by Edward Lorn
CRAWL
by Edward Lorn
Author's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
~ Winston Churchill
“The gentle maid, whose hapless tale
These melancholy pages speak;
Say, gracious lady, shall she fail
To draw the tear adown thy cheek?”
~“Sonnet to the Right Honourable Lady Mary Coke”
~Horace Walpole
1.
He loved her. She had no doubt. But he’d also betrayed her. And now they were on a road trip from Alabama to Georgia so she could spend some time with her mother in Warner Robins. Mom would comfort her and lead her in the right direction. After Colton returned home, he would make-do by himself; he’d feed the dog and write his books and watch his Doctor Who. And she, Juliet, would find out whether or not she still loved him. And if she didn’t? Perhaps she’d ditch her Judas and find herself. Or whatever it was that divorced thirtysomethings did.
Colton had been quiet since they’d left Mobile, and now he stared straight ahead, the red lights of the dashboard painting his stone face crimson. She thought, not for the first time, that he looked like Stonehenge. Or a Stonehenge. She wasn’t sure which the proper use was. Maybe Colton looked like a damn henge made of stone. His eyes had become baggier since his infidelity had been discovered. He also slumped more. Frumpy was the word that came to Juliet’s mind. His entire skin looked looser. Her big strong man had become a rotting pumpkin.
She imagined stress could do that to a person. But that’s what he got for slipping his dipstick into another Buick’s engine. There was nothing wrong with her. As far as she was concerned she had been more than active enough in the bedroom. Colton didn’t necessarily have a ferocious sexual appetite, and that was part of what confused her so. When they’d first met they’d been like any other couple, fornicating like pubescent rabbits. Even after they married a year and a half later, sex was something done more than once a day and never out of routine. They made love. They fucked. They tasted each other. Were each other. Nine years later, coitus had become a weekend practice. Friday or Saturday night, sometimes Sunday morning, they’d give porn stars a run for their money. Fun sex. Freaky-deaky bang-a-rang kind of bumpity-bump. Sometimes the cuffs came out. Other times, flavored gels were on the menu. But Juliet was always the instigator, the coach, directing Colton’s QB into the pocket. Never did it occur to her that maybe Colton didn’t want her, that he hungered for new scratch. Had he asked, she would have done anything to make him happy. But no, he’d cheated. And with the dog sitter of all people.
Colton tapped the dash’s display. “We’re running low on gas.”
“Then pull over.” Her statement came out sterner than she’d meant. She almost apologized, but thought better of it. Best to make him believe he was skating on thin ice with white-hot flatirons strapped to his feet. Colton had to think she was never coming back from her mother’s. That was the only way this was going to work.
“Right,” was all he said, drifting onto the first Opelika exit ramp.
The radio said it was quarter past one in the morning. Because of this, the only gas station open wasn’t truly open at all. It did, however, allow you to pay at the pump. Colton pulled the Subaru into the first row of tanks by the road, killed the engine, and hopped out. Juliet tracked him in the mirror all the way around the back of the car and to the rear fender on her side. He walked with a slow gait, his head down and his shoulders rolled in, concaving his chest. He looked so depressed she wanted to spit. She kept repeating her mantra, That’s what you get, Colton. That’s what you get. What you get—
He knocked on the window, jarring her out of her thoughts.
“Gimme the card out of my wallet. It’s in the center thingie.”
She popped the latch on the console’s lid and dug around inside until she came across his leather billfold. She yanked the American Express out of its sleeve and inserted it through the crack in her window. Colton grumbled a thank you, and swiped the Am Ex through the pump’s reader. He jammed the card into his pants pocket, lifted the nozzle from the base, and rammed it into the side of the car. The car morphed into Vicky the perky-titted dog sitter, and Colton became the gas pump. His nozzle filled her.
“Stop it.” Juliet’s trembling voice filled the tight confines of the hatchback. “You’re not helping anyone by constantly reminding yourself why you’re on this little jaunt across the Alabama/Georgia line. Just… stop it.”
I wonder if Vicky ever told Colton to “stop it?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she moaned.
Juliet had bought The Dog (thought of it like that, too—as The Dog) at a PetSmart in Spanish Fort. She had wanted the Heinz 57 because she’d grown tired of going to bed by herself on the evenings when Colton worked late. It still boggled her mind. All those extra hours and not one slip up. Colton truly had been at work. His paychecks verified his time away from the house, and Juliet had no reason to broach the possibility of him playing around. The Dog hassled and hindered more than it offered companionship, and tore the house to shreds every time she left it alone for longer than two shakes of its fluffy little tail.
When Colton had brought up the idea of Juliet accompanying him on his trips out of town instead of staying home with The Dog, she’d jumped at the chance. Boarding The Dog proved troublesome. The Dog had anxiety issues, and covered the back seat in vomit, urine, and feces during simple trips to the corner store. Trips to the kennel, which was over ten miles away, were most definitely not going to happen without the need of professional interior car care. Colton refused to buy The Dog Zoloft or Valium, so Juliet hired a dog sitter for those times when they’d be gone for extended periods.
