talking about, if she’s telling Carly how badly she wanted me to kiss her, or if they’re laughing at me for being old and weird. I check Holly’s Facebook page on my phone. She makes no mention of the night’s events.
When I get home, Alyna’s asleep. I put my clothes in a plastic trash bag, which I tie shut to conceal the smell of pot as best as I can. I check on the kids in their rooms, take a shower, and go to sleep wondering what in the fuck I’m doing.
some chapter
The Romance Is Gone
I wake up. I get out of bed to take a piss, and when I get to the bathroom I look down and discover a giant log of shit nestled in a wad of brown-and-yellow-streaked toilet paper in our toilet. I know I didn’t give birth to this fucking thing, and the kids never use this bathroom, nor could anything this size come out of one of their assholes. It had to be Alyna. She’s still asleep.
I stare this thing down and it’s peeking out of the water almost like it has a head, like it’s staring back at me daring me to flush it, like it knows there’s no way my toilet is strong enough to break it in half and suck it down, because it sure as fuck isn’t going down in one piece. Something deep inside me doesn’t want to flush it, anyway. Some greater sense of human justice keeps reminding me that it was Alyna, the same woman who bitched at me for jerking off, who brought this abomination into the world. This transgression cannot go without reprimand.
Before I issue a false accusation, I bend down and really look the thing over to make sure there’s absolutely no way it could have been produced in one of my kids’ colons, to make sure the blame for this inhumane act of disgusting bathroom etiquette could only lie with a fully grown adult human being. I know Jane can’t even wipe her ass by herself, and Andy isn’t great at it. There’s no way the toilet paper that’s with the turd would be that neatly wadded. It must be the work of an adult.
Is it possible that it was some other person? Is this evidence of a stranger in my bedroom? The cable man? Did Alyna fuck some other guy while I was at work, and did he fuck her so hard that he worked up a shit he chose to leave unflushed in my toilet to mark his territory? This seems pretty unlikely to me. I finally conclude that my initial instinct was correct. Alyna pushed out a burrito-size turd and just left it in the toilet without thinking about it, or perhaps left it there on purpose in some kind of passive-aggressive protest to something I’ve done. Either way, this must be addressed.
I wake her up. I say, “Alyna,” and nudge her.
She wakes up and says, “What? Are the kids okay?”
“Yeah. Can you come look at something, though?”
“What?”
“Just come here.”
“It’s Saturday.” She’s clearly not happy about getting out of bed before she’s ready to as I lead her into the bathroom and get her to stand directly in front of the toilet with the lid up.
She looks in the bowl and says, “So?”
I’ve worked this line up. I’m sure it’ll get my point across. I say, “So . . . if you have to do that, can you at least flush?” putting as much effort as I can into mocking the tone she used with me when she caught me jerking off.
Either she doesn’t remember saying the same thing to me, or she chooses to ignore my inflection. She flushes the toilet and says, “Sorry. Now can I get thirty more minutes of sleep, please,” then walks back into the bedroom. I have to flush the toilet again to get the turd all the way down after she leaves, then I piss with the seat down and purposely splash some on the seat.
chapter twelve
Team Building
Lonnie walks into my office without knocking and says, “Gonna need you to knock out a little busywork.”
I say, “Okay,” assuming he wants me to reorganize some meaningless database that no one ever uses or something similar.
He says, “HR approved an int
eroffice team-building mixer this Friday. Applebee’s. Need some flyers made up with Photoshop or something. Remember you being pretty good with those types of things.”
I say, “Why wouldn’t we just send out a company-wide e-mail?”
He says, “Nah. Flyer makes it seem more like a party, less like a work thing. Good to go?”
I say, “Yeah. Flyers. I’ll take care of it.”
Lonnie leaves and I look out my office doorway at Holly. I can tell she’s on Facebook by how intently she’s looking at her computer screen and how quickly she’s typing.
