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That evening, I still hadn’t received a response. So I did what any logical man would do at that point. I cleaned out the shed and took old containers of paint to the disposal site.
I tortured myself with possibilities. He was biking. Or travelling and concerned about roaming charges. Gifted himself a trip to Peru for his birthday. Or visiting his family. Or suspended in a bondage swing, legs in stirrups, while men urinated on him. Or Beckett, said a reasonable voice, with a new phone and hadn’t recognized the number but was too polite to ask, Who’s this? in case it was someone he actually cared about. I should have identified myself, but it was too late. It was too late. It was almost 3 a.m. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else but think, and my thoughts were either of you or him, and so it appeared, because I was prone, that my restlessness had subsided but really it had turned inward and was consuming me.
* * *
One night in August, I went for a long walk (because although Pointy was dead, I still felt the need to walk him). The walk got longer and longer until I ended up at Viv’s house.
It’s 1 a.m. Don’t ring people’s doorbells at 1 a.m., she said. I thought you were the police come here to tell me that Casper’s dead.
Sorry. I said, holding up my phone. No battery. Wait, Casper’s not home?
I know where my son is. The question is, Why are you out walking the streets?
I shrugged. She studied my face.
Casper was right, she said. You look like a zombie.
I’m fine, I said. And I haven’t seen Casper in ages.
He saw you at Shoppers.
He couldn’t say hi?
You sound like Uncle Leo. When she saw that I didn’t get the reference, she clarified, Seinfeld.
I never got into that show.
Your name’s Beckett. It’s a show where nothing happens. You would love it. She yawned. Anyway, Casper saw you standing in front of allergy medication like this. Viv hunched, pushed out her neck, dropped her jaw, and made a face like Frankenstein.
I haven’t been sleeping, I said. Then I calculated when Casper would have seen me. I had a cold, I said. Princess too.
She stood there, without inviting me in, waiting to see what I wanted. I started rambling. I told Viv that you got a cold after my cold.
So? That’s how colds work.
Yeah, I continued, but my cough was down here. I placed my hands over my lungs. I said, Remember Janet Jackson’s album cover when the guy is cupping her breasts? She was so sexy.
Have you been drinking?
Princess, her cold was in her head, I said. Totally different set of symptoms.
I explained that your symptoms were more like come-grind-on-me-to-cumbia-music guest’s symptoms. When I made a passing comment about that coincidence, you asked if I wanted a nose swab of every person who breathed on you. Why didn’t I test your gut bacteria while I was at it? I ended by saying, Viv, I think Princess is having an affair.
I don’t know why I said it. Maybe because I never got to tell her about the finger the day that I met Gluten. Admittedly, I replaced the fact of my overlap with the suspicion of your affair. And I had the zeal of a conspiracy theorist to make pieces fit. And I needed the sympathy of a woman after weeks of therapy.
Viv pushed her feet into some crocs and came outside. She would streetwalk with me.
She presented my logic back to me, pausing after every second word: You think that Princess is cheating on you be cause she caught a cold? Different from a cold you caught?
Gluten would have clapped through the question.
Not just that, I said. I had to go with it now. I told Viv about all the men coming through the house, the dinner dates with the UN of men, all sharing a certain adventurous spirit, surfers, massage therapists, guys with tans and blond hair on their arms, men with large hands and feet, Black men with nice lips.
I just don’t see Princess with another man, Viv said. You’re sounding paranoid.
Another man was the easiest thing for me to imagine. I already knew your lovers. In every aspect, they were better than me: a mature silver fox who moored a yacht in the Coal Harbour Marina, took you boating, worked out at the gym. A young guy, still in university, who could match your energy. Overly enthusiastic about everything. Overly optimistic about his startup idea. Gluten, pretty much. I should follow you one day. See where you go, see if you rounded a corner and got picked up in a teal Monte Carlo.
I presented other evidence of your affair. Exhibit C: you used to say where you were going when you left the house. Even if I was not home, you would text. Now I just heard the shower running when you got back. Exhibit D: you went out one night when we didn’t have guests in brown ankle boots with a heel.
Maybe it’s not a specific affair with one person, I said. She’s having, like, a group affair.
That’s called dating, Viv said, but she still looked skeptical.
Dating is for single people. She’s having—
I think you’re making something out of nothing.
We had reached a main road and turned back.
I wheeled out the last of my evidence. I pulled out my phone and imitated phone behaviour. I smiled, typed, put on a faraway look, turned my phone down, looked dreamy again, scrolled, thumbtyped. I asked, What do you make of that behaviour? She’s swiping.
Sorry, Beckett, I’m trying to see your case but, yeah, just sorry. Doesn’t add up. She’s not a cheater.
But what if she is, Viv. What am I supposed to do? Maybe she’ll leave me?
Stop.
Maybe this guy is way more engorgionate, I couldn’t find the word at first, affectionate than I am.
You’re going to drive yourself crazy. If you keep thinking she’s having an affair, you’ll manifest it.
