You shove chips in your mouth. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.
Your rat rolls over and you pick up your phone and scroll and then my phone pings.
@LadyMaryKay Likes your photo.
You fucked up. The picture is old. You unlike it and hang your head and Stephen King is the Master of Darkness but I am the master of your darkness. I turned off the lights inside of you and your rat reaches for your body and you swat him away. No more breakup sex. No more makeup sex. You don’t want him. You want me.
25
We’re making so much progress, Mary Kay. Oliver got invited to an extended bachelor party in Vegas. It’s one of his best friends from home and he whined about FOMO and I stole a page from RIP Melanda’s playbook and worked him over with reverse psychology.
Sucks you can’t go. That’s life being a Quinn bitch.
Poor Boys Club rules: Gambling is for trust fund kids who don’t know the value of money.
Imagine Ray’s face if he found out you left me here on my own. Not that I’d ever tell him but man. He would SNAP.
So of course, Oliver is in Vegas to prove he’s not a Quinn bitch and we’re in this “together.”
I promised to be good and I’m a man of my word, Mary Kay. You’ve been going to couples therapy somewhat religiously twice a week for two weeks and your shrink, Layla, should be disbarred. She’s oblivious to the pain you’re hiding. And she leaves the window of her office open as if there isn’t an alley right by the building that’s a fucking echo chamber.
I’d expect more from an MSW who lives in a semi-city, but at some point in life, I’ll learn to expect less.
Layla advises you and your rat to “fill the well” and “nest” and I know what she means—talk, bond, fuck—but you don’t want to talk to him. You don’t want to have sex with him. You just want to buy a whole bunch of new fucking furniture. You loved “nesting” when you were preparing for Nomi to arrive and you’re extrapolating like crazy, claiming that you and Phil nest well together. Your therapist thinks this is positive teamwork—such an idiot—and Phil made his feelings about material things clear a hundred years ago when he lambasted you in song about a crate in a barrel, a barrel in a gun, remember the summer, the end of all your fun. （Repeat 10X.） The trouble is, he doesn’t want to lose you, so he sits in the therapeutic box nodding as you wax on about “the symbolic value” of buying a new dresser like the heartless slab of phony baloney that he is.
“Whatever it takes, Emmy. Anything for us.”
So you bought a brand-new blue dresser and it wasn’t made in America—Nice job, China!—it doesn’t have cedar linings or metal undermount drawer glides. It weighs less than two hundred pounds and the “wood” is manufactured. They take real wood and disintegrate it and then mash it back together with artificial additives. Like your marriage, it’s not real. It arrived a week ago and your cheap lazy husband wouldn’t spring for the white glove delivery and assembly. So it waits for you, for him, in two giant boxes of unassembled slabs of fake wood on your back deck, where all the passing hikers and tourists can see it sit there festering, growing moldy. Dank.
Symbolism, much?
I watch from the Whisper Room as you stare at those wilting boxes. Phil’s around more these days because of “therapy” and you nag him about the dresser. He’s avoidant—Just ask your buddy Seamus, he gets off on that kinda crap—and he tells you he’s too worked up from an NA meeting.
Part of “working on your marriage” means focusing on your past. The rat won’t go to the meadow with you and he won’t hike up to the bunkers at Fort Ward—you know I have lower back issues, Emmy, and I can’t take a pain pill, obviously—so you’ve resorted to other shit. Sadder shit. You’re hosting a Reality Bites #TBT screening for couples in the library’s garden. （Gross. Sad. Just no.） All you need him to do is agree to show up and yet he grouses—Aw man, are you trying to put me in an early grave?—and you counter—It’s just one night—but he wants to go out that night because the boys are back in town. He picks up his pen—That’s a good line, I gotta write that down—and he puts down his pen—it’s someone else’s good line, you moron.
Nomi stomps downstairs. She can’t concentrate with all this bickering—Don’t worry, kid, the Edward Albee shit ends soon—and you lower your voice to a hiss—I need you to grow up, Phil—and he tells you to chill out, Emmy. Don’t take out your Melanda shit on me. I’m not your whipping post.
I clap my hands. You tell her, Phil! You steal from those Allman Brothers and drive her right into my arms!
You groan, you tell him that he’s the one who needs to grow up. He can’t choose his boys and some band at the Tractor over you and your work. He huffs that the bands are playing new songs and you’re playing old movies and he snaps his fingers—That’s a song—and he picks up his Gibson and he’s strumming and you miss me. Your cell phone rings and you want it to be me but it’s Shortus and Phil stops singing to give orders—Please tell me that asshat’s not coming over, Emmy, I can’t listen to him go on about CrossFit—and you are an obedient child bride. You send Shortus to voicemail, which means that he texts me.
Shortus: Isla later?
Me: Sure!
See, Mary Kay. Unlike your rat husband, I have empathy for single dudes who may not have the most scintillating personalities. I know it’s hard to be alone, so I’ll suck it up and have a beer with Shortus because I feel for him. It was Friends when RIP Melanda was around. It was okay for the three of you to be together, waxing nostalgic at the diner, always “popping by,” but two is not three. And now that she’s gone, you ice out Shortus.
Phil resumes playing his nonsong and you pour wine—Did you fix the stove?—and Phil is a child—Right after I finish this song.
You hate your life and you plod upstairs to your bedroom. It’s a minefield. Your old dresser is in the front yard—what must your cul-de-sac neighbors think?—and your sweaters and your tights are mixed up with his clothes in big black trash bags. You can’t deal with those fucking trash bags and you close your door and climb onto your bed. You read your favorite parts of Murakami—all but sucked inside—and you look at my Instagram—I can’t see but I know—and then you put on a silk sleep mask. Your hand delves into your Murakami and you tap your Lemonhead and I’m not a pervert but this sex fast isn’t easy.
You climax. I climax. For now, this is good enough because it has to be.
The next day when I get to your house, I climb onto your side of the marriage bed and I put on your sleep mask and I imagine you here and when I finish I’m dizzy. I smack my knee into your end table—Fuck!—and I rummage in a trash bag for your tights but I wind up with his shit-stained man-panties—Double Fuck—and I rush into your bathroom to wash my hands.
I’m getting tired of this shit and I dry my hands on a plush new hand towel—you are trying so hard—and I check your Instagram and it’s all #TBT of you and your rat. Your nostalgia is misguided, you should be looking toward the future—me—but here you are, circa the late nineties hanging all over your man. Instead of being sad about Melanda and the state of your life, you are snarky. You take a picture of yourself in your puffy nineties prom dress.