Tampa

chapter eighteen

I was still sitting upright in bed with my knees bent open, both hands clutched between my legs.

Ford was drunk, but not as drunk as might’ve been advisable. This was completely Ford’s style: coming finally to make contact at this hour, in this place, to display his wide range of privilege. In fact this was the very first thing he addressed.

“I have some buddies who work the night shift,” he explained. I thought about removing my hands from my genitals but realized somewhat amusedly that their position might give the impression I’d recently been sexually assaulted in the shower room, and it didn’t seem wise to dismiss whatever combination of jealousy and sympathy that might produce in him.

I said nothing; what he wanted most was for me to speak.

He produced a long exhale that was noticeably sharpened by gin. I wished to avoid any scenario where he might start crying; he wasn’t entirely comfortable with tears, so he felt they required long justifications. Now that he was actually in front of me again, all the previous curiosities I’d entertained—that he and I might reunite in the harmonious arrangement of my needing money and Ford’s needing a stunning wife, or the romantic notion that his breakdown might fill me with a sense of victory—disappeared entirely; he was as annoying as ever and I simply wanted him gone. He appeared to be more tan than I remembered, which brought out his wrinkles; he’d doubtlessly been staying home from work to drink conciliatory liquor by the pool. Each one of his square teeth, made highly visible as he squinted in an attempt to withhold emotion, seemed like a separate deficit. They were unmistakably the teeth of a man, and the muscles warping his thin V-neck T-shirt attested to a brute strength that felt obscenely zoomorphic, more animal than human. I realized that Ford, alone with me in the cell, could do whatever he wanted—beat me up, rape me; it might even be possible, if the paid mouths of his friends were shut tightly enough and a plausible story was created, for him to kill me and get away with it.

I actually would’ve welcomed any nonfatal form of battery. I wouldn’t be able to report that Ford had done it—his family, after all, was footing the bill for my attorney—so the implication in the courtroom would be that I’d been beat up by guards or fellow prisoners. This leverage could bring compassion in the eyes of the jury and media, and might possibly allow me to argue for a transfer into a nicer holding area, something less severe than a jail cell.

“Why?” Ford finally shouted. His fists were flexed, ready to pick a fight with the mere idea of what I’d done. Now that we were at the point of artifice finally being over, I saw no need for dishonesty.

“It’s just what I like.” At this point his eyes moved down to my clasped hands. He seemed to be anxiously waiting for me to remove them, like my vagina was a mouth ready to confess to all sorts of atrocities and I was merely gripping it shut in order to silence its cries.

The muscles in his forehead began to move in opposing directions; for several seconds I watched its various folds come alive like rows of earthworms, each one moving independently from the others. “You’re some kind of pedophile?” he asked.

“I’m not pilfering the elementary schools,” I pointed out. “They’re teenagers.”

“But you married me,” Ford spat. In his grief it was hard to tell if he was simply worked up or if he’d prepared himself for our meeting with a more proper dose of alcohol than I’d originally thought. “It wasn’t like we didn’t have sex,” he countered. As if the thought was too absurd to even speak, he chuckled a little, though it was dry and unsmiling; he knew that once he said it, he’d likely have to accept it as true. But the part of Ford that hoped I’d immediately proclaim the statement to be lunacy and chime forth cries of denial did finally compel him to say the words: “What we had together wasn’t fake.”

I suppose I could’ve given him what he wanted, apologized and said that it wasn’t him, claimed to be sick in the head. But the boxy gold rings on his fingers were too much a reminder of the nights I’d had to sacrifice a part of myself to placate him. Now that there was no further reward for pretending, it simply felt too difficult.

“You should go home, Ford,” I said, as gently as I could bear it. I felt a surge of injustice at the irony of it all: Ford was completely inattentive to the unlimited sexual potential he could leave my cell and start enjoying. How simple it would be for him to walk into a bar and find a partner of legal age whom he was attracted to, take her home and proceed to orgasm. Yet he had no sense of appreciation for this liberty. Instead he’d go home and drink and sulk. Perhaps make an ill-advised intoxicated drive to a late-night gun range. While I’d have given anything I still owned for just an eyedropper of Boyd’s semen to play with, there was nothing stopping Ford from running off to taste the full spectrum of the Kama Sutra rainbow, but he didn’t even care.

“Do you love me?” he asked. When this question failed to gain an answer, he soon began looking for a consolation prize. “Does any part of you love me? Did you ever?” I didn’t mind anger, but his expression was turning to one of injury and it sickened my stomach. His pain seemed like such an internal, private thing, no different from excrement—something to be dealt with in private. But here he was, putting it before me and making me smell it.

I realized his eyes had grown wet with disbelief; he was truly seeing me for the first time but couldn’t reconcile it with his memories. He seemed to need some verification that I actually was the same person he’d lived with for several years—that his authentic wife wasn’t trapped somewhere, kidnapped, while I acted as her imposter. So I lay down on my cot, finally rolling away from him toward the wall as was my usual custom when we’d get in bed at the same time. With an air of normalcy, as though we were at home for one last evening together, I uttered the words I’d said so often in our bedroom. “I’m tired, Ford. Could you please turn out the light?” As I closed my eyes, the question brought on a nostalgia for my soft pillow, for my nightstand of applied creams set to begin working as I slept, repairing any damage done through daily exposure to free radicals.

I held myself taut awaiting his reaction; my buttocks involuntarily clenched, partially expecting him to attack. Instead he stood there for what seemed like hours, staring at my back as I kept my eyes fixed on the wall. “Fuck,” he finally exclaimed. He then began a loud bang on the metal door that echoed indefinitely and had the effect of making it seem like we were inside a submarine. Moments later the door buzzed open and everything grew quiet.

It was the last time I ever saw Ford. The light inside my cell stayed on all night.