I STUMBLE TOWARD SHORE, my teeth clacking together like musical spoons. After carrying me just a few yards, my wobbly pins introduce me face-first to the sand. I lie in a shivering heap and wait for the late afternoon sun to broil the chills from my body. After the tremors abate, I hotfoot it to the benevolent shade of a nearby spruce tree to bundle up in my ragged, terrycloth robe. As far as I’m concerned, direct sunlight has its limited time and place.
Fifty yards offshore, Jackie's tanned body cleaves the lake's cobalt surface. Her wake, a shimmering, V-shaped scar, disappears almost the instant that she passes. If only the wounds she opens with her tongue could heal as quickly. Her extended glide through the lake's hypothermic embrace refutes my suspicion that she's more than just figuratively cold-blooded.
I’ve run through half a dozen relationships since our divorce. But each year during our visit here in the Canadian Rockies, she plays siren to my Ulysses, luring me into the punishing waters of this semi-remote cove.
Jackie cruises into the shallows with the stealth of a caiman. She rises seemingly without effort, an act of near levitation. I’m her only audience as she steps onto this narrow strand of beach. Still, after each measured step, she takes a barely perceptible pause — a subtle model's posturing. She's Botticelli’s Venus, minus the scallop shell — and contrived modesty.
From her auburn mane to her toenails, she’s a seamless celebration in bronze. I once told her my preference for the eroticism of tan lines, those razor-sharp borders dividing public domain from no man’s land.
“Wearing swimsuits,” she replied, “is against my nature.”
Jackie peels a cloying strip of seaweed from her right calf, then walks toward me. She stops a few feet from the evergreen’s shadow. Water droplets catch the sunlight on their downward slide over her goose-flesh-stippled torso. A few drops cling to the undersides of her breasts, like Lilliputian mountaineers mourning their descent.
A pair of teenage boys riding mountain bikes skid to a stop near the tree line. Jackie picks up her towel and daubs the water from her body. She dries herself unhurriedly — employing her towel as a stripper’s fan, revealing flashes of buttock, breast, and bush. The slight sag of her breasts bears witness that even her disciplined flesh can’t withstand the influential tug of Mother Earth and Father Time. From my vantage point, I see the faint stretch marks that skirt her abdomen. I know she’ll never forgive Bill for the pregnancy. Of course, she was the one who allowed her diaphragm to grow as porous as a colander. But she's punished him for it — even more than he knows.
Jackie finishes toweling off, then fixes a chilling stare on the young cyclists. They scramble off, but not before one of them checks his watch. I’d bet a year’s salary they’ll return here at the same time tomorrow.
Occasionally, I feel guilty for participating in our trysts here in BC. Bill, her current mate for life, considers me a close friend and confidante. Time and again, I've counseled him when his faith in her fidelity wavered. The evening before Jackie and I flew out of O'Hare, he phoned. "Craig-O," he whined in a register unbefitting a former Ohio State linebacker. "You know Jackie as good as me. Are you sure she's not screwing around?"
If I were honest — and didn't care to reach my next birthday — I'd have shared my theory that Jackie is a kind of sexual dromedary, that our purported annual working vacations satiate her desires for several months. Instead, I mollified him with clichés and platitudes. "You know that women are different when it comes to sex. They simply don't have our needs."
“But she hardly lets me even touch her anymore.”
“Your wife is wrapped up in the business right now. She'll come around. Look at the big picture. You have your whole life together.”
Realistically, a nylon and a sweat sock would make a more compatible pair. Jackie’s a striking, sophisticated mistress of innuendo and nuance. And Bill? Borderline handsome in a thuggish way, with a 'pull-my-finger' sense — or senselessness — of humor. If a joke isn't body-part or booger-themed, the punchline glides over his head like a stealth bomber. The real tie that binds? Bill’s fleet of seven auto dealerships.
Jackie spreads out the towel and lies down on her stomach. She raises her head slightly, absorbing the sun’s warmth. Her pose calls up the memory of a water moccasin I observed sunning itself during a canoe trip through the Atchafalaya Basin.
A senior couple appears on the trail that flanks the beach. At the sight of Jackie, the woman grabs her companion's arm and attempts to usher him away. But, a few steps later, he kneels and feigns retying a shoelace while stealing another peek toward the beach.