It takes me about half an hour to make the flyer and to print out fifty copies, which I put up in various locations around the office. I make sure to save one to hand-deliver to Holly, who is indeed on Facebook when I walk up to her desk. She takes the flyer and says, “Ooh, Applebee’s. Awesome.” She’s definitely being sarcastic.
I say, “I know. This company can be lame, but you get two free drinks.”
She says, “Are you going?”
I say, “Are you?”
She smiles and says, “I might be persuaded into going if someone I know is going to be there.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll have to go.”
That night at dinner I tell Alyna that I have a mandatory team-building mixer for work on Friday night and I don’t know how late it’s going to go. She says, “They’ve been keeping you late more and more lately, and now they’re making you do some seminar or whatever on a Friday night? You should ask for a raise or something.”
I say, “It’s not exactly a seminar, but yeah,” just as Jane hits Andy in the head with a miniature carrot and laughs.
chapter thirteen
Professional Help
I’m sitting in my chair in the living room with Jane in my lap. We’re watching an Oddities marathon. Alyna comes in with Andy, who’s just had a bath, and initiates the following conversation in a whisper, which I can only assume has something to do with her not wanting the kids to hear even though they’re in the room with us.
She whispers, “We need to talk about something.”
I say in a normal volume, “Okay.”
She keeps whispering. “I think,” she says, taking a deep breath, “I think we should see a counselor,” as she opens a bucket of Legos for Andy and dumps them on the ground.
I say, “What?”
Andy says, “I need wheels.” She helps Andy sort through the mound of loose Legos for wheels and whispers, “I think we’re having some issues right now. And I think a counselor might help.”
I say, “Why are you whispering?”
She whispers, “Because the kids don’t need to be involved in this.”
Andy says, “Involved in what, Mommy?”
She says, “Nothing, baby. Here’s your wheels,” and hands him a few Lego wheels. Then she looks at me and whispers again, “So . . .”
I say, “So . . .”
She whispers, “Will you go?”
I say, “What issues are you talking about?”
She whispers, “You know.”
I say, “No, I really don’t.”
She whispers, “Well, like me catching you doing you-know-what the other day.”
I say, “I’m a guy. That’s not an issue.”
She whispers, “Yes it is. You shouldn’t need to do that.”
I feel like she’s blaming me for jerking off even though she refuses to fuck me and I lose my shit. I say, “You’re right. I have a wife. I shouldn’t need to do that.” This is the wrong thing to say.
She says, “Oh. So just because I’m your wife, I should be your personal sex slave?”
I say, “No, but maybe more than twice a month would be nice.”
She says, “Well, it’s hard with the kids. The whole world doesn’t revolve around your crotch.”
Andy says, “Mommy, do I have a crotch?”
Alyna says, “Not now, baby, play with your wheels.” He does as instructed. I hope my son doesn’t have to have a conversation like this one day with his wife in front of his kids—my grandkids.
I say, “Look, if you’re not in the mood as often as I am, then you have to cut me some slack. I mean, it’s my only fucking outlet.”
She gasps in shock. She says, “Watch your mouth around them.”
I say, “Sorry. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
She says, “If you can’t see anything wrong with what you did, then I’m scheduling an appointment for us to see someone soon.”
I say, “Fine. Whatever.”
She picks Andy up and takes him off to his room as he says, “Wait, my Legos!” She comes back and scoops up the Legos into the bucket and takes it with them into his room, where they stay for the rest of the night. As Jane watches TV with me, I wonder what Holly is doing, and I wish I were back on her bed in her dorm room, high and happy.
chapter fourteen
First Taste
I’m sitting on a bar stool at the Applebee’s in Woodland Hills, hoping Holly actually shows up to this shitty mixer. She wasn’t at her desk when I left the office, so I didn’t get a chance for any final confirmation. If she doesn’t show, I’m going to pound my two free drinks and get the fuck out of here as soon as I can.
