Eric Puchner - Model Home

Enough was enough. Camille would confront Warren about the affair, the next time they were alone. How had they reached the point where she couldn’t even bare her suspicions? This wasn’t being married to someone. It was being married away from him, an estrangement by degrees.

Her resolve foundered a bit when she saw the Renault parked in the driveway. Steeling herself, Camille got out of the car and entered the house. Warren was sitting by himself at the kitchen table, the coffeemaker gurgling on the counter. He didn’t notice her at first, pinching the bridge of his nose. Whatever strange woman he was seeing, it didn’t seem to be making him happy. Camille thought of how Warren used to fix her coffee every night, back when she was breast-feeding Dustin: she’d get the baby to sleep finally and meet Warren in the kitchen, where he’d be waiting with a mug of Folgers. It was the only time she could drink it and not affect Dustin’s sleep. So exhausted were they, so happy in their mutual caretaking, that she’d actually sit in Warren’s lap rather than retrieve the second chair from its evening post by the bathtub. They would drink out of the same mug, passing it back and forth until it cooled in their hands.

“Where have you been?” Warren asked, not unkindly. His face looked old without his glasses, the skin under his eyes beginning to pouch. He picked his glasses off the table and put them back on.

“Dropping Lyle at work,” she said. “Then I had to stop by the post office, to send a check to Oxfam. I wanted to make sure it was certified.”

“Oxfam?” He seemed suddenly nervous. “How much did you send?”

“Five hundred dollars. I doubled it this year because of the famine.”

He winced. “For Christ’s sake, Cam!”

Camille stepped back. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re sending money to Nigeria ? Do you ever think about your own family for a change?”

“You’re one to talk about family! Anyway, it’s Ethiopia. A mil lion people have died. If you watched the news occasionally, you’d know about it.”

“Ethiopia.”

“There was a whole song about it, too. On the radio. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’”

He looked at her in disbelief. “That’s the name of the song?”

“Yes. By the Band Aids.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Warren said.

“It’s not stupid! It’s famous! At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade. ”

She was actually singing. Mr. Leonard hobbled out of his doggy bed and began to sniff her shoes. Incredibly, Warren burst into laughter. “Isn’t that exactly what they need? More shade?”

Camille did not have a rejoinder for this. The fact that she didn’t made her too angry to speak. The coffeemaker piddled to a stop. She walked around the counter and stared at the pot of swamp brown liquid.

“Are you sending back our furniture?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone called this morning. From Flegel’s Home Furnishings. They said they’d been authorized to come pick up the stuff we’d leased.”

Warren swore under his breath but then seemed to catch himself. “I’m ordering a new living room,” he said after a moment. “It doesn’t make sense to renew the lease for another year.”

“You’re ordering new furniture ?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t going to consult me about it?”

“Christ, Camille! What do you want me to do? You’re always off storyboarding Earth to My Vagina !” Warren looked at her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” He glanced at his watch and then stood up, touching his hair. “Shit. I’m showing the property at five. A couple from Riverside. Do you think — I mean, if you’re not too busy right now — could you trim my hair a bit? So it’s presentable?”

He handed her the scissors from the phone table. For a second, Camille imagined stabbing him in the back with them. She needed something to drink. Ignoring him, she laid the scissors on the table and then rounded the counter to the fridge, staring into its rotten-smelling depths until she heard Warren pick up the scissors and retreat to the bedroom. She could not find the orange juice. She was rummaging through the shelves with a growing sense of rage, realizing the kids must have finished it — just once, one time in their sheltered, go-lucky, beach-bumming lives, they could bother to make a new pitcher — when she knocked over a can of maple syrup at the back and discovered the jar she’d hidden there this morning. The urine sample. Camille felt the itch of an idea, a sly tingle of revenge. She removed the jar from the fridge and held it in her hand, the coldness of it numbing her fingers. It did nothing special when she opened it. The smell was stale and carroty, pungent enough to make her eyes water.

Surreptitiously, she removed the half-filled pot from the Mr. Coffee by the sink and then poured in the jar’s contents, watching them vanish without a trace. Then she got a travel mug from the cupboard and filled it from the coffeepot. The mug awaited Warren when he returned. He was dressed in a coat and tie, his hair combed damply over his ears in a failed attempt to make it look shorter. She’d wasted her sample — they’d no longer be able to test her today — but Camille felt drunk. Tipsy with badness. She held out the mug, like an offering. It was only after Warren had received it in surprise, lowering his lips gently to take a sip, that she realized she was grinning.

“You’re a good person,” he said to her.

“You know that the owner of Baskin-Robbins died at fifty-four?” Shannon said. “Heart attack.”

Lyle took another bite of coffee chip with hot fudge and chocolate sprinkles, ignoring the worrisome cramp lodged in her ribs. No doubt she was following Burt Baskin to an early grave. Still, what business was it of Shannon’s? Lyle never griped about the Diet Cokes she slurped down like a junkie. She used the same cup for hours, refilling it thirty times a night. There was something fascinating in watching the straw’s transformation from pristine, pin-striped tube to mangled, sorrowful reed.

They were sitting in the back room of The Perfect Scoop, listening to KROQ on the radio and waiting for the bee-bong of a customer to snatch them out front. Shannon watched Lyle finish the sundae with her lips pursed in disgust. At least she could no longer call her a virgin. Or she could, but Lyle would know the truth: last night she’d done it with Hector, a nineteen-year-old man, who was older than Shannon’s boyfriend and had his own pickup truck. She’d seen him twice since visiting his house, dates that had ended in the cramped cab of his truck — some impromptu necking, more squashed than exciting, aborted at critical junctures because of her curfew. But last night had been different, planned shyly in advance. They’d arranged to meet during his graveyard shift. She’d sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night and through the yards of her neighbors, avoiding the streets for some reason, crossing a moon blue savanna of grass, sprinklers shk-shk-shk ing over her legs, so that when she got to the guardhouse her jeans were heavy as curtains. She’d tapped on the window, wait ing for Hector to let her in. He’d held her for a while, to warm her up; it took Lyle a minute to realize he was shivering as well. They wobbled into a corner, knocking the clock off the wall. “If a car comes,” he said, “I’ll lose my job anyway.” It had hurt a little bit, not badly, and then it was over. If she had to choose a word it would be “pragmatic.” The best part, unexpectedly, was afterward. They’d held each other for a long time, as if they might shatter like the insides of the clock, watching the trees outside the guardhouse swoon gently in the floodlight.