The word manifest sounded like a Gluten word. There was a short cord between Gluten’s actions and his motives, but the cord was long and tangled in you. The cord that led to the explanation about your surgeries was impossibly long and perhaps, in the end, attached to nothing. How easy it was to be with him. Don’t romanticize, Beckett.
The walk home felt twice as long. It was almost time to wake up by the time I went to sleep.
* * *
Throughout August, you kept going out in the evenings without me and without explanation. I was rounding the side of the house one evening, picking up some shingles that had blown off in a windstorm, and saw you inside a car, saying goodbye to a man for a long time before getting out. You were animated. You had him rapt. He winced, then he laughed. I wasn’t lurking. You hugged him across the seat.
We found our man. He was not a Methodist churchboy. Young, baseball hat, Mustang.
I put the shingles in the trash bin and let the lid slam. On seeing me, your manner changed. You became an MMA fighter, The Punisher. You feigned busyness so you wouldn’t have to explain what just happened, but I wasn’t letting you get away with that. Enough skulking. Enough grovelling. Enough penance.
Who was that?
My ride, you said and kept walking toward the house.
I’m talking to you, I said. I pointed to my feet, the way I used to point for PointFive to come back.
Don’t speak to me like that.
I am still your husband, Princess.
Right, you said.
Who was that?
You got your life, Beckett, and I got mine.
You were ushering us toward a new phase of our relationship, a don’t-ask, don’t-tell phase, where we each did whatever we wanted and the other could not pry. As with many modern versions of relationships, open marriages, throuples, and such, it worked well in one direction only. One person ate all the cake while the other claimed they weren’t hungry. I didn’t want that future. What do you want, Beckett? A sandwich. In the future, when I was bored or alone and imagining what you were doing, I found myself overeating and turning up the volume to block out this lumberjack with his hands all over your new body, his uncomplicated sexuality, his involuntary erection, pushing me further and further into irrelevance in your life. He was a man from a different time who fathered nine children and still walked around in a permanent state of arousal.
We share a life, I said.
We share a house, you replied. You’re not a character on TV. I don’t have to like you. I just have to live with you.
Heat rose to my cheek.
I’m going to ask you one more time and if you don’t answer me, this is over. I’m making all this effort. Paying for therapy. What would your beloved Commie Doctor Clara Simmons have to say?
You should get your money back then.
At least I had the balls to tell you the truth—
You wanna talk balls, let’s talk balls.
The decency to respect you enough. How long are you going to rake me over the coals?
A cocker spaniel with soft ears at the SPCA flashed across my mind. Milo the schnauzer in his cage. Were they both euthanized?
All this effort for you, Princess. You know every place I go. You can track my location. I’m hauling stone. I’m working from dawn to dusk. I’m cooking meals that you don’t appreciate and you can’t even fess up.
Because you make me sick, you said, approaching. You’re beyond—what did Cindy call you—unavailable, unaff—
Shut it, Princess.
You froze for a second, then shoulder-checked me and went into the house. As the door was closing I glimpsed the fluffy white of Pamplemousse approaching to offer you its soft body for comfort.
* * *
A few days later, as sometimes happened, you booked guests to cut the tension between us. We hosted a couple and you created a new backstory for us. You were a lesbian and I was a gay man and this arrangement was to fool our conservative Christian parents. We had one child in boarding school. That evening, when the couple had gone to meet some friends, I told you firmly to stop with the stupid stories. You had won the revenge game. You were the only one playing. Your response was petulant: And if I don’t?
I nodded silently for a long time, considering.
You and your @Princess necklace were daring me.
I put four sticks of gum in my mouth and stuffed the foil wrappers in my vest. You were about to lose big-time at this game. I drove to Gluten’s apartment.
* * *
CHAPTER
I slipped into Gluten’s building through the back entrance, a door people often left off jamb when they accessed the dumpster. It’s such a shame that Gluten never got a chance to meet PointFive. A dog would give me courage. I’d straighten his bandana and tell him to sit in front of Gluten’s door, tongue lolling, irresistible. I found a receipt in my pocket and started folding it into a box. His door swung open. I had to adjust my gaze downward. A girl was standing there, wearing a pink tulle costume and a fast-food gold tiara, her eyes bright as if she had been in the act of praying for a guest and voila.
The worst thought crossed my mind. I pushed it down.
Is this where—I began.
But of course it was still his apartment. I recognized his shoes in the entryway. I could see the plants, the canopy of artificial flowers that I built in the entrance hallway. Nothing had changed except the bathroom door was closed now and the pullup bar was leaning against the wall. And this girl existed. I gave her the origami box. She held it as if it were magical.
I’m Beckett, I said, hoping for an introduction. I found a foil heart in my pocket and gave her that too.
It’s like an emoji, she said.
I knelt on one knee and showed her how to inflate the heart, all the while looking beyond her shoulder for a sign of Gluten. Sleeping? Some kind of animated movie soundtrack was playing.