Although Jackie seems unaware of their presence, her hips rotate slightly, revealing the manicured, russet-hued thatch at the juncture of her thighs. It’s a radical change from the indigenous, mousey-brown thicket she sported during our truncated marriage.
Jackie gets to her feet after the old folks are out of sight. She brushes a few grains of sand from her stomach, slips into her kaftan, and heads up the path. “Back to the lodge. I’m ready.”
“Give me fifteen minutes. Thanks to my extended baptism in Lake Frostyballs, Little Craig-O is on life support.”
Without breaking stride, she hikes up the back of her kaftan. And with that furtive sighting, just like Lazarus rising from the dead, Little Craig-O—
* * *
I’m standing naked in the middle of Jackie’s suite. She points a few inches to my left. “Stand there.”
Such a slight adjustment makes no sense, but I comply; after all, it is her turn. As always, I'm wearing a pair of condoms. Despite the double sheathing, I'm harder than a Zen koan. Her predatory expression makes me wonder if I’ll remain that way.
She glides over to me, wearing nothing but her diamond-studded wedding ring, and presses down on my erection.
"Stiff as a diving board," I say. "You could do a half-gainer off of it."
“Don’t talk.” She locks me in the same alpha-wolf stare I see when she’s closing a deal. My hands cradle her well-toned bottom, effecting a surge of gratitude for the proliferation of gyms in Chicago.
She clasps her hands behind my neck, lips drawn back, a hint of a snarl. “Now lift me.” Her words are chopped, razor-edged. “I said, ‘Lift me.’”
I spread my feet for balance, then hoist her off the carpet. She hooks her elbows over my shoulders. Her heels lock into the small of my back. With a quick rotation of her hips, she takes me inside. Her lips brush my right ear. “Get moving.” She drives a heel into my right buttock.
I react with a hip thrust. Jackie follows up with a second sharp kick, then another. Like the drummer in a Roman galley, she sets the pace of our coupling. With each strike, I drive forward and upward.
Her breathing quickens. She's getting the full benefit of this. But encased in these twin Trojans, I could be screwing a garbage disposal and barely feel it.
Jackie's kicks increase in frequency and savagery. She locks her ankles behind me, knees clench against my sides. Her head drops to her chest. A strangled growl — felt more than heard — escapes from her. She calls out to a generic deity. “Oh, god, oh, god,” then deals a stinging backhand to my left cheek.
Her brutalizing legs relax and slide down my body. "That was okay. Not great, but okay." She turns away as though we just shared nothing more than an internal handshake.
I'm exhausted, battered, and unfulfilled. Odds are, she's never ridden her Arabian gelding so mercilessly. She pads down the hall to the bathroom, leaving me to wonder, “What the fuck was that all about.”
Our lovemaking, such as it is, has been relatively uncomplicated since it evolved into a series of alternating transactions. Discarding the pretense of an afterglow spares us the cruel fiction of uncomfortable embraces and fabricated endearments. Despite the lack of affection, a good quantity of passion usually accompanies the sex. This was different — unless rage qualifies as a form of passion.
I peel off the condoms and loft them toward the wastebasket. It's a mystery why Jackie insists that I double sheath. Any intrepid gamete hardy enough to escape would have to swim a murderous bog of spermicide before bashing itself against a factory-fresh neoprene dam. Once burned, I guess.
Jackie returns and sits before the dressing table. “Back to work.” She powers up her laptop. “Where were we?”
“The Second Amend-mint Parfait.”
She spins the laptop screen in my direction. “What about this disgusting mashup of strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream?"
"Red, White, and Blueberry Torte?”
She carries a look of disgust off the dressing table mirror in my direction. "I can’t believe we took on this account.”
“We didn’t sign Love It or Leave It Cafes Inc. You did.”
The client, a redneck fry-cook lottery winner, is dumber than a whole row of posts. And his proposed line of “patriot” eateries is the most ridiculous example of jingoistic capitalism since Desert Storm Trading Cards.
When I suggested naming the onion rings 'Freedom Rings' during our first meeting, he looked at me as though I were speaking in Martian. “I don't get it."
“My Country 'Tis of Thee? 'From every mountainside/Let freedom ring?'"
He continued staring, his face as blank as a virgin Etch-A-Sketch. But when Jackie endorsed the idea, he nodded like a bobblehead taped to a jackhammer.
