Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

hundreds of times
, I’ve said the words:
The prenup is pure business. It’s not for me, it’s not even for
my parents, it’s for my parents’ lawyers. It says nothing
about us, not you and me.
He walks over toward the kitchen, tosses his wallet
and wilted dollars on the coffee table, crumples a piece of
notepaper and tosses it in the trash with a series of credit-

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card receipts.
‘That’s a shitty thing to say, Nick.’
‘It’s a shitty way to feel, Amy.’
He walks to our bar – in the careful, swamp-wading
gait of a drunk – and actually pours himself another drink.
‘You’re going to make yourself sick,’ I say.
He raises his glass in an up-yours cheers to me. ‘You
just don’t get it, Amy. You just can’t. I’ve worked since I was
fourteen years old. I didn’t get to go to fucking tennis camp
and creative-writing camp and SAT prep and all that shit
that apparently everyone else in New York City did,
because I was wiping down tables at the mall and I was
mowing lawns and I was driving to Hannibal and fucking
dressing like Huck Finn for the tourists and I was cleaning
the funnel-cake skillets at midnight.’
I feel an urge to laugh, actually to guffaw. A big belly
laugh that would sweep up Nick, and soon we’d both be
laughing and this would be over. This litany of crummy jobs.
Being married to Nick always reminds me: People have to
do awful things for money. Ever since I’ve been married to
Nick, I always wave to people dressed as food.
‘I’ve had to work so much harder than anyone else at
the magazine to even 
get
to the magazine. Twenty years,
basically, I’ve been working to get where I am, and now it’s
all going to be gone, and there’s not a fucking thing I know
how to do instead, unless I want to go back home, be a
river rat again.’
‘You’re probably too old to play Huck Finn,’ I say.
‘Fuck you, Amy.’
And then he goes to the bedroom. He’s never said that
to me before, but it came out of his mouth so smoothly that I

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assume – and this never crossed my mind – I assume he’s
thought it. Many times. I never thought I’d be the kind of
woman who’d be told to fuck herself by her husband. And
we’ve sworn never to go to bed angry. Compromise,
communicate, and never go to bed angry – the three
pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds. But
lately it seems I am the only one who compromises; our
communications don’t solve anything; and Nick is very
good at going to bed angry. He can turn off his emotions
like a spout. He is already snoring.
And then I can’t help myself, even though it’s none of
my business, even though Nick would be furious if he knew:
I cross over to the trash can and pull out the receipts, so I
can picture where he’s been all night. Two bars, two strip
clubs. And I can see him in each one, talking about me with
his friends, because he must have already talked about me
for all that petty, smeared meanness to come out so easily.
I picture them at one of the pricier strip clubs, the posh ones
that make men believe they are still designed to rule, that
women are meant to serve them, the deliberately bad
acoustics and thwumping music so no one has to talk, a
stretch-titted woman straddling my husband (who swears
it’s all in fun), her hair trailing down her back, her lips wet
with gloss, but I’m not supposed to be threatened, no it’s
just boyish hijinks, I am supposed to laugh about it, I am
supposed to be a 
good sport
.
Then I unroll the crumpled piece of notebook paper
and see a girl’s handwriting – Hannah – and a phone
number. I wish it were like the movies, the name something
silly, CanDee or Bambie, something you could roll your
eyes at. Misti with two hearts over the I’s. But it’s Hannah,

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which is a real woman, presumably like me. Nick has never
cheated on me, he has sworn it, but I also know he has
ample opportunity. I could ask him about Hannah, and he’d
say, 
I have no idea why she gave me her number, but I
didn’t want to be rude, so I took it
. Which may be true. Or
not. He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and
he would think less and less of me for not figuring it out. He
would see me across the breakfast table, innocently
slurping cereal, and know that I am a fool, and how can
anyone respect a fool?
Now I am crying again, with Hannah in my hand.
It’s a very female thing, isn’t it, to take one boys’ night
and snowball it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our
marriage?
I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I’m feeling like
a shrill fishwife, or a foolish doormat – I don’t know which. I
don’t want to be angry, I can’t even figure out if I should be
angry. I consider checking in to a hotel, let him wonder
about 
me
for a change.
I stay where I am for a few minutes, and then I take a
breath and wade into our booze-humid bedroom, and when
I get in bed, he turns to me and wraps his arms around me
and buries his face in my neck, and at the same time we
both say, ‘I’m sorry.’

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