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Mason
I’d laid a trap for her.
The next morning, she came in just as I expected her to at the crack of dawn with a laundry basket wedged beneath her arm. I’d told her the night before, casually, over an ice-cold frozen dinner she’d plopped down in front of me, that my sheets hadn’t been washed in God knows how long. I’d lain awake for her practically the whole night waiting for her to take the bait.
It was quarter to five when the door creaked open. It all went beautifully. Perfectly. Could not have been better. Rachel attacked the fitted sheet without preamble. Wrenched it from beneath the mattress. Yanked it up. And sent my Miss Last Night rolling right off the edge of the bed!
“Darling,” she said later over breakfast (an English muffin burnt to such a crisp that the whole thing disintegrated the second I tried to butter it).
“Yes, darling,” I replied.
“Maybe you can tell me when you plan to have company over,” she said, scraping a plastic plate in the sink so hard that it snapped in two.
I grinned as I scooped up my English muffin ashes with a spoon meant for the marmalade. “I thought you knew.”
Actually I’d made Miss Last Night play a fun little game where we couldn’t make any noise at all just so that Rachel would be surprised.
“It’s really no problem,” Rachel said, “it’s just that I’m not used to seeing a stranger’s pussy before my morning coffee.”
She came over to kiss the top of my head and in the process put her dripping wet yellow gloves on my shoulders. I hissed at the cold water seeping into my skin. One point to wifey.
“Oh no, did I get you wet?” she asked, sounding like innocence incarnate.
I replied by standing up and dragging the hem of my t-shirt up over my abs, over my broad shoulders and over my head. I caught Rachel, in her freshly stained apron, staring at me. Point, husband. I flopped the sudsy shirt over Rachel’s shoulder and grinned.
“Not at all,” I said. I added over my shoulder as I was halfway out the kitchen, “Did I get you wet, honey?”
Rachel was smiling, but her eyes were on absolute fire. “Dry as a bone…dear.”
And so the battle went on.
I made sure to have a Miss Last Night there every morning, and Rachel made sure to burn iron marks into every single one of my favourite shirts. I made sure to walk around butt-ass naked as much as possible, and Rachel made sure to cover every inch of herself in the thickest, woolliest, ugliest fabrics known to mankind. I made sure to eat up every little bit of food she put in front of me whether it be burnt, frozen, salted to hell, or dripping in grease, and Rachel made sure to keep it coming.
She replaced my spearmint toothpaste with baking soda quoting it was better for my teeth. She replaced my black briefs with oversized white grandpa boxer briefs quoting it was better for my balls. She replaced my silk sheets with some scratchy natural material quoting it was better for my sleep. I tried to replace her robe with a lacy piece of lingerie, but she found it out in the trash. Point, wife.
Rachel vacuumed multiple times a day, usually when I was tattooing a client. She’d come round right when I was working and say, “Lift.” “Other foot.” “Oh, let me get your stool while I’m here.” I smiled through it all, though with increasingly clenched teeth.
“Thanks, hun!” I’d shout after her as she disappeared into the kitchen, vacuum still whining.
“How long have you been married?” my clients would ask.
I’d sigh and say, “Too fucking long.”
It was all fun and games in the start, but soon tensions began to rise. I wasn’t getting much sleep because of all the extra work I was doing. Yes, work. It was work to go out every night and find a Miss Last Night. It was work to keep her up through the night so that I could be the one to wake Rachel up for once. With moaning. With wall banging. With light fixtures shaking. It was work keeping everything groomed down there so I could wander around the house butt-ass naked. To cross in front of the TV with my cock swinging while she was watching Derry Girls. To plop onto the counter next to her while she was scorching another egg. To scoot a little too close behind her while she was using that goddamn ice pick at two in the fucking morning. It was work replacing all the clothes she ruined. It was work even finding something to wear sometimes since everything was always “being washed”. And it was fucking work trying to smile all the fucking time.
By the end of the first week, I was exhausted. My cheeks hurt (both the ones on my face and the ones on my ass). Rachel was finding new ways to annoy the shite out of me and I was finding new ways not to be annoyed even the tiniest bit by it.
I invited Conor and Rian over for poker night in the hopes that she wouldn’t purposefully ruin dinner, but she burnt the popcorn so bad that she set off the smoke detector. I told her it was fine. Just fine. Fine. Fine. Fucking fine. When I upended the poker table with all its chips, I told her it was an accident and would she mind picking it up like a good wife. And she said it was fine. Just fine. Fine. Fine. Fucking fine.
Her hair was everywhere so the next time I shaved, I left mine everywhere. She was always running the washing machine into the middle of the night, so I fucked Miss Last Night on it and left her panties in the dirty hamper.
But we kept smiling, my wife and I. Through it all we smiled and smiled and smiled. Every morning Rachel chased off Miss Last Night and every day she tried to chase me off.
It felt almost sacrilegious to think this, but I was tiring most of having a different woman each night. Knowing Rachel was down the hall, it was hardest of all to resist the temptation to imagine her in my bed instead. Her in place of Becky or Tina or Lara or whatever her name was. I never thought sex would be the end of me, but I feared it might be.
I jumped eagerly into this war with Rachel, but I soon realised that I hadn’t figured out what I wanted. What spoils would there be for me if I was the victor. For Rachel it was obvious: a divorce. But what about for me? What did I want?
What if it was the one thing I couldn’t have?
Really that’s how wars are lost. The opponent loses first not the battle, but the will to fight. That only happens when there’s nothing left to fight for.
Was that what I was doing?
Fighting when there was nothing left to fight for?
