-winter #36-
Animals | RYAN DEMPSEY
"Figured we could go to the Museum tomorrow," he said to Ellen who was in the bathroom. He was reading the newspaper in the bedroom. "They have the glass blowing exhibit this month too, over at the observatory. Didn't we go there last year? I think we went there last year. Oh that's right; we got that funky vase there last year. Or was that the year before?" He laughed. "God, we've been there so many times I'm getting the years mixed up."
She came into the bedroom in just her underwear. Lace hung from the bottom of her bra and around the edges of her panties. She leaned against the door frame so her arm was over her head and her hair hung down over her shoulder. "I say we stay in all day," she answered.
"It feels good," he said.
She reached into the nightstand beside the bed. Inside there was a box full of lubricants, magazines and a pair of handcuffs. She retrieved two of the tubes. "This one or this one."
"That one."
She squeezed a small amount into the palm of her hand and started massaging him. He watched her at first then he closed his eyes. He looked down at himself again. She watched his face. Her brow folded. He closed his eyes again.
"Here." He sat up. She handed him the tube and he went into the bathroom where he put a dab of lotion on his hand and started. He started thinking of the 10:00pm newscaster and then the girl he saw on the metro that morning. He looked down at himself then started again faster. He started with the newscaster again but then his thoughts slowly turned to concern and he tried to remember the last time they had sex. Then his brain wandered further, thinking about projects that needed done around the house, reports that needed finished at work, trips and places he wanted to see.
He started to hurt. He looked down again and his hand was dry. He returned to the bedroom where she was on the bed with her back to the door. The T.V. was on. His eyes traced the curves of her hips and the line of her underwear around her rear end. He should be excited. She was his and he could have her.
"Hey." He stood in the doorway. Kneeling on the floor beside her, he kissed her shoulder. She rolled over to face him. He brushed the hair from her face. "It's not you."
She sucked in her lips.
"I'm serious," he said.
"I don't want to talk."
"But we can," he said.
"We can only talk so much and that hasn't seemed to work. All I know is I don't want to talk."
He stayed that way for a time until he nodded then got in his side of the bed. She handed him the remote.
The next morning he sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window. It was Saturday and he was very tired. His window mirrored his neighbor Keith's bedroom window and sometimes when he got up early, unable to sleep, he would sit like this and see Keith making love to his wife. Today was another one of those mornings.
When Keith finished that morning and his wife collapsed on the bed, he stood and slapped her backside. She rolled over to the night stand and lit a cigarette. Keith got out of bed, neither of them saying a word.
Ellen turned over and sighed. He watched her fall back into a deep sleep. He thought about when he should wake her for the museum.
He brought his eyes back to the window and Keith was standing there naked, a smirk on his face. Their eyes met and it took him a minute to realize it. Quickly he shuffled downstairs.
He went into the kitchen and reached into the drawer above the garbage can for his cigarettes. He poked his head out the back door and looked over into Keith's yard. Just then Keith barreled out through the door and wore only a pair of red mesh shorts. He had lines around his biceps and shoulders where his skin used to stretch and silver-white hair on his back and chest. Keith noticed him and smiled, "Jerry," he called. His voice was loud and Jerry imagined one could hear it over the hills of the neighborhood. Like a chain it pulled Jerry from his home and out on to his small back porch. "Hi Keith. How are you doing?"
"Give me a sec," and Keith went back inside.
Jerry waited. He had his hand on the doorknob then Keith returned, now with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
A tall fence divided their yards and it was only from his porch that Jerry could see completely over it. Keith however was able to reach over the top and unlatch the gate. Leaving the gate open, Keith walked across Jerry's yard and sat down in one of the patio chairs. He leaned back and stretched. He looked at Jerry, wearing the same smirk he had in the window. "I'm doing great, Jerry. How are you?" His eyes never left Jerry's face.
Jerry sat down. His body hunched with his elbows on his knees. "I can't complain."
"Yep. Things are good. Daughter is coming in for the weekend. And Kurt." He rolled his eyes.
"That's nice," Jerry said.
"They're going to some artsy bullshit over at the conservatory." He tottered in his chair. "These chairs are shit, Jerry."
"Sit in mine," he answered. Keith sat down. He scraped his cigarette butt across the cement porch and threw the butt into the yard, then coughed and spit after it. "Kurt's all about that artsy stuff. Trips, museums, all that crap. Hey, sit down Jerry. I want you to sit down."
Jerry sat down in Keith's old chair, teetering back and forth.
"It's for yuppies," Keith said. "For people with problems."
"What kind of problems?"
"You know they've been married almost five years."
"That's refreshing. Where are they living now?" Jerry asked.
"Still no grandkids. The first time I kept it in I had a kid."
When are they stopping by?"
"I mean, that's really all we're here for right?" Keith said.
"I don't understand." Jerry brought his head up.
"How long have you been married, Jerry?"
"Sorry?"
"You've been married how long?" He grabbed Jerry's pack of cigarettes and his lighter. He dragged on the cigarette and asked again, "How long you've been married?"
"Ellen and I have been married nine years."
"Nine years! Christ, Jerry. What, is there something wrong with her?"
"Sorry?"
"You guys want them right?" Keith said.
