The Ex

by Lutz, John

  “Presentable?” he asked.

  “At least.” She brushed off his suit coat and handed it to him.

  He worked his arms into the coat. She stepped in close and buttoned it for him.

  “You are something!” he told her again.

  She smiled up at him. “You already said that.”

  “Well, I think it’s worth repeating.”

  She kissed him lightly on the lower lip, then nudged him toward the door. He hesitated, looking back at her.

  “Don’t be late,” she said. “We don’t want questions.”

  He nodded, then went out the door.

  Deirdre picked up the still-glowing goose-neck lamp and placed it on the desk, then gathered some papers from the floor, rearranged them, and placed them in the In basket.

  When she’d decided that Chumley was gone from the building and enough time had passed that it was unlikely he’d return, she went to the door and shot the deadbolt into its shaft. She rolled Chumley’s chair into the kneehole of his desk, then lowered the blinds. The office suddenly seemed smaller, quieter.

  Still in her stockinged feet, Deirdre walked to the file cabinets and opened one of the bottom drawers. Squatting effortlessly so that her buttocks rested on her heels, she quickly found the hanging file folder she sought and lifted it from its steel tracks, then stood up and nudged the long drawer shut with the side of her foot.

  She carried the folder to the copy machine and set to work, smiling.

  26

  Molly scooted over toward the window to make room for Michael. David sat across from them in the booth at the Choice Deli, on the corner two blocks down West Eighty-fifth Street from their apartment. The Choice had been at the same location for decades. Though the walls screamed for plaster-patch, their coat of rose-colored paint was fresh. The counter stools and booths were only a few years old, gray vinyl with a sparkling silver design salted throughout. A tall, slowly revolving glass display case near the cash register dated back to the fifties and somehow made the thick cream pies and cheesecakes look like delicious confections from childhood.

  The waiter came over and they ordered an omelet for Molly, scrambled eggs and milk for Michael, a toasted corn muffin for David. Molly scooted the steaming coffee cup that the waiter had left, so it was well out of Michael’s reach, and stared at the back page of a Saturday Times the man two booths away was reading. A young woman from the Village had been raped and murdered near the East River, full-column news because it was in the area of Sutton Place, where the wealthy of New York didn’t factor possible murder into their plans.

  The pretty, young victim was smiling mischievously in her photograph, as if someone had just told her an off-color but amusing joke. On that sunny day she’d been psychologically a million years from unexpected violent death, but in reality closer than she’d known when the camera’s shutter was tripped. The city had been waiting.

  Michael stared up at Molly over his mustache of milk. “I’m hungry.”

  “Everybody’s hungry,” David said.

  Molly patted Michael’s wrist. “The food will be here soon,” she assured him. David handed him a pencil and he began scrawling crude stick figures on his napkin, his eyes sharply focused and his lower lip tucked in with childish concentration.

  Molly glanced out the window at the wet street. It had been drizzling from low, dark clouds since early morning. The sky looked like an upside-down gray bowl arcing inches above the tops of buildings. Along with the heat and almost tropical humidity, it helped to produce a claustrophobic feel to the city.

  “Thank God it wasn’t raining yesterday at Bernice’s funeral,” Molly said.

  “This isn’t your morning to run, is it?”

  David changing the subject yet staying with the weather. Very adroit.

  “Tomorrow,” Molly said.

  He picked up the Times he’d wrestled from the corner vending machine and folded then started to read the front section. The smiling young woman who’d met her death near Sutton Place again stared at Molly from her newspaper photo.

  The waiter arrived with their breakfasts, and David had to lay the paper on the seat beside him to make room.

  When their coffee cups had been topped off and the waiter had left, Molly spread butter on Michael’s toast, then, at his insistence, jelly. He beamed when she gave in to his demands, then promptly stuck his elbow in the jellied toast as he reached for his milk.

  David observed this and grinned. “He’ll clean up okay with a little soap,” he assured Molly.

  “Deirdre called and offered to baby-sit him today while I work,” Molly said, using her napkin to wipe jelly from Michael’s arm.

  “Take her up on the offer?”

  “No. Julia called with the same offer. I told them both no. I think we should keep him home for a while, watch him for…you know, effects.” She lowered her voice to pronounce the last word, knowing even as she did so that it was silly. Michael was sitting right beside her and would hear. But he wouldn’t know that the effects she referred to were his possible reactions to Bernice’s death. Molly was worried about what the experience would do to him. Three-year-olds could accept these things with a matter-of-factness that eluded some adults. Yet on a deeper level the trauma and grief could leave a lasting scar.

  As she forked a bite of omelet into her mouth and chewed, Michael glanced up at her, possibly wondering about his fate for the day.

  “I’m going to the gym to work out later this morning,” David said. “When I get back, I can keep an eye on him while you work. Maybe we’ll go out, find something fun to do.”

  Michael had resumed eating and didn’t look up from his scrambled eggs, but he grinned.

  “I thought you worked out yesterday,” Molly said.

  “Upper body.” He bit into his toasted corn muffin. “Lower body’s scheduled for today.”

