The Ex

29

Deirdre threw the dust rag at a lamp hard enough to knock it over. She didn’t bother to pick it up from the floor. She paced and fumed, occasionally pausing to kick or punch a piece of furniture.

“You bitch, Molly!” she hissed. “Bitch, bitch, bitch!..You don’t deserve them!”

Finally she walked over and picked up the lamp, then paused and hurled it back to the floor, bending the shade and causing the brass footing to break loose from the base and lie looped around the cord. She walked to the wall and began slamming her head against the plaster, over and over until she saw bloodstains on the paint and stopped. She staggered to the sofa and fell back on it.

For almost an hour she lay without moving, staring hard and unblinkingly at the ceiling, as if willing it to open like a box lid and free her rage and frustration to the heavens.

Then she remembered Chumley had said he’d be working at the office today. For a moment her hostility hovered around her thoughts of Chumley. She considered calling and having him take her somewhere interesting, cheer her up.

That bitch!

Yes, she needed cheering.

But Chumley wouldn’t be capable of giving her what she needed. He hadn’t managed it yet. She really didn’t want to see him today.

She sat up, reached for the phone, then lay back down with it resting on her stomach. She punched out Chumley’s home number.

A woman answered on the third ring.

“Is Craig Chumley there?” Deirdre asked, making her voice a shade husky.

“No. May I take a message?”

Deirdre smiled at the hint of alarm in the woman’s voice. Shirley. Mrs. Chumley. Another bitch!

“I, uh…Is this Mrs. Chumley?” she stammered, as if caught off guard.

“Yes, it is. Who is this?”

“Never mind, there’s no message. I called the wrong number. I’m really very sorry I bothered you.”

Deirdre lowered the receiver to within an inch of its cradle and held it there. As soon as she heard the inquiring natter of a voice, she gently hung up.

There! Let that bitch think about the phone call. Let her wonder who’d called. Maybe it was all an innocent mistake. Or maybe it was precisely what she feared, a threat to her family and home and security, to everything she thought was hers forever. Everything she simply took for granted that she deserved. Let her wonder for a long time. Let her ask Chumley about it. If he ever asked Deirdre if it was she who’d phoned, she’d deny it and he’d believe her.

That was the beautiful part. He would believe her instead of his wife.

Mrs. Fucking Chumley! Another paranormal bitch!

Chumley sat at his desk, working on his notebook computer. Since it was Saturday, he was wearing his Yankee T-shirt, khaki shorts, and thick-soled walking shoes. When he was finished here, he’d take a long walk and work off some of the rich food he’d been consuming lately. It was hard to resist dessert at some of the restaurants where Deirdre wanted to dine. At Tavern on the Green his willpower had crumbled and he’d ordered-

The phone rang, interrupting his caloric ruminations.

“Shirley?” he asked, after he’d said hello and identified himself. “Shirl?”

“That’s right, Craig.” Her voice was odd, which was why when she’d said his name he hadn’t recognized that it was her. Then she hadn’t spoken again for several seconds. “I just wondered if you were still at the office.”

“Why didn’t you speak up? Of course I’m still here. Working on the books like I told you this morning. I’ll be here awhile longer. Why did you call?”

“Do I need a particular reason?”

“No, of course not.” He sat for a while, a puzzled expression on his long face. “No,” he said again. “You don’t need a reason to call. Not ever. You know that.”

“Are you going to finish there soon?”

“Relatively soon. Depends on how things add up. But I shouldn’t be much longer. I’m gonna go for a walk when I’m done here, get rid of some of this spare tire.” There was a long pause while he waited for her to reply, this woman he lived and slept with on the other end of the line.

“I still love you, Craig,” she said in a flat voice.

He was startled. She hadn’t told him that in a long time. “Me too,” he said at last. “Love you, I mean.”

“Honestly?”

“Of course I do. Always have, always will.” He wondered about the monotonal quality in her voice. She’d been taking tranquilizers for a long time, different kinds. He didn’t know what she was taking these days. What seemed like dozens of prescription bottles were jammed into the medicine cabinet shelves. “Have you taken one of your pills?” he asked.

“Not today.” She was silent for a moment. “You’ll be home after your walk?”

“Yes, more or less. This evening, probably after supper. See you then.”

More silence.

He hung up and stared thoughtfully at the phone for a few minutes. Something in Shirley’s voice had scared him. Not just her flat tone, something else. There was no way she could know about his affair with Deirdre, yet she’d sounded suspicious. He’d told himself he didn’t care if she found out, but now he wasn’t so sure. He felt sick.

He assured himself he was probably imagining that she suspected. Guilt could do that to a man. He despised guilt; all his life it had prevented him from having so much that he’d wanted. He’d heeded it and done what was expected of him, gotten what other people wanted him to have. He wasn’t going to let guilt spoil what he had now.

Trying to put his marital concerns aside, he got back to work. Work to forget, at least for a while.

Suddenly he squinted through his glasses, then leaned forward to study more closely the figures on the glowing computer screen.

He stood up and went to the file cabinets, then stooped and opened a bottom drawer. After leafing through the contents of a file folder without removing it, he slid the drawer closed and opened the bottom drawer of the cabinet next to it.

Again he thumbed quickly through the contents of a folder. When he started to close the drawer, something stopped him, and he reopened it. He removed the folder and looked at its contents more carefully, then carried it to the desk and sat down. From a bottom desk drawer, he dug out a computer disk, fed it into the disk drive, and keyed into it on the computer.

He worked the keyboard until he’d called up the information he wanted. Then he sat almost motionless, staring at the screen occasionally moving only his middle finger to press the Pgdn key to scroll what he was reading.

After a few minutes of study, he said, “Uh-oh! Oh, shit!”

The office suddenly seemed fiercely hot. He made a move to roll up his sleeves, then realized that he had none and wasn’t wearing his usual office attire. The building management controlled the thermostat, so there was no way to adjust the air-conditioning. The office was as cool as it was going to be today.

With intermittent worried glances at the computer screen, he began examining and rearranging the papers from the file folder, trying to ignore the perspiration from his hands and arms that was making the desk slick.

Now and then, sweat from his nose or forehead dropped directly on some of the papers.

“Trouble…” he kept repeating under his breath. “Always trouble…”

David arrived home from the gym, closed the door behind him, and tossed his duffe bag in the chair that usually caught his attache case.

It wasn’t until he’d turned around that he noticed Molly standing in the middle of the living room. She was facing him squarely, her arms crossed and her shoulders raised slightly with tension so that she was slightly hunched.

“You okay, Mol?”

But he knew she wasn’t okay. She was obviously angry as hell.

“David, we’re going to move!”

He stared at her, perplexed. “We’ve discussed that one to death.”

“Let’s discuss it some more.”

“Okay, we’ll talk to the management company,” he said.

“If they won’t cooperate, we’ll figure out something else. In the meantime, I want to look for another apartment.”

He was sure something traumatic had occurred, and probably concerning Deirdre. He hesitated asking about it, but curiosity prodded him the way it prompted people to touch tongue to sore tooth.

“Something happen, Mol?” As soon as he’d asked, he regretted it. Some doors you were a fool to open.

She told him about the incident with Michael and Muffin, then her encounter with Deirdre.

He tried not to show his relief. It might have been so much worse!

“I can understand why you’re upset,” he told her, “but-”

“We’re going to move,” she interrupted in her calm voice with steel in it.

He shook his head then grinned at her. “You’re kind of determined, aren’t you?”

“‘Determined’ isn’t the word.”

“‘Sexy’ is the word. You’re sexy when you’re determined.”

“Sexy and transient,” she said with finality.