Over the drone of the drink’s fridge and the wine chiller, Annie could make out heavy breathing. It was closer than she would have liked. Now what was she going to do? She couldn’t very well call the police with the robbers on the other side of the bar.
She had to do something! She was not about to let some thieving arseholes make off with her hard-earned cash. If they wanted what was hers, they’d have to work twelve-hour shifts, like she did.
Annie had heard somewhere that if a predator in the wild approaches you, you can scare it off by running at it full pelt and yelling at the top of your voice. Spurred on by outrage and an increasing need for the toilet, Annie decided to test the theory. She slipped the electric flyswatter from a nearby shelf and set it to “zap.” After several abortive counts of three, she took a good lug of air and leaped out from behind the bar, shouting and screaming. She slapped her palm against the bank of light switches on the wall, and light flooded the lounge. Still fully embodying the banshee spirit, Annie swiped the swatter wildly in the direction of the intruders.
A lot of frightened screaming and the sudden change from dark to light had left Annie temporarily dazzled, so it took her a moment to register what she was seeing. Sprawled across the banquette at table nine, desperately and inadequately trying to cover her nakedness with cushions, one of which had the words Keep Calm and Carry On embroidered across its front, was Ellie, the newest waitress. And before her, with a fast-drooping erection and a blue bar towel held up against his nipples, was Annie’s husband, Max.
* * *
—
Later, as Annie lay back against the crisp white pillows in her hotel room, she would think of all the clever, cutting things she could have said to her husband in that moment.
“It’s not what it looks like!” Max had said.
Behind him, Ellie sat very still, eyes wide like Bambi, as if she thought by not moving, Annie might not be able to see her. In an ideal world, Annie would have whipped back smartly with something like:
“Ah, I see you’re training young Ellie in the finer arts of customer service.”
Or:
“Don’t tell me; there was a blackout and all your clothes fell off and Ellie was so frightened you had to put your penis into her vagina to calm her down?”
But what Annie actually said, when faced with her naked husband, clearly screwing the waitress half his age, while she, his long-suffering wife of twenty-six years, stood before him, deflated with crow’s-feet around her eyes and an electric flyswatter hanging loosely by her side was: “Gup . . . Gup . . . Ubber . . . Affphoof.”
Then she’d stumbled backward, zapped her own thigh with the swatter, and let out a tiny bit of wee.
Chapter 2
Annie slept surprisingly well, considering she had just entirely changed the course of her life, and woke before dawn on a strange sort of high. She called Marianne, her head chef at the Pomegranate Seed, filled her in on the situation, and handed over the responsibility of the kitchen.
“What a shit-bag!” said Marianne. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got this. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet,” said Annie. Her heart began to pound as she realized she had no plan beyond the next two days she had booked at the hotel. “Can you remind Max to feed Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle?” Annie asked. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was her cat.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Marianne.
“Don’t I sound okay?” said Annie.
“Well, yes,” said Marianne. “You sound a bit too okay. A bit manic. Like you’ve taken speed or something.”
Annie laughed. The sound was high-pitched. “I’m fine!” Annie said, a little too brightly. “Really! Absolutely fine!”
She looked around her hotel room, knowing that every room in the building would be identical; generic “modern art” canvas above the bed, satin silver bed runner to break the expanse of white linen, a brown faux leather chair in one corner, and walls painted in a pale gray, which would no doubt be called something ridiculous like Husky Shimmer. There was a desk along one wall with a hair dryer, a travel kettle, and two cups on a plastic tray, and above it a flat-screen TV. It was the traveling salesman’s home away from home, the hen-party haven, and now, a wronged wife’s bolt-hole.
“Do you want me to come over?” asked Marianne.
“No, no. Don’t be silly. Somebody’s got to run the kitchen.”
And then, almost as if her voice were speaking without her brain’s permission, she found herself saying: “They were on table nine, you see. I chose that sofa. I picked the color out of a book of swatches. And the weird thing is, when I caught them, I kept thinking, What about the velvet? Semen is a hell of stain to get out. That’s mad, isn’t it? What kind of a woman worries about stains when she walks in on her husband screwing another woman?”