Noon Friday, July 7th, 2023
Jia. She was the solitary hidden sniper who held up the whole campaign at the beachhead. If she rejected him, Garin would severely doubt himself. He might take it for the hint he needed that in the expanse of time since he won Lyrou, he’d lost it, he no longer appealed to women in that way. It might hurt his ego so badly that he’d fear being rejected again, too much to retry his luck the next day, or ever.
And then what would that do to his entire project with his wife, talking a big game and then slip-falling through the mud flat on his face right out the gate. It would be a humiliation so catastrophic that it would make his shocking discovery of her parallel-world seem benign.
Speaking of snipers, he’d rather be picked off by one than be in his shoes when Lyrou looked upon him as a hurt bluffing flubbing hubby who couldn’t deliver on his lofty aggressive promises... under her magnifying glass a sniveling wriggling worm on her hook, an emasculated man who built in his imagination a false hero of himself to cope with what she’d done to him. To be seen by Lyrou as lacking the courage of his convictions? By the devil that couldn’t be!
Jia had flirted with him, hadn’t she? Or was that not serious? Was she being overly polite? Was she just having some fun, entirely verbal? He’d make a fool of himself to stick his foot in his mouth with a proposition. She’d know that he took her little arm touches and smiles and hair twirling over the years for much more than it was. He burned under his collar to picture it unfolding that way.
The what-ifs were building so large inside him, rubble caving in a mine shaft, that they would obstruct any move forward on his part, thwarting himself before giving Jia a chance to accept or reject. He wondered at himself how it was he’d gotten the courage to pursue Lyrou back when he was a much less accomplished man, a man-boy really, and tuition broke.
He closed his eyes and remembered who he used to be, how brave he was. He recalled that he had nothing to lose back then. He thought nil of himself, and so he could do anything! Is that then the secret, younger Garin, let go of my high ideals of myself?
Yes. You’re nobody, you were born, one day you’ll die and be forgotten, whether this woman or that woman welcomes your advances or not is inconsequential. There is do it or don’t. Do it or don’t. Do it or don’t.
Garin stood from the lounge sofa as he saw Jia coming out of the elevator. He began to walk. He’d come up beside her and start a chat. Walking, his limbs didn’t feel entirely his, and he became hyper-conscious of his gait. Did he look as awkward as he felt? Never mind it. The sight of Jia strolling alone just up ahead took his mind off himself. Jia had a figure that was both normal and yet terribly beautiful. Her hair swayed and bobbed so gently as she walked to the main entrance.
That’s the other secret, isn’t it, younger Garin? You become brave enough to speak to a woman when she looks this good, good enough that you must have her, good enough that you don’t stop to think she’ll laugh or sneer at you, when she looks so good you just have to say anything, whether it’s pure poetry or a stupid incoherent line of garbage from your mouth. When she looks as good as Jia you gotta say something to her.
⚜
Noon Friday, July 7th, 2023
With the house to herself as was usual, Lyrou had left her phone downstairs to go up and with a basket of sheets and pillowcases to change beds. She came to Penny’s room first, set the basket down on the door, and entered to remove Penny’s yellow polka-dotted sheet-cases set. No sooner than she had yanked the fitted sheet, she was compelled to lie down.
On her back, her feet at the headboard, her head hanging upside-down over the small mattress, hair sweeping the floor, tears ran down her forehead and into her hairline. Why did she agree to it? Non. She thought to herself, you are a being drawn and quartered, stallions pulling in each cardinal direction, no slack left. And the inadvertent entrapment of it was that no one tied her wrists and ankles; she was holding these drag tethers by the grip of her own fingers and toes.
⚜
Morning Saturday, July 8th, 2023
Garin’s sneakers pounded the trail through Fort Lee Historic Palisades Park with a well-paced, deliberate right-left-right thud-thud-thud. His legs burned as they always had, but this morning the anaerobic lactic acid hit differently. What was a jog compared to his having limped through blistering brimstone? His world had been struck by a meteor; ensuing tsunami waves, fire-rain, volcanic ash, and pyroclastic surge plaster-cast encasing and suffocating all. Total entombment in darkness.
But there was a new age within him. The dust layer in his stratosphere had begun to thin and break with the first sight of the sun, its warmth thawing him. He’d heard Lyrou’s anthology of infidelity, every word, and it had blasted a crater in him that would remain forever like Chicxulub. But like that raw mantle-deep gouge, it was now beneath the waves, submerged by rising sea-levels owing to the melting of the glaciers over his heart. New life, now!
