Dry as Rain

  I immediately thought of Danielle. Blood rushed to my face so fast I thought I’d pass out. I just prayed they hadn’t talked. The only thing I could do was play it cool until I knew for sure.

  “Who sold you the car?”

  “Stan Jacobson.”

  “Did he give you a fair price?”

  “Better than fair. He cut him a deal and Marcello insisted he split the commission with you.”

  “How thoughtful of him.” So, Mr. International thought he could buy me off? I thought of my wife showing up at my place of business with a handsome Italian in tow, instead of me, and how that must have looked to the guys. It hurt my pride and ticked me off at the same time, but I knew it would have been hypocritical to say so.

  When she crossed her arms, I knew I was in trouble. “Guess who took his check?”

  I was still picturing the two of them touching and laughing right out in the open where everyone could see them when I remembered that Danielle was now F&I.

  Kyra’s face distorted in anger. “That’s right. Your girlfriend, Dani. You know what that tramp had the audacity to ask me?” She stared at me expectantly as if she really expected me to guess. “If I knew.”

  I could barely hear her over the pulse pounding against my eardrums.

  “If I knew,” she repeated as she rubbed her rag hard enough against the wood to take off the finish.

  Feeling light-headed, I covered my face.

  “I told her very calmly that yes, I did.” She turned around. “You should have seen the look on her face. She didn’t expect me to say that, I can tell you that. She thought she was going to shock me, I guess.”

  I sat there waiting helplessly for the guillotine to drop.

  “I told her I’d forgiven you, and we were doing better than ever.” She let out a mirthless laugh. “Her jaw hit the floor.”

  I dared to peek at her. “Really, that’s what you said?”

  Her eyes shot laser beams of death at me. “I lied, Eric. Just like you did.”

  She threw her rag down and began pacing the floor, her ankles wobbling every so often in the heels she seldom wore. “How old is she? Is she even Benji’s age?” She shook her head. “It all makes sense now. Why your jacket smelled like watermelon the day you brought me home from the hospital. You’d probably come straight from her bed! How could you? How could you carry on these past weeks as if that hadn’t happened? How could you act like everything was fine between us, when you’d already destroyed our marriage?”

  Knowing anything I said could and would be used against me, I chose to remain silent.

  I caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye and turned to find Benji standing in the kitchen doorway. He’d heard every word.

  Kyra turned to see what I was looking at. “Benji, your dad and I need privacy.”

  Benji walked over and picked up each of our hands, just like he used to do when he was little and found us arguing. “Mom, I know what he did was awful, but trust me, so does he.”

  She gave him a hurt look as she slid her hand from his. “Your father cheated on me, Benjamin. I’m entitled to be mad.”

  Benji stepped back, looking unsure.

  “Kyra, please,” I said. “This isn’t his fault. You’re embarrassing him.”

  She looked on the verge of tears. “I’m embarrassing him? You’re the one who did this. You’re the one who’s embarrassed our family. You know how stupid I felt to find out you cheated on me with that girl?”

  Kyra covered her face and began to sob. I motioned with a nod for Benji to go to his room.

  I watched my wife for a moment and then took a chance and pulled her to my chest. I held her as she cried into my neck.

  After a few minutes, she pulled back and wiped the tears and mascara from under her eyes. She looked up at me and touched the tears I hadn’t even realized I’d cried, with the saddest expression. When she laid her hand on my cheek, I thought she was going to say something to comfort me, utter forgiveness or an apology of her own.

  Instead she whispered, “Please leave.”

  Thirty-Three

  I looked over my shoulder at Larry, who had just walked through the door carrying a grocery bag.

  “What a circus,” he said.

  “When isn’t work a circus?” I asked. “Hey, thanks for letting me move back in.”

  “Mi casa es su casa.” He walked the bag to the kitchen and I followed.

  I watched him put away a bunch of diet food—protein shakes, rice cakes, diet soda, and even carrot sticks and a bag of apples. “What ya got there?” I asked.

  “Just decided it’s time to make a few changes.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Wow. I never thought I’d live to see the day Larry Wallace went on a diet.”

  With his hands buried in a place I doubted they’d ever been before—the fruit and vegetable drawer of his refrigerator—he turned and gave me a harsh look. “Not a diet. I’m just trying to eat a little better. We’re not going back to work and announcing I’m on a diet, understand?”

  “But you are.”

  He stood and closed the fridge door. “You want to get a hotel room?”

  “Fine, you’re not on a diet. So, how’d the two-day sale treat you? You make some serious bills?”

  He grabbed a diet soda and set it on the cocktail table, before kicking off his dress shoes into the pile by the door. He performed his version of the moonwalk, then made a V for victory on each hand, raising them high above his head. For the finale, he hung his head with the Vs still raised to the ceiling. Sweat stains marked his armpits.

  I hit the mute button on the remote, and the canned sitcom laughter was gone. “That good, huh?” Flickering light from the television made the room glow, dim, and glow again.

  Larry made guns with his hands and blew on the make-believe barrels of both. “I was on fire, man. Hat trick, baby. Three cars—out—the—door.” He curled his lip up Elvis-style. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “Well, you sure had a better day than I did.”

