GEORGE DYKSTRA HELD HIS POKER GAMES IN THE KITCHEN OF ONE of his Fox Hollow model homes, a four-thousand-square-foot, four-bedroom unit known as The Parkhurst. He’d invited the boys there as a last resort a couple of months ago—their longtime host, a divorced guy who sold and installed high-end home-theater systems, had found himself a live-in girlfriend and abruptly quit the game—and it turned out to be a stroke of genius. A huge step up from the divorced guy’s crappy condo, The Parkhurst was a luxury clubhouse where grown men could kick back in style. With Fox Hollow (“an exclusive residential enclave for the discriminating homebuyer”) still under construction, there were no kids to wake with their loud voices, no wives to offend with their coarse language, no neighbors who might object to a little vomit on their front lawns, not that that happened very often. The only downsides were the no-smoking rule George had instituted after the first game—several prospective buyers had complained that the model kitchen reeked of cigar fumes—and the fact that you had to go outside to take a piss, though that wasn’t such a big deal on a crisp autumn night like this.
“All right, you shitheads,” said Mickey Dunleavy, a Realtor whose genial, prosperous face was plastered on for sale signs all over town. “Follow the Queen, fifty-cent ante, going to Chicago, hi-lo declare.”
Tim nodded along with the rest of the players, though he had only the vaguest idea what any of this meant, beyond the fifty-cent ante. He’d played a little poker when he worked at Lucky Rent-A-Car, but to the best of his recollection—he’d been high a lot in those days, so his memory wasn’t always that reliable—it was just the basic stuff, five-card draw, seven-card stud, acey-deucey. So far tonight, four hands had been dealt, and they’d all had unfamiliar names like Anaconda, Razz, and Lowball. Even after the rules had been spelled out, Tim still found himself lagging behind the action, making bone-headed decisions, falling for transparent bluffs. Not even a half hour in, his twenty bucks of chips had dwindled to less than five.
Dunleavy dealt a pair of hole cards—Tim got a deuce and a king—then began flipping them faceup, as though it were an ordinary hand of stud. After everyone had received their fourth card, the dealer nodded to Tim.
“Bet’s to the new guy.”
“It is?”
“Pair of eights showing.”
Tim looked at his up cards, an eight and a three.
“Threes are wild,” George informed him. “It’s Follow the Queen, remember? The first card that follows a face-up queen turns wild.”
“Oh yeah, right.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” muttered George’s cousin, Billy, the genius with the Hummer dealership. “I thought you said he was a cardplayer.”
“How about you shut your mouth?” George asked him.
Billy shrugged. He was a scrawny, jittery guy in a dark suit, with such pronounced jaw muscles it looked like he was chewing gum even when he wasn’t.
“Guy’s a greenhorn.”
“Fifty cents.” Tim glared at Billy as he tossed two red chips into the pot.
“Big spender,” Billy said, flashing him an unfriendly smile.
Tim wasn’t sure why, but Billy seemed to have taken an instantaneous dislike to him. First he’d made a disparaging comment about Tim’s Saturn—“Hey, who called Domino’s?”—in the dirt parking circle outside The Parkhurst, before they’d even been introduced. Then he’d mocked Tim for bringing a six-pack of Diet Coke to a poker game.
“Careful, pardner,” he’d drawled, doing a bad John Wayne. “Better go easy on that stuff.”
If Billy had made these remarks in the right spirit, Tim would have been the first to laugh. It was sad to be drinking lukewarm diet soda when everyone else was guzzling ice-cold Heinekens—he’d caught himself more than once gazing tenderly at those sweaty green bottles—and his old car did look pretty lame out there, sandwiched between someone’s BMW and a brand-new Hummer H2 with dealer plates. But underneath Billy’s just-kidding smirk, Tim sensed some real hostility, and wondered what he’d done to provoke it. Pastor Dennis would have said that Billy was in deep spiritual pain and ripe for the picking, but Tim just thought the guy was an asshole.
On the next go-round, Dunleavy flipped Tim another face-up three.
“Ooh, baby,” he said. “Three of a kind for the new guy.”
His luck was short-lived, however.
“Looky here,” Dunleavy said, dealing a queen to George, followed by a nine to Phil Kersiotis, a well-regarded contractor whose trucks Tim saw a lot around Greenwillow Estates and some of the other upscale neighborhoods in the area. “The plot thickens.”
“What happens now?” Tim asked.
“Nines are wild now,” George explained. “Nines and queens.”
“What about threes?” Tim asked, trying to sound as though he were merely trying to nail down the rules.