“Christ, woman. Must we name every item on his fucking menu?"
She lights a cigarette. "Complain all you want. We need every client we can get.”
That was true in the past. The first eighteen months with our agency were touch-and-go. But for the past two years, Jackie has pulled in so much business we're constantly subbing out work to freelancers.
I see her drive for what it is: primal, not financial. She thrives on the thrill of the metaphorical hunt — the excitement of closing the deal. And both in securing and “managing" accounts, she has no peer. When meeting with our overwhelmingly male clientele, she orchestrates both body and attitude into a symphony of persuasion, composing a seductive counterpoint of bosom-flashing dips, subtle touches, and ingratiating banter. The woman could sell Ayatollah Cola to Ronald Reagan. And her virtuosic laugh can convince the biggest boor that he’s a latter-day Thurber. Yet, with a minor change of inflection, she could make him feel that he has the comic timing of Zeppo Marx.
“That covers side dishes and desserts,” she says. “Now to the entrees.”
Before I can reply, her phone chirps out the Michigan State fight song. She gives it a dismissive glance and takes another drag on her cigarette.
“You might as well answer," I tell her. "He won't hang up."
She crosses the room and snatches the phone. “What?”
I take advantage of the break to slip into the bathroom. I lean toward the mirror and examine the damage left by Jackie's ring. A line of diamond-sized indentations stands out red on my cheek.
I return to the bedroom and slip into my boxers. Jackie stands at the window, framed in the blaze of sunset. She holds her phone close to her mouth. "You know I do," Her voice is hushed. "No, I won't say it. I'm with our client.”
Bill is in one of his needy moods, demanding verbal confirmation of her love. She turns toward me and mimes a long-suffering sigh. “You don’t hear anything because this is a business meeting, not a goddamn frat party.” She tosses me the phone. “You talk to him.”
I try to sit on the bed, but my brutalized buttocks won't have it. "Bill, old buddy. How are you doing?"
"Hey, Craig-o!" He calls me that when he's half in the bag. “You guys getting a lot of work done?” His fluttering timbre betrays the subtext: “Is Jackie cheating on me?”
“Honestly, we’ve spent so much time together we barely can stand the sight of each other.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The drunken slob isn’t half the liar that his wife is.
Jackie snatches back her phone. "Satisfied now?” She turns away. "Sorry doesn't cut it anymore."
She continues in a hissing whisper. Whatever she's saying is cutting Bill to the marrow.
When it comes to arguments, I bludgeon with sarcasm and epithets. The damage is immediate. However, my verbal jabs heal quickly. Jackie wounds with a malignant subtlety. Her words, like poison, penetrate deeply, seeking out the vitals. And she dispenses the dosage with the expertise of a Borgia. Recovery is slow — and seldom complete.
Jackie shoots me a theatrical eye roll. “All right, stop your whimpering. I forgive you.” She drops her phone onto the bed. “He gets worse every day.”
* * *
Jackie closes her laptop. “Thank god that’s over.” She stands up. “Not your best effort, by the way.”
“Not our best effort,” I counter. I’m relieved to finish this project, yet a little disappointed. Our business partnership has far outlasted our marriage for one reason. From the outset, there's been brilliance in our collaborations. It was as though some metaphysical alchemist used our mutual ambivalence and contrasting talents to forge us into an alloy that even Jackie's acid tongue could not dissolve - until now. This campaign feels like one giant step backward — perhaps the first step on a path that will lead toward different destinations.
Jackie snatches her skirt and a pair of panties and heads toward the bathroom. "I'll clean up, and then we'll go to dinner."
“Not so fast,” I say. “Now I’m ready for my turn."
“Fine, what’ll it be, garter belt and nylons? Waitress outfit?”
“Not this time.”
She drains a small bottle of schnapps from the mini-fridge, then flops onto the bed and spreads her legs. “Okay, do your worst. I’m sure you will.”
“Just a minute.” I need to settle on something as unpleasant as the ask-kicking session she put me through.
Jackie props herself up on an elbow. "Well?"
“I’m thinking.”
She lies back again. “Take your time. The meter’s running. Nineteen minutes and counting.”
I lie beside her. My right hand seeks out the small of her back and cinches her stomach against mine. I pucker up and make a succession of kissing sounds.
“Oh, hell.” She tries to push me away. “Couldn’t you just beat me with a sock full of quarters instead?”