  He loosened the knot of his tie and slid it over his head. “I made enough to buy that ultimate home gym thing I’ve been wanting. You know what Thompson said today?” He smiled. “That I’m irreplaceable.”

  “You are,” I said, “and not just at work. You think you’re really going to use that gym? It would make an awfully expensive coat rack.”

  He patted his gut. “You ever know me to say I’m going to start eating better and working out?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t say I have.”

  “That’s because until now I had no desire to. You know I only started eating like this when Tina cheated on me. I think I’ve been trying to kill myself with food ever since. Stuff happened at work today that made me realize that it’s time to move on and stop letting what she did rule my life. I might actually have something to offer a good woman someday, and when that day comes, I want her to want me for my body as well as my mind.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Sounds like someone’s been watching Oprah.”

  “You’re a funny man.”

  “My wife doesn’t think so,” I said. “Did you see Kyra come in with her boyfriend, Marcello?”

  Larry plopped on the couch beside me. It made a whoosh sound like he’d knocked the air out of it. “I saw a lot of stuff today, but not that. I was doing a test drive with a couple bent on seeing the entire city. They put so many miles on the car, if they hadn’t bought it, I would have been ticked. I heard when I got back that Kyra was in there with some old Italian helping him buy a car.”

  “Old?”

  “Stan told me he was like a million years old or something.” He picked up his diet soda and popped the can. “Thompson said he was glad the dude was paying cash because he probably didn’t have four years left in him to make the loan.”

  “Marcello’s old?” I asked again. All the times I pictured him, not once was it with age spots.

  “Yeah, old and rich apparently. I mean I
guess that was him. Jacobson said he was a happy, old Italian man. She can’t know more than one Marcello, can she?” He kicked his feet onto the table. “Listen, I’m sorry about Kyra. But at least everything’s out in the open now. That’s got to feel good.”

  “Not particularly,” I said, still trying to wrap my mind around Marcello being ninety. I owed Kyra yet another apology.

  He nodded toward the TV. “Watching anything good?”

  I shook my head. “A hundred and fifty channels and nothing on.”

  He took a swig from his can and grimaced. “So, how mad is she?”

  “She wants a divorce.” I crumpled my empty, full-calorie soda can and tossed it across the living room, actually hitting the kitchen garbage for a change.

  I unmuted the TV and stared at the screen, not really seeing or hearing it. My mind was again on Kyra and what she might be doing at this very moment. Probably thumbing through the yellow pages for a lawyer.

  Larry unfastened his top two buttons and stood. “Let me get out of this monkey suit so I can fill you in on the Barnum and Bailey show we had at work today.” He went into his bedroom and closed the door.

  After a few minutes his door opened, and he reemerged wearing purple pajama bottoms and a matching T-shirt.

  I looked over my shoulder at him and laughed. “You look like Barney.”

  “Wanna know what you look like?” Not waiting for a response, he went into the kitchen.

  The refrigerator door opened and shut. He walked out holding two rice cakes and collapsed on the couch next to me. He held one out.

  “I’ll pass on the Styrofoam, thanks.”

  He bit into one and scrunched his face. “This is going to take some getting used to.” He sneered at his diet soda before taking a swig. At least this time his grimace was less dramatic. Maybe he’d get used to the taste. I hoped so. The man was a heart attack waiting to happen.

  “So, fill me in. What happened at work?”

  “Where to begin? How about if I start with the six o’clock news and save the Jerry Springer episode for last?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Thompson officially announced his retirement.”

  I silenced the TV again and whipped around to face Larry. “You’re kidding.”

  He took another drink. “Nope.”

  I hadn’t expected Thompson to retire for at least a few more months. What was even more surprising was that he chose to announce it while I was off. It didn’t look good for me that I was the last to know when I should have been the first.

  “Wow.”

  “I’m just warming up,” Larry said. “You ready for the real kicker?”

  I was still trying to choke down the first pill; I wasn’t sure I was ready to swallow another one. “I don’t know. Am I?”

  “Danielle and Santana got caught fooling around in the parking lot during hours.”

  “Get out!” A myriad of emotions hit me, ranging from jealousy to elation, all of which left me feeling soiled.

  “Yuppers. Ruby caught them making out in that new white bimmer we just got on the lot.” He smiled and shook his head. “That biddy dragged Santana out by his ear all the way to Thompson’s office. I told you she used to be a nun.”

  Danielle and Santana—I just couldn’t picture it. “Are you messing with me?”

  He took another swig of his drink and chased it with a second bite of rice cake. “Nope.”

  “So, were they both fired?” It seemed everything that possibly could happen at Thompson’s had happened all in one day. Thompson announcing his retirement, Benji meeting Danielle, then her and Kyra’s confrontation, and now this. Larry wasn’t kidding—it really was a circus . . . and all on sale day.

  Larry shook his head. “Wait, I haven’t even gotten to the best part. Thompson was still trying to figure out what to do with them when Santana’s wife flies into the office and snatches Danielle by the hair.”

