Dirty Cops Next Door

by Summer Cooper

  I shook my head and said, “That’s not funny, Wyatt...so if that’s your idea of funny, you’ve failed miserably.”

  He didn’t immediately respond. Instead he took another drink and said, “We’re very different people.”

  “What does that even mean? And what does that have to do with anything?” I was confused, hurt and felt that my whole world was falling apart. I didn’t even recognize my life anymore. I had lost my business and now Wyatt wanted to leave me? I felt as if my insides were slowly being torn out. My head was now pounding and the only thing I could think of was that I desperately needed to wake up from whatever terrible nightmare I was having.

  “Wake up, Misha. Wake up...wake up,” I repeated over and over. I felt ridiculous, but it was worth a shot.

  “You’re not asleep,” Wyatt said with a sigh. “You should have seen this coming. Even I knew this was coming.”

  And just like that my confusion and hurt turned to anger. “I should have seen this coming? What exactly should I have seen coming, Wyatt? My husband leaving me? My husband, who promised me forever, just up and deciding that forever was way too long?!”

  He finally put down his drink and looked back up at me. His eyes seemed regretful, yet determined. “I’m sorry, Misha. I don’t know what else to say.”

  I stood there, also not knowing what I should say or do next. I was completely caught off-guard. And I hadn’t expected this. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I had thought that we had been happy. I had thought that everything between us had been great. I hadn’t seen any warning signs...any red flags. And then it occurred to me...

  “There’s someone else?”

  He shrugged. “There has been for a while.”

  I felt my legs giving out from under me as I leaned back against the wall and then blindly reached for a chair. I sat down heavily and placed my face in my hands.

  And then things went from bad to worse. “She’s pregnant with my child.”

  I don’t remember standing up. I don’t remember reaching for the wine bottle. Nor do I remember tossing it against the wall so that shards of glass flew across the room and red wine began to spread across our pristine white carpet resembling a slow pool of blood. My blood, I thought to myself, since Wyatt had figuratively ripped my heart out.

  Wyatt was now standing, his face showing surprise and fear. I had a temper, a really bad temper, but I kept it tightly controlled...most of the time.

  “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  He looked stunned and held his hands out as if to defend himself from me. “Misha, I know you’re angry. We should talk...” His words came out almost as a plea.

  “There’s nothing to talk about, you cheating piece of shit.” My voice dripped with venom. I meant every word. Now when I looked at him I didn’t see the handsome, tall, brilliant man I married. I saw a cheater, a no good shadow of a man. He sickened me.

  “You’re disgusting,” I said simply. I didn’t torture myself by asking how long his affair had been going on. I didn’t want to know. And I also didn’t care who he was having an affair with. All I knew is that he had been screwing around with someone else and now that someone else was pregnant.

  “You made it clear that you never wanted kids---”

  “How does that give you the right to go stick your dick in someone else?!” I screamed.

  “Don’t be so vulgar---”

  “Vulgar? You’re worried about me being vulgar? That’s your concern, Wyatt? You know what concerns me?” He opened his mouth and then seemed to think better of it. Apparently, having an affair hadn’t made him stupid. “My main concern is that you promised to share your life with me, but instead you cheated and started screwing around with someone else. So, I think I have a right to be vulgar. I have a right to be mad. So don’t give me a lecture on vulgarity, you repulsive, spineless, sorry excuse for a man.”

  “It just happened...it wasn’t planned.”

  “I don’t care if your dick didn’t have an itinerary. How does that make it any better? How is that an excuse to mess around on your wife? Your wife! I’m your wife, Wyatt! For eight years, I’ve been there for you. For eight years we’ve shared our lives! And now I find out that my husband, the person I thought I could trust with my life, has knocked up some other woman. How do you think that makes me feel, Wyatt? I’ll tell you. Like shit.”

  I was done discussing anything with him as I abruptly walked away. I headed toward our bedroom and walked straight to the window, opening it wide.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, following me.

