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A few days after that, his phone vibrated later in the evening than usual. It could have been anyone, but when he declined the call, Delphine flat-out asked. “Are you having an affair?”
What did it say about him that this had stunned him?
“Of course not.”
But then she showed him her phone, with a blurry but no less damning photo of Anna and him coming out of a private shower room in the airport’s first-class lounge, on its screen.
He didn’t remember now what pathetic shit he said in response, probably something like, “It’s not what it looks like.”
Although that was exactly what it was.
He had met Anna during a layover, pun not intended, on a prior trip. They flirted by text, then sext, and coordinated flights and cities to meet again.
The affair continued in that vein, a series of trysts in cities they both passed through on the way to somewhere else.
It was so appallingly cliché, including the part where some asshole at the airport recognized him, sold a couple of pictures to a tabloid, and posted all over social media.
He still wished he could have a do-over, turn back the clock and handle the situation like a better man.
He and Delphine barely spoke after that night. Divorce papers were served, angry meetings took place in attorneys’ offices, and then their relationship went dark.
Shame had dogged him since. Not only because of the affair itself but because of how he lied. He had been so ashamed, he had not been able to talk about it with her.
That night—the Night of Getting Real, he called it—after more of his denials, she smacked him across the face, hard.
He could still hear the sound and feel the sting on his cheek. More than the physical force, the sudden realization of the meaning and impact of his lies, his betrayal, and of the depth of her hurt and anger knocked him off balance, causing him to lose his footing and stumble backward.
He never in his life felt as small, as sorry, as full of regret and self-loathing as he did in that moment.
How had he not understood all of this before? But by then it was too late.
She stormed into the bedroom and came out quickly, pulling a small suitcase—too quickly for his false denials to have surprised her.
On her way to the elevator, she raised her hand to the painting and slashed it with the point of the diamond in her engagement ring.
Then she turned to him and in an eerily calm voice called him a fucking, lying prick.
A fuc-king, ly-ing prick.
He wished she had screamed so he could tell himself she was overreacting, or that she called him something else, something less rhythmic.
Because the cadence of that phrase echoed his own thoughts and tunneled its way through his eardrums and into his brain, lodging itself in some remote cluster of cells no amount of booze or weed or sessions with a shrink had yet been able to quell.
The sound of her smacking his face earlier, that lodged there too, reminding him how badly he treated her, how much he deserved her wrath. Reminding him he had been a coward and a liar.
He got the painting repaired. If you didn’t know there had been a gash, your eye would move right past it. But he forced himself to look at its scar, the tight ridge of canvas, each time he walked past it so he would not forget what he had mindlessly done for reasons he still could not fully identify.
And so he would not repeat it.
Today, sound burbled from the living room TV he left on yesterday. He picked up the remote and turned the volume higher until noise filled the room. He still hated coming home to the silence.
With the TV eating up electricity twenty-four seven, he was probably Con Edison’s best customer.
In the bedroom, he contemplated a quick nap but settled on a shower to clear his head. His limp dick twitched to life as his boxers brushed against it when he took them off.
He imagined the fabric was Quinn’s hand, reaching for him, guiding him into her. There was baby oil under the sink, and he poured some into his palm, pretending it was her juice and his jerking hand, her body pulsing around him.
She would not have fucked him like that if she saw him now, jacking off like a teenager as he stepped into the cavernous shower-for-two, tugging at his full sac before aiming the spurting release toward the drain.
