Preta's Realm (2 page)

As he stood and pushed the plastic leather office chair back from the desk, Drew noticed a new arrival to his inbox. He placed both hands on the desk and squinted at the bold subject line. “Tonight,” was all it said.

Incentive to get me through the meeting
, Drew thought as he hit the buttons on the keyboard to lock his computer from nosy cubicle mates and office pranksters.

***

The rest of the morning bled into afternoon with a constant cycle of texts, emails, phone calls, and drop-in visits from the usual suspects. Drew wondered how any business got done with the alluring siren call of social networking and smartphones tucked out of sight but within reach.

“Heading out to the Fox and the Hound after work. You coming?” asked Brian.

“It’s Monday,” replied Drew.

Brian threw both hands into the air and his mouth drew into a circle.     “Can’t possibly have a beer on a Monday.”

Drew rubbed a hand over his forehead as three more messages jumped to the inbox. “I’ve got too much work to do.”

“You could come hang?”

“Billy has hockey practice and Molly’s been at me for weeks to snake the drain in the bathtub.”

“Livin’ on the edge,” replied Brian as he shoved his hands into pockets full of lint, change, and scraps of paper.

“Someday, you’ll get it,” said Drew.

“Already do and got a prescription to keep it from spreading,” replied Brian as the fifties-era wall clock crawled towards five.

Chapter 2

“Hon, can you help Billy get the hockey pants on? The suspenders aren’t staying on his shoulders.”

Drew looked at Billy and motioned over his shoulder with the nod of his head. “Will you please tell Mom it’s fine?”

Billy smirked and winked at his dad. “All fixed, Mom!” he yelled towards Molly, who was upstairs working the knots out of Sara’s hair.

“Got a scrimmage after practice?” Drew asked while Billy pulled the shirt over his shoulder pads, releasing the musky fragrance of pre-adolescence on ice.

“Probably. Coaches let us play if everyone does their best on the drills.”

“Remember to—“

“Keep my head up near the boards and not every shot has to be top shelf. Got it, Dad.”

Drew tussled Billy’s hair and reached for the hockey stick lying across chapter books on the Greek gods. He helped his son carry the hockey bag to the car and lift it into the trunk before backing out of the driveway, turning right onto Main Street and heading east. While the radio blared another “alternative” rock song that was no longer the alternative to anything, Drew remembered the subject line of the email he did not have time to revisit.

Tonight
, he thought,
will have to wait until tonight.

***

“Left wing, left wing!”

Billy skated towards the corner and unleashed a bruising hip check on the unsuspecting kid hovering over the puck like a hen trying to hatch an egg. A collective sigh oozed from the parents clinging to the glass. Drew shrugged and looked at the parent next to him on the bleachers.

As the game progressed, however, Drew and the other parents retreated into somber silence. The opposing team filled the net with goals until the mercy rule came into play, and the referees let the clock run in hopes of protecting the self-esteem of the losing team, Billy’s team.

“Can you untie my laces?” Billy asked Drew through wet eyes and a sniffling nose.  Other parents entered the locker room and helped the children shed their hockey equipment.

“You gave it your best out there, kid.  I’m proud of you.”

Billy managed a smile for his dad as the coach prattled on about the merits of losing and how it builds character.

***

“Billy was really upset about the game.”

“Losing sucks.”

Molly rolled her eyes and let her toes crawl up Drew’s calf. “Don’t be so coy. Your opinion means a lot to him.”

“Just doing what fathers are supposed to do.” Drew struggled to complete sentences with his wife wrapping her naked body around him underneath the warm bedding of a frigid February night.

“Love you, hockey Dad.”

Before Drew could reply, smooth skin and flowing hair enveloped him.

***

The green LED clock read 3:13. Drew smirked through the exhaustion as he thought of the signs held up at sporting events. He then figured out that it was 3:16, not 3:13, and the realization brought him completely out of the dream state.

He turned and saw Molly’s dark hair fanned across the pillow and her ample chest raising the comforter. Drew slid his hand across the cool sheets between their bodies and touched the soft, hidden flesh of his wife’s upper thigh. Molly moaned and pushed his hand away.

The bedroom door opened to the hallway. Drew and Molly’s room sat between Billy’s and Sara’s and directly across from the steps. The bathroom down the hall held a nightlight to help the kids find it in the middle of the night, especially Billy, who struggled to hit the bowl between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Drew stood and his toes recoiled from the icy feel of the oak hardwood. He curled his right leg to fight off an impending cramp. The wood beneath his feet cracked and protested as he trudged towards the bathroom. He heard Sara snoring and saw Billy’s right leg hanging through the Pittsburgh Penguins bedding and over the edge of the frame. Drew’s dark reflection peered back at him as he passed the vanity and emptied his bladder.

He crept down the steps and into the living room, and picked up the remote, holding it for a moment before putting it back down.

175 channels, 170 of them showing infomercials
, he thought.

