APORKALYPSE NOW, by Gale Albright

My husband was in the garage playing with one of his things.

“Fred, why don’t you quit playing with those things and come in to dinner?” I asked, sticking my head around the laundry room door. “I fixed some real nice pork chops.”

“Quit calling them things,” he said. “They’re bicycles.”

He was sitting in front of his red bicycle with a toothbrush in his hand.

I laughed. “What are you doing, brushing its teeth?”

“I’m cleaning the wheel spokes. They get road film when I ride.” He dipped the brush in a bucket of sudsy water and kept stroking those spokes.

“Why don’t you use the hose? That’ll take all night. The chops will get cold.”

“I want to finish this. You go ahead without me.”

I shut the door and went back to the kitchen. The golden-brown pork chops, the black-eyed peas swimming in bacon, the buttery, garlicky mashed potatoes all just sat there, turning to ice.

He could be such a jerk. It would serve him right if I sat down and ate the whole dinner all by myself and left Mr. Bicycle Thing to starve. He had four bikes. Was he going to clean them all tonight?

An hour and forty-five minutes later, well after dark, Fred came in the house. He was filthy, as usual, after playing with his things. Excuse me, bicycles.

“Well, did you finish brushing the bicycle’s teeth? Did it need some mouthwash, too?”

He didn’t answer me. I was sitting in my recliner, trying to watch my favorite reality show. He made a bunch of noise in the sink, splashing around, using that Lava soap he kept by my liquid Dawn.

“If you’re looking for dinner, I put it up. I was afraid it would go bad,” I said. “It is summer, you know.”

“Yeah. And you keep this house freezing with the air conditioning, so what’s the difference? We might as well be living in the Arctic.”

I gritted my teeth and decided to play nice. “You want me to microwave you some dinner?”

Fred shook his head and dried off his filthy arms with one of my mother’s best dish towels.

“No, I’ll have a power shake. I’m not really that hungry. I keep telling you, pork’s bad. Too much fat clogs your arteries. I want to quit eating meat.”

The four pork chops I’d eaten rumbled in my stomach. Quit eating meat!

It was that damn bike riding that put these crazy ideas in his head. Ever since he started reading bicycle magazines he’d talked about going vegetarian. He e-mailed me articles from so-called health experts. They told you to drink ninety quarts of water a day, pump iron, and eat brown rice.

Fred proceeded to grind up frozen blueberries, flax meal, yeast, lecithin, and soy milk in the blender, ruining the climax of my show with all that crunching and whirring. Then he strolled in with a brimming glass of foamy pink stuff, sat in his recliner and promptly changed the channel.

“What are you doing? Cherie is about to tell all the other girls how Mona is messing around with her husband, and now you’ve spoiled it.”

“I need to see who won today’s stage of the Tour de France,” said Fred, fiddling with the remote. “You can watch that silly housewife stuff anytime.”

This was too much. First he scorned my nice dinner, forced me to pig out on pork, then he messed up my show’s season finale and said I kept the house too cold.

“You’ve gone nuts ever since that quack doctor said your cholesterol was too high,” I snapped, jumping out of my recliner. “Now all you can think about is riding bicycles. You spend more time with those bikes than you do with me!”

Fred got one of those long-suffering looks on his face. “Faye, I’ve asked you if you want to get a bicycle. I’ve asked you to take walks with me.”

“It’s too hot to get out there and walk.”

“We can get up early and walk.”

“I need my sleep. I don’t want to get up early. Why don’t you stay home and watch TV with me? You can always take more pills for that cholesterol. You’re not a spring chicken. You’re supposed to have high cholesterol.”

“I don’t want to have a heart attack. If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t be cooking pork.” Then he turned up the volume.

I ran to my bathroom, turned on the fan, and screamed into my fluffy bath sheet. “Damn you, Fred! Damn you!”

I walked back and forth in front of the TV, hoping Fred would comment on my tear-swollen face. He kept dodging around me, waving the remote.