It was only supposed to be the one time, after which they’d give The Dog to a proper shelter and be done with the whole mess. But Colton changed his mind when they got back, insisting that it would be cruel, that a shelter would no doubt put The Dog to sleep within a week’s time and then he and Juliet would both have some poor animal’s blood on their hands. At least that’s what Colton had told her. Truth was, he didn’t want to lose Vicky.
And to think, if Colton had simply offered Juliet the chance to go with him on work trips in the first place, she’d never have asked for the dog and Colton wouldn’t have been caught with his cock in the cookie jar.
The Dog had been boarded for the trip to her mother’s. The Subaru still smelled of canine evacuations.
Macklemore came over the radio, singing “Same Love.” She reached down and spun the volume higher. The song took her away from that gas station, away from that state, that world. She floated behind her eyes, riding waves of bass drums and trumpets, legato lyrics and melodic piano. Juliet melted into her seat, and was numb. Not happy, simply fluid, for the first time in weeks. Months. Ever. She’d felt so much so long ago that everything else since then seemed dumbed down and unreal. She was crying. She didn’t care. Needed the release. Her heart felt heavy, liquid, pumping in time with the music.
Their wedding day flickered across the screen of her mind. Her twirling in a pink dress, looking princess-like and carefree. Colton in his purple tux (she’d fought hard for that one) spun his bride across the dance floor to the tune of “Forever and Ever, Amen.” Their family and friends would say later that she s
eemed to float, that she was an angel, that she’d never looked so radiant and brilliant; her eyes had been full up with fireworks, perpetually exploding. Colton had been so handsome, a manicured five o’clock shadow darkening his chiseled face. The flat slope of his Stonehenge nose had been transformed; that one, subtle ugliness she had once cringed over was now a quality unique to him. Juliet’s mother had a horrible wine-colored birthmark that stretched from left cheek to collarbone, and Juliet used to wonder how Mom had ever snagged Dad. Now she knew. It was time. It was love. Both things combined created a bubble, a funhouse mirror effect, but instead of warping beauty, it hid blights, highlighted the good, elevated the positive. His schnoz disappeared for a while. Now it was back, and she hated Colton for allowing its return.
Colton slid into the car again, started the engine, and pulled out of the BP station. When they were back on the interstate, she glanced over at him, at his slab of a nose, and shivered. How cold she had become—Frosty the Snow Bitch tooling across eastern Alabama in a silver Subaru hatchback, accompanied by Stonehenge himself. Itself. Whatever.
Frosty the snow bitch? No, she wouldn’t do that. There was no need to call herself names. Colton had screwed the pooch (well, the pooch sitter, anyway) and spoiled everything. Damn him. How had she ever loved—?
Do not finish that thought, young lady. You’re angry. You finish that sentence and all this, all nine years of it, is over. Shut up and stare at your nail polish or something.
“Are you going to talk to me?” Colton asked.
Juliet was so shocked by his sudden question that it took her several seconds to respond.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“This. You and me. Why you’re leaving.”
“Oh,” she said shortly, “you mean you cheating on me. Gotcha.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, blanching the knuckles.
Juliet laughed mirthlessly. “You have no right to get angry here.”
She returned to the view scrolling past her window. The silhouettes of trees whizzed by, highlighted only by the backsplash of a red warning light atop a tower somewhere in the distance. Juliet tried to assure herself that she didn’t feel like throwing open her door and spilling out onto the tarmac simply to get away from the current topic of conversation.
“I’m not angry,” Colton said. “I’m frustrated. You said we’d work this out. That you wanted to work this out.”
“I do want to work this out,” she said, without looking at him. “It’s just too new. I need time. That’s why I’m visiting my mother. But, of course, I’ve already told you all this multiple times. Perhaps if my name were Vicky you’d give enough of a shit to actually listen to me.”
“She didn’t matter to me.”
“Right. You were just screwing her.”
“That’s low.”
She reared on him. “I’m low? Are you kidding me? You’ve got some nerve. Seriously.”
He flinched under her words.
“How are we going to rise above this if you can’t let it go?” he asked.
“We don’t have to rise above it. I have to forgive you. Right now, you’re not making that very easy. You messed up, Colt. Not me. If I do forgive you, it will be on my terms.”
A silence weighing roughly the same as a sumo wrestler settled upon them. Juliet glared at her husband’s crimson-splashed face. He still seemed to be angry, which infuriated her even more. Did he really think this was her problem? That she’d done something wrong by not accepting his apology and jumping back in the sack with him minutes after he’d been caught? What the hell was wrong with him?
Colton shattered the fragile quiet with, “Do you even love me anymore?”
She slapped him. It was an awkward thing. She’d been going for his left cheek. Instead, her right hand whapped down atop his lips, as if she were a mother popping a child on the mouth because they’d cursed. Colton barely flinched, though. His gaze traveled ever so slowly from the road to her, and she had a brief moment’s thought that he was about to direct them into those red-rimmed trees.
“I guess I deserved that.”