“Shut up,” I counter. “Don’t talk.”
I press my lips against hers and force my tongue past her lips and teeth. The inside of her mouth tastes of peppermint and smoke. Despite always acceding to my non-mainstream preferences, she balks at kissing. “I can’t stand it,” she once confessed. “It’s just so — personal.”
Her tongue darts up, down, to the side, trying to flee the pursuit of mine. It's like wrestling a reluctant adder. Her body feels stiff and non-compliant. I grab her wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for a pulse.”
Before I can close in on her again, there’s a hinge-rattling thud on the door. “Goddamnit, Jackie, open up!” The voice coming from the hallway is terrifyingly familiar.
Jackie vaults over me. “Just a minute, Bill.” She sprints for the dressing table. “Shut up and wait a minute.”
“What the hell?” I whisper.
Without breaking stride, she shrugs. “Damned if I know.”
There's another blow on the door. “Come on, Jackie!”
"I said, 'Just a minute.' I'm not decent. In fact, give me two minutes.”
I scramble for my clothes, then dive under the bed with them. Jackie kicks a renegade sock under the dresser. She pulls the comforter down until it nearly touches the floor. Seconds later, the door bangs open. “Bill, quiet down, or they’ll kick me out of here,” she hisses.
Bill’s size 14 wingtips stomp into the room. They stop only a few feet from my nose. "Where is the bastard?" His voice is quieter but still filled with murder.
“You’re drunk.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Six-foot-five, pushing 270, and he still needs to get hammered before confronting her.
"How the hell did you get here so fast?"
“I flew into Prince George this morning and rented a car. I’ve been in the bar since four,” he says. “Where is the son of a bitch?”
“Fine, you win. He’s in the bathroom.”
His shoes shuffle across the floor. A door slams open. "There's nobody in here."
"Oh, that's right. He's in the closet."
I hear the splintering of wood. A louvered door clatters to the floor.
Jackie laughs. “What was I thinking? He’s under the bed.”
A chill surges through me. Bill’s feet rush toward the bed. In a burst of latent Catholicism, I long for a final confession and last rites. He kneels beside the bed. I spring through my options. Should I knee his balls and take off bare-assed down the hallway? Beg for mercy? Pray for a quick death. The comforter begins to rise like a curtain on my final act. I try to swallow back my rising panic, but my mouth is a copper-flavored desert.
“Who are you screwing?” Jackie demands.
The comforter drops again. “What?”
"You're having an affair, you bastard. That’s why you’re accusing me.” Good old Jackie. The best defense—
I hear Bill struggle to his feet. “Jackie, I’d never.” Of course, he wouldn't. The big fool has less guile than a cocker spaniel pup.
The bed frame complains as he plants his bulk onto the bed. The springs sag to within an inch of my nose. I squeeze my eyelids closed and try to picture the wind-scoured emptiness of eastern Montana — the open sky above the Platte River valley. Instead, I feel the same smothering panic I suffered during last week’s MRI. Taking in long, slow breaths does little to help.
Before his booze-dulled senses can regroup, Jackie starts in again. "A cheating husband always accuses his wife to draw attention away from himself." There’s a serrated edge to her voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that you’re fucking around on me?”
"I’m sorry for thinking you, well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” she says. “But I do know that I’m sick and tired of your jealousy bullshit."
"Please don't say that." His desperation leaches through the mattress. "I can't live without you."
“How did you find out I was here?”
"Private eye. He said you’re with a guy.”
“Of course, I’m with a guy. Your buddy, Craig-o." Her voice is crystalline, each word over-articulated. “You knew that. We’re working on an important campaign.”
“I thought he meant somebody else.”
A cramp seizes up the sole of my right foot, curling my toes painfully downward. The bedsprings creak and press against the side of my head as Jackie slides beside her husband. “Just keep this up, mister.”
I can envision her drawing up to Bill, giving him that look — the lethal set of her jaw, eyes drawn down to slits, the slivers of her emerald irises almost crocodilian. It's the same look that derailed my train of thought during chronic marital skirmishes — until I realized our marriage didn’t merit resuscitation.
“You’re about to ruin the best thing you’ve ever had, mister.”
“Please don’t.” His syncopated sobs translate through this box spring like the idling of an ill-tuned engine. I’m growing less afraid, more impatient, and slightly disgusted with the pathetic hulk.