“Hey, I’m trying to watch this,” he said.

I stomped into the bedroom and slammed the door. I sat on the bed. Then I got up and slammed the door again. I hoped Fred would get the message. I was hurt.

But it didn’t work. I lay down and tossed and turned for hours. How dare he pretend I didn’t care about him? Of course I did. I’d eaten pork all my life and it hadn’t hurt me. Real men ate meat. They didn’t drink pink shakes.

When I woke, the bedside alarm clock said 2 a.m. Fred lay beside me, snoring. Wide awake, I got up and went to the kitchen. I took the dinner I had saved for Fred out of the refrigerator and put it in the microwave. Then I proceeded to eat four more pork chops and all the rest of the mashed potatoes and black-eyed peas. Then I opened a package of chocolate-marshmallow trail mix and ate every last bite.

I sat out on the back porch and watched the sun come up.

My stomach ached and my eyes were sore from crying.

I had had enough.

“What are you doing out here?”

I almost fell off the porch swing. Fred was staring at me from the back door.

“I couldn’t find you anywhere,” he said. “I was worried.”

He was worried? Fred was worried about me? My heart gave a leap.

“I, uh, I must have nodded off.”

Then I noticed he was dressed in stretchy black bike shorts and a yellow jersey, one of those silly shirts with three pockets in the back.

“You were worried about me but you took time to put on your bike clothes first?”

He looked at me like I had an extra eye in my head. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You know I ride every morning before it gets too hot.” He shook his head and went back in the kitchen.

I followed him inside. He was drinking another one of those pink foamy power shakes. He had made a pot of coffee.

I knew I should keep my mouth shut. But I couldn’t. “You were worried about me but you stopped to make a pot of coffee and a shake and put on your bike clothes? What if I’d been kidnapped?”

“Don’t be silly, Faye. Why would you be kidnapped? Do I look like Donald Trump? I don’t have any ransom money. I’m retired.”

He finished his drink, wiped off the pink, foamy mustache with the back of his hand, and tromped across the living room. He was wearing those bicycle cleat shoes.

“You shouldn’t wear those in the house!” I shouted.

Fred fastened on his bike helmet and paused at the front door. “Why don’t you calm down and drink some coffee? Have you thought about getting back on those anti-depressants?”

Then he slammed the door. I heard those little cleats on his bike shoes going click click click on the driveway.

I sank down in my recliner. Anti-depressants, my ass! It was Fred’s fault I had that little nervous breakdown a few years ago. He had railroaded me into the state hospital with all those lies about my so-called “unstable” behavior. If I was acting crazy, it was his fault.

I tried to be the best wife I could. Cooked my man pork chops and mashed potatoes, kept the house clean, washed his clothes, made his dental appointments. I had even forgiven him for having me locked up. And this was the thanks I got.

* * * *

A few days later Fred said he was going to join a neighborhood bike riding club. “The local peloton,” he said, grinning.

The peloton! The word reminded me of penguins. It was a foreign word, of course, everything to do with bicycles was foreign. Whatever happened to those nice Schwinn bikes everybody rode when I was a kid? We didn’t have to worry about gears. Now you had to have special clothes, helmets, shoes, and a degree in math just to work those gears. And if you wanted to brake, you had to use the handlebars, not your feet.

The first time Fred persuaded me to get on one of his bikes, I ran right into a mailbox and broke my pinky finger.

“Why didn’t you steer away from the box?” he said, picking me up off the ground.

“I couldn’t stop. The damn bike wouldn’t stop. I kept reversing the pedals and the bike wouldn’t stop!”

The neighbor next door paused in his weeding to watch the show.

“How many times have I told you? The brakes are on the handlebars. How hard can it be?”

I was sobbing by this time. I clutched my hurt finger and shouted, “It’s not American! It’s not American!”