“Threes are just threes,” George told him. “They’re not wild anymore.”
“What the hell is this?” Billy said. “Sesame Street?”
After another round of betting—Tim stayed in just in case there was another change in wild cards—Phil dealt the final hole card. Tim drew the seven of hearts, a meaningless addition to his hand. He figured he would fold when the bet came to him, but George spoke up before he had the chance.
“Remember, you have to declare hi-lo before you place your final wager.”
“Why?”
“It’s Chicago,” Dunleavy explained. “Low spade in the hole splits the pot. But you have to declare if you’re going for the high hand or the low one.”
Tim didn’t have to check to know that his face-down two was a spade.
“Oh, jeez.” He pretended to think over this complicated question of strategy before tossing his last four chips into the pot. “I dunno. Low, I guess. I just wish those threes were still wild.”
The only other player to declare low was Billy, who had the four of spades in the hole. He wasn’t too happy when Tim revealed the deuce.
“Goddammit!” he barked at George. “You were coaching him!”
“I was not,” George shot back. “I was just telling him the rules.”
Billy took a long pull on his beer, swishing it around like mouthwash.
“He shouldn’t play if he doesn’t know the rules.”
“He knows ’em now,” Dunleavy pointed out. “Guy’s a quick learner.”
“Here.” Kersiotis grinned at Tim as he slid two leaning towers of chips across the table. “This is your share. Not bad for a split pot.”
ONCE HE got a couple of winning hands under his belt, Tim started to relax. He’d been nervous about coming here, worried that he was putting his career above his principles, willingly placing himself in one of those dicey situations Pastor Dennis had warned about—his life was suddenly full of them—in which sin seemed not only possible, but completely natural and unavoidable. Now that he’d taken the plunge, though, it didn’t seem so bad.
At least part of this feeling had a theological basis. He’d done a little web surfing at the office, and had been pleasantly surprised to discover there wasn’t a whole lot of biblical support for the idea that gambling was a sin. It certainly wasn’t one of those open-and-shut cases like killing or adultery—there was no Commandment that read, “Thou Shalt Not Participate in a Friendly Game of Chance”—nor was it covered by one of those broad, somewhat murky prohibitions like the one in Ephesians against “obscenity, foolish talk, and coarse joking,” or even one of those archaic, widely ignored taboos, like the Old Testament ban on eating pork. The authorities who believed gambling was a no-no for Christians had to go pretty far afield to justify their position, claiming it was a form of stealing, for instance, or citing a passage like, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” or even suggesting that gambling was a violation of the Golden Rule, since the gambler who took an opponent’s money was doing to the opponent what the gambler wouldn’t wish the opponent to do to him.
But none of this struck Tim as very convincing: if everyone agreed to the rules, it was impossible to say that anyone was stealing money from anyone else, and, in any case, such small amounts were at stake that it made no sense to claim greed as a motivating force for the players. As for the Golden Rule, if you forbade poker on those grounds, you’d have to forbid soccer as well, and baseball and football and golf, and any sort of competition in business or in love—anything with a winner and a loser—and Tim couldn’t see how anyone could function in a world like that, not even Pastor Dennis. You’d have to be like those saints in India who spent their whole lives trying not to swat mosquitoes or inadvertently swallow a gnat.
“Hey, George,” Kersiotis said, during a lull between hands. “Ask Tim about driving.”
“Oh, yeah.” George grinned. “I forgot about that.”
“We’re taking an informal survey,” Dunleavy explained.
“It’s kind of a personal question,” George added. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Billy looked up from his shuffling.
“Don’t be a pussy. Just ask the goddam question.”
“I’ll do it.” Dunleavy wagged a finger at Tim. “Be honest now. Have you ever jerked off while driving?”
“Driving my car?”
“Yeah, you know. One hand on the wheel, the other on your Johnson.”
“Sounds kinda dangerous.”
“You gotta pick your spot,” George explained. “A nice straight country road is your best bet.”
Kersiotis nodded. “Busy highways are a bad idea. That’s strictly for emergencies. You know, when you got no choice.”
“Can’t you just pull over?”
“No way,” said George’s brother-in-law, Al, a big red-haired guy who’d barely said a word all night. “You’d look like a total creep, jerking off on the side of the road.”
“Good way to get yourself arrested,” Billy muttered.
“And forget about the rest areas,” said George. “That’s the one place you want to avoid at all costs. That’s how you get yourself in the paper.”
“Wait a second,” said Tim. “Is this like a regular thing for you guys?”
