When the bloom is off the rose and your spouse invites you to a romantic
dinner—alone—that should be a red flag, a bloody red flag.
dinner—alone—that should be a red flag, a bloody red flag.
Infidelis by Ben Josef
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The
photo he handed her was an old Polaroid, the kind that, due to its rudimentary
chemical processing, gave the person in the picture a kind of hazy green aura,
with bright red eyes like a rat.
And
up from the past, via a forgotten photograph, Annette’s own bright red eyes
stared back her, her face flushed and giddy, her mouth halfway down the shaft
of some guy’s cock. By the blurred, knuckled hand giving a cropped-out thumbs
up she knew that it was Reid, one of Jonathan’s coworkers back when he was
still at Rydon-Wellers, before he moved on to sixty-hour-weeks and a six-figure
salary. Two years back. At an office party. How cliché.
She
should have been expecting this. She knew it would happen, eventually. Maybe
not this particular indiscretion, but one of them.
But
not tonight. Their four year anniversary. She’d made reservations at Bella
Monica, and it was a bit weird when Jonathan said he’d cancelled, that
they’d be staying in tonight, Jonathan playing chef for the evening. The
strange part: he didn’t seem enthusiastic about it.
Now
she knew why.
The
picture bored into her, burned her face, but she didn’t look up, at him.
Annette knew she was wrong, that she was a piece of shit, but she still loved
him, maybe more as a friend the last few years, but still, she never meant for
it to come out this way.
“Listen,
Jon—“
“Who
else?”
Fuck.
This was it. She tried to think. Should she fess up to the whole damn stable,
or try to play it off as a one time thing? She hesitated, which she shouldn’t
have done because it gave Jonathan his answer.
“Christ,
Annette. How many?” he asked, his face slack and wounded.
He
looked broken and Annette felt like she was going to throw up. If the second
circle of Hell existed, she knew she’d shored up a lot of beachfront property
in her name.
Before
she could speak he said, “You know what? I don’t want to know. One was enough.
I’ve already made up my mind.”
“Jonathan,
wait,” she said. Annette couldn’t be sure if she sounded sincere, because she
couldn’t be sure if she was. Maybe this was for the best. She obviously wasn’t
good at this wife business. A quick divorce. A few months as the scorned whore.
The Scarlett Letter. All that.
And
when Jonathan reached into his jacket pocket, she was sure he would pull out
the papers, drafted and ready. Jonathan never procrastinated.
So
when he pulled out the stubby .38 revolver, a knot constricted in her throat
and her whole body went tense. That’s when she noticed it. How had she not
noticed it? Jonathan was wearing gloves. Big yellow dishwashing gloves.
The
blood fell from her cheeks and splashed down hard in her gut.
“Jonathan,
what are you doing?” She was scared now.
Her
husband didn’t say a word, reached back into his back pocket and pulled out a
folded letter.
“This
is my living will. Got it done this morning. Only took fifteen minutes, if you
can believe it…”
“Please,
baby, whatever you’re thinking—“
“It’s
legally binding, too. What it says is, basically, if I die, everything I have
will be left to you. Everything in the accounts. Checking. Savings. All of it”
“I
don’t understand, baby. You’re scaring me. Please put the gun away. Can’t we
just talk?”
Jonathan
continued on as if she hadn’t said a word.
“The
only catch is, you only get the money if I die. Not if we get divorced.”
Annette
sat dumbfounded. None of what he said made sense. Why did he have the gun? She
tried to think of the words that would make him listen to her, come back from
whatever ledge he was leading them to, when before she could open her mouth,
Jonathan leapt across the table and grabbed her hands, pushing the butt of the
revolver into them, twisting her fingers around the trigger.
She
screamed and pushed back, knocking over the chair and tripping back into the
wall. Jonathan stood over her, leveling the .38 at her arms’ feeble attempt to
block the bullet.
“Look
at me,” he said. His voice was a void. A blank canvass.
She
looked at him. His cheeks were wet and on fire. He reached into his back pocket
and pulled out a second piece of paper and threw it down to her.
“Read
it after,” he said and walked over to his cell phone, punched the screen three
times with his yellow rubber fingers, hit a second button which amplified the
sound so that Annette could hear the voice that came out and said, “9-11, what
is the nature of your emergency?”, and set it down before facing her again.
She
didn’t understand.
Jonathan
raised the gun to his own head, gripping the thing as awkwardly and unnaturally
as possible, settled the barrel flat against his temple and whispered in a tone
so soft it barely registered, “I loved you,” it said, “and you did this to me.”
He
pulled the trigger. Every pink and bloody bit of memories and personality and
potential went flying across the room, painting the kitchen sink and the side
of the fridge an abstract art piece in monochrome. The gun dropped from his
unorthodox hold and fumbled across the linoleum floor.
Annette
couldn’t breathe. The operator on the phone was shouting something
indecipherable into the ether. The picture of Reid—she didn’t even remember his
last name—sat next to the cell, along with the will.
Looking
down at her trembling hands she saw the fluttering, final note.
Read
it after, he’d said.
She
opened the letter. She choked. It was only four words long, but it was all he
needed to punish her. To get back at her.
