Read Online Our Town by Kevin Jack McEnroe - Free Book Online Page A

tasted it. Mixed with makeup, she didn’t mind. She balled up another tissue square and patted her face and then put it up her nostril. She looked at herself. She looked ugly. She hated herself, again. She’d forgotten about the executives.
    “Fine,” she replied. She turned the lock counterclockwise—lefty loosey—and Eddy opened the door and peeked in. He was handsome. Tough handsome.
    “You all right?” he asked. Real sweet.
    “Yeah. It’s fine. Thank you.”
    “No problem, ma’am. I’m gonna let him in, okay?”
    She nodded.
    Dale entered, his once slickly parted hair now hanging down before his eyes, covering the bump—his unicorn—he’d procured on his forehead. His shirt was more open than before. He sucked in through his nostrils and felt more energetic. Alive again. These days he only breathed through his nose.
    “Let me look at you,” he said, quietly, and he grabbed her face again. He turned it from side to side in his palms. He was checking if he’d done enough damage. Then he held it straight and looked back at her, flat in the eyes. He let go with his right hand and he slapped her. Then he slapped her face again.
    “Don’t ever embarrass me like that again,” he said, coolly, calmly. “I told these people we were coming here together. Coming together. Asman and wife. And then I can’t find you. And I ask someone. And they say you’re upstairs, talking to two guys. Two guys. Do you consider that acceptable behavior? As a married woman you think that that’s okay?”
    Dorothy rested her face against Dale’s hand. She could feel her cheeks getting hotter. She thought she must look red. Redder than before, even. Tomato faced.
    “Do you hear me?” Dale asked, and then let her go.
    Dorothy turned toward the sink, away from him. She squeezed the porcelain in her hands until a fake nail cracked off and landed against the blood-clot tissue.
    “Let’s hope so,” Dale affirmed. And then he opened the door and left. He left the door open behind him.
    Dorothy looked up at herself in the mirror. She grabbed a new tissue and blew out the old tissue and threw them both in the toilet and watched them tie-dye the water as she flushed.
    SHE TOOK A cab home. Dale took the car. She was nervous as she entered the house and walked upstairs to the bedroom. The lights were still on. She crept through the door and saw Dale on the bed. He lay in his underwear and dinner socks with the TV remote in one hand and the rocks glass—the same rocks glass as before—in the other. An ice pack rested on his head. He looked up at her.
    “I kind of hurt myself, if you can believe it,” he said, chuckling. Then he looked back toward the TV.
    *    *    *
    Months later—actually probably less—Dale woke up in the middle of the night. He wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t heard anything—instinct, I guess—but he was suddenly filled with energy. And, perhaps even more so, fear. He reached over to Dorothy’s side of the bed and felt for her, but no one slept beside him. He breathed in deeply. He pulled off the covers and stood up. He noticed the bathroom door was closed, but low light was streaming through the half-inch spacebeneath the doorframe. He walked to it, quietly, with measured steps. He opened it. The shower curtain was pulled, but two pedicured feet stuck out the far end. There was a hand-painted antique lamp—an East Coast winter scene, children sledding in the park—which just yesterday was on the bedside table, plugged in, and lit, sitting on the toilet bowl. It sat perched on the lid. In the tub, one leg and foot was crossed over the other. Dale stepped two steps and opened the curtain. Dorothy lay sleeping. Peacefully sleeping, in an empty tub, with an avocado-green face peel, dry and cracking, still on her face. Her hair was pulled back in a bun on her head. Her hands were clenched just below her breasts, one of which showed through her bathrobe. Her breaths were soft and mechanical. Her heart