“Not so much these days,” Kersiotis replied. He was a good-looking guy with the self-confidence of an ex-athlete. “I mean, I got three kids, lotta responsibility. But when I was younger, hell yeah. I mean, your mind starts wandering in a certain direction, what are you gonna do?”
George gave Tim a searching look. It almost seemed like he was disappointed.
“Are you telling us you never did it? Not even once?”
“You’d be the only one,” Dunleavy informed him. “Everybody else fessed up.”
“Really?” Tim looked around the table at the faces of his respectable, middle-aged companions. “All of you?”
“So what about you?” Kersiotis said. “You a member of the club?”
“I’d say so if I was,” Tim told them. “But it never even occurred to me.” Feeling pressure to confide something, he added, “I got a hand-job in a traffic jam once, a long time ago, but we weren’t moving. We were just kinda stuck there, waiting for them to clear an accident.”
“Handjobs don’t count,” Billy said disdainfully. “Everybody’s done that.”
“It’s true,” Dunleavy said. “Billy’s given a lot of handjobs. That’s why guys are always asking to go on test-drives with him.”
“Fuck you,” Billy told him.
“I had a girlfriend once who went down on me on I-95,” Al reported. He glanced at George. “Don’t worry, I’m not talking about your sister.”
George shrugged, as if to say it didn’t matter to him one way or the other if his sister performed oral sex in fast-moving cars.
“Anyway,” Al continued, “it was going great, but then I had to stop short, and let me tell you, neither one of us was very happy about it. We decided we better wait till later.”
“Twenty years later,” Dunleavy chuckled, “and Big Al’s still waiting.”
“That’s nothing,” Billy said. “One time in high school I fucked this girl while I was driving her home.”
“You are so full of shit.” George looked at Tim. “Don’t believe a word this clown says.”
“I’m serious,” Billy insisted. “Tina-Marie Johansen. You know, with the walleye? Her parents were really strict and she had to be home by eleven. We were running late, and the only way I could fuck her was if I drove her home at the same time.”
“Come on,” said Kersiotis. “The only thing you fucked in high school was your pet hamster.”
“This is the God’s honest truth.” Billy held up his right hand like he was testifying in court. “She was wearing a skirt, so she just slid over and climbed aboard. I mean, nobody wore seat belts in those days. I just had to lean a little to the right so I could see where I was going. The only problem was the stick shift kept banging into her ass when I put it into second.”
“Can you believe this?” Dunleavy said. “Now he’s working the stick shift and screwing a cross-eyed girl at the same time.”
“Not cross-eyed,” Billy said. “Walleyed. There’s a difference.”
“I’m surprised you weren’t juggling some bowling pins, too,” Kersiotis said.
“While giving yourself a haircut,” added George.
“You guys are just jealous,” Billy said. He slammed the deck on the table so Al could cut the cards. “Let’s play a hand of 727.”
WHAT SURPRISED Tim as the night wore on wasn’t the excessive drinking, or the compulsive sexual boasting, or the casual vulgarity of the conversation—he’d spent a lot of time around guys like this in his previous life, and this bunch was by no means the worst he’d encountered—what surprised him was how comfortable and unthreatened he felt in the midst of it. He’d come to Fox Hollow thinking of himself as a spy straying into enemy territory, but by the time they started the ten-dollar round of Texas Hold ’Em that was one of the evening’s main events, he’d begun to feel more like a wanderer who’d accidentally found his way home.
“I’m trying to get my wife to shave her pubes,” Dunleavy said, passing out white plastic markers that identified the Big Blind and the Little Blind. “But she won’t do it.”
“Trust me,” Kersiotis told him. “You’re better off. Shelley’s been going Brazilian for the past couple of years, and I gotta tell you, I’m not crazy about the stubble.”
“I’ll tell you what I don’t like,” George said. “That little strip of hair some of ’em keep down there. It’s like a Hitler mustache.”
Big Al raised his hand in a Nazi salute. He’d loosened up quite a bit after polishing off his fourth beer.
“Ja, mein Führer!” he bellowed, cracking himself up.
“We’re on totally different wavelengths,” Dunleavy explained. “She’s accusing me of wanting her to look like a little girl, like I’m some kind of pedophile or something. But that’s not it. I just want her to look like a porn star, except I can’t say that, ’cause she somehow got the impression that I don’t look at porn.”
“What?” said Billy. “She actually thinks you use that laptop for work?”
“If she does,” George quipped, “then she must think you’re a workaholic.”
