Well, Damn. We’re Married!

Chapter 1 – The Wife

The Last Coin

Jack looked at his watch, his thumb still on the key in the ignition. Eight o’clock. The second hand was on the twelve as he cut the engine.

He had left at seven twelve. For the drive he allowed forty-five minutes, plus half an hour of buffer, plus a quarter of an hour in case the buffer wasn’t enough.

Today: green at the intersection. Green on the ring road. Green before the bridge.

The garbage truck that usually blocked the right lane at this hour sat idling in a driveway and let him by. A parking spot was open right in front of the entrance.

He got out and looked at the tires. On the left, a hand’s width to the white line. On the right, a hand’s width.

He didn’t pull forward and back one more time.

He locked the car and tugged the door handle. The door stayed shut. He took two steps, turned around, and tugged again.

Locked.

The folder lay on the passenger seat, the meeting on top: nine o’clock. The marketing firm on the third floor. Back rent, no answer to three letters. Jack left it there. He knew it by heart.

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and set off. Forty steps to the streetlamp at the end of the plaza.

He tapped the pole with two fingers and turned around. Forty steps back to the glass door.

The second time he took his hands out of his pockets. The third time he whistled.

The janitor, who was just unlocking the glass door from the inside, left the key in the lock and watched him go.

The overnight drizzle let up. Jack held out his palm, and nothing more came. It smelled of wet asphalt and the exhaust of the buses across the street.

Jack looked up at the sky, gave it a nod, and undid the top button of his coat.

The fourth time, he saw the coffee machine. It stood at the very edge of the plaza, a tin box with scratched Plexiglas and a rust ring around the coin slot. A woman stood in front of it, not moving.

Jack stopped at twenty-eight.

Her coat was threadbare at the hems, the fabric thin but brushed clean. No lint, no stain.

She searched the left coat pocket, then the right, then the left again.

With stiff fingers she pulled out a coin, a single tarnished one, and pushed it into the slot.

Clunk.

Nothing. No whirring. No paper cup dropping into the holder.

She pressed the button. She pressed the coin return.

She patted the Plexiglas with the flat of her hand, not hard, more the way you pat an old dog on the back when he’s just chewed up the carpet. The machine kept the coin.

Her shoulders sagged forward. She leaned her forehead against the pane. Her breath made a small white patch on the Plexiglas, and the patch shrank.

The woman slid slowly down the machine until her knees were on the wet pavement. The worn leather bag slipped off her shoulder and landed in a puddle with a splat.

She left it there.

Jack didn’t put his hands back in his pockets. He read her the way he read every balance sheet. Top to bottom.

Coat: old, cared for.

Nails: short, clean.

Ring finger: a pale strip of skin where a ring had been.

Earlobes: holes. No studs.

Hair: a knot, strands pulled loose by the wind. Dark at the roots, light at the tips, a summer nobody had touched up.

Bottom line: sold everything that could be sold.

The woman froze, one hand still on the Plexiglas. She turned her head.

Her eyes were pale blue, and under the reddened lids they looked paler still. And they were looking at him.

Jack no longer knew which number he’d been on.

Clara clawed her fingers into the fabric of her coat. Is he looking at the dirt on my bag? she thought. Does this amuse him? The fine gentleman in the tailored suit watches me lose my very last coin to a tin box. Go on. Laugh.

“Something to see here?”

Her voice was rough from the cold and had an edge.

“No,” Jack said. “Sorry.”

He turned to the facade and counted the windows on the third floor. Twelve. Behind him came a rustle. The woman got up.

She lifted the bag out of the puddle and shook it out, and the water dripped onto her shoes.

Jack didn’t walk on. He turned halfway toward her.

“I wonder …” he began, “whether you might allow me to invite you to the café over there.” He nodded toward the burgundy awning on the other side of the street.

She opened her mouth.

“Not as charity. As a request. I have another hour before my meeting, and I deeply loathe having to drink my coffee alone.”

She looked at him. The shoes. The coat. The face. The shoes again.

“That’s a lie,” she said.

“Yes,” Jack said.

“You drink your coffee alone every morning.”

“At eight fifty-eight.”

“And today?”

“Today I’m early.”

“How early?”

“An hour.”

“And what do you do with an hour?”

Jack looked toward the streetlamp at the end of the plaza. “Until just now: forty steps there, forty back.”

Behind the glass door, the janitor finally turned the key.

Her fingers let go of the coat fabric.

“As a request,” she repeated.

“As a request.”

She thought about it. Her stomach thought faster.

“One coffee,” she said.

The Scent of Melted Butter

Cashmere coats hung on the coat rack at Café Le Petit. Porcelain clinked inside, and a woman at the window laughed at something on her companion’s phone. Her handbag had a chair of its own.

The waiter at the door looked at Clara’s coat, then at Jack’s coat, then at Clara’s again, and shut his mouth without a word.

Jack walked past the empty tables and held the terrace door open for Clara. Nobody sat outside.

Jack pulled out a chair for her under the heat lamp that glowed orange beneath the awning. From the bright dining room you could only see the terrace if you turned around.

Nobody turned around.