  “You’re just lucky I don’t own a gun,” I growled as I walked into his closet. I began ripping his clothes off the hangers and carried them in my arms and promptly threw them out of the window.

  He reached out to stop me and I gave him a look that would stop death in its tracks. He promptly took a step back.

  “Throwing out my belongings doesn’t help any.” He had the gall to sound offended.

  “Being a cheating son a bitch doesn’t help any either,” I said, gathering up another pile of clothes and happily watching them all float to the ground.

  Mrs. Friedan, our nosey neighbor, of course, chose that moment to come by with her dog and looked up at the clothing floating through the air as I threw more out.

  I waved happily and shouted from my window, “Hi, Mrs. Friedan. Don’t mind the mess. My husband is sticking his penis in places that he shouldn’t so I’m helping him move out.”

  “Misha!” Wyatt hissed, coming to stand next to me to look out of the window. Mrs. Friedan stared at us speechless while her dog did number two in our yard.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Friedan. It’s just a minor domestic dispute, nothing to worry about,” Wyatt assured her with a false smile. He shot me a glare, saying, “You’re making a scene.”

  And I whispered threateningly to him, “Say one more word and you’ll learn exactly what it feels like to fall out of a second storey window. You might be a hotshot engineer, but I’m pretty sure you haven’t mastered the art of flight.”

  Mrs. Friedan was dragging her now urinating dog down the street. “Let’s go, Twinkle. Come on, girl...let’s go.” She looked nervously up at us as if she were afraid to get sucked into our lunacy. And that’s exactly what this situation was...lunacy.

  Wyatt glared at me and stomped away from the window. “Great, Misha. Now the neighbors will think we’re crazy.”

  “The neighbors? You care about the neighbors’ opinion of you, but you’re perfectly okay with me knowing that you’re the lowest of the low? Check. Got it.”

  He frowned at me and shook his head as if he felt sorry for me. “I should have known better than to expect you to handle this maturely.”

  My fists tightened. Now I wish I had tossed him out of the window with his clothes.

  “And I’m not leaving...you’re the one who’s leaving.”

  “What?” I was shocked. “This is my home and you have no right to make me leave.”

  “Do I have to call the authorities?”

  “I dare you.”

  “You already have a record,” he warned.

  “For public nudity!” I had been a little bit wild in college to say the least.

  “Still...let’s not make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “What the---” I stopped abruptly as he reached for his cell phone and began dialing.

  “Oh my god, are you seriously calling 911?”

  He looked at me annoyed. “What do you think I am? Some sort of monster? I’m clearly calling the non-emergency number.” God, I hated how he was still capable of being perfectly reasonable while I, on the other hand, was barely dealing with the fact that my world was falling apart.

  I slapped the phone out of his hand and it went flying under our dresser.

  I scrambled for it and while reaching for it I found a pair of bright pink panties. Panties that weren’t my own.

  I slowly stood up and extended the panties in
front of me. “You brought her here?” My voice was now shaking and I realized my hands were shaking too.

  “I’m not going to answer that,” he said tightly and suddenly everything I felt for him, everything I thought I felt for him began to change. He seemed smaller to me, less of a man. But my anger didn’t dissipate. Oh no, I was just getting started.

  “You’re leaving now.”

  “I already told you--”

  He stopped abruptly as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and began scrolling through my contacts list looking for a number.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Uncle Niko,” I said casually.

  “Wwwwwwhat?” Wyatt stuttered. “Put down the phone. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Found it...dialing...” I said, putting the phone up to my ear.

  “You’re joking...right? You wouldn’t. Fine! Fine! I’ll leave!” he shouted, getting visibly upset. I hung up and said, “I thought you would.”

  Without a parting word, he turned on his heels and walked out of the bedroom. A minute later I heard the front door slam and I took a deep breath and lowered myself onto the bench that sat in front of our bed.

