Elizabeth wanted to be married. She just didn't want to be married to HIM.
Ben loved her. He loved her with his whole being, just as he had pledged to 18 years ago at their wedding. He was just tired.
They had gone shopping. They wandered the aisles of Target looking at all the same shit they looked at every four days or so. They bought dog food. He showed her jeans and tops and a dress or two. She rolled her eyes. They shopped the grocery section. Everything she picked up to put in the cart he suggested was wrong. She bought the wrong beans, the wrong size package of chicken, the wrong flavor coffee. They finished their trip and checked out. They loaded their haul into the back of her truck. She cursed the way the groceries rolled about in the back of the oversized sport utility.
He had told her to get whatever she wanted. All she needed to do was pick it out and he would do the business end of things. He suggested the little BMW or the Mercedes. She wanted a massive truck. At the dealership, he had pointed out the next model up with the leather seats and all the bells and whistles. No. She wanted THAT one.
He bought it for her.
As they drove home she complained about the size. She bitched about the radio. She wished she had gotten leather seats. She didn't like the feel of the upholstery on the backs of her legs.
"Fuck you are impossible to please," he said unable to stop himself.
That had been Tuesday. Friday afternoon they still hadn't talked. They had exchanged a few text messages, logisitics only. He sent her a message.
"Mario's at 5:30."
"You go ahead."
"We need to talk."
"Fine."
For an hour they sat, still not talking. They drank a bottle of wine and split a pizza.
"What do we do now?" he asked seemingly out of nowhere.
"I don't know," she replied.
She had been watching a man at the bar watching her. She was an attractive woman. She didn't necessarily look younger than her 44 years but she was a striking woman for her age, tall, blonde, long-legged, and well proportioned, at lease since she had her breasts done. She had needed to balance her round ass.
The waiter asked if he could get them anything else. Ben said just the check. After he had paid he looked over at his wife. Her attention was elsewhere. She was staring. He could tell exactly where too.
"I guess I'll see you at home."
"In a bit."
"Beth?"
"Yes?" she said, turning to him for the first time in a while.
"Nothing," he replied. He walked out of the bar.
From her table, she saw him escape to his car. She watched him slip into the driver's side. She watched it back out slowly and watched it slip out of the parking lot onto the boulevard headed for home.
She stood, gathered up her purse and walked to the bar. She took the empty stool next to the tall man in the black T-shirt. He as wearing cowboy boots.
"Do you have the hat to go with those?" she asked him quietly.
"'Course," he replied.
"Liz," she introduced herself.
"Randy," he replied.
"Hm... I hope you are."
Ben didn't drive home. Rather than drive beneath the freeway and head for their subdivision he took the right turn onto the ramp. It was only ten minutes at seven on a Friday nitght headed into town rather than out of it. His friend from the office had all gone out for a drink. He hoped they would still be there. He wanted to talk. He wanted to drink. He wanted to smile and Joke and for just a few minutes not sit frustratedly trying to think of what would please her.
He found Mike, Kevin - his boss, Myra - the top performer, and Erika the Executive Assistant sitting in the bar at a long table that had probably been full an hour earlier.
Elizabeth let the man buy her a beer and a shot. He wasn't a real cowboy, he just had the boots the truck and at home the hat.
Ben ordered whatever they were drinking and ended up with a glass of scotch, something he never drank. The SVP picked up the tab and excused himself. Myra and Kevin left. He still had half a drink left. It was a thirty dollar glass of booze. He was going to finish it. Erika suggested they move to the bar, let the server have her table back. He shrugged. The two of them sat at the far corner in the dark. He sipped whiskey, she had a cosmo. She suggested they have two more. He looked at her a long moment wondering what he should do. her hair was blonde on top, dark around her neck. She had thick dark eyebrows over large dark eyes that seemed larger and darker in the dim light.
"Another?" the man asked Elizabeth.
"Naw, I'm good. she said. "I wish you had your fucking hat."
"Why?" Randy smiled. He was bald with a goatee and crystal blue eyes.
"I would put it on."
"Ya know what that means, right, when a lady takes a mans hat?"
"I do," she said, looking at him, her expression one of intent.
"Maybe we should go back to my place. You can try it on."
"Do you think it will go with my outfit?" She tugged at her shirt the way she did when she wanted it to fall open a bit and reveal a little more of her investment.
"If it don't you can lose the outfit."