Most people blow these HR-sanctioned events off, but the usual crew that shows up to all of them is in attendance. Jim Treadwell from Accounting is sitting a few stools down from me. He’s probably fifty, hates his wife, hates his kids, works late every night, drinks at Applebee’s, Chili’s, or Cheesecake Factory every night with anyone who’ll join him. Stacey Primm from Legal is doing a shot and screaming, “Whooo!” like it’s spring break and she’s still in her twenties. She’s probably forty, has one of those weird long asses, and just seems like she’d be terrible in the sack. I wonder if anyone at work has fucked her and would be willing to fill me in. Randy Burke, also from Legal, is trying his hardest to be funny by yelling, “Next round’s on me, guys,” and holding up a drink ticket. No one laughs. He got caught chatting with a cam girl in his office last year, but it was after hours, and it was on his iPad instead of company property so he just had to take sensitivity training. He didn’t get fired, but everyone knows he was jerking off at work, which might be worse than getting fired. And Wendy Brills from HR walks up to me with her three chins and hands me my two drink tickets as she says, “Nice turnout. Thanks for making the flyers. I’d love to give you an extra drink ticket, but rules are rules.”
I take my drink tickets and use them to order two double J&Bs on the rocks from a cute waitress. I imagine fucking her in some back room or office that must exist somewhere in the Applebee’s. When she brings the drinks back, I pound the first one and plan on doing the same to the second when I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear Holly say, “Slow down, cowboy.”
I leave the second drink on the bar and turn to look at her with a smile on my face, but she’s not looking at me. She’s looking down at her phone, texting or updating her Facebook status or something. My smile fades away during the ten awkward seconds it takes her to finish whatever she’s doing on her phone. Finally she looks up and I put the smile back on. So does she. When she hugs me, when she presses those hard titties against my chest and rubs my lower back with more pressure than a casual work acquaintance should, I don’t give a fuck about the ten seconds she ignored me. I say, “Hey. Glad you showed up.”
She says, “I told you I was going to if you were going to.”
“Yeah, I know. I just didn’t see you before I left the office, so I didn’t know.”
“I’m a woman of my word.”
“Fair enough.”
“So how would I go about getting some of those drink tickets?”
Wendy is still a few feet away. I say, “Wendy, can Holly here get a few drink tickets?”
Wendy turns around and says, “Oh, so
rry, we’re only authorized to give tickets to full-time employees. Interns don’t count.”
Holly looks at me with an exaggerated pouty frown and sad eyes. I say, “Here,” and slide her my other double J&B. She pounds it without batting an eye and says, “Okay, I’ll get the next round if you get the one after.”
“I’m game.”
For the next three hours we talk about a lot of things, none of which is my wife and children. She never leaves my side to talk to anyone else, nor does she stop texting or checking her Facebook for more than a minute. Nonetheless, we drink, we order appetizers, we get to know each other. Even though I’m positive she must know I’m married, it feels like a date.
As the Applebee’s staff initiates last call just before midnight, I look around and see that everyone from work has left, except for Jim Treadwell, who is polishing off what has to be his seventh or eighth screwdriver. Out of obligation I say, “Hey, man, you need a cab or a ride or something?” He looks at me and says, “Nah. My drive home is the last time I’ll have alone,” pounds his drink, unenthusiastically tosses a few bills on the counter without even waiting for his tab, and leaves. I can see myself becoming Jim Treadwell in fifteen or twenty years.
I say to Holly, “Last call. You want another one?”
She says, “No, I’m seriously hammered as it is. One more and I’ll be puking.”
“Do you need a cab or a ride or something?”
She looks up from her phone, smiles, and I think I detect some flirtation in the way she says, “Mmm, a ride home sounds like it could be fun.” I pay our tab and we walk out into the parking lot. She doesn’t seem that drunk to me until she stumbles and almost falls near my car. I put my arm out to help her get her balance. She laughs and says, “Almost ate shit. That would have been embarrassing.”