Tim was well aware of exactly how upset and disappointed Pastor Dennis would be if he could see him right then, laughing along with everyone else at the idea of a man enslaved by lust, but for some reason he couldn’t manage to get himself all worked up about it. For one thing, he didn’t actually believe Mickey Dunleavy was addicted to porn—if he were, they wouldn’t be joking about it—and even if he did have some kind of problem, Tim was pretty sure it wasn’t any of his business. All he really knew was that he was having a good time.
It was just nice to get a night off for once, a little breather from the relentless pressure he’d been living with for as long as he could remember. Sometimes it seemed like all he ever did was worry. About Abby, about Carrie, about Allison, about the soccer team, the Tabernacle, the housing market, and now about Ruth. And lately, whichever way he turned, someone else was breathing down his neck, telling him he’d screwed up, and no matter how hard he tried to fix things, he only managed to screw them up worse and make people more pissed off at him than they already were. He understood on some level that he was at fault—he wasn’t going to deny it—but he couldn’t always figure out what he’d done wrong, or how to go about making things better. It was just the same old story, the same old Tim: good intentions, bad results. The only real question he had about his life was just how much worse it was going to get in the next few days.
“All right,” Kersiotis said. “Everybody ready?”
“Wait.” George rose from his chair and opened the cooler on the counter. “Anybody want a beer?”
“I’ll take one,” said Big Al.
“Me too,” said Dunleavy.
“What the heck,” Tim said, amazed not only by what he was saying, but also by how calm he managed to sound. “One beer’s not gonna kill me.”
TIM AND George were the first two players to be eliminated from the Hold ’Em tournament—George because he’d gone all in on the very first hand, staking everything on the perfectly reasonable assumption that he could win with a full house of jacks over sevens (unfortunately for him, Big Al made the same guess about kings over fives), and Tim because he was so distracted by the taste of his first beer in three years that he stayed in way too long with weak cards two hands in a row and ended up bankrupt.
“The hell with these assholes,” George told him. “Let’s go get some air.”
Tim dropped his empty in the trash bag and grabbed another Heineken from the cooler on the way out. He knew it was a bad idea, but there wasn’t much sense in stopping after one. If you were going to fall off the wagon, you might as well at least get a buzz out of it.
Here I am, he thought. Right back where I started.
He thought of Pastor Dennis and felt a dull pang of regret. The guy had invested so much time and energy in saving Tim’s ass, and this was what it had come to. It was the Pastor’s job, of course, but even so, Tim knew he’d take it hard when he found out.
I tried, he thought. I never tried so hard in my life.
He stepped onto the back deck and sat down next to George at the top of the steps, which led down to a dirt lot that would someday be someone’s backyard. Maybe there’d be a pool, Tim thought, or at least a picnic table and a gas grill, a fence and some ornamental shrubbery.
“I like it like this,” George said. “Be kinda sad when the people move in.”
“You’ll just have to build another one somewhere else.”
Tim set his beer bottle on the deck and leaned back, tilting his face to the sky. It was a stunningly clear night, the darkness speckled with stars and the blinking lights of airplanes. The planes seemed to be moving so slowly when you watched them from down here, like they had nowhere special to go.
“I’m glad you could make it,” George said. “I think the guys really like you.”
Tim shook his head. “I’m not much of a cardplayer.”
“You’re holding your own.”
“Tell that to your cousin.”
“Ah, don’t worry about Billy. He was just born that way. Nothing anyone can do about it.”
Reaching into his back pocket, George pulled out what appeared to be a cigarette case, a slender silver box that gave off a pearly sheen in the moonlight.
“You know who you should talk to?” he said, flipping open the case to reveal a single skinny joint. “Mickey Dunleavy. That guy’s got the touch. He’s the only real-estate agent around who’s still selling houses.”
“Definitely. I’d love to sit down and talk business with him.”
George pinched the joint between his fingertips and withdrew it from the case, which snapped shut with a surprisingly loud report.
“I put in a good word for you,” he said, sticking the joint between his lips and fishing a lighter from his hip pocket. “I think you guys might be able to get something going.”
“Thanks,” Tim said, riveted by the path of the flame as it moved toward the puckered tip of the joint. The paper crackled as it caught fire. “I really appreciate it.”
George tucked his chin to his collarbone and sucked in the first hit with a furtive, slightly anxious expression.
“No problem,” he said, in a small, strangled voice. “What goes around comes around.”
After several seconds, George closed his eyes and released a shocking amount of smoke from his lungs.
“Wow,” said Tim. “That smells good.”
George chuckled knowingly as he passed the joint.
“Thought you might like it.”
