See You on the Other Side (2 page)

“Are there… is there anything that you regret?  You know, about… about our lives?” I asked.  My mouth had gone dry, and my heart was racing, building and building in the speed of its beats until I nearly felt sick.

Karen rolled her eyes and puckered her lips like she was pretending to think about.  Then, before I knew what was happening, she had scooped up a handful of dishsoap foam and blown it into my face.

“Nope,” she grinned.  “Not one.”

With the foam bubbles covering my face and falling down onto my shirt, I was caught somewhere between laughter and rage.  That was what Karen brought out in me-- the very best, and the very worst.  I was left standing there, unsure of how to act for a moment, before a comeback finally came to me.

“I’ll make you regret that,” I said, grinning for the first time in what felt like ages. The plate clattered to the countertop as I leapt toward her, encircling her wrists with my hands and pulling them away from her center, where she had held them so protectively as she roared with laughter.

It struck me as I held her there, closer to her than I had been in a long, long time, that now that I had her, I didn’t know what to do with her.  I’d said I would make her regret, but the way she was looking up at me, brown eyes framed by lashes so long, they’d never needed mascara, that I was the one at the real disadvantage.

And then she kissed me, so softly that it was almost as if our lips hadn’t touched at all.  When she pulled away, all I could think of was how badly I wanted more.

“So what am I supposed to regret?” she asked teasingly.  Her nose wrinkled when she smiled, giving her the devious look of someone who had just done something delightfully bad.

And I couldn’t leave her then.  I didn’t have it in me.  I wasn’t brave enough to contain that longing with the knowledge that I’d never be able to satisfy it ever again.

♦♦♦

Karen left the house the next day to check up on her vet clinic, assuring me that she’d be back later that night.  As soon as her jeep left the drive, Tammy was at the door, ringing the bell impatiently and banging with the knocker.

I’d been working on the painting again, slaving away at the face whose features still seemed to elude me.  It was beginning to take shape again, but I couldn’t envision what the shadows and curves would end up shaped into.  With the way it had been going, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had to trash it again and start over anew once more.

“Why do you keep messing with that thing?” Tammy’s voice called from behind me.  Apparently, she’d let herself in.

“It’s my work,” I said, continuing to study the lines my paints had made.  “I’m not messing with it-- I’m finishing it.”

“Yeah,” she said, slinking over.  Her arms wrapped around my shoulders and I was immediately enveloped in her scent, something floral and expensive and chemical and strong.  “But it’s not like anyone’s gonna buy it, you know.  No market for it anymore.  Apocalypse, remember? So why bother?”

It frustrated me, how little Tammy understood.  I didn’t paint for other people, though that was what had allowed Karen and I to buy such a big, beautiful home, and it was what had put our kids through college.  It wasn’t the money that made painting worth it-- it was the joy of the art.  Monetary rewards were secondary, useful but never my end goal.

“You don’t just get to write off the universe because it’s ending,” I said, and it took me a moment to realize who I was paraphrasing. 
Karen
.  Karen, who had supported me even in the beginning, when my income was nonexistent and my paintings hadn’t been worth the canvas I’d painted them on.

“Ugh,” Tammy sighed, slipping between me and the easel.  “I hate when you get like this.  Shut up and kiss me.”

And then her lips were on mine, hard and hungry, but when her tongue slipped into my mouth I didn’t feel passion, or romance, or desire.  Her tongue was slippery, foreign.  She’d started smoking again.  I could taste the ash on her. 

It made me feel sick.

“God, what is wrong with you today?” Tammy asked, pulling back and looking at me like I’d just called her fat.  “Please at least tell me that Karen’s gone because you told her it’s over.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.  “I haven’t gotten a chance yet.  She’ll be back any minute now.”

It was a lie-- of course it was a lie.  Tammy probably even know I was lying-- I wasn’t a very good liar.  But I said it anyway, hoping that she would go home, desperate to do anything just to get her to leave.  I didn’t want Tammy.  I wanted to paint.

I wanted to hold Karen again.

“Today sucks,” Tammy pouted, strolling through my studio like she had a claim to the place.  “You know I ran out of moisturizer this morning?  Called my Avon lady and she just laughed at me--
Who would deliver it
? she said.  Then I tried everywhere in town-- Walmart, the drug stores, everywhere.  Looters had already ransacked everything, wiped out the whole beauty section-- can you imagine?”  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her open a jar of modge podge, sniff it, and recoil dramatically.  “It’s like, what would anyone do with a whole town’s supply of moisturizer?  Makes me sick, thinking of all of those welfare mommas and crack whores using it up on their nasty skin while I dry out and shrivel up over here.” 

It was true, for what it was worth.  Tammy’s tanning habits had left her skin a lovely shade of light brown, but at a cost.  I had no idea what kind of expensive moisturizers Tammy used to keep her skin looking nice, but without them, she was truly beginning to look her age.

She put the jar back on the shelf, uncapped.  “Do you think that Karen would have anything?”

“Probably not,” I answered honestly.  “She doesn’t really use anything, as far as I can tell.”

In truth, I didn’t really know either way-- but if Karen did have a jar or two up in the closet, then they were Karen’s, not Tammy’s.

Tammy had me.  She wasn’t going to take anything else that belonged to my wife.  I would have to be enough.

“Shame,” Tammy said.  She was walking toward me again, swinging her hips wide and licking her lips like she was trying to be sexy.  “I didn’t just come over here to nag you though, you know.”

“Hmm?” I said.  She was between me and the easel again-- and I felt like I was so close to properly visualizing my intended end result, too.

“Yeah,” Tammy said, breathy and slow.  “I thought maybe, if saying goodbye is becoming hard for you, I’d try to, you know, make things a little easier.”  She dropped to her knees before me and hooked her fingers into the waistband of my sweats.  “Or a little harder, depending on your perspective.”

