Page 32 of His Last Wife

Val heard a weak voice that sounded something like a little girl inside of her say no. But it was barely audible, just barely. Val knew what she was supposed to do then. She quieted the little girl and told herself this was what she had to do. What she’d always done.

“You taking me home, Daddy?” she purred in Chuck’s ear so sensuously he blushed and stuttered out a response that made him sound like a teenage boy preparing for his first orgasm with a pretty girl. Val loved that reaction. It reminded her of how every man she ever met used to respond to her. Blushing and stuttering. Jamison had been that way once too when she had her stiletto in his mouth.

“Ho—ho—ho—home?”

“Yes, Daddy?” She looked into his eyes. “I’m kind of tired of this scene.”

“Ho—home. O-o-o-kay. I need to come clean about something right now,” Chuck said, starting a rehearsed excuse as to why he couldn’t have a woman at his place—and not one bit included the fact that there was a petite blonde with his last name waiting inside.

He asked if they could go to “Cinnamon’s” place and she came up with her own list of excuses that included a busted pipe and dead cat. Then there was talk of a hotel. Chuck said he’d need to go to the ATM to get some cash to pay for a room. He asked if they could go someplace outside of the city, outside of the perimeter. Val laughed and said, “I’ll go anywhere with you, Daddy.”

The sex was uneventful. There was probably a better word to describe it, but even taking the time to think up one would give the sad series of bedroom fumbles too much energy. Suffice it to say, it was at every possibility a waste of gas, money, hotel-room time, and even the walk of shame through the hotel lobby to get to the room.

First, Chuck couldn’t get out of his pants. Val laid on the bed in bright-red lace crotchless panties, spread-eagle and watching this man stumble to get down to his boxers, which were some cheap, checkered Walmart discount undies that made him look fifty pounds overweight.

Then he tiptoed to the bed, making promises about everything he was going to do to Val—where he was going to put his penis and how he was going to “pound” it into her and make her scream for “mercy.” And he did put it here and there and pound it all around.

And Val responded with the requisite “Give it to me, Daddy” and “Harder” and “Oh, baby, yeah.”

When it was done, when Chuck was done flipping Val all around and pretending he was a porn star, he put her on her back and hunched over her like they were their most primitive selves, having sex in a cave with animal sketches on a wall. He heaved and thrust, dug his knuckles into the sheet and then just suddenly fell into Val’s legs, wrapped around so hard he could’ve broken them both off.

That was it.

Val as Cinnamon laid there in the middle of the bed with bleached, white sheets strewn all around for no good reason and the district attorney already passed out between her legs. His stinking spit oozed out onto her breasts as he fell into a deep, coma-like sleep.

Val peered up at the dusty chandelier that looked maybe too grand to be in the dank hotel room Chuck drove right to out by the airport. Those cries of no from the soft voice inside were growing louder and sounding so sad, hurt, betrayed.

“Just do it,” she said to herself. “Get it over with.”

Val laid there for a minute until Chuck started snoring and talking in his sleep, then she dragged herself from beneath his body and stood over him, looking. She held her cell phone in her hand with the camera focus pointed at his naked, pimpled black behind. She left the hotel room with fifty self-styled pictures presenting various levels of incrimination. That and the platinum wedding band she found in his pants pocket.

When Val pulled into the driveway in the back of the house that always made her remember Jamison, she was shaking and a crying mess. While the little excitement she’d felt capturing the DA in some act that would have him ready to do anything she requested, made her feel like she’d really done something special as she strutted out to her car in the hotel parking lot, by the time she made it to the highway to head home, she regretted something. Not necessarily that she’d slept with him. But something. Like that she could do it. That people could expect that from her. That it was her part.

She went back to the question she’d asked herself on the couch before she’d went to the hotel. Who was she? Who was Val? And why was she always in this position?

Those tears came out so easily with no one other than her to see them. Then, sobbing like a baby pulled from her mother’s breasts just when she was about to fall asleep, Val banged on the steering wheel and cried out, “Why?”

There was no black truck waiting in the driveway. No mother snooping in the window.

Val looked at both empty places and felt the despair of loneliness. Nothing seemed attached to her in any way. Not even her own hands on the steering wheel. She looked at them. They were removed. Away. Disconnected. Just not there for her. Then she sensed that maybe she wasn’t real. Maybe none of this was. It was all a dream. She wanted it to just go away. All of it. And herself too. Go away with her baby into the dark night.

More tears were falling and Val was about to scream out for anyone to hear her when two lights pulled into the driveway of the little mansion. They glowed like stars hanging down so close on the Earth.

These were the headlights on that black truck.

Val jumped out of her car. She ran to the truck. When Ernest got out, her arms were reaching toward him.

“What is it? What?” Ernest asked. He opened his arms and let Val and her worries crash into his massive covering. And he held her.

“I’m here. I’m here, baby. I’m here,” he assured Val, though she hadn’t said a word. “I got you. I told I’m going to be here, right? You don’t have to cry.”

He rocked her in his arms and repeated his soothing words.

“Where were you?” Val asked through crying, like he’d always been there and she hadn’t just banished him hours ago.

“I was thirsty. I went to get a slurpee. Had some onion rings too,” Ernest said nonchanclantly, but Val could tell he said it to make her laugh.

In his arms, she looked up at him.

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