Tim got a little overeager on his first toke and ended up coughing it all out, much to George’s amusement.
“Sorry,” he choked, thumping his chest and wiping tears from his eyes. “I’m out of practice.”
“I hear you.” George inhaled another monster hit. “I’ve been cutting down myself. Doctor told me to watch my weight, but all bets are off when the munchies hit. Especially now that there’s a Taco Bell down the road that stays open till midnight.”
“I was always a White Castle man myself.”
“Plus, my wife doesn’t like having weed around the house. She thinks it sets a bad example for the kids. So now I gotta sneak around and hide it from her.”
“Just like the good old days,” Tim said, puffing more cautiously this time around. “When I was in high school, I hid my stash in a flashlight, in the compartment where the batteries were supposed to go. Kept it right on my dresser.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“Yeah, except I got busted during a power failure.”
George flicked his lighter on and off a few times, as if he were just getting the hang of it.
“I can always spot a fellow pothead. I bet you were into Pink Floyd, right?”
“Actually, I was more of a Deadhead.”
“Oh.” George couldn’t quite hide his disappointment. “I was a Floyd guy.”
“Dark Side of the Moons a cool album.”
“No, The Wall,” George told him. “That’s a fucking masterpiece. I had this girlfriend in high school, and we used to get stoned and put on The Wall and dry hump until I thought my dick would melt.”
“Ouch,” said Tim.
“No, it was all right,” George insisted. “Dry humping’s got a bad rap.”
“Safe sex.”
“Angie Pirro,” he said. “I never actually fucked her.”
Tim couldn’t tell if he was complaining or just stating a fact, so he let this pass without comment. They traded the joint back and forth in silence until the roach was too small to bother with, and George flicked it into the yard.
“Damn,” he said, shaking his head in admiration. “That’s some fucking good weed.”
Tim opened his mouth to agree, but he was distracted by a powerful rush, a warm tingly surge of well-being that seemed to radiate up from the deck and into his blood. For one breathtaking moment he was weightless, untroubled by gravity. He heard himself giggle.
“So how’s the soccer going?” George asked.
“Okay,” Tim said, sinking back down. “We’re playing for the championship on Saturday.”
“Damn.” George placed his hand on the back of Tim’s neck and gave a friendly squeeze. “I envy you. We’re lucky if we end up in fifth place.”
“This was a great season,” Tim said, polishing off the dregs of his beer. “I’m not gonna know what to do with myself when it’s over.”
“You can always sleep late on Saturday morning. Maybe even get it on with your wife.”
Tim shook his head.
“I just really love this team.”
George pondered this for a moment.
“Let’s go back inside,” he said. “See what’s happening with the game.”
“You go ahead,” Tim told him. “I gotta make a pit stop.”
AFTER GEORGE went in, Tim took a walk around Fox Hollow, ostensibly looking for a secluded place to relieve himself. He understood that this was an unnecessary precaution—aside from the poker players, there wasn’t a soul around—but he kept going anyway, wandering down the hard-packed road past empty houses in varying stages of in-completion, big dumb boxes rising like monuments out of the desolate terrain, not a tree or car in sight, his head muddled, his heart beating a little too fast.
I am so fucking stoned, he thought.
It was almost creepy how it had happened, so smoothly and slyly, the way George had summoned him outside and offered the joint without asking, not even giving him a chance to refuse, as if he’d known all along that this was the real reason why Tim had come. Of course, Tim had already begun drinking by that point, so it was hard to blame George, or pretend he hadn’t made his own decision. But for some reason, it didn’t feel like that. Being stoned just felt like something that had happened to him, a matter of circumstance rather than will.
He just wished George hadn’t mentioned soccer, because that had spoiled what had been shaping up as a pretty nice buzz. It was a nightmare—all he’d done was say a simple prayer of thanks, and now his team was in shambles. Several angry parents, including his own exwife, were threatening not to let their daughters play in the championship game; meanwhile, Pastor Dennis had devoted his entire Sunday sermon to what he called Tim and John’s “youth sports ministry.” And now it looked like the shit had really hit the fan, because he’d come home that evening to find a stern message from Bill Derzarian on his answering machine, insisting that he call back ASAP, as well as one from a friendly reporter from the Bulletin-Chronicle, eager to get “your side of the story.”
I’m wasted, he thought. That’s my side of the story.
About halfway around the main loop, he spotted a Port-A-Potty that appeared to be a pretty popular destination, judging from the foul cloud that surrounded it. He briefly considered ducking inside, but settled for standing in its shadow, peeing on it rather than in it, enjoying the sound his urine made splashing against the plastic wall of the outhouse.
