The sales associate Thompson had hired to take Danielle’s place when she was promoted tried to fit in, but his jokes were corny, and most of the time he walked around looking like his head might explode at any given moment. Maybe once he learned the job a little more he’d loosen up and his jokes would get better, though I doubted it. I knew the wound-too-tight type when I saw it.
At the end of the day, Thompson took Larry and me aside and said he’d announce his final decision tomorrow, but no matter what happened, he wanted us to know that he thought we were both excellent employees and hoped there would be no hard feelings. It was all starting to feel a little drawn out and melodramatic, but that was Thompson for you.
I was on my way out, preparing to crash hard, when Benji called my cell phone to say that Kyra wanted me to stop by on my way home. I assumed she’d read my letter and was ready to lay me out once and for all. Gathering my resolve, I headed up the walkway and knocked on the door before I could lose my nerve. No matter how ugly it got tonight, I told myself that after this, for better or worse, we could all finally move on.
Kyra answered in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Instead of hello or a string of expletives like I expected, I was met with “Steve’s dead.”
I stepped inside. “Who?”
“Our fish. I think he starved to death. Did you feed him when I was in Milan?”
“Yes, of course.” I remembered sprinkling flakes into his bowl at least once, but I was at Larry’s more than here. Why wasn’t she feeding him? I closed the door behind me.
“When was the last time you fed him?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Recently.”
She wore her hair in a ponytail, which swung as she turned to walk further inside the house. “You’ve got to flush him. I can’t do it.”
“Hey, Dad,” Benji said from the couch. He was still wearing those same stained sweatpants.
“Son, you think you might want to shower sometime this month?”
Kyra scowled at me. “Leave him alone. This isn’t his fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.” Smelling smoke, I looked around but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Is something burning?”
Kyra grunted and hurried to the kitchen. “That’s just great. It’s ruined!”
“What’s ruined?” Benji asked.
“Really, Son,” I said, “at least change your clothes once in a while.”
“I’m officially no longer a sailor as of today,” he said.
“Oh no.” My heart sank. Here I was giving him a hard time about something so shallow when he just received a blow like that. I guess I’d have to work harder than I thought to keep the 180 I’d just done from becoming a 360. “I’m sorry, Ben.”
He stared at the ground. “It’s fine. It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming.”
Kyra stepped out of the kitchen with an oven mitt on her right hand and a smear of black on her left cheek. “Thanks for ruining my brûlée. This was supposed to be for Marnie’s dinner tomorrow. Now what am I supposed to bring?”
“Yes,” I said, watching wisps of gray float across the room, “I’m sure it was all my fault.”
She turned and marched into the kitchen. “Are you going to flush Steve or what?”
“How long has he been dead?” I called to her.
“Since about ten this morning,” Benji said flipping to the Food Network. “Dad, check this out. They’re making stuffed rainbow trout. You can’t catch a tastier fish.”
“Just flush him!” Kyra yelled from the kitchen. “He’s starting to stink.”
“There’s no way he’s starting to stink that fast,” I yelled back. I turned to Benji. “Yeah, rainbow trout are the bomb. Where’s Steve?”
He pointed to the fishbowl that was now just half full and sitting on the entry table. A hard-water stain formed a ring around the top of the bowl, where his water would normally be filled to.
“Why didn’t you do it?” I asked him.
“She wouldn’t let me. She said since you were the one who killed him, you should do it.”
“I killed him?”
He shrugged. “She’s not exactly being rational. I think she just wanted a reason to call you.”
“Did she read my letter?”
He gave me an apologetic grimace. “Yeah, she tore it into a million pieces, then set it on fire and shoved the ashes down the garbage disposal. Did you know that Brenda Harrington has breast cancer?”
“What?”
“I don’t hear the toilet flushing,” Kyra screamed.
“How did you find that out?” I asked him.
He picked up one of his mother’s Southern Living magazines from the end table and thumbed through it faster than he could even look at the pictures. “I told you I go over there.”
“Eric!” Kyra yelled.
“Ben, go flush the hall bathroom so we can finish talking.”
Always the obedient child, he did as I asked and walked back to the living room. “Bram’s devastated. He shaved his own head so she wouldn’t feel bad when she starts losing her hair to chemo.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, feeling guilty for all the things I’d said about them over the years. I had no idea.
“He says they caught it early, so she should be able to beat it.”
I pulled the curtain back and looked out at their house. A For Sale sign stood in the front yard.
“Are they in financial trouble?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think they just want to be near her parents in Wyoming.”
“But isn’t his whole family here?”
“Yeah, but she’s the one who’s sick.”
“What about his job? He just got promoted.”
Benji frowned. “Are you serious, Dad? That’s his wife.”
Kyra walked out of the kitchen carrying a baking dish with what looked like a glob of charcoal pudding stuck to it. She glared at the fishbowl, then me. “Why is he still here?”
Benji’s gaze bounced between his mother and me.
“I asked Benji to flush the toilet so you’d be quiet long enough for him to finish telling me about Brenda Harrington’s cancer.”
