Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 12 (7 page)

Laurel finished digging the hole. She placed Woods
's body in it and said a few words, though to what, or for whom, she wasn't too sure. Standing by the open grave, she thrust her hands in her pockets. Woods's last note was folded up in one of them:
You could do worse.

"
I probably could," she said out loud. "I've known worse," and as she said it, she realised it was true. She still couldn't remember, but her gut could.

Laurel looked at her convict number in the palm of one hand and Woods
's note held in the other. Then she glanced around the fresh green of the clearing and all she had made of it. Slowly she made a fist and crumpled the note, throwing it into the grave hole. Then she began to shovel the soil back in. She still had a lot of work to do today—the homestead wouldn't maintain itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J.S.Watts lives and writes in Britain. Her poetry, short stories and reviews appear in publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and America including: Acumen, Envoi, Mslexia and Orbis and have been broadcast on BBC and independent radio. A poetry collection, “Cats and Other Myths”, and a poetry pamphlet, “Songs of Steelyard Sue” are published by Lapwing Publications. A novel, “A Darker Moon”, a dark psychological fantasy, is published by Vagabondage Press. See: 
www.jswatts.co.uk
 
or
www.facebook.com/J.S.Watts.page
.

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By Rachel Kolar

They were going to have the fight again.

Brian stood outside the door of the apartment, hand hovering over the knob, trying to ignore the lingering pain at his temples where the student loan officer had removed the neural probes. He didn't want to go inside. As soon as he went inside, he'd have to tell Danielle how much money they still owed, and then they'd have the fight again.

Don't be so sarcastic this time
, he reminded himself; then he took a deep breath and opened the door.

His wife
was sitting at her easel by the window, stippling something in green. Her head jerked up as he came in, and she wiped her hands on her ratty smock. "How did it go?"

He kissed her forehead, trying to ignore the knots in his stomach. "
Good. The memories scanned in fine, and the loan officer said U Maryland would unlock my transcripts and send my journals and stuff from junior year in a week or two."             

Danielle nodded, but he could feel her body tensing.
She knows. She knows I don't remember meeting her yet. If I did, I would have mentioned it right away.
"What about us?"

"
I remember seeing you. We both knocked out our science requirement with—"

She pulled back, eyes bright. "Did we talk?"

And here it starts.
He might not be able to remember their past, but he knew the next few minutes of their future well enough:

"
Eleven thousand dollars? How can we get that with a teacher's aide paycheck? We can barely even pay rent.
"

"
I'd be pulling in more if you knew how to budget. I'm not the one who got our educations foreclosed.
"

Sometimes she'd blame him for not helping her to budget, but usually she'd start yammering about her art.
"
At least I'm doing something to get us out of it. My last painting made—
"

"
—
almost as much as you spent on the oils!"

"
You asshole. It made a lot more than that. And buyers can tell when my art doesn't involve professional-quality materials.
"

"
Can the toilet tell when your shit doesn't involve Whole Foods?
"

"
We'd be able to afford to eat right if you went into a career that made any goddamn money!
"

Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to push the memories aside.
"No, we didn't talk. I thought you were gorgeous, but I was too scared to—oh, honey, don't."

"No,
no, it's fine, it's just—" She scrubbed furiously at her eyes. "How much more?"

"Dani
—"

"How much?"

"Eleven thousand."

Her face fell, and he tried to cut her off before the fight
got started. "But I took a lot of my education courses junior year. I can't get my teaching certificate back until they unlock my whole transcript, but I'm so close that somebody might hire me provisionally. And your art's been selling so well this year! Another year of you working like this..."

Danielle's mouth pressed into a thin slash. Without a word, she
pushed past him and out the door, slamming it behind her.

Brian stared after her, too stunned to follow. This was new
. Usually they had the fight until she locked herself into her studio, and when she emerged that night they'd pretend nothing had happened. Maybe they'd skipped straight to that part this time. He considered going about his business as usual, acting normal whenever she came home...but no, Danielle got bad enough when they fought. God only knew how she'd get if it stayed bottled up. He got a beer from the fridge, picked up a pile of quizzes to grade, and waited.