  That didn’t seem right to Molly, but she said nothing. David, as far as she knew, had never been on an alternating workout schedule. But then she wasn’t privy to what went on at Silver’s Gym. She’d been there only once, to meet him before leaving to join friends for dinner. She remembered it as a functional, depressing place, with old equipment and a darkened and smoothly worn wood floor. But men seemed to like that kind of atmosphere where they worked out. Possibly it made them think they were sacrificing more and so should see greater benefits.

  “…about the fire?” David was saying.

  “What?”

  “Did Julia say anything more about the fire at her mother’s apartment?”

  “She told me it was deliberately set. The arson investigators said an accelerant had been used, and they found an empty wine bottle in the basement that had contained gasoline. It was lucky nobody was killed. Well, not only luck was involved. Unlike our building, when the fire alarm sounded, everyone knew there was probably a fire.”

  “Maybe they’ll lift some fingerprints from the bottle,” David said. He took a sip of coffee.

  “No. According to Julia, fire took care of that. The bottle was blackened and in pieces from the heat. Gangs, is what the police think. There’s a lot of gang activity in that neighborhood, and a sixteen-year-old kid who’s been in that kind of trouble before lives in the building.”

  Michael demanded more jelly for the second half of his toast.

  “It’s a shame kids get screwed up in those gangs,” Molly said.

  “It must be a tough neighborhood.”

  She used her knife to scoop grape jelly from its plastic container. “You do what you must to survive, I guess.”

  Don’t we all? he thought. Or was he only telling himself the survival of his marriage and reputation depended on his cooperation with Deirdre? She was a potent exterior force, but maybe his compulsion was his own. Their relationship was one he knew was drowning him as surely and fatally as Bernice had been drowned. He realized it yet seemed unable to find the strength to swim toward the surface.

  He could only struggle and sink deeper.r />
  As he was going to do later that morning.

  27

  The basement was almost completely dark except for yellow pools of light spread by bare overhead bulbs. Visible in the dimness were jumbles of ductwork above, and junk below. There were ripped screens, an old sawhorse, an upside-down tricycle without wheels. A row of wooden storage lockers faded into the blackness, its walls constructed of slats with two-inch spaces between them, solid wood doors with hasps for padlocks.

  In the dim light of a paint-splotched lightbulb back near the boilers, David had Deirdre pressed against a wooden wall of one of the storage lockers. He was standing. Her wrists were bound above her head to the slats with one of David’s old silk ties. Her skirt was hiked up and her legs were locked around his waist.

  Beside them was the duffle bag containing David’s workout clothes for Silver’s Gym, where he’d told Molly he was going. Later, he would slip out through a side door of the apartment building and actually go to Silver’s and work out. Though right now he doubted if another workout was necessary.

  He was thrusting into Deirdre, causing the loosely nailed slats of the storage locker to slam together. Something fell inside the locker with a sound like glass breaking on the concrete floor.

  “Too much…noise, David!” Deirdre moaned desperately between thrusts. “God, too much…noise!”

  He didn’t let up. “You’re the one who…insisted on doing this down here…”

  Getting winded, he paused and took a deep breath, then leaned forward and bit her earlobe, hard. Punishing her for making him need her. Her arms strained against their silken bondage.

  “Shit, David! Don’t draw blood!”

  He drew his head back to look closely at her in the musty dimness. Her eyes were puffy and dreamy with lust but still held their glint of calculation. She was losing herself only ninety percent.

  “You never minded before,” he told her. “Besides, turn-about’s fair play.” He bit her ear again, but not nearly as hard. She tried to move her head away but couldn’t, her movements restricted by her upraised arms.

  “I’m a working girl now. I have to wear earrings.” She giggled. “For those I need ears.”

  He’d stopped biting her and resumed driving himself into her, watching her eyes lose focus and become slits and her lips tighten and withdraw over her perfect teeth. She was his a hundred percent now.

  And he was hers.

  He felt her body tense and her legs clasped him more powerfully. After a few more strokes he pressed hard into her, holding himself tight against the bulge of her pubic mound and grinding her against the raw wood slats as he spilled into her. He heard himself moan. He held her pinned against the slats afterward, hard enough to make the old wood boards creak with the strain, as he valued every second.

  Finally he withdrew from her and she lowered her legs and was standing on her own. He quickly untied her wrists and slipped the silk tie into a pocket.

  They kissed long and feverishly, then smiled at each other, eyes serious, and began reorienting themselves to the postcoital world as they rearranged their clothing.

  “I love dark and dusty old basements,” Deirdre said, rubbing her wrists. “I’ve had more fun in them than anyplace else.”

  David checked to make sure he’d zipped his fly. “I don’t like Molly being right upstairs.”

  Deirdre gave him a lascivious grin. “I kind of do.” She spread her legs slightly and held her wadded panties to her crotch beneath her skirt. “Wow! You must have come a gallon, the way you’re running out of me. It’s lucky I only have to make it to my apartment in this building, or I’d leave a trail.”

  He winced, not only at her indelicacy but at her casual attitude about them all living beneath the same roof, the wife, the lover, the cheating husband. It was one of those moments when David gained some perspective and was terrified.

