Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

It came to my attention that Monroe and I rarely spent time over at my place unless we were having sex. Because Monroe pointed it out.

It was late one Thursday afternoon. Mr. Borchard had just packed up his tools for the day, leaving my half-finished replacement dock covered with, a tarp by the shoreline. He’d had a brainstorm about using some of the wood salvaged from the old dock to build a couple of benches for the yard, and had spent nearly an hour discussing their construction with Monroe. When he finally left, we collapsed into my hammock, exhausted by a retiree with the energy of a kindergartner on Red Bull.

“So why don’t we hang out here tonight? You know, with our clothes on,” he suggested.

I frowned at him. “That’s sort of random.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said as we lounged, my feet resting on his chest. “I like having sex at your place just as much as I like having sex at mine. But is there a reason you don’t ask me over for nonsexual reasons?”

I chewed my lip, considering. The truth was I was afraid of extending too many invitations Monroe’s way because I didn’t want to come across as one of those needy divorceés he was so afraid of. I figured letting him do the inviting kept me from overstepping his precious boundaries. And I liked having my own space. It was sort of like having my own little tree-house, when I wanted to be alone, I could pull up the rope ladder and hide out. Besides, Monroe had better DVDs at his place.

But letting him know that I’d put that much thought into this probably would have weirded him out. So, instead, I said, “Well, there is the chance you’ll find that voodoo altar in my closet…”

“Nice,” he snorted, flicking my ankle lightly, just enough to tickle.

“What happened to ‘You may be my favorite person ever because you don’t attach strings to sex’?” I asked, flailing my feet out of his reach.

“One, that’s a pretty broad paraphrase. And two, maybe I would like to attach a string or two. Like a meal or a movie or a meal.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t want to cook your own dinner, do you?”

He shook his head. “I’m not a proud man.”

******

Since Monroe didn’t give me a laundry list of ingredients, food groups, and regional cuisines he refused to consume, I decided to stretch my culinary muscles a bit with a Mexican feast of enchiladas with a three-pepper sauce. Judging by the way Monroe clutched at his throat and ran for my sink after taking his first bite, I may have overdone it a bit.

“Are you okay?” I cried as he downed his third glass of water.

A mile-wide grin split Monroe’s sweaty, glistening face. “That was awesome! Hit me again.”

“I don’t know if I should,” I said hesitantly, scraping the pepper sauce off of my own portion. Darn Mama and her unreliable “dash of this, pinch of that” recipes.

“I can’t even feel the burn anymore. I think my tongue has gone into shock,” he assured me. “I haven’t had Mexican food like this since the roach coach that parked outside our precinct office got closed down by the health department.”

“Have you stopped to think maybe comments like that are why I don’t invite you over?” I asked him. “Would you do me a favor and take a preemptive Pepcid or something before you explode? They’re by my laptop.”

“You keep your antacids by your laptop?”

“That’s usually where I’m sitting when I need antacids.” I speared a forkful of nonsaucy enchilada and pointed my fork at him. “I’ve seen the bobblehead collection you keep by your laptop for inspiration, buddy. Don’t judge me.”

I heard Monroe shuffle around papers on my desk, looking for the illogically small medicine bottle. “Hey, Lace, what is this? ‘My hope for this holiday season is for Tony to develop a debilitating case of ringworm.”

Oh, crap.

Monroe was holding a stack of the sample newsletters I’d been putting together from Maya’s case studies. He read aloud, “Jordan insisted that we both shower before we had sex, otherwise, he couldn’t ‘rise to the occasion.’ And then, of course, we showered after we had sex. After a while I figured out that sex with Jordan wasn’t worth all that showering. The environmental impact alone was shameful. Lacey, what are these?”

“It’s just a …” I found that I was embarrassed to try to explain it to Monroe, which couldn’t have been a good sign. I took a deep breath. “Maya, the girl with the cranial accessories, she thinks we can make a killing publishing newsletters like the one I wrote about Mike for angry divorceés across the country. People give me their information, I write the newsletters for them, they mail them out. Maya’s already got enough orders to keep us busy for a while. The profit projections -”

“Have you lost your mind?” Monroe demanded.

“I’m not in love with your tone right now,” I told him.

“Why would you want to do this?”

Monroe’s voice seemed to rise in decibel level with every sentence. The mirth of just a few moments before had completely evaporated. I tried to choose my words carefully, keeping my tone as even as possible. “Because apparently I’m really good at it. And there are all of these women out there who need me. They’re angry and humiliated and hurt and they need a voice. And that’s something I can give them. I can help them and get paid handsomely to do it.”

“And how much good did your newsletter do for you?” he asked. “Did it make you happier? Make you feel better? Did it do anything but make your situation worse?”

“It brought me up here. It brought me to you, so it couldn’t have been all bad.”

“What if some woman sends you information, you send one of these things out, and it turns out she’s wrong? That her husband wasn’t cheating and she’s sent out an announcement calling him a ‘dickless wonder’?”

“Maya has a legal waiver that would protect us if that happened,” I said, realizing how lame that sounded even as the words left my lips.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll sleep better at night, knowing that you helped destroy a marriage, but you’re protected.”

“Why are you so angry with me? Why the hell do you care so much whether I tinker with a stupid writing project? How is this so different from writing a book?”

“Writing a book doesn’t drag other people down with you. You did your damage with your newsletter. You accepted it and I thought you’d moved on. But now you want to repeat the same mistake over and over again. How could you be happy wallowing in anger and bitterness every day, feeding into people’s need to hurt the ones they used to love? What kind of person would do that?”

It was the disdainful look on his face that did it. The mad flutter of my heartbeat and my immediate instinct to make it right, apologize, take it back. The curl of his lip and tone in his voice that said I was “in trouble.” I’d seen that look on my father’s face, heard the tone from Mike. I did not need another man supervising me or protecting me from myself.

“I’m sorry, am I only supposed to write what you say I should write?” I asked, rising from my chair. “This is none of your business, Monroe. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“So what I have to say doesn’t count?” h demanded. “It doesn’t matter that I think it is a huge mistake?”

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t need you telling me what to do, what’s an acceptable way to live my life and what’s not. I’ve already had that. I don’t want another husband. I don’t even want a relationship. That’s not what this is. This is - I don’t know what it is. But what we’re doing doesn’t give you the right to boss me around.”