forty-two

Huey, the programming man-child, dug into a pancake the size of a laptop and considered my question. We were in the cafeteria in the Waltham building, an airy expanse where you could get a bite to eat and listen to the water rushing in the fountain. Huey was making short work of his pancake, and I tweeted his success while I let the silence build:

Man vs. Food. @hueybigdog 1, Pancake 0.

Huey asked, “What did you tweet?”

“I gave you props for showing your pancake who’s boss.”

“Thanks.”

“But you still haven’t answered my question. Where did people get this idea that Alice and Carol were lovers?”

“I don’t know,” said Huey. “Suddenly it just seemed that guys were talking about Alice and Carol.”

“Come on, dude. That kind of thing doesn’t just start up. There must have been a trigger. Did you guys go out drinking or something?”

Huey shifted his girth in the small aluminum chair. If I had ever had doubts about the tensile strength of aluminum, they were gone. Still, the chair seemed burdened. He shifted back. Huey was uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just the chair. He wolfed some more pancake. Somewhere above us, Jael was watching.

“You’ve got some on your mouth,” I said, and pointed to the corner of my own mouth. Huey’s tongue flicked out and nabbed a syrup-soaked crumb.

Huey looked at the floor and said, “Sorry, man, I can’t help you.”

“Bullshit. You’re a crappy liar. That’s why they don’t let you in front of customers.”

“I’m not lying,” he whined.

“It’s all over your face.”

“I got that piece.”

“Not the crumb. The lying. You should never play poker. Now tell me who started the rumors about Carol.”

Huey shifted in his seat again. He tore at his pancake, gulped a chunk of it, drank some Diet Coke, and rubbed his hand down his face. Then he leaned close and said conspiratorially, “All right. I think I started it.”

“What? How? Why?”

“Look, I just want you to know that I don’t look at porn all the time.”

I said, “OK.”

“But you know, while I’m waiting for the computer to do something and have nothing else to do …”

“You don’t do it on company computers, do you?”

Huey looked at me like I had just suggested that he wore his pants inside out.

“Of course not. I have an Android tablet. I steal WiFi from the office next door. They use WEP, so it’s easy to hack.”

Huey was right. Using WEP security was like hiding your house key above the doorframe. I said, “So you’ve got your own little porn thing going? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Huey shifted again, creaking his seat. He stopped making eye contact.

He said, “I’m not proud of it. I just like certain things. You know. Specific things.”

“What? Whipped cream or something?”

“No,” he said softly, poking at his food.

I thought of the pictures of Alice and guessed, “Bondage?”

Huey’s face went red under his beard. He looked miserable.

I chucked him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t sweat it, man. Everybody’s got something.” Something occurred to me. “It’s just porn, right? You don’t do anything, do you? Like with Alice?”

Huey’s eyes shot up and locked on to mine. “You mean about killing her with duct tape? No! Of course not. It’s just porn.”

“Then what’s this got to with anything?”

“It’s got to do with those rumors about Alice and Carol. There’s this—” Huey’s eyes flicked up and over my shoulder, and widened.

“They weren’t rumors.” The British accent cut through the room. “Your wife was a lesbian, and a hot one at that.”

I knew that voice. Roland was standing over us. I stood and faced him. He was wearing a black MantaSoft-logo shirt and black pants.

I said, “Roland, you stylish devil. You matched your colors today. Was it for me?”

Roland took a step closer and said, “Laugh it up, wanker. Your wife had given up on you. You put her off the entire male sex.”

The people around us stopped talking. Roland and I were standing in the middle of the cafeteria, nose to nose. It was breakfast time, and the place was full. The clanking of glasses and chatting died away.

“How the fuck would you know?” I asked.

Roland said, “I know because there were three of us in that room. It was incredible.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Am I? I suppose I should offer proof.”

“I suppose you should shut your mouth.”

Roland leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “When did Carol get that lovely tattoo on her ass? What was it? A lizard?”

It had been a gecko. Carol had gotten it just after we were engaged. She said it would be our “saucy little secret.”

Roland continued in a septic whisper, “She had an amazing set of tits. Real ones. You would have been a lucky man if you had been getting any. It’s a shame your work interfered.”

Then I left my body as something else took over. I watched, like a spectator, as I shoved Roland in the chest with both hands. He took a step back to regain his balance. The people around us stood and formed a circle. It was like a fight at the ball game.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Truth hurts, doesn’t it? It just burns you that someone else was seeing her naked. Touching her tits.”

I stepped close and said quietly, “Did you fuck her?”

Roland smiled, his bad teeth jutting like tombstones.

He said through rank breath, “I did much worse.”

That’s when I hit him. I’d never hit anyone in my life, but I balled up my fist and took a swing. It landed on his cheek, and his head snapped sideways. He looked at me with pure hatred and grabbed at me. I grabbed him back, leaned my weight to the right, and then when he resisted, I pushed to the left and threw him into the fountain like a sack of shit.

The crowd surged in. People bumped and jostled me as they went to help Roland out of the fountain. Then Huey was next to me. He said, “Get out! Get out before they call the cops.”

I took his advice, turned, and left. I walked straight out of the cafeteria, took a right, and walked down the hallway. The commotion in the cafeteria faded away, and I was walking past offices. My cell phone rang. It was Jael.

“Meet me in front. I am in the car,” she said. God, she’s fast.

I walked out through the front doors feeling light and elated. I was coming to the end of a long dream, and better days lay ahead. I floated down the front steps of the office building toward her Acura MDX, which idled in the visitor lot.

Jael jumped out of her car and rushed around to embrace me. She pressed her left hand into my back and her right hand into my side. I raised my arms to hug her back. She said, “You are bleeding.”

I looked down. Blood trailed down my side, soaking my T-shirt and smearing my jeans.

I said, “Holy shit. I’m bleeding.”