“After your last temper tantrum, I went to a lawyer and had divorce papers drafted. One phone call, and it's all over."
Bill cries out — a high, strangled squeal. He kneels beside the bed. His thighs frame the wastebasket beside the dressing table. One of the condoms, like some miniature Hindenburg, lies draped over its rim. I hope that Bill’s vision is even more clouded than his judgment. His crying jag transitions into a coughing fit.
“Stop your blubbering. I’m not leaving you. Not yet, anyway.” Jackie’s voice has softened. It’s soothing, almost motherly. “Now, get up and at least act like a man.”
The knot in my foot tightens. I hook my big toe with the opposite foot and force it straight.
“You have to look at the big picture,” she tells him. “We don’t have much time for each other right now. That'll change when things slow down in a few years."
Bill sniffs. "That's what Craig told me. To look at the big picture."
When I think Bill couldn't sound more pathetic, he whines, “Can I stay with you tonight?”
“No.” That tongue of hers could fillet fish. “You’re going to the parking lot, getting in your car, driving straight back to the airport, and catching the first plane back to Chicago. If I see your face one second before I walk in the front door, I'm filing those papers."
She finally ushers Bill across the room. I hear a few muffled words, then Jackie’s laugh. It’s not her flattering version. At the click of the safety latch, I slide out from beneath the bed and attack the burning knot in my sole. Jackie lights up another smoke and walks to the window. “There he goes. He's unlocking the car door--"
Jackie’s play-by-play of Bill's progress is hardly necessary. I easily visualize the great, neutered bear lumbering toward his rental car, bent over beneath the cumulative weight of every passive-aggressive 'observation' Jackie has made concerning his existence.
She heads off toward the bathroom. “I could go for a big, bloody ribeye,” she calls over her shoulder. "Then again, there's nothing like a slab of rare prime rib." The woman is the poster child for cool. Only minutes earlier, we barely escaped being stomped into eternity by her atavistic cuckold. Now, she’s debating the comparative merits of dinner entrees.
I continue massaging my foot. As the pain subsides, I discover I’ve pissed myself a little. The relief of being alive trumps my embarrassment.
Jackie emerges from the bathroom and plants herself in front of the dressing table mirror. She snatches a brush and pulls it through her hair. “You know that I was just joking last night.” She sounds casual, but there’s a brittle quality in her voice.
“Joking about what?”
She shoots a furtive glance at me in the mirror. "That whole thing about how, when I'm alone, I'm afraid."
“Afraid?”
“That I don’t really exist?”
And there it was: The reason for the savage sex. For Jackie, kissing is pure bliss compared to revealing weakness. My only glimpse of her vulnerability surfaced during the cocktail hour of last year's ad awards banquet. A tedious marketing manager was tormenting me with a synopsis of his in-progress novel, an opus singular both in theme and execution.
I had just put my head into auto-nod when I spied Jackie on the outskirts of the festivities. She stood alone, a rare occasion when she wasn’t making herself the focal point of one group or another. Instead of the undisputed maven of the Cook County advertising community, I saw this bewildered little girl. That expression disappeared so quickly that I dismissed it as the byproduct of a bored and overactive imagination.
“Did you hear what I said?” she demands. “That I was joking?”
This will be an easy fix. “I was too drunk last night to recall anything after the Caesar salad.” I perform a few toe raises to stretch out the remnants of my cramp. “What did you say?”
“Nothing important.” She sounds relaxed, almost warm.
She might be feeling better, but I’m still pissed. Understanding the cause of her brutal fucking is one thing. Forgiveness is another. “You know, Bill interrupted my turn.”
“After dinner.”
“Can’t handle a little smooch fest on an empty stomach?”
She feigns gagging. “It appears I’ll need an extra martini tonight.”
And I’ll need an extra order of Escargots à la Bourguignonne. Sometimes, revenge is a dish best served hot, with garlic.
— MICHAEL PROPSOM
Michael Propsom is a former Big 10 defensive tackle with a BA in Social Work from University of Wisconsin-Madison . His stories have appeared in various publications including the Saturday Evening Post online, Berkeley Fiction Review, Isele Magazine, and Wisconsin Review. He has had two Pushcart Prize nominations. He lives in Washington state where he builds custom guitars.