“Typical,” she said. “My husband, the liar.”
“How is that a lie?” I asked.
“How isn’t it?”
“Kyra, please don’t do this.”
“Or what? You’ll fall in love with another woman?”
“I’ll be upstairs,” Benji said, looking miserable.
I waited for him to go, then reached for Kyra’s hand. “I never loved her. I love you.”
She yanked away from me. “You don’t have an affair on someone you love.”
“It wasn’t an affair,” I said. “I only slept with her once, and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it.”
Her face distorted in rage as she threw the dish. The brûlée hit the wall right before the dish shattered against the floor. “No, you didn’t just sleep with her once. You slept with her a thousand times and will sleep with her a thousand more. And every time I close my eyes, you’ll sleep with her again. As long as I live I’ll never get that image of you and her together out of my head.”
I laid my hand across my eyes. “You wouldn’t let me touch you.”
“I didn’t even know you anymore! You were so wrapped up in your stupid job, I felt like I was married to a stranger. You stopped talking to me, you stopped thinking about me, and for all I could tell, you stopped caring about me.” She paused and looked like she was trying to regain her composure. “And besides, I knew what you really wanted.”
I looked at her. “What did I really want?”
“The stupid routine is getting old.”
“What did I want?” I repeated. At this point I honestly had no idea what she meant. I wasn’t sure I’d even known what I really wanted.
“That Latin bimbo.”
My mind reeled trying to figure out what in the world she was t
alking about. I drew a blank.
“I was standing on the landing when you kept rewinding and playing that thriller with Chantico Lopez.”
I felt like I’d entered the twilight zone. “Who?”
“The woman with the long dark hair, brown eyes, and the big—” she cupped her hands in front of her chest. “You think I want you touching my body while you’re fantasizing about her?”
The only thing I could figure was that the concussion had planted false memories. “Honey, you’re confused—”
“Don’t even try it,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare try to confuse me. I watched you rewind, pause, and replay the clip where she took her shirt off, over and over and over. How do you think that made me feel?”
I was about to tell her again that she was mistaken, when the lightbulb finally came on. “The beige lamp?”
She bent over, picked up two of the largest pieces of broken dish, and used them to scoop up the brûlée. “I don’t remember the name of the stupid movie. I just remember your obsession with her breasts.”
“No, not the title,” I said. “The movie was Just Another Murder in Mexico. I’m talking about the beige lamp I was looking at. That’s what I was rewinding and replaying the movie for, not some stupid woman.”
She stared me down.
Heat flooded my cheeks as I realized what had happened. “I couldn’t pick the actress out in a lineup, but there’s a beige lamp in that scene. It had a maroon flower on it one second and then the flower was gone. They must have spliced the scene, and the lamp got turned so the design wasn’t showing or something. It was a blooper. That’s what I was looking at.”
“Yeah right,” she said weakly.
I just stared at her, digesting the magnitude of what she was saying. All those nights I spent racking my brain to figure out what I could have done or said to turn her off.
Without warning, her balled-up fist hit me dead in the chest. She threw another weak punch, followed by another. “Get out,” she screamed, pounding my chest, harder and harder, screaming that she hated me.
I grabbed her wrists. “Stop it. I didn’t lust after some actress on TV. Our issues started far before then and you know it. You can’t blame your years of frigidity on one misunderstanding. You wanted nothing to do with me long before that movie even came out, so don’t even try it. Put blame where blame belongs, Kyra. Admit that you stopped being attracted to me. And it wasn’t because of some stupid actress.”
She let out a wail like a grieving mother. “How could you sleep with that girl?” Pulling free, she punched me again, but this time I grabbed her and pulled her against me.
As she struggled to get away, I held on like my life depended on it. “What happened to us?” I asked.
She tore away from me and thrust her arm out toward the fish floating upside down in his bowl. “That’s what.”
Thirty-Seven
Today was the day I’d been working toward for the last six years. I would find out in the next fifteen minutes whether it would be me or Larry running the dealership from now on. All those twelve-hour, six-day work weeks, dragging myself in even when I felt like death and missed family functions—not to mention all of Thompson’s bull I had to endure—it all came down to this moment.
But it was my wife, not the job, that took precedence in my thoughts as I sat at my desk, listening to phones ringing, incentive announcements blaring from overhead speakers, and the rest of the usual midday commotion.
Last night was all I could think of as I stared through the wall of windows at the showroom floor. I watched Larry slink out of our boss’s office looking like he’d had his million-dollar lottery ticket stolen, which could only mean one thing—the job was mine. I should have been happy; I’d sacrificed so much for this. But instead, I just felt terrible for my friend, and in a way, worse for myself. The thought of spending the rest of my life here in this dealership, without Kyra to go home to, felt a little too much like a one-way ticket to purgatory.
Sitting alone at my desk, watching my coworkers scurry around like ants, I forced my thoughts back to rehearsing what I would say when Thompson finally offered me the job—promises to fill his big shoes to the best of my abilities, suggesting Larry be given my old job, if he hadn’t already thought to offer it to him, and of course, I’d have to lavish the appreciation on him as thick as honey for choosing me.
