The one in the passenger seat rarely leaves his apartment unless it’s to commute to or from work. On weekends and holidays, he goes to breakfast at the diner. He eats pancakes and bacon, almost always. He spreads the butter all over each cake, however many pats he is offered, then pours a generous amount of syrup onto the plate. He likes the pancakes drenched but not soggy, and he likes it when syrup gets on the bacon, too. Inside the diner, there are always well-dressed people, people who’ve come from church, people who are related to one another, families, loved ones. He always finds a table facing away from these people. He doesn’t want to listen to their conversations, the righteousness.
The one driving talks about the one in the passenger seat with his wife sometimes. He talks about the shirts behind the door. He remembers when his boss introduced them, how his hand was damp. He points out that he never socializes with people in the office, how he always keeps to himself. He tells his wife he thinks the one in the passenger seat is half a fag. The wife asks why he would think such a thing. He tells her he isn’t sure, that he’s heard it around the office, that it’s the scuttlebutt.
Whenever the wife initiates sex, she likes to ask her husband about his special friend at work. She calls him a fairy because she doesn’t like the word
The one in the passenger seat almost never discusses his work or his colleagues when talking on the phone with his mother. When his mother presses him, he tells her that everyone is cordial. He tells her they are all good people. He has never mentioned the one who is driving by name to his mother. He did say once that he saw something he wished he hadn’t. But when his mother asked what, he told her she wouldn’t want to know.
He doesn’t tell her that he thinks about quitting sometimes but doesn’t know what else he could do for work. He doesn’t tell her that he imagines certain crimes, committing them, things he could do in the workplace, things he could maybe get away with, things that happen all the time, all over the world. He doesn’t tell her how bored he is by everything. He doesn’t tell her that he visits Asian massage parlors every so often on the way home from work, that he knows which ones are good and which aren’t, which try to rob him and which seem like they are genuinely happy to see him, to service him. He doesn’t tell her he’s visited two transsexual prostitutes during lunch breaks, doesn’t tell her that he’s touched their parts and that they’ve touched him and that he wants to do it again. What he does tell her is what goes on in his apartment building. He tells her about the front door, how that the buzzer won’t work for weeks at a time, and how that he has to go downstairs to let the deliveryman in whenever he orders dinner.
The two are in the car together.
The one in the passenger seat says, I’ll say. He rolls the window down a little.
The one driving did not formally propose marriage to his wife. After several months of misinterpreted conversations and endearing gestures, they found themselves in front of an ordained minister and two paid-for witnesses. The ceremony was simple and brief, as there was a line out in the corridor waiting to do likewise.
The bridal night included a mutual decision to forgo the threshold ceremony but was otherwise traditional. Once inside their room, the ersatz honeymoon suite, she spent a solid hour in the bathroom while he examined his genitals under the covers. He was hoping they would go twice, once she came out, if she came out. He wondered what would happen if she didn’t. Wondered what he’d do if she had done something to herself in there, maybe with pills or a razor. He waited. He thought about them going twice again. They’d gone twice only a couple of times before, once during a memorable evening that involved take-out Chinese. He was hoping she would come out wearing something special, something he hadn’t seen before. That is, if she were to come out at all. If she didn’t come out, he’d have to go in after her, break down the door, find her like that, dead in the tub. He’d have to call the police and explain the whole thing, the wedding, the witnesses, the threshold. For the rest of his life, he’d be the one whose wife committed suicide on their wedding night. He’d have that story to tell over and over to all kinds of people, all kinds of empathetic women. Eventually she did come out, and when she did, she wasn’t wearing anything special. She came out naked and said something like Are you ready for me? He was, as anyone might expect, devastated.
Afterward there was the standard back and forth, give and take, push and pull.