  “No way,” I said, riveted with morbid fascination. This was more melodrama than a soap opera. “Man, Santana’s wife isn’t exactly petite. How’d she find out?”

  “That’s the weirdest part. Danielle told her herself.”

  I sat there speechless, trying to make sense of it.

  “Yeah,” Larry continued. “From what I could piece together, when she and her little lover were brought into the office, to save his job, he claimed she threw herself at him and he was trying to fend off her advances. You know Danielle ain’t going to take that lying down, even though that does seem to be her preferred position these days.”

  He took a sip from his can, like he needed a breather. I couldn’t wait to hear the end of it. I hadn’t been this riveted since Fatal Attraction. “Finish the story,” I said.

  “So, to get even, Dani calls Mrs. Santana and rats him out, but instead of crying and divorcing him, like Danielle figured she’d do, the woman goes postal on Dani and drags his butt home. Literally, I might add.”

  “Was Danielle hurt?”

  “She just lost a wad of hair, which may or may not have had a little flesh attached to the end of it . . . and her job, of course.”

  “Man, I missed all the excitement.”

  “Be glad you weren’t there. You could have been implicated.”

  “That would have made your life easier.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Good-bye, competition.”

  “I don’t want the job that bad.”

  I ran a hand through my hair. “Man, I can’t believe Danielle and Santana are gone.”

  “I know, right?”

  “That could have just as easily have been me.”

  Larry set the half-eaten rice cake down on the table and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “What if—?”

  “Reality check—your what-if has already happened. You’re living with me, and she’s going to divorce you.”

  “What can I say? I’m a pathetic excuse for a man.” I knew what I was saying was true. It didn’t matter what Kyra had done to push me away, I’d made a promise before God for better or for worse, and I broke it. In the end, I was no different than my father after all.

  Sliding his legs off the cocktail table, he knocked the mangled box of tissues onto the floor and got a weird look on his face. “Shoot, what time is it?”

  I looked at my watch. “Nine. Why, you got a date or something?”

  “Yeah, and so do you.”

  “Reality check—I’m married.”

  “Not that kind of date, doofus. I want to show you something I think will cheer you up.”

  I doubted there was anything that could do that, but figured with him taking me back in on such short notice, I owed it to him to go to Alaska if that’s what he wanted.

  Thirty-Four

  Twenty minutes later, I was dressed in jeans and a hoody standing next to Larry at a bus stop, wondering what we were doing here. “Why are we riding the bus when we have two perfectly good vehicles?”

  The night air was cooler than usual, and we were in a part of town I tried not to go through if I didn’t have to. A bleached blonde in a waitress uniform sat on the bench beside where we stood, clutching her purse as if we might be waiting to do a grab and run. The air reeked of urine and fried onions.

  As it grew nearer to the projected time for the bus’s arrival, more people showed up, all working class, all weary looking, all going home after a long day’s work as far as I could tell.

  An elderly man with a long white tuft of beard showed up last, pulled a battered guitar out of the case he’d been carrying, set out a paper cup, and started to play “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Before he could even get to “Badder than old King Kong,” the city bus screeched to a stop in front of us, bringing with it a heavy dose of exhaust. Larry threw a dollar in the guitarist’s cup, and the man gave him a gummy smile.

  I leaned into his shoulder to whisper, “You shouldn’t encourage those people.”

  “Of course I should. The man’s making a living.
”

  Some living. I followed Larry onto the bus and thanked him for paying for the both of us. With the exception of public school transportation, I had never ridden a bus and had no clue how much I was supposed to give them anyway. I didn’t see a credit card slot, and I seldom carried cash these days.

  We took a seat at the very back of the bus, which was a bench seat that forced me to sit next to the musician with the missing teeth. He smelled like garlic. When he smiled at me, I held my breath and smiled back.

  “You like my song?” he asked.

  I hesitated. “Sure.”

  “No, you didn’t. I can see the lie in your eyes.”

  I turned to Larry. “Why are we here?”

  He smiled. “Hold your horses. You’ll see.”

  The bus rolled away from the stop, filled to about half its capacity. I could feel my brain vibrating in my skull as the bus jostled me about. Between that and the exhaust and garlic smell, I was starting to get a little motion sick. I was about ready to pull the cord for the next stop just so I could get some fresh air, when a young man stood up and started giving a speech. After a minute I realized it wasn’t a speech at all but a sermon.

  I looked at Larry, who grinned back at me. Judging by the look on his face this kid was what we’d come to see, but I didn’t see what point there was in taking the city-turned-church bus when we could have stayed home and watched a TV evangelist if he wanted to be preached to.

  The kid held the overhead bar with one hand and a small wooden cross with the other. “God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.”

  Some scrawny twentysomething sitting next to an even scrawnier twentysomething yelled, “Sit down, Jesus freak.”

  The preacher kid looked over at us and smiled. Larry smiled back, then stood up with all his three hundred plus pounds and said, “I want to hear what he has to say.”

  The scrawny duo crossed their arms but said no more.

  The kid continued, bolder than ever. “The Lord says He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that He offers. But He will pour out His anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil.”