Choke on Your Lies

by Anthony Neil Smith

  David always seemed a little out of place there. A scholarship kid, well above average, but never looking for the spotlight. Our small talk always focused on classwork rather than nightlife, art, dating, what was on TV, music, or YouTube. I didn’t get it. He didn’t seem the type to want to sex up any of his teachers. Frances must have chosen him for some reason. She was the one who made the advances.

  A couple of lawn mowers whined out of sync. One was a few houses down, the other out of sight. A bright day, I needed sunglasses to keep from squinting. All the better to keep him from reading my intentions so easily.

  I walked up to the door and rang the bell. There was only one car in the drive, a cheap older compact that announced itself as “College Kid’s Car”. Home alone would be good. No, wait. It meant he could make up any story he wanted, and all it would take was one neighbor, Mr. Mower for instance, saying I was here. I thought about leaving. Ready to turn around and give up before—

  The door opened, only the screen between us. He looked appropriately crumpled and unwashed for a college junior on vacation. Hard to tell if he’d just woken or not.

  He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look surprised.

  And me, nervous ol’ me, couldn’t help myself. “David, hey, sorry to just drop in like this but, you know, I’d make a mess of it over the phone, all the technical stuff. I’m lost half the time, so if you can show me…Oh, I forgot, the magazine, just a couple of things we need to check on. No biggie, but they can’t wait all summer, right?”

  Not getting anything but the blank stare, drifting into annoyance. On his turf, he let it shine through much more aggressively, I suppose.

  “If you’ve got plans or something, I understand, but if I could show you…” I wasn’t getting anywhere, and he wasn’t buying it. So, fuck it. I played up taking off my sunglasses, sliding them into my pocket. Sighed. Looked him in the eye and said, “We need to talk.”

  At first, I thought all I’d get was the same heavy-lidded stare, but he shrugged and turned away from the screen, headed into the living room.

  I didn’t know if that was an invite or not, but what the hell. I opened the screen and stepped inside. I followed him into the living room, where a flat screen at the opposite end, a video game console attached to it, but both were off. Maybe a younger brother. David would be more interested in the computer in his room.

  He sat on the couch lazily, and I suddenly felt much more apprehensive. David, in sweatshorts, barefoot, and musky, had the upper hand and knew it. He didn’t look at me as I took the chair beside the couch, at least trying to keep the professor/student hierarchy intact, a bit like therapist and patient. Crossed my legs, wondered if he would offer me something to drink. But he didn’t. Wasn’t going to.

  I said, “You fucked my wife.”

  Like that. Out in the open air.

  Still not looking at me. “Sorry.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  That’s when I realized I had expected a lot more.

  “You think that’s enough? ‘Sorry’? Like, ‘Oh, my bad?’”

  “No one says that anymore.”

  “Whatever they say.”

  He shifted around, flexed his toes. Shoulders scrunched up around his ears where he had reclined in the deep back cushions. Like he was a part of the couch. Just furniture.

  “David, I’m talking to you.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I am. It’s been a long time anyway.”

  “What’s a long time?”

  “Like, I don’t know. Christmas? January?”

  “So, five months to you is a long time?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Like a whole semester.”

  I could’ve lectured him, I supposed. Employed some sarcasm that might operate over his head, make him look even dumber than he currently looked. Might have made me feel a little better about myself, until I remembered the part about him sleeping with Frannie. Were little victories all I had left? Something to satisfy me even if it meant nothing to anyone else? I mean, I could wilt this kid with intellect and scathing wit, but he’d yawn because I was in his house and the worst I could do was fire him from his stupid job, and he could get another one on campus very easily.

  I shifted in my chair. God, what a bad idea all of this was. I wished he had offered me some water or something. My mouth was desert dry.

  “David…you can still stay on my good side.”

  “Really?”

  “It depends. I need your help.”

  He laughed. “That’s what this is? You want me to help you in your divorce?”

  “David—”

  “Dude, Professor, how’d you even find out? She told you, right?”

  I shook my head. Why was it me on the receiving end now? “That’s not important.”

  “Did you follow her? Wait, why would you wait, like, half a year to tell me if you knew back then? So she had to tell you. Or someone else. Someone else told you?”

  “Stop right there.” I was leaning forward, pointer finger up and accusing. “I know is how I know. I found out. And you, you’d better be glad it’s me here asking instead of my lawyer. It’s more than just you fucking my slut of a wife. You weren’t the only one, you know.”

  “Neither were you.”

  “Well thank you, young man. I needed that. As if I didn’t already know. What, it makes everything better? It obviously pissed you off a little too, her not wanting to ride you anymore. You remember the exact time she told you. I bet it was a day after the last time you fucked her. And I bet you pleaded with her. ‘Please, please, no, I’ll do anything.’”

  “Shut up!”

  My subconscious got the better off me. No more restraint. “It was that good, wasn’t it? I should know. Make fun of me all you want, but I got a lot more of it than you ever did or ever will. Years of it. So you want to be pissed off at me, or do you want to get back at her?”

