Dry Fire
Part Two
Thankfully he was loud enough that they heard him coming in. Knowing what they were obviously doing was bad as it was, he couldn’t imagine actually walking in and seeing it. No really, he couldn’t even try to imagine it. He didn’t even want to picture himself doing it. At a certain age, sex becomes an act you engage in solely in the dark and it has little to do with religious fervor or the concept of modesty.
Barry was beet red and not just from their recent exertions. He was busy trying to collect his slip-on shoes, backing up and farther away as if he were expecting the lunge of some unhinged and jealous animal. She didn’t have any of that worry. She didn’t even bother tying the front of that dingy old pink robe she tended to wear around the house more days than not. She wasn’t necessarily smiling but there was no sense of guilt on her face. Nothing resting there to tell him she was anything but surprised and maybe even a little relieved that there was no point in lying.
A lot of things go through a persons mind at a time like that, he imagined that most people really would make some dramatic show about something like that but all he really felt beside that general sense of betrayal was the disappointment that there was something worse than the news he was coming home early to give her. This crap is going to interrupt those plans. He actually heard himself saying that inside his head as Barry grew ever darker red and started trying to skirt around the wall as if there was some other exit from the bedroom beside the door he was still blocking.
He didn’t say anything, not in the moment, not as Barry was dashing out of his house like his ass was on fire, and not much in the minutes after that. There wasn’t much worth saying. He backed out of the room and down the hallway and gave Barry the space to jog his tubby ass out of his house.
Later he guessed he should have been angry at the idiot. The thing is, he wasn’t. Barry was annoying but benign. The guy was a walking dad joke with all the character and charisma of an ugly Christmas sweater. That was something he was angry about and it was just about the only thing he did say to her as she started stuffing her meds and a few changes of clothes into a bag.
“Barry?” That should have been a question but it came out sounding like a new way to say fuck you.
“That’s exactly what I would expect from you. Nothing about me and why I did this, or any thoughts about yourself and what’s been so wrong between us for so long. No. It’s my choice you want to argue about. Just like always. What was I supposed to do? Put a fucking ad out in the paper?”
They have sites just for this, don’t they? That would have been a good one, instead he just repeated his one word, question/curse. “Barry?”
The disgusted sigh, a signature move. She was the one fucking around but she was disgusted. She was also leaving. If there was ever a time in his whole damn life of not having enough words or the right ones and certainly never the right mix of the two, where he needed a win, this was it.
Thirty-three fucking years! You think I didn’t look around, back in the day. You think I didn’t have any chances? Thirty-three years, doesn’t that mean anything to you?
That would have been exactly what he wanted to howl after her as she fast walked to the front door on her way to her car. Not the perfect thing to say or probably the most sensible thing either but it’s what he was thinking. What he said instead was a last and much more reflective version of the same thing he had been parroting since he got home. “Barry?”