He zipped up and continued around the bend, back toward The Parkhurst. The model home was all lit up, a bright island in the middle of all that darkness, but Tim felt a chill come over him as he approached the edge of what would eventually be the front lawn.
This is a mistake, he thought, listening to the loud voices and lewd laughter seeping through the windows. I don’t belong here.
He turned before he could talk himself out of it and veered across the road to the parking area. He hated leaving like this, without saying good-bye or connecting with Mickey Dunleavy or offering a word of explanation for his peculiar conduct, but he didn’t think there was any other way to do it. George would worry, he understood that, and the other guys would call him a flake, so he took a moment to scratch the word “JESUS” into the passenger door of Billy’s Hummer with the sharp end of a key, so they’d at least have some kind of vague idea about where he was coming from.
IT WAS a school night, but Randall didn’t seem to want to go home. Ruth had dropped as many hints as she could think of, clearing away the coffee cups, yawning without covering her mouth, and talking about how early she and the girls had to get up in the morning, but none of it made an impression. Randall just sat there, with that same dazed expression he’d had all evening, chewing over his long list of grievances.
“I did everything for him. The shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, all that fifties housewife crap. If he lost a button, who do you think sewed it back on?”
“You didn’t have to,” Ruth reminded him. “You did it because you wanted to.”
“I did it because I love him,” Randall admitted. “But do you think he ever thanked me?”
“I’m sure he was grateful.”
“He just thought it was his due. It was his mother’s fault, you know. She treated him like a little prince.”
“A lot of men are like that,” Ruth pointed out. “Frank sure was. If he had a cold or a tummy ache, the whole world came crashing to a halt. But if I was in bed with the flu, he’d come up and ask what I was cooking for dinner.”
“It was worse because Greg’s an artiste,” Randall said, pronouncing the word with bottomless disdain. “He truly believes he has more important things to do than buy groceries or clean the toilet. That sort of thing is for lesser mortals like me. Sometimes I just wanted to grab him and say, Hello? You ’re not Pablo Fucking Picasso. You ’re just a real-estate agent who plays with dolls!”
“That’s not fair,” Ruth said in a gentle voice. “You always loved his work. And he couldn’t have done it without you.”
“That’s not what he thinks.”
“I’m sure he knows. And if he doesn’t, he’s going to find out the hard way.”
“Oh, don’t worry about him. He’ll find someone else to take care of him. He just bats those big blue eyes, and the boys come running.”
“Maybe they used to,” Ruth said. “But he’s not a kid anymore. It’s not so easy to find someone new when you get to be our age.”
“Good. Let him find out what it feels like to be rejected for once.”
“He didn’t really reject you. You kicked him out.”
“Because he wouldn’t commit.”
“You’ve been living together for ten years. You co-own a house. How much more of a commitment could you ask for?”
“I want to get married. That’s something that matters to me, okay? It didn’t used to, but it does now.”
“It’s kind of a moot point, isn’t it?”
Randall shrugged. “I just want him to propose. I want him to ask me to marry him if and when it becomes legal. He knows that, and he refuses to do it.”
“It seems kind of crazy, breaking up a good relationship over a completely symbolic proposal.”
“It’s not symbolic,” Randall insisted. “I’m talking about a real proposal. Actual words coming out of an actual person’s mouth.”
“I don’t get it,” Ruth said. “Why don’t you just propose to him?”
Releasing a soft groan of frustration, Randall leaned forward, letting his forehead drop heavily into the palm of his hand.
“Have you heard a word I’ve said?”
There was an edge in his voice Ruth didn’t appreciate. All she’d done all night was listen. She’d tried three different times to bring him up to date on Maggie and Eliza’s sudden interest in Christianity, and her own uncertainty about how to deal with it—the girls had come home from church on Sunday bubbling over with excitement about the fact that Esther Park had gotten the entire Living Waters Fellowship to say a prayer for Ruth’s soul—but he just kept changing the subject back to his own broken heart.
“You’re tired,” she told him. “You should go home and get some rest.”
Randall looked up, his eyes puffy and frightened behind his smudged lenses.
“Why not?”
“If I have to spend another night alone in that bedroom, I’m gonna kill myself.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
Randall shook his head, as if to say he wasn’t joking.
“We’re gonna have to sell the house. We can’t get married, but we can sure as hell get … divorced.”
For some reason, this was the word that set him off. His face tightened into a childlike mask of grief, and he burst into tears.
“Oh, honey,” Ruth said, rising from her chair.