  He stood. “I don’t care. It’s still better than helping you. You’re a fucking prick, man. Every day I walk into your office, I know you’re going to make me feel like I’m beneath you. Like you’re the big giver of wisdom. I’m so sick of it, man. Sick of you. I don’t care how many times you tried to be, like, nice. It was always this condescending bullshit. Nobody likes you. No one in any of your classes. They all think you’re a dick.”

  I stood, too. I eased my sunglasses out of my pocket, slipped them over my eyes. Stepped closer. “That’s enough. I know better. I’ve gotten as far as I have because people like me, they like my work and the way I teach. Just because you’re a pathetic scholarship kid whose best is only a fraction of what some of your classmates have on their worst day, don’t think for one day, not even one second, that you’re better than me.”

  “Get out of my house. Just get the fuck out. I quit.”

  “No, you’re going to help me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  It was the exact wrong time. Way too late. I’d fucked it royally, but that’s when Octavia’s whispering voice in my mind turned to a shout.

  I slapped David hard across the face.

  I mean, much harder than I expected. My hand throbbed like I’d slammed it in a car door. David gritted his teeth. His cheek went bright red.

  Oh no. No, no, no.

  Octavia again: now, tell him what you want.

  “David. You helped my wife forge my name on a quit-deed. I need you to tell that to my attorney, and tell me where to find the robot pen she used.

  He lifted his chin. “You ever hit me again—”

  “David!” Came out as a bark.

  He blinked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If I did, I’d tell you. I wouldn’t help you, but I’d want you to know it was me who fucked you over.”

  Before Octavia’s voice warned me that he was probably telling the truth, my hand was on the move, aiming for the same spot on his face.

  But this time, before I’d even followed through, David had grabbed my wrist and fo
rced it down. He shoved me. I went down, flipped over the chair’s armrest. He straddled me before I realized what had happened, punched me in the chest. I fought him, held his arms, shielded myself and tried to buck him off.

  He got a hand free and landed his own slap across my face. My sunglasses went flying.

  “You like that? How’s that feel? Huh?”

  Another one.

  “Feeling like shit yet? The way you made me feel? Huh?”

  Another one.

  I said, “Enough! That’s enough, goddamnit!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Get! Off!” I threw all of my weight to the left.

  He fell back, banged the back of his head against the edge of the end-table, rattling the picture frames on top. He grunted and reached for the point of impact. I scrambled up and away.

  His fingers came away from his head bloody. He winced.

  I felt bad. I wasn’t even really hurt. “Are you okay?”

  “Get out of here.”

  “I’m sorry, David, okay? But, seriously, I’m about to lose my house over this. Do you understand? My house!”

  But what do kids understand, right? He was probably thinking Then get another house. You’ve got money. Or, Get an apartment. Or, So? Point two, who was going to believe him? He’s going to try to say a professor slapped him? All I had to do was fake it. I did, even. Seethed through my teeth and grabbed my shoulder.

  “I think you dislocated it.”

  A couple of drops of blood fell from his head to the carpet. He looked up, mouth open, imagining his future slipping through his fingers like sand. He said, “Look, I’ll change my major. I won’t take any English classes. Just…I don’t know anything about your house or robots or anything. I swear.”

  I closed my eyes. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Please, Professor. I’m sorry. It wasn’t what you think. She came onto me, but it wasn’t about you, I don’t think. It was…I can’t tell you.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, you can’t tell me? You won’t?”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean…I can’t. I don’t know. It just happened.”

  I didn’t believe it.

  He glanced left and right, picked himself up and looked over at the clock on the wall. “I need to clean this up before my mom gets back. Please. Get out of here. Don’t get me involved. I can’t help you.”

  Maybe I could’ve pressed it more, threatened to tell his mother the whole story about how her son attacked me. But for some reason I believed him. Jesus, I was a soft touch.

  “Not a word, then,” I said. Didn’t know if I meant him or me or about what, particularly, but that was all I had. I kept my hand gripped on my shoulder—it was fine, if a little achy—until I got to the door. Outside, I shook it off and hoped David hadn’t seen. I was sweating and breathing hard. In the car, I looked in my rearview. He’d nicked me. My lip was swollen. My cheek was bruised. And it had all been a giant waste of time. I started up and left, just in time to see a small SUV driven by a woman in sunglasses, his mom, I supposed, turn into his driveway. She didn’t pay me any mind.

  Shit. I’d left my own sunglasses inside. Fuck. They’d cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. Well there you go, David. A nice parting gift.

  TEN

  I sat in Octavia’s office after Jennings had brought me a cold gel pack for my face. I told her everything. I capped it off with, “I can’t believe I hit him.”

  “You should’ve hit him first.”

  “I can’t believe I listened to you.”

  She ignored me for a moment while typing a response to an email, then said, “The thing with the shoulder, that was a good save though. Maybe you can use that more often, get beat up and then get them to talk through pity.”

  “Are you crazy? I’ll never do that again!”

  “If you want to keep your house, you will.” She finally looked at me. “You believe he doesn’t know?”

