"Well, I'm not making it. What have you been doing all day?" He stood halfway out of the doorway, his work clothes still on, and scowled at her. Yet again! How could you stay home all day until eight and wait for my return to be hungry? As the argument continued, his voice gradually rose from its usual muted tones to a volume that anyone in the hallway could hear. Finally, he dropped into his chair and started untying his bootlaces.
"Do what you want."
"What?" his wife yelled back.
"Do what you want! Go wherever you want, eat whatever you want. You sure as shit not getting it from me. This is ridiculous!" He kept looking up as he shouted, and looked back down to see the laces becoming an unrecognizable lump. This only made him more irritable. "Damn it!" he swore.
"Well if you don't want me here, I'll go see if there's someone who will!" She grabbed her coat off the chair closest the door in a sweeping motion, knocking the ironing board and a flurry of bills to the floor. In a shower of black lettering, she was out the door.
He sat there in silence as the last of the papers hit the floor. He knew he was irritable due to the weather being so horrible outside, but this was a long time in coming. Why was she like that? He refused to use the word lazy, because she went to work like everyone else. It just seemed that as soon as she got home and interacted with him, her compulsions went to zero. Grunting with effort, he slung the boot off into a cat bed and sat back for a second. This was no new occurence. He knew she had probably fled in tears to be coddled by her parents, living five minutes away. He had gotten pretty mad, he mused as he went into the kitchen. That might make her stay over there for the night. Hopefully anyway. He selected a glass from the shelf, waggling his hand in the unconscious habit he had during decision making, then picked up the tequila bottle. Sauza Blanco should correct this night, he thought. He put a finger of tequila in the glass, then muttered, "What the hell," and left the glass there, taking the bottle into the living room.
As he drank, he mulled over the situation. He could always leave....and then what? He thought. Doing the knight in shining armor to move out here with her family had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now that his own family was mad at him, pulling out of here would leave him in completely alien territory. He rolled the bottle between his palms as he grimaced. Trapped - at least for now. He would open another savings account, maybe at Bank of America. They had treated him well before...
This was his last thought before passing out.
The phone call rattled its way through his head, and kept up the chorus for Red Hot Chili Peppers' Otherside as he struggled his way back to coherence. His mouth tasted horrible, and there was an empty bottle of tequila poking into his grizzled cheek. The fuck was going on?
"Hello?"
"It's Anne. Are you home?"
Anne. The one woman who somehow, always knew when to call. Though he had lots of female friends (something that rarely escaped the wary, possessive eye of his wife), she was the one who could instantly put a smile on his face. He wanted to call her his best female friend, but somehow that always seemed a poor phrasing. She was one of those women about whom he would always think, "In another life...in another time..."and leave the thought grudgingly unfinished. Many times he heard her talking about her boyfriends and would come home needing a drink. He tried to parse his thoughts about her logically, yet she held some power on him that he could not explain.
"Yeah," he groaned, struggling to a sitting position. The next words snapped him into wakefulness, however.
"I'm being followed. I need help. Like right now."
He got up, instantly regretting it as angry thunderbolts crashed inside his head. He was up, though, and with something to focus on, the alcohol would burn itself out of his system quickly. It seemed like he would need it.
"Where are you now?"
"I'm on Green, coming up to Lake now. He's been on me for a good half hour now. No police stations really close to here and my gas is pretty low." He could hear her voice nudging against the oncoming panic and slowly being forced back. She was normally pretty stable and in control, which meant that this guy really worried her. Something had to happen, and for right now, he was the guy to do it.
"Well, you could always come here. Hit a left on Lake and gun it up that stretch. Two lights and then right, Ill be outside." He dropped the phone into the cushions and went for his jacket, fumbling around for his boots before sliding the cat off of the right side. What a night.
As he stepped outside, he heard the squealing of tires. Someone had come off of Lake in a hurry, and he could easily guess who that was. She saw him outside and whipped the SUV to the left, spewing loose pebbles onto the sidewalk as she pulled in. She got out and hurried over to him as they both heard a second squeal of tires. With someone else standing with her, all visible traces of fear evaporated. She stood shoulder to shoulder with him as the Lumina came around the corner. The car slowed, as if to make the same turn, and stopped in the street. Inside Dom's brain, gears turned. I wonder if this will work.
As the door of the car opened, he reached down to the waist of the tall t shirt he wore. "You might want to turn around!"
Even muffled by the falling snow, his voice split the gathering darkness, and the door stopped moving forward. He kept his hand at his waist, and waited, stone faced with racing heart. The door closed, and he could hear some grumbling and slurs as the car pulled off.
Only then did he allow himself time to look at Anne. She was sweating, even in the cold, and her bare shoulders were shaking. She turned to him and wrapped him in her arms, and purely by reflex he embraced her.
"Thank you," she breathed into his ear.
He held her for what, in another case with another person, would have been an inappropriately long time, then released her finally. They both looked at the snow, now coming down in force with large flakes, then back at each other.
"So.....maybe you should come inside."
Inside, with the heat going, the color came back to her cheeks and she sat on his couch gratefully. He had gone to the kitchen for some water for her, but standing in front of the refridgerator, he reconsidered and came back out with a bottle of spiced rum. She accepted a cup and lifted it to her lips with both hands. When she put it down, he was close to her, a grim look on his face. "Now what the hell just happened? What did I interrupt? A rape? A murder? A really persistent door-to-door salesman?"
She looked up sharply at him, intending to glare, but she saw the look in his eyes and knew that behind the screen of calm, his mind was exploding with possibilities.
She exhaled slowly and began. "Well, I was at a party and this guy kept coming on to me. I didn't want anything to do with him but he kept pushing up. Eventually I dealt with him-"
Someone got booted in the jewels, he thought-
"...but I guess he wasn't discouraged, and when I left I saw him after me. Then I ended up here, and, "she shrugged half heartedly, "here we are....alone?" She looked around. "Where is...you know."
She tried to make the words come out lightly, but the bricklike weight of her feelings was evident behind them. Anne did not like his wife. No, she thought. That wasn't it. She was frustrated that women like that could bag guys like this while she floundered with loser after loser. If she was his woman....she let the thought burn out. That can lead to nothing but trouble.
"She's gone somewhere," he grunted. To her gaze, he related the events of the evening, and they both rolled their eyes. They had had conversations along these subject lines many times before. Mutual frustration bubbled under the surface, and taboo thoughts came out of their twilight hiding places yet again. They normally would be able to suppress them, but the combination of alcohol and their recent shock left them weaker than usual.
The full scope of his position only now came to hit him between the eyes. Here he was, alone with Anne after all this time, in his own house. He laughed aloud, spilling some of the rum onto the arm of the couch and the dvd case hanging off it. Reflexively her arm jerked upward in suprise at the sensation of the liquor hitting it, just as he had leaned down to make sure the case would not fall. A sharp pain bloomed under his eye and he fell down onto his ass, more from surprise than anything else. The tequila affecting his balance had not fully dispersed either. Anne sprang up and rushed to him, the shadows of guilt flitting across her irises as she knelt to see the damage. "Oh damn, I'm sorry. I'm just kind of jumpy right now. Didn't mean to hurt you." She sat next to him on the carpet, ignoring the staring cat as she held his face in her hands. "Let me see."