As he jogged, his usual playlist of hard-driving tunes was replaced with something softer, something unfamiliar. Serenity. The vaporwave flowing from his phone strapped to his arm took him across the Milky Way, from where he could look down on his life and all lives with detached perspective. What was it all anyway? Just laugh! One must laugh!
Above him, a red-tailed hawk sailed through the sky, its razor-beak and wings cutting the air with quiet menace. Garin kept his eye on it as he jogged. He watched, happy to see it was hunting. He mentally wished both the raptor and its rodent prey well. Good hunt, he thought, and then good escape, acknowledging the contradiction but meaning it all the same. And to all the stalking predatory people and all the grazing person-prey, good hunt and good escape!
The George Washington Bridge, there was no better, closer angle of it than on this very hill. Its crisscrossing suspension system steel towers stood wide and tall, leading toward Manhattan with a grey mechanical beauty. At this spot, the sight of it was like a painting, proving linear one-point perspective, and its reflection on the Hudson below demonstrated distortion-mirroring. Built during the Great Depression, its construction offered vital work, and its completion allowed more vital commutes; people survived thanks to it. Garin nodded to the span, giving his thanks, too; it greeted him as he survived his own life’s greatest depression.
He passed a few people on the trail: a mother jogging with a stroller, complete with a napping child. There was another fellow dad-jogger, but with a massive German Shepherd. There was an old, bearded, dwarfish Hasidic man perched on a bench. Garin was amused that they were unaware, not that he thought they should care, but they were all unaware of the reforging that had taken place inside him. Had they ever been through such a revolution within?
Physically, he was slowing on this path, but he was in the headspace to light up the afterburners and jet through the final length. Garin’s legs moved faster, and his lungs filled to their max. There would be no heeding pain signals; those nerve pathways were put on mute. His whole body gave itself to his command. This was it, run, run, run, don’t think about the rest at the end, that will come when it comes. Our task is to run, and so it will be!
⚜
Evening Saturday, July 8th, 2023
Garin found Lyrou in the basement rec room. He came down the stairs and looked curiously to see what she was doing. She was practicing a game of pool solo.
“Hello, Garin.” She greeted him as she leaned in to take a shot, her cleavage also greeting him.
Garin took up a pool cue and chalked the head. He stood hand on his waist, waited for her to take her shot, and proudly declared, “I’m going out with Jia.”
Her eyes widened with shock; the announcement spoiled her shot. The name “Jia” echoed through her mind, the first volley in the salvo. She was unsure of how to react. Part of her wanted to protest, to cling hypocritically to the monogamous ideal she’d always known and received unquestionably from Garin, but another part of her was intrigued by the thought of Garin with someone else.
Her hand was shaking as she took a sip from her beer and then set the can down on her stool. “Oh?” She tried to keep her expression neutral, but the flutter in her stomach gave her away. “Who is she?” The question was innocent enough, but her tone was laced with the curiosity of one terminally diagnosed asking how long they had. She watched him closely, saw the hint of a vengeful smile.
Garin took his shot, clean, precise, corner pocket. “My first memories of Jia are of her many furtive peeks at me. Jia is a very lovely woman who works in the Tiāntáng office, a floor below our office. She’s joined us for lunch many times and hit on me repeatedly. The other guys elbowed me. Terry, Wayne, they saw her interest in me as sure as I did. She put out her lure, and I’m ready to bite. I asked her out,” Garin said, staring happily at the pool table as if it were a lily pad-rich pond, taking another shot. “I never allowed myself to imagine having anything with Jia because I thought... I’m married and so is she, however tepidly. But if we’re going to have our understanding... I’m excited. I’ve had relations with one woman for 13 years... Lyrou... only you. Only you. Only you. Each time… only you.”
“Only me.” Lyrou dug for his insult.
“We won’t be twisting words. You know that I mean solely you and nothing impertinent. Yes?” Garin was stern.
Checked so quickly, Lyrou dropped that line. “Yes, I understand,” she said, too calm. Taking her shot, she turned again to face him, looking for doubt. “What happens with this woman stays between us.”
“If it happens, I’m confident it won’t be in the gossip pages,” Garin said plainly.
