Femme Fatale and other stories

usually mocked for its lack of subtlety. We drank silently, pretending a truce. We crawled into bed and watched one of his favorite DVDs, a Sergio Leone Western. I would start to doze off, then pretend to be wide awake when he asked if I was sleeping. He didn’t like me to fall asleep with the television on. He resented the ease with which I slipped into sleep each night.
    On our television, a boy stood beneath his brother, who had a noose around his neck. If the boy moved, his brother would die. Henry Fonda stuck a harmonica in his mouth. “Play,” he said, “play for your ever-lovin’ brother.” Of course he couldn’t stand there forever, harmonica in mouth, hands tied behind his back. He staggered forward, and his brother died.
    By the time the sun came up, I realized an unpredicted snow had been falling all night, and the streets were near impassable, even for a brand-new Volvo.
    But I had to go to work or be docked a day’s pay, snow or no snow, binge or no binge, Sergio Leone or no Sergio Leone. I said good-bye to my husband’s slumbering form and headed out the door. I wore jeans, snow boots, a black turtleneck, the new winter coat, suede gloves, and a felt hat. I turned the key in the lock. I wanted to take it from my ring and throw it in the nearest drift, but I knew I couldn’t. I’d have to come back. I walked to the train. I did my work. And that night, when the train stopped at our station, I wasn’t on it. I was at my sister’s house. She wasn’t approving, but she was sympathetic. She listened as I called and told him, in a choked voice, that I was never coming back. He didn’t say anything. The line went dead in my hand.
    He didn’t have a gun, after all, so there was no blood on the walls. But there was all that booze, and all those pills, his and mine, squirreled away for the sleeplessness we had never tried to cure. Because I didn’t go back for forty-eight hours, things were pretty bad. The dog, luckily, had survived, and without resorting to anything desperate or disgusting. I had filled his kibble dish the morning I left. Still, it was bad, and everyone felt sorry for me, wanted to ease my guilt. So sorry that the suburban police said it must be an accident, and the coroner agreed, and the insurance company gave up fighting after a while, so the mortgage was paid off in one fell swoop, with the life insurance. There was no suicide note. And while there were all those threats, dutifully reported to all those mental health professionals, they proved nothing. He had mixed booze with pills, despite warnings. True, it was suspicious he had taken so many pills, but I was able to report in all honesty that he had often ignored dosage advice, taking two, three times what was recommended. He also had an amazing capacity for liquor.
    It never occurred to anyone that he was probably dead the morning I left, that my phone call home that night, overheard by my sister, had been completely for show. Or that the pills had been chopped up and dissolved in his bourbon bottle days ago, in hopes such an all-nighter would come again, and soon. It had been hard, waiting, but it was worth it. I had not noticed the snow falling because I was lying in bed, listening to his heart stop.
    He always said he would kill himself if I left. All I did was hold him to his word.

DEAR PENTHOUSE FORUM (A FIRST DRAFT)
    Y ou won’t believe this, but this really did happen to me just last fall, and all because I was five minutes late, which seemed like a tragedy at the time. “It’s only five minutes,” that’s what I kept telling the woman behind the counter, who couldn’t be bothered to raise her gaze from her computer screen and make eye contact with me. Which is too bad, because I don’t need much to be charming, but I need
something
to work with. Why did they make so many keystrokes, anyway, these ticket clerks? What’s in the computer that makes them frown so? I had the printout for my e-ticket, and I kept shoving it across the counter, and she kept pushing it back to me with the tip of a pen, the way I used to do with my roommate Bruce’s dirty underwear, when we were in college. I’d rounded it up with a hockey stick and stashed it in the corner, just to make a pathway through our dorm room. Bruce was a goddamn slob.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, stabbing that one key over and over. “There’s just nothing I can do for you tonight.”
    “But I had a reservation. Andrew Sickert. Don’t you have