He did take me to the doc in the box and they put a splint on my finger. After that, I refused to go anywhere near those bicycles. A person could get killed.

Anyway, back to the peloton. The neighborhood peloton. All that meant was a bunch of middle-aged men got together and rode down the road, messing up traffic, acting like teenagers instead of driving a car like God intended. And that peloton is a French word. For a gang of guys riding bicycles.

They started meeting on Tuesday nights that summer. Fred didn’t get home until after dark. That was okay with me. I could sit and watch anything on TV I wanted and eat as much meat as I felt like without being lectured. Fine, let him go out and fool around. I was glad he was out of my hair.

Then they started meeting on weekends, early in the morning.

“We’re riding down to Pecan Grove and back today,” he told me one Saturday as the sun was rising. I was bleary and confused. It was way too early to get up.

“Pecan Grove! That’s twenty miles away. That’s a forty-mile round trip. On bicycles?”

He grinned. “No problem. It’ll be great. Next month we’re going to ride to San Marcos.”

He had lost his mind. He was a retired accountant, not a young stud.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” I said.

“Nope, I’m in the best shape of my life, Faye.” He fastened his helmet and grabbed a sack of bananas and bagels. “You ought to try it. Women who ride bikes have nice tight butts.” And with that, he left.

Nice tight butts?

I ran out the front door and flagged him down before he cleared the driveway. He paused, balancing on the bike like some kind of ballerina, and lifted his eyebrows.

“You’re in your nightgown, Faye.”

“Are there women in your group?”

He stared at me for a moment. “Well, sure, a few.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He laughed. “Tell you what? Get back inside and get dressed, for God’s sake. See you later.”

“When later?”

But he was gone, pedaling away, happy as a clam. My next-door neighbor had come out to get the morning paper. He took one look at me and fled back to his house.

I looked down. It was a sheer nightgown and of course I wasn’t wearing any underwear. How embarrassing. It was Fred’s fault I was becoming the talk of the neighborhood.

All day long I couldn’t get it out of my head. Nice tight butts. Nice tight butts. Over and over again, like an evil mantra. Nice tight butts.

I took off my nightgown and put on a pair of yellow Capri pants and a matching shirt. I looked in the full-length mirror on the bedroom closet door. I turned around and looked over my shoulder. At my butt. My wobbly, untight butt.

I was a retired office worker. I’d spent most of my time sitting behind a desk banging away on a computer. Of course my butt wasn’t tight. Now that I was retired, I shouldn’t have to worry about my butt. Why couldn’t I get fat and happy in my golden years? And why couldn’t Fred get fat and happy along with me?

It made me so mad I had to go to the grocery store and fight all the Saturday shoppers. By the time I was through and had almost run over three idiots who didn’t seem to notice I was trying to back out of my parking space, I had had it. When I got home I cranked the AC to 68 degrees and opened a gallon of Blue Bell Pistachio Almond ice cream and went to town. I turned on the TV and watched a marathon of Real Housewives of Atlanta until I passed out on the couch.

When I woke up it was almost dark. I heard laughing outside on the front porch. I staggered to my feet and went to the door. Where was Fred? He’d been gone for hours.

When I opened the door, there was Fred and a bunch of other people. Well, not a bunch. There were two men and a woman. A girl, really. They were all wearing those tight black shorts. Their bikes were lying right on my front lawn.

Fred said, “I told the guys they could get some ice water for the road.”

The two men shook my hand and followed Fred to the kitchen, holding their water bottles. The girl stayed on the porch with me. She must be one of their daughters. She was blonde and blue-eyed with a dark tan and very white teeth.

“Hi, Faye,” she said, “I’m Sherri. It’s nice to meet you. I asked Fred where he was hiding his wife.” She laughed.

I didn’t know what was so funny about that. She needed to be careful with all that sun exposure. When she smiled I saw little crinkles around her eyes and mouth. That’s what riding bikes did to you. I bet she’d look like a real hag by the time she got to be my age.