  I mumbled, shrugged, winced. Maybe I’d believed him back at the house, but since then I wasn’t so sure. I’d been lied to so much and had no idea, the answer could be that it was me. I had the look of a person who could be lied to. Even people who normally told the truth looked at me and decided I was low risk, extremely gullible, so what was the harm? In hindsight, I wondered if Stephanie had been telling the truth about Ashton after all.

  Octavia kept typing, so I got lost in my head, thinking of a poem about my house: The wood soaks in each fight, each embrace, the smell of each meal. That last part wasn’t working. I needed to list real meals, evoke real smells. How to do it without pissing off vegetarians? Fuck it. I didn’t think meat-eating in poetry was a crime, at least not yet. If anyone asked, I would say, “Sorry, I’m a gourmet.” That sometimes smoothes things over. Now, if it were a fish dish, that also helped—for some reasons the vegetarians I knew didn’t feel as bad about eating seafood. But I couldn’t use veal—

  “Mick! Asshole!”

  I jumped. Octavia stared at me across the desk. I jumped again when I realized Harriet was standing beside me. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “She asked if you were staying for lunch.”

  Blinked. Blinked. “Uh, um…what’s on the menu?”

  Harriet sighed. “No menu. It’s a grilled walleye sandwich and minestrone. Plus some garlic potato chips.”

  “Potato chips?”

  Octavia said, “She’s making them. Jesus, Thooft, pull yourself together.”

  I nodded. I had somehow sunk so low in the chair that my armpits were on the armrests. I pushed myself up. “Sure, okay, lunch is good. Sounds good.”

  Harriet clucked her tongue and winked at me, then spun on her heels, left the office. I watched her go. Goddamn it. I couldn‘t help myself, and not just because of her ass, but because I knew myself too well, always going after the ones who would most abuse me. Eager to jump right into another canyon of disappointment.

  Octavia cleared her throat. I pretended I had been looking at the books instead. “Do you have an Aristophanes I can borrow?”

  “Please. Number one: don’t even think about it. I will cut you. Second, have you been home?”

  “Not since yesterday.”

  “Okay, well, do you think Frannie’s been by?”

  “Where is this going?”

  She rocked to and fro in her chair, gaining the momentum to brace herself on the desk and push up. “The proof…gah…could’ve been there…er…all along. What if she’s already gotten….rid…of it when she realized you weren’t coming home last night?”

  “How would she know? What, is she driving by every hour checking on me?”

  “You dumbass. Her friend told her. You think she’s not going to tell Frances you were on a date? I mean, it would piss off Frances enough to keep up the vendetta, but also make her feel better that you’re finally getting the message that it’s over. And then she could go to the house and remove anything incriminating.”

  I shook my head. “Stephanie promised.”

  Octavia rounded the desk, still wearing the same silk robe she’d worn at breakfast but her skin was glowing, supple. I was starting to believe that Octavia spent most of her days naked except for that robe. She stood before me and said, “You’d never know. We bitches decide what’s a secret and what’s your problem. ”

  I hadn’t thought about it. I rearranged the gel pack.

  “So go home, tear the place apart. See if Miss Chill is as smart as she thinks. Check to see if she’s fucking someone on the computer science faculty, too.”

  “Hey, that’s a bit much.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “I mean, hell, it seems you and Jennings would know something like that before I would.”

  “True. Which is why it’s shameful.”

  I drooped. No energy left to fight. “All right.”

  *

  At home, I poured myself a glass of ice water and downed it in one long pull. Chilled my teeth, but I needed to rehydrate. Poured ano
ther. No booze for me. I needed a long break from the stuff. I went upstairs and showered for the second time that day. This one was to relax more than to cleanse. I ran it hot and hard, blasting against my back for a good twenty minutes before I climbed out to sit on the toilet. Just sitting, dripping, wondering what would happen next.

  I tried to imagine packing up everything I owned and starting over somewhere else. There had been a time in my life when that was exciting, perhaps the thing I most looked forward to. But after all these years, coming to crave the comforts that only came with settling in—both at school and with Frannie—I couldn’t imagine being comfortable anywhere but here. Especially considering that on my own, I wouldn’t be able to afford a place anything like this. Most likely a small apartment. A nice one, sure, but not home. Not these trees, these rooms, and the amber light that travelled across the walls as the day faded.

  I dried myself, dressed in my lightest khakis and thin silk shirt, and made my way downstairs to figure out where to start.

  Easy enough: the messages. A quick glance had shown that the light wasn’t flashing, but when I went to check the caller ID, there were two messages. Right before I left, I erased them. Someone had been here after all.

  I just hoped whoever called wasn’t dumb enough to give away what I’d been doing behind Fran’s back.

  No luck.

  The first message was from David: “I just wanted to say again, leave me out of this. I’ll leave your sunglasses in your box when classes start. I’m changing my major to Marketing.”

  I had only seen him three hours ago. The time stamp on the call was from right after. So…today? Fran had been in my house that same day? Maybe she was in the basement as I stood there. Or she could’ve escaped while I was in the shower. I was about to bolt for the stairs when I caught the second message.