"Never planned on it." Jerry looked at the patio. "We never wanted kids."
"Bullshit."
"Hard to find time, I guess. We've discussed it before."
"What's to discuss? You put your dick inside her and go to town," Keith said.
"Sometimes it's not that easy," Jerry said.
Keith leaned back in his chair and took a long drag from his cigarette. He pinched his bottom lip with his empty fingers and let the smoke out through his nostrils. He studied Jerry for a time.
"So, when is your daughter stopping by?" Jerry asked.
"You having…problems?" Keith waived his hand around Jerry's crotch.
Jerry stood. "No, not at all."
"Little guys aren't swimming the way they should?"
"That has nothing to do with it." Jerry started pacing across the small porch.
"They have pills for that, you know. Procedures. She's still young enough for it, right? She's probably about thirty-seven, right?"
"That's not what it is," Jerry said.
"They have donors. You buy another man's sperm, doctors shoot it in your wife and she has a baby." Keith ended his thought slowly and quietly.
"We just don't want kids," Jerry said.
The same smirk that Jerry had seen through his window slithered across Keith's face.
"So, where's Ellen at, Jerry? She home?"
"Yeah, she's home. Why wouldn't she be home?"
Keith stood and tried to look through the windows. "You know, I haven't seen her since Joe's cookout." He sat back down placing his hands behind his head. "If I remember she was wearing a nice little thing. It was pretty hot that day."
Jerry stopped pacing. "She doesn't want to come out."
"It was Sunday and you had gone home early because you had work in the morning."
Jerry blinked.
"I was telling her about my tattoo." He stood again, lowered the waistband on his shorts and presented a black outline of a cartoon Viet Cong soldier with heavily slanted eyes and a line through it. "All the girls were wearing nice little numbers that day." He pulled up his shorts. "A lot of the ladies at that party have seen my tattoo."
"Did they ask to see it?"
"And I've seen a lot of theirs." That smile slid across his face. "You should've seen the place after you left. You're wife sure did have a lot to drink," Keith sniggered.
"Sorry?" Jerry said.
"Now, don't go telling the old lady about any of this. Hell, she probably already knows." He elbowed Jerry. "It's been this way since high school, college, even in the army. Some of these kids you see running around the neighborhood might even be mine." He laughed.
Jerry started to get very hot. He could smell Keith as he nudged close beside him and reached for the doorknob. Jerry watched his hand grip it in slow motion. He then stepped in front of him and put his hand on his chest, feeling his coarse silver hair and the damp heat on his hand.
Keith kept his fingers around the doorknob. He got closer to jerry face and Jerry could see the tiny specks of white spit in the corners of Keith's mouth. He could smell his cigarettes on his breath.
Keith took his hand from the doorknob. He towered over Jerry. Then Keith gave that same smirk again. "Did you like what you saw this morning?"
"Sorry?" Jerry said.
"Could you hear her? Sorry if she woke you up."
Jerry's hand remained on Keith's chest but lost its formidability.
"Can't say I ever hear anything going on over here." Keith glanced over Jerry's house.
Jerry dropped his hand and his arm hung limp.
"It's not like your windows a two-way mirror. Tell me, Jerry, does Ellen like to watch? She ever wish she had someone that could satisfy her? Not some puny runt of the litter."
Jerry brought his eyes to Keith's. He started breathing heavily. His hands suddenly became cool but his core was hot and he was sweating. His mouth dried. He could hear the gnat buzzing by his ear, could see each individual hair on Keith's shoulders and could tell, by smelling his breath, what he had eaten that morning.
"It's okay, Jerry," Keith patted Jerry's shoulder. "It's a right only some of us have." He then reached for the doorknob but Jerry slapped his arm away. The two stood in each other's focus. Jerry could count the lines in Keith's retinas, the broken red vessels in the whites of his eyes as his eyelids widened.
Keith remained but Jerry wouldn't move, even as Keith started to back away. "Remember I'm retired, Jerry." He still wore that smirk. "And you got work on Monday." Keith made his way towards his home and back through the gate that divided their properties.
Jerry watched until he couldn't see him anymore. He then closed the gate, went back to his house and in through the kitchen door. He walked through the kitchen and up the stairs, hearing Ellen in the bathroom.
"When do you want to leave for the museum? All I have to do is put on some clothes."
She stood before him in the bathroom doorway. He could smell the perfume she had just sprayed on. Her breast hung pendulously from her body, straining with blue veins.
"I'm ready whenever you are. I’m sorry about last night. I can't help but feel like it's my fault. We can talk about it in the car, maybe even start therapy…"
He grabbed her around the shoulders and forced her into the bedroom. He threw her on the bed. He took off his clothes and stood above her naked. He could smell himself.
"Honey…" She started to sit up.
He pushed her to the bed.
She lay there a moment looking at him then rolled over on to her stomach. She arched her back, and moving closer to him, he pushed himself inside her. She gasped, accepted him and braced herself in the folds of the mattress. He tasted the salt on her skin where he kissed the nape of her neck, felt the wetness of her hair as it rubbed along his cheek. Her breathing was deep and quick. He could smell her and himself. He grabbed her around the hips as he turned his head and looked out the window.
bio: Ryan works for Allegheny County and resides with his wife in the Pittsburgh area.