Her eyes narrowed slightly with curiosity. “Confident, are you?” She couldn’t help but feel this charismatic aura was a good fit for him, but the thought of losing him to another woman was petrifying. She tried to keep her voice light, teasing. “What made you so sure of her?”
“She’s been flirty with me and said all but the obvious to express that kind of interest... and you know... she’s married, too. But her husband lives in Shenzhen, and they rarely meet. Thinking about it now, she must be lonelier for a man than you.” Garin took the poise of a romantic hero, his pool cue in two hands like a claymore.
“I’m not lonely, not in that way.” Her hand stopped mid-trace down her neck, and she stood straight, the implications of his words working through her brain. In muffled anger, she said, “Well, I suppose we’re both about to explore new... vistas.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “You still belong to me. Don’t you?”
Garin took his shot, again like a pro. “I’ll tell you whatever you ask, and you’ll tell me whatever I ask. I’ll even tell you if she’s better than you. And I’ll come back to you just the same. By the way, who will you meet in the coming week?”
Her eyebrow cocked at his question. “Meet?”
Garin planted the butt of his pool cue down into the floor like a Myrmidon standing at attention. “You had plans before I rained on them, were they sweet sugar cubes dissolved? Were they oases in your dry desert of a marriage that turned into mirages as I looked more closely at them?”
Years of habit would have her lie about any such plans, but now, now she was truthful. “I haven’t plans, given…”
Garin, with his fingertip to his lip, said, “Given what? Given that I know. Wife, who would you meet this weekend if I hadn’t come to know? In that alternate timeline universe where I still sit unaware, who is that Lyrou at this minute preparing to see?”
She took a moment to gather her thoughts, her hands resting on her thighs, watching him take another shot on the pool table. The idea of telling Garin about her encounters sent a shiver down her spine. She’d never been one to talk about her flings to anyone, not friends like Reine, not maman, not in a diary, but if this was a newfound openness, it was undeniably... liberating.
Her gaze lingered on his bulge before meeting his eyes, gesturing for her to take the next shot. “Tu sais, I don’t have anyone lined up to pocket the ball yet,” she said, now sultry. “But I’d been talking to someone, a man I’ve known for years but have rarely met in the last few months…”
Garin stared into her. “His name?”
To say his name to Garin, was this real life? “Paulo. He’s... quite a personality.” The reality of telling Garin his name, and then the possibility of seeing Paulo again... “But,” she added, her hand moving up to caress her arm as if longing to be touched, “I couldn’t do that now.”
Garin said, deadpan, “No? Why?”
Lyrou looked up at him with doe eyes. “I just can’t.”
Garin ran his hand over the green baize, messing the balls across the table, ruining the game. “That’s a cockroach.”
Lyrou’s big dark eyes narrowed. “Pardon?”
Garin unfiltered himself. “In the light, scurrying away. It won’t do in the light what it does in the dark. It knows it would be squished if seen.” Garin held the red solid, tapping it on the felt table, exhaling through his nostrils, “Yeah. I won’t stop before I’ve started because you’ve found your brake at last.”
Lyrou tried to control her anger; she told herself Garin was still agonizing, how nothing had been fixed for him, that it was only mere days since her missteps kicked over the lantern that burned down his castle. Softly, she replied, “I’m not an insect. I don’t want to hurt you when you hurt me. It’ll become a never-ending cycle of retaliation or end when we hit our bottom.”
Garin propped his cue against the table and walked over to where Lyrou sat. He knelt, hands over her hands, and kissed her. “I’m very excited, Lyrou. I haven’t done this before. Yours is the only woman’s body I’ve so much as seen naked in-person in a long time. I’m a bit nervous; I could have performance anxiety. How awful would that be? Oh well, jump in, swim or drown.”
Her jugular pulsed as she dreaded his impending tryst. She swallowed, her hand trembling slightly under his. “I don’t want us to lose each other.”
“Then let’s make this promise... we won’t continue neglecting our union,” Garin formulated.
The warmth of his skin against hers, the comfort of his touch, was reassuring her. “OK. We’ll keep our bond resilient.”
⚜
Noon Tuesday, July 11th, 2023
Lyrou was parked outside Paulo’s on a side street. She texted him that she’d pulled up, and he texted back that he needed a minute to get cleaned up. This man slept until noon, spending his nights smoking weed and working at a synthesizer with an array of monitors, a drum machine, and half a dozen samplers on-screen. He counted himself a founding bro of Krushclub, which he prophesied would be huge, and for that gave himself props as an underground musical genius.