The laptop sat on the end table, the blue glow pulsing near the power switch. He ran a hand through his hair and lifted the cool, metallic hasp at the front of the machine. His finger depressed the round power button and the screen flickered from charcoal grey to black, and then to a blinding array of colors that forced Drew to squint. His desktop wallpaper appeared, a photo from a trip to New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

Molly hated the picture. A woman, young and blonde, stood on the balcony of a hotel overlooking Bourbon Street. Her sandy hair fell about her shoulders, tinted by the red bulb of a nearby streetlamp. The woman’s eyes shone with glee, assisted with a healthy dose of Hurricanes and Red Stripe beer. Her wrists crossed at the bottom of a tight-fitting tank top that struggled to contain two upright breasts. Beneath the bottom of the shirt and the top of low-slung, hip-hugging jeans, a strip of tanned, tight skin clung to a toned abdomen. The light from the festival glinted off her naval piercing. Dozens of beads sat on her chest in the traditional colors of the holiday, purple, gold, and yellow. Drew took the picture because it was a perfect shot of Madame LeVive’s Voodoo Temple shop, which sat underneath the balcony. While his buddies spent rolls of film on drunken girls flashing boobs for beads, Drew was more interested in the story of Voodoo in the Crescent City. While it may have been the truth, Molly never bought the story.

Once his eyes adjusted to the glare of the screen and passed over the well-known intricacies of “slut on balcony,” as Molly named it, Drew used the track pad on his laptop and placed the cursor over the Thunderbird icon. He hesitated, somehow unsure as to whether or not it was a wise move. Years ago, Drew promised himself that he would never again check his email at night.

Before he could reconsider, the beautiful blue bird appeared and was then replaced by an inbox. At the top of the list, sorted by arrival time, sat more offers for penis enlargements and deep-discount prescription meds. His eyes slid down the list until they caught the subject line that had escaped reading until now. “Tonight.” Drew’s mind jolted a memory before his eyes read the email.

In the summer of 2005, things at the office reached a fevered pitch prior to the buyout. Molly was pregnant with Sara and Billy was getting ready for kindergarten.

“She keeps giving me strange looks.”

Brian winked. “Oh yeah!”

“I’m married, asshole,” replied Drew.

“So are thousands of other swingers. Molly would never find out.”

Drew shook his head as Vivian came past his desk for the third time in one hour.

“Can we talk?” she asked, casting a dagger at Brian as she spoke.

“I’ve got the Wilson deadline tomorrow. I’m really busy.”

Brian took three steps backward and turned towards the break room. “Catch ya later, Drew.”

Vivian watched him shuffle off while shaking the disgust from her hair. “He’s an asshole.” Drew nodded. “Listen. I know you’re married.”

Drew crouched forward in his chair and began to speak when Vivian cut him off.

“Meet me after work at Sully’s Tavern. One drink, a talk, that’s it.”

“I’m married.” Drew stretched the word out as if Vivian was hard of hearing.

“One drink. That’s it.”

A car blew past the bay window of the living room. The dilapidated muffler tore holes in the early morning and shook Drew from his dream. Daydream, dream, recollection? He was not sure what it might be called when it happened at 3:30 in the morning on the couch with a computer on your lap.

The glowing oasis of the screen floated in a sea of darkness. The orange pall of the streetlamps crept beneath the drawn shades. The cool hand of February cracked the floorboards and shook the loose windows in their sills. As if maneuvered by a hidden hand, the worn refrigerator motor kicked in and rattled the empty kitchen.

He looked down at his inbox and its newest addition, “Tonight”. Drew glanced to the left and noticed that the “sender” field was empty.

Typical spam
, he thought.
Delete it and go back to bed.

Instead, his right hand positioned the cursor over the subject line and his pointer finger delivered a click. Drew’s hand trembled as he waited for the message window to open. He felt a flutter in the room as if it were exhaling a dusty, old breath. Shadows cast on the living room wall twitched. Drew could taste the dust blown from the heating ducts of the old house.

The whiteness of the message body almost blinded Drew. He put one hand towards his eyes to diffuse the glare. The “sender” box was empty. The “body” box was empty. The subject line held a single word, “Tonight”. The seven letters stood with resolve, staring at Drew through liquid plasma eyes.

“Is short.”

Drew almost dropped the company laptop to the floor. He swore under his breath, thinking about the thousands of dollars he would have to cough up should the laptop get damaged outside the office. The concern passed as the two words came again.

“Is short.”

He shut the lid and waited for the blue and orange lights on the keyboard to fade. Drew set the machine on the table and sat in the still darkness, convincing himself that he had mumbled the words. Twice.

One of the shadows hanging on the wall slid towards the floor like a shelf of ice falling into the Arctic Sea. It crept along the baseboards and the inky black of the form spread into the kitchen and out of Drew’s sight.

He stood and placed a bare foot on the oak floorboards. The coldness of the century-old wood felt like fire on the soles of his feet. He peered into the kitchen, expecting to see the shadow and hoping it was Molly getting a glass of water.

“What’s short?” Drew heard himself ask. His face flushed red in the darkness, an embarrassment to himself. “Who am I expecting to answer that question?”

The cranky heater in the basement coughed and, with a reluctant clang, fired up again as the thermostat dropped to fifty-five degrees. The air shook Drew and he swore he saw his breath. As quickly as the chill infiltrated his bones, it disappeared.

He turned and looked at the digital clock on the microwave: 4:03.