Hey! It was Gluten’s voice overhead. I jumped.
The girl laughed. He stood in the hallway behind me, also wearing a fast-food crown.
To the girl he said, You can’t be opening doors for strangers? What if it was a killer whale out here?
He’s on land.
Or a crocodile. Or a regular killer.
He told me his name. He’s not a killer. She looked at me for confirmation.
I’m not, I said. I stood up.
Oh, and killers never tell people their names. Did you tell it your name?
No.
Good.
Gluten pushed his way through the doorway and stood facing me. He was thicker. A bulk phase? Depression weight?
Do you know what it wants? Gluten refused to address me directly.
Whatchu want, Cuz? she said. Her phrasing caught me off guard. And I saw the resemblance between the two of them for the first time. Around the mouth.
Visiting, I said. That’s all. Wanted to see how my favourite plant is doing. Then I covered my mouth and said Sacha’s name like a secret password.
The girl lit up. I tried to snag Gluten’s eye but he was looking at the girl, instructing. We were in some teachable moment.
Sacha’s in trouble right now, she said.
What happened?
It’s complicated. But we can save her.
Gluten stage-whispered to her, Ask him why he cares so much about Sacha?
Why do you care so much about Sacha?
He probably wants to eat her, Gluten answered for me.
Gluten, I said. Can I come in?
Should we let him in? he asked the girl.
Not if he’s going to eat Sacha.
What are you and your dad doing in there? I held her eye and gave her my most trustworthy nod. I looked into the apartment again.
You know what we say to nosey people.
Don’t be up in my grill, she said. She snapped her neck. Weird to see a little white girl do that.
Okay. I held my hands up. Can I at least see Sacha? I won’t douse her with salad dressing.
Gluten tried not to smile, but the girl giggled.
Then I promise I’ll leave you guys alone.
I offered her a stick of gum and quickly folded another heart for her.
She said, You can come in and see Sacha, but you can’t take her out of the apartment.
Gluten stepped out of the doorway, so I could enter. He clapped twice when I didn’t move.
Brethren, you heard the lady, he said, finally addressing me.
* * *
Inside the leafy kingdom, there was a full make-believe game underway.
Put your cape back on, the girl said to Gluten.
He wrapped a towel around his neck.
Gluten had added real dried flowers among the artificial ones. In the bathroom, I glimpsed—the shower, where it began—a tray where he must have kept Pamplemousse’s litter.
The kitchen smelled oily. I noticed a yellowish-brown residue from deepfrying along the range hood.
Sacha was near the patio door, heart-shaped leaves reaching up. She looked fine to me.
I still didn’t know the girl’s name. Since Gluten was already a prince, I took to calling her princess. She removed the gum from her mouth and gave it to Gluten. I tried to do the same and he ignored me. She tossed aside a stuffed dinosaur and said I could take up the role of Evil Guardian who had imprisoned Sacha and turned her into a plant until the prince could rescue her. It was like our recent guest dinners on steroids. I was given a costume: a towel for a cape, a papertowel roll for a sword, and a white mask with a beaked nose and feathers at the temple. Little Princess came up behind me and pulled the elastic band out of my hair.
There was a package of Chips Ahoy cookies on the end table and while the game was in progress I ate the cookies like chips, without thought to amount.
He didn’t say grace, Little Princess said.
Gluten replied, Doesn’t matter. He’s going to hell.
In the game, I had to wield my sword and block Gluten the Prince from getting to Sacha. When the girl tried to rescue Sacha, I was careful not to touch her until Gluten showed me how to play my part. I had to pick her up and bodyslam her on the couch and tickle her to death, then go back and pretend to eat Sacha.
After we did this for a couple of cycles, Little Princess broke character to ask Gluten, What time are you going to be there tomorrow?
Nine, he said.
Eight thirty, she shouted. The bus leaves at nine. On Friday. The field trip is on Friday. You made up a whole song about it.
I know, I know, he said. Stop worrying. I won’t miss it.
Don’t forget.
Okay.
Because it’s supposed to be really fun.
I’ll be there.
Where’s your phone? I’m going to set your alarm.
She took his phone from the kitchen counter and turned her back to us, programming with both hands.
I pointed to her back and made a rocking gesture at Gluten. Is she your baby?
He pointed, tapped his nose twice, then pointed to himself, the inside of his elbow: his flesh and blood.
I nodded. So the mother must live locally. She was probably his opposite, a woman who got tired of the woo-woo philosophies and supported him until they broke up and he had to work at Old Navy to afford child support. Little Princess had a normalizing effect between us. Maybe it was because she was younger and female, but I did not feel as defensive around her as I sometimes felt among Casper and his friends. If the three of us and a dog were at a playground together, we would not raise curiosity.
I told her, I said quietly to Gluten. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me the first time when I collected Pamplemousse.
The girl was on his phone but still listening. She asked, Told me what?
Not you, I said, then to Gluten: About—
There’s nothing to tell.
I nodded. But I didn’t give her details, so—I stopped.