Lyrou hadn’t done this before. She had, but she hadn’t. Something was missing, and she didn’t think long to determine what it was: the secrecy and stealth. Her husband knew, her husband didn’t object, and her husband wouldn’t divorce her for it. What was this then? Was it more right or more wrong? What if you steal the baguette from the baker, the same as you’ve nabbed free loaves for ages, but this time he catches you, grabs you by the wrist, and plants another baguette in your hand!? That’s not all, he implores you to eat! The baker presses the baguette to your lips and smirking, promises, ‘No worries, I’ll also fill my belly, eat-eat, don’t go on fast for my sake’. What’s this?
Paulo had once lit his blunt in her car, and she nearly karate chopped his lips off his face to get it out of the vehicle before it might leave a hint of a scent. To preserve her Garin, to preserve the old order. In a moment, to let Paulo walk down from his third-floor apartment, down flights of back porch stairs, through the rear gate, to turn down his alley and hop in her passenger seat... his hair wet from showering... would be to officially accept Garin’s new order.
She was picking up Paulo to give him a ride, to catch up, and then for him to give her a ride. That was all, but that wasn’t all. Lyrou thought that if she was selling her birthright for pottage, a true marriage by the strictest definition was traded away for cheap, dirty, sexy fun. Or was she rejecting an oversold bill of goods for the real juice of life? Was Garin?
She looked up from her driver’s side window to see Paulo locking up his back door and turning to come down his back porch stairs. Press the ignition and drive away? She saw Paulo closing back the rear gate and turning to come strolling down the alley. Long-haired machisme bohémien; floral-pattern shirt fully unbuttoned down to his tight black jeans, line of black fur from his briefs to his chest, tiny gold crucifix sparkling stuck to his damp skin. With a pull of her fingertip, Lyrou unlocked the car doors.
⚜
Evening Tuesday, July 11th, 2023
Pregnancy. That could have happened, but she took care that it didn’t. Stopping in the pharmacy was usually unnecessary, but this evening she was wary of the odds and Paulo’s pullout game. At the window, she pressed under and through a handwritten note. The pharmacist took it, tossed it, and passed back under and through the requested packet. A tap of her card. Back in her car, she took it, and that was done. Whatever little chance there was had now been reduced to almost nil.
Paulo had given her body the love it needed. To think she would have done her best to never be touched by, kissed by, fucked by Paulo again. To think she would have done her damnedest to never run her hands all over him, to take his cock in her palm, in her mouth, in her deepest part… was she ready to give up this one lover to keep Garin? Was she ready to give up all lovers to keep one man?
She made herself think of, visualize, hear, taste and smell all those indescribable heavenly treats a woman gorges on when she has a revolving selection of lovers; her fingertips through the short-curled hair of a sculpted chest, a smooth warm ball sack cupped in her hand as she knew she was about to receive the contents, a hard muscular ass tensing as it rammed into her, a man’s grunting moan as he was overcome and couldn’t delay a second longer… letting himself ejaculate onto her tits, over her face, across her ass cheeks, smattering her lips, creaming-filling her depths.
Was she about to give that up for Garin? It was hard to imagine. She was so sure she could and that she would, but that was before getting fucked by Paulo again. High on a mountain overlooking the nations, the devil on her shoulder scoffed at that apologetic Lyrou that only yesterday believed it might convert into a monogamous good wife, grinning and concluding, Maybe you could have, but why when you can have all the kingdoms of the world, all this power given thee, and the glory of them?
Lyrou sat in the parking lot for a moment, looking at the people coming in and out of the pharmacy store: a potbellied Black uncle with a moustache slinking through as if he’d an old back injury; a trio of boppity teenage girls talking and walking like sparrows across the parking lot; a blondish delivery driver with a box under his arm and a pep in his step; a very short Central American speaking rapid Spanish on his cellphone; a deli shop apron woman on her break keeping her hair out of her face as she pushed past the delivery man for the revolving door. Lyrou thought about if none of them had been born. Who would notice that? Nobody would miss people they never knew. Would somebody know they were missing, or feel they were missing? Were they supposed to have lived?
⚜