As I tapped my pen against the desk blotter, my thoughts once again turned back to Kyra and our unraveling marriage. I doubted that we’d have any trouble selling the house and considered what I might do with my half of the money. With the raise I’d be getting, I could easily afford payments on a new condo. That meant that the proceeds of the house on Macabee could go into a special account set aside for the specific purpose of wooing back my bride. No matter what a long shot it was, I had to at least try.
Maybe I could begin by surprising her with a trip to a place she’d always dreamed of visiting, like Hawaii, Europe, or better yet, Israel. She’d always wanted to be baptized in the Jordan. We could do it together maybe. It could be symbolic of not just the change in me, but the change in us.
My mind reeled. If I was going to be the supportive husband I had made my mind up to be, I’d need to be at as many of her gigs as possible—the guy at the front table, clapping the loudest, whistling obnoxiously. I just didn’t see how I’d be able to make that happen now, but I’d have to find a way. That was all there was to it.
When I glanced up at the wall clock, I noticed a young man dressed in a suit a lot like one of mine, standing by the front desk talking to the receptionist. It had been so long since I’d seen him cleaned up, I almost didn’t recognize my own son. I hurried over to meet him.
Larry must have noticed him right when I had, because we both called his name at the same time.
“Wow, nice reception,” Benji said smiling between us. The suit he wore was mine. I couldn’t believe just how well it fit him.
“Looking good, Ben,” Larry said. “You come to wish your old man luck?”
Benji gave me a questioning look. “Luck for what?”
“Today’s the day,” I said, feeling self-conscious with Larry’s eyes on me. “What are you doing here?”
“I decided to go ahead and set up an interview.”
“You did?” Larry and I asked at the same time.
Larry grinned at me and gave my arm a jovial punch. “You owe me a beer.”
I rubbed my arm. “What are you, twelve?”
“Do twelve-year-olds drink beer?” he asked.
A woman with a preteen in tow walked up to us. “Can one of y’all help me?”
I pointed to the closest salesman. “Phil, over there, will be happy to.”
She thanked us and dragged her son over to him.
“Hey, you should’ve let me have her,” Benji said with a wink in his tone. “I’m ready to make some moola.” Not only was he wearing my suit, he smelled like my cologne.
“You really want to sell cars?” Larry asked him.
Benji buried his hands in his front pockets. “I’ve got to make a living somehow.”
“It’s not like this is the only way.” Larry gave me the same do something look Kyra liked to use.
There was something about seeing my son dressed like every other sales guy on the lot and standing against the backdrop of the busy showroom floor that made me realize the magnitude of this crossroad in his life.
I thought of how different my life might have turned out if I had never come to work here. If I’d given my family what I’d given this place. I also thought of Angelo and what his life might be like if he gave up being what he was called to do—to sit in a lawyer’s office all day with his nose stuck in a book.
“He’s right, Ben,” I said. “You don’t want this. Selling cars isn’t really your thing. The ocean is.”
He scrunched his face at me. “But you said—”
I set my hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You can’t listen to m
e. Your father’s an idiot. For you, working here would be like a prison sentence; trust me. How about for now we keep your options open, okay? I’m sure we can find something you enjoy that you can also make a living at.”
He frowned. “What gives?”
“I just want you to be happy; that’s all.”
His frown turned up into a half smile. “Really?”
“Believe it or not, it’s what I’ve always wanted. I just didn’t realize until recently that the path there might not always be paved with money.”
“So, you’re not going to ride me about college anymore?”
“I didn’t ride you. I just encouraged.”
He picked up pretend reins and made a giddyap clicking sound.
Larry nodded at me. “I like this kid.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “He’s just like you.” I glanced at my watch. “Listen, Ben, I’ll stop by the house tonight on my way to Larry’s, and we’ll talk about this some more if you want. Maybe set up a game plan for figuring out what you were put on this earth to do.”
Dimples formed on Benji’s cheeks. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them sink so deep. “Thanks, Dad. That’s really cool.”
I shrugged like it was no big deal, but inside I felt like a hero. “Better go cancel your appointment.”
The bounce in his step as he walked into Ruby’s office to tell her he’d changed his mind was worth more to me than the commission on a thousand cars.
Larry turned to me as we watched Benji walk out the front door. “Good call, man.”
“Thanks,” I said, giving my watch another glance.
“You better go in.” He nodded to Thompson’s office. “Destiny’s waiting.”
Thirty-Eight
When I stepped into Thompson’s office, it reeked of that cheap cologne of his and cigars. One smoldered in the ashtray, already half smoked, as if he’d started the party without me. I couldn’t blame him I guess. If there was ever a reason to celebrate, retirement would be it.
He lifted open the fancy wood box sitting on the edge of his desk, revealing a row of fat, brown cigars. Two were missing, which made me wonder if he’d already given one to Larry as a consolation gift. “You know, Yoshida, I’ve done a lot of nail-biting these past few weeks. Choosing who will run the business that’ll be funding your retirement isn’t for the faint of heart.”