“So, Sherri, are you riding with your dad and his friends today?” I was making polite conversation. I don’t know why she laughed so hard.

“Oh, Faye. What a sweetheart you are. I retired from the post office last year. I’m the same age as the other guys in the peloton. Maybe a little older!”

She went inside to get some water. I was stunned. That tanned skinny blonde was MY age? No way. No way in hell.

I told myself, don’t do it. Don’t do it, Faye. But I had to.

I followed her into the kitchen and looked at her butt.

At her nice tight butt.

* * * *

After the little peloton had left with their filled-up water bottles, Fred glared at me.

“What in hell happened to you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You have green crap all over your shirt. And on your face, for God’s sake. What did you do, take a bath in ice cream?”

He pointed at the empty gallon of pistachio ice cream on the kitchen table.

Had I really eaten the whole thing?

I ran and looked at myself in the hall mirror. Oh, my God, Fred was right. I looked like a kid at a birthday party. My face got red. What those people must have thought. Then I got mad again.

“It’s your fault,” I said, stomping into the bedroom where he was removing his bike shorts. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing company over!”

He turned on the shower and stepped in. “Well, hell, I didn’t think you’d be covered in ice cream. I was kind of embarrassed.”

My rage went through the roof. I jerked back the shower curtain and started screaming at him, while he stood there, helpless, with soap in his eyes.

“I embarrass you! You’re the one who rides around in those stupid clothes on your stupid bikes! Most real men watch football on TV!”

He rinsed the soap out of his eyes and turned off the spray. “Why should I watch TV? I’m trying to take care of myself. Maybe you should get off your fat ass and do something instead of eating a whole gallon of ice cream.”

“I bet you don’t think that skinny blond bitch has a fat ass!”

Fred wrapped a towel around his waist and left the bathroom. “Don’t say anything about her,” he snarled, as he grabbed for his clothes. “Sherri is not a bitch.”

“Oh, what is she now? Your girlfriend? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re screwing around on me with that bicycle bitch!”

Fred finished dressing and pushed me aside—literally, he pushed me—and headed toward the front door, grabbing his wallet and car keys on the way.

“If only I was that lucky, but she’s already got a husband. If she gave me the green light, I’d be all over her.”

I followed him outside, screaming at the top of my lungs. “You’re going to see her, aren’t you! AREN’T YOU?” I picked up a rock by the flowerbed and threw it as hard as I could. It smacked him right on the back of his head. He staggered, then whirled around.

Fred looked so mean I was scared. And I’d never been scared of Fred before.

“You crazy bitch! I hope you choke to death on your own pork!”

He got in his car, slammed the door, and peeled out of the driveway like a maniac.

“I hope you die! I hope you die!” I screamed. “You stay away from her!”

The next door neighbor and his wife stared at me from their flower bed.

“Why don’t you people get a life?”

I went back in the house, sobbing and screaming until I got sick. I barely made it to the bathroom in time. Ice cream is nasty coming back up.

Looking down at that green puke, I had my light bulb moment.

Fred was going to leave me for Bicycle Barbie. He was in love with her. I kept hearing his words over and over again. About how if she gave him the green light he’d be all over her. But Sherri was married. Maybe she was going to leave her husband. She was nothing but a home-wrecking bitch.

Then I remembered what he said after I hit him with the rock, how he hoped I choked to death on my own pork.

He wanted me dead.

I wasn’t crazy. I knew the score. I had watched plenty of those TV shows about husbands killing their wives so they could marry another woman. If Fred watched more TV he’d know that I wasn’t as dumb as he thought. I was on to him.

It was him or me.

The next couple of days were hard. Fred treated me like I was some kind of wild animal that ought to be locked up. He slept in the guest room. That is, when he was home. I tried to tone it down, put on a smiley face and act like everything was normal. All the while, deep inside, I was screaming.