  Our bed...I thought bitterly to myself. I wondered how many times he had defiled it. Now I wondered who the other woman was. All the fight in me was gone. I felt a tear slip down my cheek and wiped it away. I dared any other tears to fall. I wasn’t a crier. I never had been and I wasn’t planning to start now.

  My marriage was over. My career was over. The life I had spent the past eight years building was gone. I stood up and realized I still had the panties in my hand. I tossed them out of the window and watched them hit the ground, falling on top of the rest of Wyatt’s things.

  And then I found another bottle of wine, sat on the couch and drank straight out of the bottle.

  I took a few more sips and thought to myself, “Well, Misha, you’ve hit rock bottom...there’s nothing but up from here.”

  And I prayed to whatever saint handled miracles, as I closed my eyes, that I would catch a break at least for the night. I was done for the day. A philandering husband. A baby by someone else. A business gone. Life was kicking my butt and today I was all out of fight. I picked up the wine bottle, grabbed my phone and made my way to the guest room determined to drown my troubles, at least for tonight, in a bottle of wine.

  2

  “Get up.”

  “No.”

  “Get up.”

  “Go away,” I groaned as I tried to use my pillow to block out the burst of light that filled my room.

  “You have two seconds to get up or I’m bringing in a hose.”

  I peeked out from under my pillow and said to the man who was standing next to my bed, looking annoyed, “Oh man...did Grandma call you?”

  Uncle Niko nodded. “She says you haven’t showered in weeks.”

  I sat up and shrugged. “It might have been that long. Maybe longer.”

  Uncle Niko shook his head and said, “Pitiful. You look like a dirty, street kid. Like you spend your evenings picking through garbage looking for food.”

  I looked down at my shirt. I had fallen asleep in a t-shirt and sweatpants. It was my uniform now. My shirt was covered in mustard stains. I couldn’t help myself. I binge ate hot dogs when I was depressed. And there were unknown stains all over my sweatpants. I figured some of those stains were ketchup, relish and probably even more mustard.

  “Okay, so I eat like a pig when I’m depressed. Sue me. Whatever,” I said, turning to bury myself back under the blankets when I caught sight of my face in the mirror. I had black smudges across my cheeks. “Where the heck did those come from?” I said to myself as I spit on my fingers and tried to wipe it off.

  Uncle Niko sat down in the chair across from me and shook his head. He said with amusement, “You look like a coal miner.”

  He was right. “I have no idea what this gook is on my face.” I gave up trying to fix it.

  “You’re a mess, Misha.”

  “My life is a mess. What do you expect?”

  “I definitely don’t expect you to just sleep your life away just because Wyatt left you. I never liked that guy.”

  I fell back on my bed with a sigh. “For the hundredth time...I left him. He did not leave me. Well, I mean…we left each other.”

  “Doesn’t matter...same conclusion. You getting up sometime this week or do you plan to turn into a dry skeleton?” He shook his head. “I thought I raised you better.”

  “You didn’t raise me.”

  “I gave you candy. And sent you birthday cards.”

  “Why’d you stop giving me candy?” I whined, feeling nostalgic for simpler times when my only concern had been how much chocolate I could stuff myself with.

  “You’re an adult. Buy your own candy.”

  “Newsflash, Uncle Niko. I’m broke.”

  He instantly stopped teasing me. “You serious?”

  I turned my face to look at him. He hadn’t aged much over the years, except that his dark hair was now turning slightly silver and there were silver streaks in his beard. He was short and stocky, wearing jeans and a plain t-shirt. He had tattoos from his wrists up both his arms, finishing at his neck. And he had a scar that started at the top of his forehead and finished just between his brows.

  He wore his wedding ring on his finger. He never removed it, even though his wife, Selma, had been dead for at least two decades.

  He looked tough because he was tough. I remember hearing rumors that he served time before I was born. And my friends in the neighborhood had said he was in the mafia. Grandma had always silenced those rumors, but just looking at him, it was an easy assumption to make. Most people who didn’t know him well were afraid of him.