His truck was lifted high on massively oversized wheels and tires and she hoped desperately he wasn't compensating.
"Do you want to talk about?" Erika asked him.
"About what?"
"Whatever you are thinking about that had you staring at your drink like its one of those pictures with a hidden image you can only see if you look at it just right."
"Not really."
"Is it Elizabeth."
As a response, he smiled. Smiling at her meant he looked up from his drink. Her lips were... purple? Her fingernails were painted purple. Yes, he thought looking at her, her lips were purple. She was sort of a hippie. She was wearing a leather jacket over a crochet top. Rather than jeans, she wore a peasant skirt, a loose flowing thing that draped around her legs and barstool. She was barefoot. He stared at her feet. They seemed too large.
"Stop," she said quietly.
"Stop what?"
"Looking at my feet. I know. They are too big. I hate them."
"I like your feet," he said reflexively. He wasn't into feet in any particular way and he probably had never once noticed her feet despite knowing her for almost three years.
"Come on," she said.
"Where?"
"We are gonna take your mind off your problems for a bit."
"Okay," he said. He paid for their drinks and did the end of his single blend like a shot. She pointed him at the passenger side of her little Honda. It was a mess, the floor full of all sorts of nonsense, a mixture of trash and supplied he thought as if she was in the middle of a cross country drive. He laughed and crunched his long legs in. She mumbled she was sorry, he mumbled it was no big deal.
He had a shitty little house in a shitty little neighborhood. Randy explained the bitch had ruined him. He did what he could just to cover the child support. Inside it was messy and she liked it. It drove her insane that Ben always had to be walking around the house picking up. Sometimes she made a point of not throwing out her pop cans just to piss him off. She excused herself to the bathroom. There was just one and she had to be sneaky to slip into his bedroom. It was a mess as well. A single sheet covered the bed coming up from one of the corners. A blanket emblazoned with a giant red boar hung from the foot of a thin queen mattress. It was a man's place. She found the hat, a cheap tan cowboy hat with no band. She made her way to the small bathroom. It was equally dirty. She took a leak, stripped down to her panties, and put the hat on her head. It was a little small.
"What do you think?" she asked, posing herself at the end of the short hallway. He sat on the couch with a can of Budweiser and no shirt. She pushed the comparison to her father out of her head.
"I think you need to come suck my cock," Randy told her. Was that really so hard? she asked herself. Ben would whine and complain about her not giving head but he didn't have the balls to just ask for it.
Ben made it to the stairs that led up to the second story apartments but that was as far as he let himself go. He stopped. Yes, her admired the way her ass moved as she walked up to the door but he didn't follow her.
"Are you coming."
"I want to."
"Well, then come on."
"Erika," he muttered, wishing she wasn't so far away, wishing he didn't have to talk so loudly.
She walked back down the stairs, took his hand, and led him back up to her door and inside.
"Erika," he said again.
"Benjamin," she replied, mocking his serious tone.
"I can't do this."
"Ha!" she barked, a deep throaty and genuine laugh. "I'm not doing you."
"No?"
"I'm engaged."
"I thought so."
"If I wanted to have sex with you, I just would," she said.
"Oh," he really didn't know what else to say.
She stripped off her jacket and tossed it onto the back of a chair. The room was sort of cluttered. The walls were covered in shelves, the shelves were covered in tchotchkes, doodads, books, pictures, all sorts of crap, but they were neat, dusted, the tables were covered in odds and ends but in a way that looked more organized, almost staged. As she walked toward the patio he saw her small top was backless and he admired her soft tanned skin. She was braless but he had noticed that before if her top allowed she preferred not to wear one. She waved at him from her patio and he followed her.
They sat in silence as she stuffed the bowl of a tall ornate glass bong with pot, took up a lighter, and filled her lungs.
She handed it over to him.
"I don't.." he said, his voice cracking a little.
She pointed, waved, nodded, but said nothing. she held her breath, letting the herb do its work.
He took a hit, the first illegal drug he had taken since he was twenty.
It hit him quickly. It hit him hard. He sat back in a deep chair feeling as though he was settling back into a cloud, or a dentists chair, one or the other.
They each took another hit. He stared out at the purple sky and his mind wandered. He thought about otters. Erika was an otter. She was silly and playful and charming and cute. Elizabeth was more of a... cat? Meaner... Cheetah... Puma.