I never realized Fred was such a psycho son of a bitch. He acted so ordinary. But I had seen these TV shows where everybody thought the husband was a real nice guy, and then look at what he did. I wasn’t fooled. The scales had fallen from my eyes.

The third day after I hit Fred with the rock, I got home from the grocery store and saw the message light blinking on the phone. Fred was out in the garage playing with his bikes, so I pushed the button.

“Mr. Lawson, this is Marty Farr with Downtown Condos. I have a couple of nice prospects I’d like to show you. I bet you’ll like them a lot better than the other ones we’ve looked at.”

I erased the message. So, it had come to this. He was looking for a place to live. With that Sherri, no doubt. Probably one of those luxury condos with giant bathtubs and vibrating mattresses and mirrored ceilings.

How could he pay for it? I knew. Over my dead body was how.

I had another thought that almost brought me to my knees. If he wanted a condo, he was going to sell our home. Fred and I had lived here ever since we got married. We had been happy together back then. How did it all go so wrong? How could I live without him?

I looked at myself in the mirror. “Stop that lip trembling, Faye,” I said. “You’ve got to be strong. You weren’t raised to be a quitter. You got to fight fire with fire. You got to strike first. It’s justifiable homicide. Hell, it’s self-defense.” I watched those NCIS shows and knew all the legal talk.

I had to be smarter than Fred. For my plan to work, I had to fool him.

He kept flinching whenever he saw me, so it was hard to be patient and pretend that everything was okay. Finally, a few nights after the big blow up, I went to the store and brought home some vanilla-flavored soy milk, chocolate-flavored soy milk, frozen blueberries, and frozen strawberries. I unpacked them on the kitchen table, while he looked on in astonishment.

“Oh, Fred, honey,” I said, “I bought these for a peace offering. I know I’ve been kind of… well, kind of out of control lately. And I want to make up for it. I think it’s great that you’re making these smoothie things and staying away from pork. I just want to say I’m sorry.”

His eyes were like big moons in his face. “Really?’ he croaked.

I lowered my eyes and hung my head. “Oh, yes, honey. I don’t know what got into me. I called the doctor and I’m going to see about getting back on those anti-depressants.” It really galled me to suck up to Fred like this, but I had to get his guard down. After all, I was dealing with a psychopath. It was like playing patty cakes with Hannibal Lecter.

His face kind of melted. “Faye, do you really mean it? I… I can’t believe it.”

I knew I had him then. He had bitten on the hook and I was ready to reel him in. I wanted to pump my fist in the air and holler “Gotcha!” but I kept my head down and looked sad.

“I want you to be happy, Fred,” I said, all soft and sweet.

He was kind of wary, but I just talked to him soft and slow, batting my eyes and acting all lovey-dovey.

He was nervous. He still didn’t trust me, but I gritted my teeth and kept on playing along, acting like Betty Homemaker. I even started drinking some of those horrible pink smoothies with him, and asking if he thought I should get a bike. He actually seemed kind of happy about it. Lord, he was such a deceiver! If I didn’t know he was screwing around with Sherri and plotting to kill me, I’d almost believe he was sincere.

A few times I almost caved and decided maybe he was a nice guy and maybe I should get a bike, but my inner voice kept telling me to beware. I had to remember all those TV shows about evil husbands and how the trusting wife found out the truth too late. My only hope of survival was to make one of those preemptive strikes.

Since I’d started listening to Fred instead of shutting him out, I learned he and the peloton were going to ride down Route 391 on Saturday and then take the Loop around to the highway. He said they might not get home until after dark, but they’d have their bike lights on. I tucked that information away. You bet I did. A plan had formed in my mind.

All you had to do was look in the newspaper and read how people on bicycles got hit by cars. It happened almost every day. So I figured that come Saturday evening, when it was dusk, and the peloton was out on the Loop, it would be a good time to make that preemptive strike.

I asked Fred to show me where the peloton was going to ride, acting like I was interested in what the hell he was doing, and he seemed pleased.