The phone rang before she could make it to the other side of the table, sounding way louder than usual. Ruth froze in her tracks, torn between her desire to comfort her friend and the natural urge to find out who could be calling at such a ridiculous hour.
“Oh, God,” Randall said, in a pathetically hopeful voice. “Maybe it’s him.”
Ruth snatched the phone off the cradle, hoping to silence it before the third ring. The caller ID showed an unfamiliar number.
“Hello?”
There was a long silence on the other end. She repeated the greeting.
“Hey,” said the staticky voice on the other end. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Gregory?” she said.
“No, Tim.”
“Tim?”
“The soccer coach.”
“I know who you are,” she told him. “I just don’t know why you’re calling.”
“Who’s Gregory?”
“None of your business.”
“Oh.” He sounded a bit put out.
Randall mouthed the words, Who is it? Ruth shot him an apologetic look and wandered down the hall, out of earshot.
“Why are you calling so late?” she whispered into the phone.
“Excuse me?”
She repeated the question at a higher volume. Tim chuckled strangely.
“I was, uh, wondering if maybe I could come over.”
“Now?”
“Is that all right?”
“No, it’s not all right. It’s eleven o’clock on Tuesday night. My kids are asleep.”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“We’re talking now,” she pointed out. “What do you want to tell me?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t mean talk to you about anything special. I just mean talk to you talk to you. You know, like we’ve been doing.”
Ruth’s bewilderment had worn off enough for her to realize that Tim didn’t quite sound like himself. There was a peculiar lilt in his voice she’d never heard before.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Depends how you look at it. I’m a little messed up, if that’s what you mean.”
“Drunk?”
“Stoned, too. A nice all-around buzz.”
“I thought you didn’t do that anymore.”
“Me, too. Guess I was wrong.”
“Is that what this is about?” she said. “You got high and decided you might like to see me?”
“Now you’re catching on.”
“And what? I’m supposed to be flattered?”
“I didn’t really think it through that far. I was just hoping you’d be awake.”
“You’re not driving, are you?”
“No, actually I’m parked.”
“Good.”
“Right in front of your house,” he added, with another cryptic chuckle.
“I hope you’re kidding.”
“I can honk the horn if you want.”
Ruth walked to the end of the hall, pulled aside the curtain, and peered through the window of her front door. He was right where he said he was, a shadowy figure in the driver’s seat.
“This isn’t funny,” she told him.
“No,” he said. “At least we’re in agreement on that.”
Ruth let go of the curtain and turned around, startled by the raggedy sound of her own breathing. Randall was standing at the other end of the hall, watching her with a quizzical expression while he dabbed at his eyes with a Kleenex.
“Tim,” she said. “I’m going to hang up now.”
“So can I come in?”
“No,” she said. “You can’t.”
“But I need to talk to you.”
“Come back when you’re sober. Right now you need to go home to your wife.”
TIM DIDN’T get home until after midnight. He’d thought about heading to a bar after Ruth sent him packing, but his conscience—or maybe just some instinct of self-preservation—had kicked in, and he drove to the Tabernacle instead. The building was locked, of course, so he knelt down by the door and prayed for strength and guidance until a cop pulled up in a cruiser and told him he needed to take it somewhere else.
“I hate to bother you,” he said, “but no one’s allowed on the premises after eleven.”
“This is my church,” Tim told him.
“I understand.” The cop was an older guy with a mustache and a melancholy expression. “I don’t make the rules.”
Tim couldn’t help himself. “That’s what Pontius Pilate said.”
“Yeah.” The cop mustered a wan smile. “Right before he busted Jesus for loitering.”
Heaving an ostentatious sigh, Tim rose to his feet. His knees were stiff, but his head was a lot clearer than when he’d started.
“I guess I can finish up at home.”
“I appreciate it,” the cop told him. “Have a nice night.”
“You, too,” Tim replied.
He’d warned Carrie that he might be late and told her not to wait up—not wanting to mention the poker game, he’d told her he had an “important meeting” with a big developer—so he assumed, when he saw the light on in their bedroom, that she’d fallen asleep while reading. But she was awake and waiting for him, sitting up in bed in a flowered bra-and-panty set he’d never seen before.
“Whoa,” he said, raising both hands as if she’d pulled a gun on him.
“You’re lucky,” she told him. “Five more minutes, and I would’ve conked out.”