And with that, he focused on the road once more. His fists relaxed, and blood returned to his knuckles. A soft hand lighted upon Juliet’s left thigh, squeezing through her jeans. She didn’t allow it to linger, shooing it away with the back of one hand.
“What I meant was, I still love you,” he said, “and I hope one day you can forgive me enough to remember that we used to share something special.”
“Something special…” She let the sentence die in her throat. It would have become forced laughter had she not swallowed it forthwith.
They settled back into the oppressive silence. Not talking was becoming old hat with them. Juliet had to keep telling herself that silence was conducive to healing. Although she couldn’t recall a single time in her life when one of her wounds had mended or festered based on the volume level of her surroundings.
“I miss before The Dog.”
“What?” She’d heard him fine, but didn’t understand the meaning. What was before the dog? Shouldn’t it have been, before Vicky?
“No, that’s not right.” He blinked and a tear rappelled down his cheek, landing in the corner of his square lips. “I mean, I miss what that time represented. I miss that time when you needed me. I think The Dog killed that need in you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Before The Dog, you needed me… well, you needed something, anyway. Once you had that mutt to comfort you those nights I was away, you didn’t need me anymore.”
“Colt, that’s bull—”
“Is it? You were filling a hole.” His anger came rushing back. “Replacing me with a fucking dog!”
He slapped the steering wheel.
She jumped.
He was sobbing now.
“You didn’t need me. What was I supposed to do? She was there. There, goddammit. There!”
Juliet steeled herself against the new Colton, this Colton filled with undue rage. She would not let him make this about her failures, because she was not the one who’d failed.
“You fucked her because you wanted her. It had nothing to do with me.”
“Exactly.” He loosed a sigh that sounded full of relief. “It had nothing to do with you.”
She twisted in her seat, trying to find a position of power that didn’t exist inside a hatchback. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t sleep with her because I don’t love you. I didn’t sleep with her because you weren’t there for me, or because I was upset with you for not putting out enough, or whatever other excuse your brain has dug up. I fucked her because she was there, Julie. Vicky was available. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. I slept with Vicky because I was bored and you weren’t around.”
“And where exactly was I, Colt?”
“Most nights? With your dog.”
Rivers of ice ran down her back. Was he actually getting to her? Could he have possibly found the one argument that made his infidelity acceptable? She didn’t even like that fucking animal. Did he honestly believe she’d been too enamored with The Dog to give Colton the attention he deserved? Then again, she wasn’t sure Colton actually deserved her constant attention. He paid the bills, but she wasn’t some pre-suffragette kitchen-bound homemaker who knelt at the command of her mister. She was a free woman who returned what she received. Love for affection. Anger for rage. Silence for betrayal. That was the base of it, wasn’t it? It all came down to a betrayal, a breaking of vows. A promise destroyed under the weight of two people entwined on a couch, writhing against one another, moaning and groaning, and singing each other’s names.
All Juliet had wanted was to surprise Colton with a quiet dinner at home. She’d made the excuse that she had some errands to run, that she would be a few hours out about town, and he’d said that was fine because he needed to run to the office for something. Colton called Vicky to watch The Dog. Juliet
had left the dog sitter and her husband alone, thinking Colton was going to leave as well.
His car being in the driveway when she returned caused Juliet’s stomach to roil. She tried to will the bad feeling away, assuring herself that he’d simply beaten her home. But she hadn’t been gone that long. He couldn’t have made it to the office and back in the time she’d been gone. Which left one possibility: he’d never left. Her subconscious suggesting subterfuge, Juliet parked across the street, knowing deep down something was amiss. She shuffled over the asphalt, feet never really leaving the street. Stumbled onto the grass and up the porch steps, her keys tinkling together, far too heavy in her extended hand. The knob swallowed her offering, turned, and the door floated inward. Sounds flooded over her, nasty words and expulsions of orgasmic glee. She slammed the door, silencing the cadence of the lovers on the couch. Juliet braced herself against the door frame of the entrance to the living room, lifting her head to see the naked bitch scrabbling for her clothes, and Colton, sweating and panting, trying to cover his massive erection. The thing bobbed under its own weight below a tuft of curly brown hair, looking intent on impaling someone. Or ripping them in two. Juliet saw it, dismembered and twitching, on the floor of the kitchen beside a bloody butcher’s knife. And that’s what made her move. Out through the front door, down the steps, across the grass, into the street, and behind the wheel. She screamed the entire way. Because she was scared. Because she was terrified of the violence she wanted to see done to her husband. To her beloved Colton. Tires squealed as she rocketed away. Sobs wracked her while she fled. The sky opened up and sent torrents down to wash it all away. To wash her away.
And to think, poor Colton felt neglected.
Now, Juliet gripped the sides of her seat, fighting back the building rage that threatened to bubble forth from her.
In a voice not much more than a whisper, she said, “Don’t… just don’t. Keep on and you will end up losing me, Colton… if you haven’t lost me already. If you try to make this about me again, I will get out at the next stop, walk to the nearest bus station, and take a Greyhound the rest of the way to my mother’s. So I suggest you stop talking, unless the subject is the weather or some inane sports trivia you seem to be so fond of. Are we understood?”