Her mouth found my cock effortlessly-- how could it not?  I was a man, a man whose upper brain had little to no control over the lower one, and a man whose cock hadn’t seen a woman’s mouth for a long time.  When I’d stopped being interested in Karen, she hadn’t pushed the matter, and apart from the fumbled flirtations with Tammy, I had been too noble-- or too scared-- to seek pleasure elsewhere.  Tammy’s technique was fantastic, flawless even…

But my mind wasn’t on the big fake pout working up and down my shaft.  My mind was on my work, my worries… on my wife, who it seemed I had only just begun to rediscover, who I suddenly missed very, very much.

“Tammy… no.  Not now.  Not like this.” 
Maybe not ever
, I added silently, pushing her away.

I tucked the erection into my waistband and backed away from her, palms flashing in surrender to my higher morals.  Even as I did it, I could see her temper start to boil over.

“Bobby, what the
fuck
,” she said, her volume rising with every word.

“Look, Tammy, I’m sorry.  I just--”

“You just what?!” she shrieked.  “I’m down on my knees with my mouth on your dick and you push me away?  What’s wrong with you?”

“I didn’t--” I stammered, but her fuse was already lit.

“Look, Bobby.  David is already gone.  He left this morning.  There’s nothing left for me here-- nothing but you, and I’m beginning to even question that much.”  She wiped her mouth and rose to her feet. “I’m leaving tomorrow, with or without you.  Either you come to me tonight, or I’m gone.”

I was left speechless as she walked away, out of my house and maybe even out of my life, and she didn’t wait for me to come up with a comeback.

♦♦♦

I started packing my suitcase.

I didn’t love Tammy.  I knew I didn’t love her.  If loving Tammy was the problem, then leaving Karen would have been simple, like closing a boring novel halfway through because you stopped caring whether the characters lived or died.  But I hadn’t packed all of my shirts and pants, socks and boxers into a bag because I loved Tammy.  I did it because I had no other choice. 

The real reason I was leaving was that Karen deserved better.  A real man doesn’t cheat on his wife-- doesn’t even think about doing it.  I could still feel where Tammy’s hands had touched me earlier, and even though I had showered, I still didn’t feel clean.  I wasn’t a man, I was a coward.

I had fucked up.  I had fucked up bad.

I had just reached the top of the stairs when Karen came home.

The sound of dogs barking filled the house as the door slammed shut.

“Bobby?” Karen called.  I could hear her on the landing, trying to wrangle the dogs and hang her purse on the coat hooks by the door.  “Some people abandoned their dogs at the office, so I figured I’d--”

It was then that she saw me standing there at the top of the stairs, my suitcase in one hand and my car keys in the other.  I hadn’t packed any of the things that really mattered to me-- my paints, my camera, my hoard of hardcovers or my italian espresso machine-- just the bare necessities, the things that I had to bring with me to make it until the comet rained fire and brimstone upon the ragged, worthless thing that my life had become.

We stood there for a while, just staring at each other, me at the top of the stairs, her there on the landing.  I kept trying to gauge the expression on her face.  Was she angry?  Surprised?  Hurt?  I had finally settled on an answer-- probably all three-- when she spoke to me.

“So you finally grew the balls to do it,” she said.  Her voice was calm, collected, clear-- all of the things that I had always trusted Karen to be, and none of the things I had expected.

“You… you knew?” I stammered.  I might have had the high ground, but Karen definitely had the upper hand.  This whole time, the hiding, the secrecy, the elaborate lengths I’d gone to keep it from her… and she’d known all along.

I was even more fucked than I had previously imagined.

“A woman always knows,” she said simply.

I watched her sink to the floor slowly, lower herself down onto the bottom step like she’d just finished running a very long race and now it was finally over.  I was so sure that she was broken then, sobbing with her face in her hands as the dogs, a golden retriever, a bulldog and a black lab, all frenzied around her.

And then she proved me wrong again.  When she lifted her head up and looked back at me, there was a smile on her face.  The noises I had mistaken for pathetic sobbing were laughter.

What a fucking woman.

“You didn’t think I knew?” she asked, and then she was coming up the stairs at me with a look in her eyes that was half mad half hysterical.  “Bobby, you’re the most obvious man I have ever met-- how could you possibly think I didn’t know?”

When she reached the top of the stairs, she stood level with me, uncomfortably close and looking me dead in the eyes.  I’d forgotten how tall she was.

I’d forgotten the golden tones that flickered like wild flames in her eyes.

“So, who’s idea was it?” she asked.

How was she so collected, even as I stood there with my suitcase in hand, ready to walk out the door?

“Tammy’s, I’ll take it,” she continued.  “What kind of ultimatum did she give you?  ‘
Leave your wife or else I won’t suck you off anymore
’?”

“She didn’t-- we never--”

“God, Bobby,” Karen sighed.  I watched her breasts heave beneath the thin, worn fabric of her concert t-shirt-- Ozzy Osbourne, 1996.  “You weren’t even fucking her?  I knew you were cheating on me, but I thought you were at least
enjoying
it…”

She looked so goddamn alive like that, caught between anger and exasperation but filtering it all through her firecracker sense of humor and personal brand of zen.  She was better off without me.  I had to keep reminding myself of that.  It was just so damn hard to go, with her standing there looking at me like she didn’t know whether to slit my throat or laugh in my face, but I knew I had to.  I didn’t deserve a woman like that.  I never had.

But when I moved to brush past her, she caught my arm.

“You can leave,” she said like a Queen talking down to a peasant.  “I won’t stop you.  But first, I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” I asked.  God, I was on the verge of tears.  She was better off without me.  Whatever she wanted, I would do it, if it meant that I could just give her back what little time she had left.