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From the top of their narrow street he watched her enter the apartment complex. He couldn’t follow her there. She wouldn’t want to see him, not now, maybe not ever again. He stood outside the apartment entrance and tried to breathe without it hurting, smelling the smoke before he saw the man. Cigar. Its smoker stood in the shadows, but stepped forward as he spoke.
“You have romantic problems?” It was the man from the window, from the apartment opposite. He grinned, white teeth in the dark. “You fight like lovers.”
“We. Yes.” No point hiding it, not with him.
“She is bomb, your woman. She put big hole in your life? Like all beautiful women she is dangerous material. Must be handled carefully.”
“Too late. Boom.” Reid made the motion with his hands. “I fucked it up. I’m out of my depth.” He appealed to the older man. “What do I do? Do I stay in a hotel tonight?”
“Eh, only if you have had enough of her. But a woman like that.” He took a drag on the cigar and laughed.
“There’s never enough.”
“So, so, my friend. You are not married, I think.”
“No. Oh, man, we’re only just beginning. Was that your wife?” He meant in the woman in the window sucking cock and taking it from behind and they both knew it.
“For ten years. She drew,” the man made a heart in the air with the glowing tip of the cigar, “for you.”
“We saw.”
“We are very different. She is a princess and I am a pig. She does not remember why she married me. She tells me this every day.”
“That was the first real fight we’ve had.” The first to make him think he could do something desperate.
“You feel like you’re choking,” the man made a fake coughing sound.
“Yes. I am a pig too.”
T
hat got an arm slung over his shoulder. “You and me, comrades. Men who eat the garnish. It’s our misfortune to love women who deserve the finest.”
That about covered it. “How do I get her back?”
“You get on your belly and crawl because she is worth it. No matter what you did. No matter she is right or wrong, you crawl over glass and shit, you eat your pride, and you make her see you are the wrong one and she is the right one.”
Would that even be enough? Reid moved out of the other man’s hold. “What if she did something and I can’t get past it?”
“Did she fuck some other man?” A guttural grunt. “You know this or crazy thoughts?”
“I don’t know.” It was making him crazy. “No, she wouldn’t, I don’t think. I just need to hear her say it.”
“Comrade, I watched your woman. You know this. She watched me, but she only saw you.”
That went in like a lumbar puncture, an injection of sense to his spinal column. It’s what he’d needed to hear.
“If she kicks, you take it, no pain is too much. If she shouts, you are silent. If she cries, ah, if she cries, then you know you made a proud woman break.” Reid’s neighbor thumped his chest. “And you feel shame. This you must show her or she knows a pig like you isn’t worth her love.”
“Jesus.”
“My wife. We fight a lot. Fuck a lot. I hate her. I love her, it is all the same. I’d die for her.”
It’s how he felt about Zarley. “Let’s assume I get the crawling done. How do I keep her?”
“Ah comrade, I’m a pig, not a man with a couch you can lie on.” He slapped Reid on the back. “Learn how she needs to be loved. Give her that.” He flicked the fiery end of the cigar into the dark and they both watched it disappear. “Good luck, my friend.”
Once the man had gone, Reid walked on past the apartment entrance. He needed a sharp head before he went to Zarley. He walked for thirty minutes and when he was back outside the big blue carriage door he was no clearer about what to say. But the lights were out in the apartment so maybe he’d let her sleep. In the morning things might not seem so dim.