By the time Danielle's key turned in the lock, it was almost midnight. Brian, who had been dozing on the recliner, snapped awake and scrambled to gather his thoughts.
Non-confrontational, that's the trick, don't get her back up
.

Danielle stepped in
and almost dropped the key when she saw him. "Brian! I—I thought you'd be in bed."

"If I was smart, I would be. I'm going to need an IV of coffee just to make it to work without falling asleep."
 
Shit! Non-confrontational.
He moved to the couch and patted the seat next to him. "C'mon, Dani. Talk to me."

She
didn't move. "I—I shouldn't keep you up. Can we talk in the morning?"

"I'll be busy getting ready for work in the morning. It might as well be now." She was shifting her weight from foot to foot now, as if preparing to run. "Dani, honey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing..."

"Hey." He crossed to the door and wrapped his arms around her. She flinched away for a moment before her hands crept tentatively around his waist. He pulled her closer,
inhaling the clean, soapy scent of her skin.

He pulled back. "You showered while you were out?"

"I went to the gym. You know, endorphins."

"Until midnight?"

"I went to Caroline's after. I was still mad. We did the whole eating brownies and watching crappy comedies thing."

He wanted to believe her. He also wasn't stupid. His stomach
twisted.
Oh God, who is he, who is he, who is he..
.

He wanted to shout at her, to demand she tell him the truth
—but what if he was wrong? She couldn't be cheating, not his Dani, not his girl. She wouldn't do this.

Or would she? Had she cheated on him during their senior year? Had she cheated
with
him, and this was karma? It might all have been there from the start. He'd known her before the foreclosure, but she was a stranger now.

"Brian? I can't breathe."

"Oh!" He stepped back, his arms aching from holding her so tightly. His fingers had left white prints on her shoulders. He didn't know whether he hoped they'd bruise. "It, um, it sounds like you had a long night. Let's talk about this later."

She hesitated. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I stormed out like that."

Danielle apologizing. Something was definitely wrong. "Let's go to bed," was all he could say. As he slid between the sheets later and she curled up beside him, warm and soft and smelling too clean, he thought,
Let me be wrong, let me be wrong, let me be wrong.

~

Google had over fourteen million hits for "how to tell if your wife is cheating," mostly hawking spy software far beyond Brian's price range. Even the sites that actually gave advice were close to useless. If Danielle had come home with hickeys on her neck, Brian thought sourly as he stared at the five hundredth screen of crap, he wouldn't need to wonder.

He tried some of the better ideas, but the results were mixed. "Accidentally" taking her cell phone instead of his hadn't turned up anything incriminating, and whenever he called her she always had some plausible excuse for not picking up. Feigning doctor's appointments to take off work and follow her had seemed promising at first; it was mostly just sitting in the apartment parking lot and watching her paint, but twice she had
gone to a run-down dance club on Route 40 called "Dreamz." This was it, Brian had thought with a growing sense of vindicated rage, but there had been no lover in sight. The first time she came out alone, and the second time she came out with a dark-haired college girl—
oh, God, she's bi, she was in Pride Alliance, and we just don't remember—
but they drove away in separate directions.

But after almost a month of trying, he
found something that might work. One of Danielle's countless indulgences had been insisting that they treat themselves to a night out every Friday—no, not Subway, a
real
night out. She had been doing less of that lately. Brian had hoped it was because she valued their memories more than ahi tuna steaks, but it might be because she had some sugar daddy taking her out instead. If she didn't accept a date night, she was almost certainly cheating.

But she surprised him. "That sounds great," she said, running a hand through his hair. "I haven't wanted to say anything because money's so tight, but we haven't done dinner and a movie in ages."

"Yeah," Brian said. "Maybe we should do something cheap."

