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

now
more than ever
– yes! it would be a buck-up speech, an all-
hands-on-deck speech! But no, my boss just said: 
I guess
you know, unfortunately, why I called you in here
, rubbing
his eyes under his glasses, to show how weary and
dejected he was.
I wanted to feel like a shiny-cool winner, so I didn’t tell
my students about my demise. I told them we had a family
illness that required my attention here, which was true, yes, I
told myself, entirely true, and very heroic. And pretty,
freckled Andie sat a few feet in front of me, wide-set blue
eyes under chocolatey waves of hair, cushiony lips parted
just a bit, ridiculously large, real breasts, and long thin legs
and arms – an alien fuck-doll of a girl, it must be said, as
different from my elegant, patrician wife as could be – and
Andie was radiating body heat and lavender, clicking notes
on her laptop, asking questions in a husky voice like ‘How
do you get a source to trust you, to open up to you?’ And I
thought to myself, right then: 
Where the fuck did this girl
come from? Is this a joke?

---

You ask yourself, 
Why?
I’d been faithful to Amy always.
I was the guy who left the bar early if a woman was getting
too flirty, if her touch was feeling too nice. I was not a
cheater. I don’t (didn’t?) like cheaters: dishonest,
disrespectful, petty, spoiled. I had never succumbed. But
that was back when I was happy. I hate to think the answer
is that easy, but I had been happy all my life, and now I was
not, and Andie was there, lingering after class, asking me
questions about myself that Amy never had, not lately.
Making me feel like a worthwhile man, not the idiot who lost
his job, the dope who forgot to put the toilet seat down, the
blunderer who just could never quite get it right, whatever it
was.
Andie brought me an apple one day. A Red Delicious
(title of the memoir of our affair, if I were to write one). She
asked me to give her story an early look. It was a profile of
a stripper at a St. Louis club, and it read like a 
Penthouse
Forum piece, and Andie began eating my apple while I
read it, leaning over my shoulder, the juice sitting
ludicrously on her lip, and then I thought, 
Holy shit, this girl
is trying to seduce me
, foolishly shocked, an aging
Benjamin Braddock.
It worked. I began thinking of Andie as an escape, an
opportunity. An option. I’d come home to find Amy in a tight
ball on the sofa, Amy staring at the wall, silent, never saying
the first word to me, always waiting, a perpetual game of
icebreaking, a constant mental challenge – what will make
Amy happy today? I would think: 
Andie wouldn’t do that
. As
if I knew Andie. 
Andie would laugh at that joke, Andie
would like that story
. Andie was a nice, pretty, bosomy Irish
girl from my hometown, unassuming and jolly. Andie sat in

---

the front row of my class, and she looked soft, and she
looked interested.
When I thought about Andie, my stomach didn’t hurt the
way it did with my wife – the constant dread of returning to
my own home, where I wasn’t welcome.
I began imagining how it might happen. I began
craving her touch – yes, it was like that, just like a lyric from
a bad ’80s single – I craved her touch, I craved touch in
general, because my wife avoided mine: At home she
slipped past me like a fish, sliding just out of grazing
distance in the kitchen or the stairwell. We watched TV
silently on our two sofa cushions, as separate as if they
were life rafts. In bed, she turned away from me, pushed
blankets and sheets between us. I once woke up in the
night and, knowing she was asleep, pulled aside her halter
strap a bit, and pressed my cheek and a palm against her
bare shoulder. I couldn’t get back to sleep that night, I was
so disgusted with myself. I got out of bed and masturbated
in the shower, picturing Amy, the lusty way she used to look
at me, those heavy-lidded moonrise eyes taking me in,
making me feel seen. When I was done, I sat down in the
bathtub and stared at the drain through the spray. My penis
lay pathetically along my left thigh, like some small animal
washed ashore. I sat at the bottom of the bathtub,
humiliated, trying not to cry.
So it happened. In a strange, sudden snowstorm in early
April. Not April of this year, April of 
last
year. I was working
the bar alone because Go was having a Mom Night; we
took turns not working, staying home with our mother and
watching bad TV. Our mom was going fast, she wouldn’t

---

last the year, not even close.
I was actually feeling okay right at that moment – my
mom and Go were snuggled up at home watching an
Annette Funicello beach movie, and The Bar had had a
busy, lively night, one of those nights where everyone
seemed to have come off a good day. Pretty girls were
nice to homely guys. People were buying rounds for
strangers just because. It was festive. And then it was the
end of the night, time to close, everybody out. I was about to
lock the door when Andie flung it wide and stepped in,
almost on top of me, and I could smell the light-beer
sweetness on her breath, the scent of woodsmoke in her
hair. I paused for that jarring moment when you try to
process someone you’ve seen in only one setting, put them
in a new context. Andie in The Bar. Okay. She laughed a
pirate-wench laugh and pushed me back inside.
‘I just had the most fantastically awful date, and you
have to have a drink with me.’ Snowflakes gathered in the
dark waves of her hair, her sweet scattering of freckles
glowed, her cheeks were bright pink, as if someone had
double-slapped her. She has this great voice, this fuzzy-
duckling voice, that starts out ridiculously cute and ends up
completely sexy. ‘Please, Nick, I’ve got to get that bad-date
taste out of my mouth.’
I remember us laughing, and thinking what a relief it
was to be with a woman and hear her laugh. She was
wearing jeans and a cashmere V-neck; she is one of those
girls who look better in jeans than a dress. Her face, her
body, is casual in the best way. I assumed my position
behind the bar, and she slid onto a bar stool, her eyes
assessing all the liquor bottles behind me.

---

‘Whaddya want, lady?’
‘Surprise me,’ she said.
‘Boo,’ I said, the word leaving my lips kiss-puckered.
‘Now surprise me with a drink.’ She leaned forward so
her cleavage was leveraged against the bar, her breasts
pushed upward. She wore a pendant on a thin gold chain;
the pendant slid between her breasts down under her
sweater.