  He was tough-looking on the outside and a tough talker too, but he had always been there for me and my friends. Embarrassingly enough, he had met all my dates. He had also scared all my dates away so it was a miracle that I had even ended up married.

  “Maybe you should have done a better job scaring Wyatt away,” I commented out loud.

  “Huh?” he said, looking at me funny.

  I sighed. “I was just thinking that you did such a great job during my teenage years scaring off all the boys, but somehow you let Wyatt slip through the cracks.”

  “He was always a pansy. I knew the moment I met him that he was bad news,” Uncle Niko said. “You should have married that Kenny fella. He was a nice kid.”

  “He’s gay,” I said, knowing exactly who he was referring to. Kenny had been my high school crush. He also took me to prom...which is when I found out he was gay. I caught him making out with the quarterback and figured prom night wasn’t working out in my favor. I guess I had a history of being involved with men who didn’t want to be involved with me.

  “No! Seriously?!” His eyes were round in surprise. “But he has a family!”

  “Yeah, I heard he came out to his wife a few years ago and now he’s married to his divorce lawyer. I heard they’re very happy together; even Kenny’s ex-wife is remarried. So, it all worked out. They all even still go to the same church.”

  “No kidding...” Uncle Niko said and then he looked at me with pity. “Did Wyatt leave you for another man too?”

  “I’m pretty sure he left me for a woman, given that she’s pregnant and all,” I said, annoyed that Uncle Niko was bringing it up.

  “You sure?”

  I tossed a pillow at him and he easily dodged it, a big smile spreading across his face. “Still too slow---”

  His smile disappeared as another one of my pillows caught him in the face.

  “Now care to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  Here, I was embarrassed to say, was my grandmother’s condo where I was hiding out from life. I wasn’t taking any calls...I had even shut out my best friends, Lacey and Emmaline. They’d heard the whole sordid story from Grandma. Besides Grandma, Uncle Niko was the only person I’d spoken to since Wyatt sprung the news of his aff
air on me.

  “Mom’s concerned. She said you’ve been holed up in here for weeks. She’s worried about you.”

  I frowned and slowly sat up. “She should have said something to me. Why did she call you?”

  “Well, she figured you wouldn’t speak to your parents and you refused to talk to Lacey and Emmaline…”

  I shrugged it off. I didn’t exactly get along with my parents. We never saw eye to eye on anything and that was why I had practically lived with my grandma in Brooklyn since I was a teen. I was named after my father actually. His name was Misha, a popular Russian male name which Mom thought would be a great fit for me. I wasn’t bitter. I liked my name. It made me stand out. And I looked just like my dad.

  He was petite for a man, not quite 5’5 with light blonde hair and green eyes. I was the same. I was only 5’1 and had the same pale complexion as my father. The same light hair. The same green eyes. The only thing I had inherited from my mom it seemed was her temper and demeanor. The difference was --- she was unapologetically mean. I at least tried to be nice.

  My dad was a postman and my mom was a homemaker. She watched a lot of tv and shopped. Dad was pretty much a dictator and did what he wanted. He never spared anyone’s feelings. They were perfect for each other and, in my opinion, they should never have had kids. I seemed to make them as miserable as they made me. It only took one fight, when my mom yelled out that she wished she had never had me, to make me realize that living with Granny was best for me. So, at 13, I had made the move and a few years after that, with a few court visits I had become an emancipated adult, legally free of my parents. Granny had been happy to have me. I think she had been lonely without me. I hadn’t seen my parents in a few years, but I spoke to my mom every now and then when she called to check on Granny. She never checked on me. I figured she knew I would always be fine. She used to say that I had nine lives.

  My Uncle Niko was my mom’s brother. Growing up he had been like my replacement father; he filled in for my dad who expressed zero interest in me, unless it was to criticize me. Uncle Niko had been like my surrogate father figure for my formative years as well. I had him and Granny to thank for the fact that I had turned out so well. Well, at least, I kind of turned out well.