The corners of her mouth tightened. "Sure," she said in that too-bright voice that meant "hell no."

"Or we could treat ourselves," Brian said, resigned.

It was an extravagance
—but a nice extravagance. It was only Bertucci's, but even so, he couldn't remember the last time they'd been to a place with a waiter and a wine list.

"What brought this on, anyway?" Danielle asked, spearing a piece of asparagus and prosciutto from the antipasto platter.

"I just..." Brian faltered, then grabbed for the first thing that came to mind. "I've been so bummed about us not starting to date junior year, you know? I figure we could get depressed about it, or we could start dating now."

She grinned. "I like that idea. Let's do Friday dinners again."

He grinned back, feeling a little of the tension ease away. It was true, anyway. They needed dates. If he wasn't wrong, if she was cheating, she remembered how she met the guy. She remembered that new relationship high, the one where he could do no wrong, and every time he touched her, it was like electricity. She remembered her first time with him, before sex started falling into routines. She
remembered.
He had to make her feel that with him, too, even if it wasn't really new at all.

T
he theater was only a few blocks away, and it was a perfect spring evening, so they strolled over, arm in arm. They looked over the options and picked a mockumentary that had gotten good reviews, and had been standing in line for about five minutes when Brian noticed the kid.

He was mid-twenties, maybe a little younger, out for the night with three of his buddies. He was looking at Danie
lle. That was nothing in itself—guys looked at Danielle; she was a beautiful woman—but there was something in the kid's face that Brian didn't like, the way his eyes crawled over her skin and under her blouse. The kid nudged his buddies and pointed at Danielle, and they gave her cool, appraising looks before one of them said something that made the others laugh.

Danielle was talking, but he'd lost track of the conversation. He glared at the kid. The kid smirked back.

"Brian?"

He didn't look at her. He had the childish sense that if he broke eye contact with this little shit, he'd lose. "Button your sweater, Dani."

"Why—" She trailed off. She must have followed his gaze. The kid's eyes slid over her one more time before he turned back to his group. Something else that he said made them explode with laughter. "They're just stupid kids." Danielle's voice was tight.

He turned back to her. Her eyes were on the floor. "Hey." He touched her cheek, and she looked at him. "Do you want me to do something macho?"

"No." No smile. "No, forget it. Let's just watch the movie, OK?"

The movie was funny, and by the time it was over, Brian had almost forgotten the creep. He put his hand on her knee as they watched, and she didn't move it away.

But when they got home, she told him how tired she was. "It's been a long day. Maybe dinner and a movie was too ambitious."

Alarms blared in Brian's head, and a barrage of images flashed through his mind of what she'd really been doing all day to wear herself out.
He doesn't even need to take her on dates, he's just that good...stop it, you're being an idiot, stop it...

"Brian? Hey, I'm sorry, I'm just tired, OK?"

"OK," he said, his good feelings from the day completely evaporated. "Sure."

~

When he was leaving work the next Monday, Danielle texted him to let him know she was with a buyer.

Brian stared at the phone for a long moment. A
buyer. Maybe she really was with a buyer. Maybe not. He didn't know, and if he didn't find out, he was going to go crazy. He had to go to Dreamz and see if she was there. Maybe it was nothing, but it was the only lead he had.

At three in the afternoon, Dreamz was a pathetic sight
—fewer than a dozen cars in the lot, no loud music or colored lights, nothing to separate it from the countless other sleazy Route 40 bars and strip clubs. Brian scanned the parking lot for Danielle's sedan, not sure whether he hoped to see it or not.

It was there. Parked in the back, but it was there.

Brian stepped out of his car, took a deep breath, and pushed open the peeling blue door to Dreamz.

If anything, it was even sadder on the inside than on the outside. The dance floor was empty; the speakers were playing some godawful
thing that sounded like a metal remix of "She Blinded Me With Science"; four sulky-looking men were scattered around the room drinking beer, and two college-aged girls sat in a corner with highball glasses. Danielle was nowhere to be seen.