She looked good, he thought, giving her a furtive once-over. The new lingerie was sexy but reassuringly wholesome—a lot of the stuff he’d gotten her was too slutty for her to wear with any conviction—and there was a shy, eager smile on her face. Any man in his right mind should’ve been thrilled, but Tim felt unaccountably irritated, as if she’d spoiled his plan for a good night’s sleep.
“We don’t have to do anything if you’re tired,” he said. “I’m pretty bushed myself.”
Her smile didn’t go away, but he could see that her confidence was shaken. She glanced down at her lap, running a tentative hand over her belly.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like what I’m wearing?”
“No, it’s fine. Very nice.”
“You mean it?”
“I do,” he said, with a little more sincerity. “You look pretty.”
“Good.” She patted his side of the mattress. “Then why don’t you come over here and kiss me?”
Tim considered her request. It would’ve been so easy to lie down beside her and give her what she wanted, so pleasant and painless. But that was the problem. He’d been taking the easy way out for too long—this was one of the things he’d just been praying over—and he’d come to realize that it wasn’t fair to either of them.
“Carrie,” he said. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while now. Something important.”
“What? Is something wrong?”
He heard the fear in her voice and knew that he should sit down beside her and take her hand. But all he could think about just then was the beer on his breath and how alarmed she’d be if she smelled it.
“I had a long talk with Pastor Dennis a couple of weeks ago, and, uh, and we came to the decision that I—well, that you and I need to take a break for a while. Sexually, I mean.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What does that mean, take a break?”
“You know, take a break. Not have sex for a while.”
“But we just did. The other night.”
“That was my fault,” Tim explained. “I’ve been weak. I should’ve told you a long time ago.”
Her voice turned wary. “Is this some kind of punishment? Did I do something wrong?”
“This is my problem,” he assured her. “It has nothing to do with you. I was talking to the Pastor about my … spiritual condition, and he said that he didn’t think I should be physically intimate with you until I took care of some issues.”
She nodded, but her face expressed nothing but bewilderment.
“What issues?”
Tim found himself staring intently at the hot pink bottle of Sizzlin’ Strawberry lube on the nightstand. They’d ordered it a few months ago, tried it once without much success, and then promptly forgot about it. He wondered what had possessed her to rescue it from the drawer.
“About Allison,” he said. “I still have a lot of lustful feelings for her, and they’re interfering with my ability to be a good husband.”
Even as he said this, it occurred to him that he hadn’t been thinking about Allison anywhere near as much as he used to; in any case, she certainly wasn’t the worst demon he was grappling with at the moment. But the confession was out, and he couldn’t just take it back.
“You think I don’t know that?” Carrie asked. “You think I don’t see how depressed you get every time you go over there?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever really stopped loving her.”
Carrie pondered this for a moment, then shrugged.
“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. I don’t care.”
A small laugh escaped from Tim’s mouth.
“Right.”
“I’m serious,” she insisted. “You love your ex-wife, and we’re just gonna have to live with that. I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing, right?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s not really that complicated,” she replied. “It would be a problem if she still loved you, but she doesn’t. She married someone else and had a kid, and you said yourself that she seems pretty happy. So it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
What she said made a certain amount of sense, but Tim found himself reluctant to admit it.
“This thing we agreed to is totally biblical. A husband shouldn’t have sex with his wife if his heart isn’t pure. It’s in Corinthians. Ask Pastor Dennis if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not married to Pastor Dennis,” she said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“So who’s he to say what goes on in our bed?”
“It’s not just him, honey. It’s in the Scriptures.”
“Jerk!”
She snatched the lube off the table and threw it at him, harder than he expected. He barely managed to get his hand up in time to deflect it. “Hey,” he said. “Take it easy.”
“Go to hell, Tim.”
“I really don’t see why you’re so upset.”
She glared at him, her eyes full of pain.
“I can’t believe you’re such a baby. You think I don’t fantasize about other men?”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. But I don’t go crying to Pastor Dennis about it. You know why?”
Tim shook his head.
“Because I love my husband,” she told him. “And all I ever wanted was for him to love me back. But he couldn’t do it.”
Tim didn’t dispute this.
“You never did, did you?” For some mysterious reason, she was smiling, as if this knowledge brought her some kind of sad pleasure. “You never loved me one bit.”
“I—” Tim began, but he faltered. “I’m trying, Carrie. I’m trying to be a good husband.”
“Trying to do your Christian duty?” she taunted.
“That’s not fair,” he told her. “I’m really working at this.”
She shook her head, slowly and for a long time. Tim felt as though some terrible judgment were being passed, and understood that there probably wouldn’t be an appeal.
“If you loved me,” she said, “it wouldn’t seem like such a chore.”