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“Next time, I’ll bring you some for your own lunch, sir.”
Gus tipped his faded New York Mets hat. “I’ll be waiting for it.”
After Alphé’s deckhand, Pierre, arrived, they pushed off the dock. The commercial trawler that had belonged to his father headed out to the bay. He had his fishing spots planned out to a tee, and it was his turn to fish the bay this week. He preferred the calmer waters of the bay over the ocean during the winter, even if his catch wasn’t as great.
They chugged out to open water, watching the GPS.
“I got king cake for lunch today,” Pierre said, stowing his lunch in a cabinet down below.
“I hope you brought enough to share,” Alphé said, distracted. “It’s windy today for sure. We’ll put out both anchors.”
***
While Alphé threw nets into the deep brackish water of Cypress Cove, his soon-to-be ex-wife woke up with a banging headache. Stumbling toward the bathroom, Lola glanced into the living room first to see that all traces of Alphé were gone, his sheets and blankets and pillow stowed away out of her vision so it was like he almost wasn’t there anymore, only his razor and toothbrush hiding in the cupboard.
He did his own laundry at his mother’s shack; she had an old wringer washer that he had tried to replace, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Gossiping, her sister, Babette, said that his work clothes were in the truck bed tool storage box in the back of his pickup truck, and the cabin of his fishing boat held the rest of his meager belongings.
The reason he didn’t move out completely, besides the fact that the house had been his before he married, was because of his kids. The best, loving father, he’d sleep miserably on the couch for the rest of his life if it meant he could see his children every day.
Sitting at the worn kitchen table, stirring coffee, Lola looked around the house. It was quaint, a shotgun house in the middle of a manicured, narrow lot. Noel had a hefty bank account thanks to his father paying him well for keeping up the yard, which had become an asset to their neighborhood.
There was no excuse for her not working. A certified nurse’s aide, she could get a job at one of the extended-care facilities in the area anytime she wanted. But she didn’t want to work.
Being available to her children was Lola’s cross to bear, the mom who drove the kids and their friends to extracurricular activities, the house always open. On any given night, they’d have two or three extra kids sleeping over, and it was never a problem. The local pizza parlor thanked the Beaumonts for their thrice-weekly pizza purchases. And Alphé and Lola were known to clothe Noel’s and Angela’s friends when their own parents were unable to afford the uniforms necessary for the Catholic school they all attended.
So why did she need to cheat on Alphé? Beautiful, gentle, generous Alphé? She’d never forget the first time they made love; his body was like the marble statues she’d seen as a kid in the sculpture garden, and she had trouble taking her eyes off him, his muscles defined by hard work on the fishing boat.
This time, it was middle-age boredom. A trip into Casson’s Hardware for a part to fix her garbage disposal was what started it.
“You fixin’ it yourself?” Alfonso Casson had asked.
“I’m gonna try,” she said. “I don’t have a hundred bucks to fix a garbage disposal that only cost fifty when it was new.”
“I’ll swing by at lunch and take a look.” He held up the part. “I’ll bring this but won’t charge you now in case it’s not what you need.”
“You sure? I’m not looking for a handout.”
“Nope, no handout. Just being neighborly. Alphé’s a good customer.”
So when he showed up at lunch with a bag of food from Spencer’s Deli, after he fixed her garbage disposal that had a sponge caught in its bowels, they sat at that worn kitchen table and ate lunch together and listened to each other’s problems.
His wife was a drunk who didn’t know her own name by noon, and her husband was an overworked fisherman who didn’t have the time or money to entertain his spoiled wife.
The lunch date repeated itself over the weeks and finally segued into fondling each other under the kitchen table.
“We can go to my bed,” she whispered.
“What if your husband comes home?”
“In the middle of the day? You’re kiddin’, right? He hasn’t been home during the day in ten years.”
So she led him to the bedroom, and they undressed each other. It was inevitable that she’d compare the older man’s body with Alphé’s. Although it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t what she was used to, his belly just big enough to put pressure on her lower chest so she felt like he was crushing her, and he fell off her when he came, reminding her of a pornographic cartoon she’d seen as a teenager with a rabbit doing the same thing, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing out loud.
In spite of that, he was so grateful to her, or maybe it was due to guilt for having sex with the fisherman’s wife, that he began having odd jobs done for her around Alphé’s house: new windows in the kitchen when the old ones leaked during a hurricane, a new bathroom floor, and smaller things that could be done without being obvious. Alphé saw that the repairs were being made and never questioned Lola when she claimed to have, “Saved the money for the work out of my grocery budget.”
Lola let Alfonso do the work, and she rewarded him with acts that Beverly Casson was no longer willing to do for her husband.
“Don’t you feel like a prostitute?” Babette asked, disgusted. “You’re married to that beautiful piece of man flesh and you’re betraying him with that old man? Stop it!”