  There was a soft scratching sound from another part of the basement, and he and Deirdre stood still for a few seconds.

  Then she kissed him and said, “Only a rat.”

  “So there’s another one down here.”

  “You’re far too hard on yourself, David. We’re not the only two people having an affair, and Molly’s not the only wife who’s in the way. You should learn to embrace your destiny the way you hold me.”

  “It isn’t just Molly. What about Michael?”

  “I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do. But his world isn’t going to come to a close. Did you know the children of divorced parents are a majority in public schools now?”

  “The statistics don’t bear that out, Deirdre.”

  “Well, there are liars, darned liars, and statisticians. Anyway, sometimes people have to recognize reality and give in to its power. It’s like this big roulette wheel that spins and decides whose lives get mingled and changed. This time it’s you, me, and Molly. She might not like it, but it’s fate.”

  “Another thing she didn’t like was you being our baby-sitter the other night.”

  “That’s just because she’s too suspicious. She’s paranormal.”

  He felt to make sure his underwear had soaked up his sperm and her wetness, and the front of his pants was free of telltale spots that would have to dry before he could leave the basement. “You mean paranoid. And why wouldn’t she be? She’s got a lot of stress in her life lately.”

  “We can’t help that.”

  “Can’t we?”

  “You’re not down here with me against your will, are you, David?”

  He spread his fingers and raked them through his hair, scraping his scalp with his nails. “I’m not sure I’ve got any will left.”

  She laughed loudly, causing his heart to skip as he glanced around nervously. Hardly anyone came down to the dusty, gloomy basement, but if someone they knew did happen to discover them here, it would add another layer to his guilt and fear and might be devastating. Deirdre’s roulette wheel in the sky, jolting his future again.

  “It sure seemed like free will a few minutes ago,” Deirdre said. “That’s the part you don’t understand. The choice is yours but you can’t help yourself, David. You can’t help loving me.”

  “I can’t help fucking you.”

  “That’s close enough for now.”

  She moved directly in front of him then reached out and laced her fingers behind his neck, leaning back slightly so he was supporting her. She stared into his eyes with a gloating but desperate gleam that seemed too bright to be the reflection of the nearby low-wattage bulb. He gazed back at her with more hopelessness than passion.

  “Molly didn’t like you baby-sitting Michael,” he said again.

  She seemed incredulous. Injured. “Why not? Did she think I was going to harm him?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Whatever the reason, Molly must be going off her rocker chair. She oughta see a doctor, David, really.”

  His irritation made him want to slap her, hurt and shock her. His voice was tight but level. “Stop saying she’s insane.”

  “Why should I? She’s saying things about me. What’s good for the goose is good for the rest of the flock.”

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  “I’m serious, David. You don’t want to admit it, but the way she’s been acting lately, she really does need professional help.”

  He thought for a second he actually would strike her. Then he knew where it might lead, that it wasn’t a solution or even an option.

  Without speaking, he reached back and unfastened her hands from behind his neck.

  Then he turned away from her abruptly, picked up his duffle bag, and walked into the darkness.

  The worst part was, he suspected she might be right about Molly needing help. And it was his fault as well as Deirdre’s. He was caught in a terrible, destructive dance with her, and no matter how much he hated himself, he couldn’t stop dancing.

  At the gym he worked the Nautilus equipment, then the free weights, with a determination and a fierceness tha
t pushed him to surpass his previous limits.

  “Aren’t we full of piss and vinegar today?” Herb Mindle remarked. “What the hell did you have for breakfast?”

  David wiped perspiration from his forehead with a towel and smiled grimly. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Sure, I do,” Mindle said. “It’s my business.”

  David paused and nodded. “That’s right, I’d forgotten.” He chalked his hands, stretched out on his back on the padded bench, and gripped the barbell at the proper width for maximum-weight presses.

  He still felt strong, but lying as he was, staring up at the lights on the ceiling, he felt a curious dizziness come over him and erode his confidence. Everyone was human; everyone was weak and broke more easily than they imagined.

  “Better spot me on this,” he said. “It’s ten pounds above my previous high. If I don’t make it, the bar might come down and break my neck.”

  “Then why not try only five extra pounds first?” Mindle asked.

  “Because I decided to go for ten,” David snapped, tired of Mindle’s probing. There was no excuse for it, even considering his profession. He had no right to keep prying, eliciting information, analyzing.

  Mindle moved around to be in position to grab the bar in case David lost control. He looked pensive, as if musing over David’s answer to his last question.

  “Pertinent,” he said with a grin. “Pertinent.”

  28

  While David was doing bench presses, Molly was at her desk working on the architectural manuscript, coping with split infinitives and flying buttresses, wondering at the deterioration in the use of language among academics.

  A shrill cry of pain made her drop her pencil.

  It had come from Michael’s room, where he was down for his nap.

  She jumped up and ran.

  Michael was out of bed, jabbing at a cornered Muffin with a toy rifle equipped with a bayonet. The rifle and bayonet were obviously plastic, but the bayonet was still sharp enough to evoke screeches of pain and rage from the cat, who was trapped in the angle where the bureau met the wall.