We drove out in the country, where Fred showed me the bicycle route. The Loop itself, especially the part near the bird sanctuary, was nothing but fields and big trees, no houses, no street lights, hardly any traffic. Yes, it was a good place.

There were a few moments when I had doubts, but I kept giving myself pep talks. I was not going to be Fred’s victim. All I had to do was think of that bitch with those sun wrinkles and tight butt taking my place, and I turned as cold as ice. There would be no mercy.

When Fred left to meet with the peloton on Saturday afternoon, he kissed me goodbye. I told him to have a good time. He smiled and said he’d take me shopping for a woman’s bike next week. I grinned and kissed him back.

The last kiss.

The Judas kiss.

* * * *

It was dusk when I got in my SUV and backed out of the driveway. People were in their back yards grilling (pork, probably) or inside watching ball games on TV. Even my nosy next-door neighbors were nowhere to be seen.

I watched the odometer like a hawk as I drove through town, hit the access road on the Interstate, and got onto 391. The light was fading. I could see the first fireflies blinking. A rusty old pickup passed me, headed for the highway. Then nothing.

It was almost dark when I turned into the Loop. Tree branches hung down like grasping hands along the narrow, twisting road. Slow down, slow down, I told myself. When I came around a sharp curve, I saw two people riding bicycles just ahead of me on the right shoulder.

I turned off my headlights and slowed down, trying to creep up behind them. I squinted, trying to see in the fading light. A man and a woman were riding side by side. I could only see them from the back, but I knew who they were. The woman had blond hair showing beneath her helmet.

It was Fred and Sherri, together! He had lied about the peloton. It was just the two of them. I bet they were laughing right now, talking about how happy they’d be when Fred killed me and got the insurance money so they could live happily ever after. Well, horsepower trumped bike power. Filled with an inner glow of righteous rage, I rammed my foot all the way down on the accelerator, and aimed straight toward those nice tight butts.

I slammed the SUV right into them.

I almost plunged into the ditch, but managed to fight the vehicle back onto the road. Something was hanging on to my front bumper, dragging on the pavement. In a panic, I hit the accelerator. When I whipped around a sharp corner, whatever it was fell off. I turned my lights back on. I was shaking so hard the SUV was all over the road. I almost rammed into a fence.

When I got back to my neighborhood, I forced myself to drive real slow. I pulled up in the driveway. I got out of the SUV and looked at the front bumper. Oh, my God! It was a mess. There was cloth and metal and the grill was twisted and red yucky stuff was all over the place. Trembling, I opened the garage. Fred kept all his damn bicycles in there so I had to park on the driveway most of the time. I needed to keep anybody from seeing the front of the car, at least until I could get it repaired somewhere out of town.

I ran in there like a crazy woman, grabbing bikes and shoving them across the garage. I dragged them and kicked them, trying to make space for my car. The SUV was still running in the driveway. I had to hide it fast.

Sweating and shaking, I got in the car and started to inch my way into the garage.

WHAM! WHAM!

Something slammed into my driver’s side window.

I screamed.

It was Fred! He raised his fist and slammed the glass again.

I rolled down the window.

“What the hell have you done to my bikes?”

Red and blue lights were flashing in my rearview mirror. The neighbors must be wondering why the police were in their nice, quiet neighborhood.

“F-Fred, I thought you were with the peloton,” I managed to whisper.

“We finished early,” he said, shaking his head slowly, looking at his bikes lying all mangled up on the garage floor. “I stopped by the barbecue place and got some of those baby back ribs you like so much… with potato salad and banana pudding… and stuff.”

Car doors slammed behind me. I heard footsteps on the driveway.

My husband was staring at the front bumper of the SUV. He gave me one of those “you-must-be-crazy” looks he was so good at.

The son of a bitch had brought me pork. Just the kind I liked. Full of cholesterol.

I was right all along. He did want me dead.