Joe Hill - Horns

“I’m getting sick of your mouth,” Ig said.

“You don’t like it? You don’t like to hear me talk about fucking? Why, Ig? Does it mess with your picture of me? You don’t want a real person. You want a holy vision you can beat off to.”

The waitress said, “I guess you still haven’t made up your minds.” Standing beside their table again.

“Two more,” Ig said, and she went away.

They stared at each other. Ig was gripping the table and felt dangerously close to turning it over.

“We were kids when we met,” she said. “We let it get a lot more serious than any high-school relationship should’ve been. If we spend some time with other people, it will put our relationship in perspective. Maybe we pick it up again later and see if we can love each other as adults the way we did as kids. I don’t know. After some time has gone by, maybe we can take another look at what we have to offer each other.”

“‘At what we have to offer each other’?” Ig said. “You sound like a loan officer.”

She was rubbing her throat with one hand, her eyes miserable now, which was when Ig noticed she wasn’t wearing her cross. He wondered if there was meaning in that. The cross had been like an engagement ring, long before either of them had ever discussed the idea of staying together their whole lives. He honestly could not remember ever seeing her without it-a thought that filled his chest with a sick, drafty sensation.

“So do you have someone picked out?” Ig asked. “Someone you want to fuck in the name of putting our relationship in perspective?”

“I’m not thinking about it that way. I’m just-”

“Yes you are. That’s what this is all about, you said so yourself. We need to fuck other people.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “Yes, I guess so, Ig. I guess that has to be part of it. I mean, I have to sleep with other people, too. Otherwise you’d probably go over there and live like a monk. It’ll be easier for you to move on if you know I have.”

“So there is someone.”

“There’s someone I’ve…I’ve been out with. Once or twice.”

“While I was in New York.” Not asking it. Saying it. “Who?”

“No one you’ve ever met. It doesn’t matter.”

“I want to know anyway.”

“It isn’t important. I’m not going to ask you any questions about what you’re doing in London.”

“About who I’m doing,” he said.

“Right. Whatever. I don’t want to know.”

“But I do. When did it happen?”

“When did what happen?”

“When did you start seeing this guy? Last week? What did you tell him? Did you say things would have to wait until I took off for London? Or did it wait?”

She parted her lips just slightly to reply, and he saw something in her eyes, something small and fearful, and in a rush of prickling heat he knew something he didn’t want to know. He knew she’d been working toward this moment the whole summer, going all the way back to when she first started pushing him to take the job.

“How far has it gone? Have you already fucked him?”

She shook her head, but he couldn’t tell if she was saying no or refusing to answer the question. She was blinking back tears. He didn’t know when that had started. It was a surprise to feel no urge to comfort her. He was in the grip of something he didn’t understand, a perverse mix of rage and excitement. Part of him was surprised to discover that it felt good to be wronged, to have a justification to hurt her. To see how much punishment he could inflict. He wanted to flay her with his questions. And at the same time, images had started to occur to him: Merrin on her knees in a tangle of sheets, lines of bright light from the half-shut venetian blinds across her body, someone else reaching for her naked hips. The thought aroused and appalled in equal measure.

“Ig,” she said softly. “Please.”

“Stop with your please. There are things you aren’t telling me. Things I need to know. I need to know if you’ve fucked him already. Tell me if you’ve fucked him already.”

“No.”

“Good. Was he ever there? In your apartment with you when I called from New York? Sitting there with his hand under your skirt?”

“No. We had lunch, Ig. That was all. We talk now and then. Mostly about school.”

“You ever think about him when I’m fucking you?”

“Jesus, no. Why would you even ask that?”

“Because I want to know everything. I want to know every shitty little thing you’re not telling me, every dirty secret.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll make it easier for me to hate you,” Ig said.

The waitress stood rigidly at the side of their table, frozen in the act of setting down their fresh drinks.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Ig asked her, and she took an unsteady step backward.

The waitress wasn’t the only one staring. At the other tables arranged around theirs, heads were turned. A few onlookers watched them seriously, while others, younger couples mostly, observed them with bright-eyed merriment, struggling not to laugh. Nothing was quite so entertaining as a noisy public breakup.

When Ig looked back toward Merrin, she was up on her feet, standing behind her chair. She was holding his tie in her hands. She had picked it up when he threw it aside and had been restlessly folding and smoothing it ever since.

“Where are you going?” he asked, and caught her shoulder as she tried to slip by. She lurched into the table. She was drunk. They both were.

“Ig,” she said. “My arm.”

Only then did he realize how hard he was squeezing her shoulder, digging in with his fingers with enough force to feel the bone. It took a conscious effort to open his hand.

“I’m not running away,” she said. “I want a minute to clean up.” Gesturing at her face.

“We’re not done talking about this. There’s a lot you aren’t telling me.”

“If there are things I don’t want to tell you,” she said, “it isn’t out of meanness. I just don’t want to see you hurt, Ig.”

“Too late.”

“Because I love you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He said it to hurt her-he didn’t honestly know if he believed it or not-and felt a savage rush of excitement to see he had succeeded. Her eyes filled with bright tears, and she swayed, put a hand on the table to steady herself once more.

“If I’ve been keeping things from you, it was to protect you. I know what a good person you are. You deserve better than what you got when you threw in with me.”

“Finally,” he said. “Something we agree on. I deserve better.”

She waited for him to say more, but he couldn’t, was short of breath again. She turned and navigated her way through the crowd, toward the ladies’ room. He drank the rest of his martini, watching her go. She looked good, in her white blouse and pearl gray skirt, and Ig saw a couple college boys turn their heads to watch her, and then one of them said something, and the other laughed.

Ig’s blood felt thick and slow and he was conscious of it pumping heavily in his temples. He wasn’t aware of the man standing next to the table and didn’t hear him saying “sir,” didn’t see him until the guy bent over to look in Ig’s face. He had a bodybuilder’s physique, his sporty white tennis shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. Little blue eyes peeped out from under a bony crag of forehead.

“Sir,” he said again. “We’re going to have to ask you and your wife to leave. We can’t have you abusing the staff.”

“She’s not my wife. She’s just someone I used to fuck.”

The big man-bartender? bouncer?-said, “I don’t need that language in my face. Take it someplace else.”