Bruce was eating lunch in his Dodge Aspen when he realized Lydia's diaphragm must still be in the glove compartment. She had called his house last night looking for it, but since his discomfort with the arrangement had not lessened, especially if his wife Patty got to the phone first, Bruce had neglected a proper search. He'd taken Patty out for celebratory cocktails instead. Her recent Weight Watchers loss was excuse enough to focus on lighter things. Her finding a new chapter to attend after their recent move had been a challenge. Home early from work one afternoon, Bruce had caught Patty locked in the laundry room with the sound of snack cake wrappers coming from behind the door. Every two-pound loss was a victory.

An hour west of Junction City, Oregon, closer to the water in the small town of Currency, there were few choices for a proper mixed drink. Patty said she wouldn't go back to that dive bar next to the Safeway again. It just wasn't worth it. There was a neon Rolling Rock sign in the window, and more importantly someone had once spilled cheap sangria on her new Nordstrom culottes. The only other option was a motel bar in the slim tourist district. With its large green leather booths and the charming cigarette machine in the corner, The Cordial Room had stood the test of time and could hardly be called a concession of venue. Bruce and Patty might have acknowledged this if they didn't hold drinking establishments to those too common standards of middle-class conceit. Bruce was an engineer specializing in sanitation. His job was rarely glamorous. But excelling in his field following a trade school education which cost him little, and capitalizing on Patty's absent maternal instinct, there was plenty of money for microbreweries and trips to wine country.

Now rationing the last fries of his lunch, Bruce sat parked behind the recycling plant which bordered with its gray smell and machinery the opening of Currency's inlet into the greater Pacific. He was nearing the end of his lunch break. With his administrative title he got a full hour. Of course, that was never enough time to drive from the outskirts of town into the commercial district and back, and still enjoy his fast food. Bruce stopped by the Hardee's drive-thru on his way to the plant every morning. He kept his double-burger combo in the kitchenette fridge until one o'clock. The other guys made fun of him for it. Bruce was new, that was expected, but he could hardly get away with packing something so savory for lunch while at home. This way he enjoyed every minute of his meal, and on brighter afternoons he might sit on the hood of his Aspen, stretch out on the roof of the roomy station wagon and pat the wood paneling of the car like one might a loyal dog.

Today Bruce imagined a lesser end to his and Patty's cocktail celebration as he drained his jumbo 7-UP. The ice had melted and diminished the flavor. What if Patty had happened to open the glove compartment last night, perhaps looking for the Altoids, a whole-piece mint among the white dust of the tin, and found Lydia's rubber contraceptive instead? Silence was depressing, but Bruce knew it was better than the alternative. His and Patty's relocation from Fresno up the Oregon coast struck Bruce with a profound sense of volunteer exiles, elephant graveyards.

George, The Cordial Room's bartender, knew to take out his blue mixing guide when he saw the couple walk through the door. The portly man had trained in Times Square when crème de menthe was still ordered straight. On one unseasonably warm Palm Sunday, he had even served Peter Lawford. Still, there was no denying Bruce and Patty were cocktail snobs of the highest degree. It wasn't a handicap that necessarily extended into top shelf liquors; only that their satisfaction derived from a special knowledge of the proper glass for a Rosewater Rickey, the ratio difference in martini dryness and how many jiggers in a gill. Both Bruce and Patty's mothers were heavy lushes who died from a type of organ failure. Theirs was the dull alternative to fully embracing the alcoholic gene.

Now Bruce glanced out at the station wagon's desolate surroundings in the pale afternoon light. He watched the faceless concrete of the recycling plant while cleaning his hands with some leftover pocket tissue. He sighed, trying to quiet his thoughts. A pall of mist was gathering off the water. They hadn't given him any napkins at the Hardee's drive-thru. They never did.

In a swift motion Bruce opened the glove compartment like he were trying to catch something by surprise. There, next to the owner's manual and an empty pack of Marlboro Mediums with some spare change in it, was Lydia's missing diaphragm. He felt how the dried fluid of two nights ago had glossed the rubber in a cold layer. It was a tactile elegy exaggerated by the remaining hamburger grease on his fingers.

"I try to finish a book every couple months." Bruce remembered telling Lydia as they undressed in the back of the station wagon. "I like to stay informed." The sun was shining at the beach, but they were the only people there. It was the type of chance you could take in Currency, sneaking around out in the open. "I used to read everything, a lot more…" Bruce had droned on as Lydia kissed his neck. "Even poetry. I mean, I can appreciate anything if it's not too experimental."

Attending high school in Fresno, Bruce would often fantasize about running for a position in the state government, maybe lieutenant governor or mayor. Something in the public eye. Sitting in civics class, he would think up campaign slogans. It was an internal response brought on by the ills of the time. Although he stayed home when his friends drove up to San Francisco to protest Vietnam, no one could really say he was for the war. It was only that Bruce barely passed exams even in the subjects that interested him. When Kent State happened, he had just finalized plans to attend Lincoln Vocational Academy in Salinas. The last month of his senior year, he imagined what it would be like being shot by the National Guard walking from homeroom to your locker. His current career supervising the sewage filtered out from the plastics compactor didn't bother him. And Patty often bought him paisley ties for his birthday.

Now weighing the desire to drive over to Lydia's and drop her property through the mail chute, Bruce remembered her husband Tom often worked from home. Tom was a writer of SAT workbooks. He had a space in a sad little office park a few miles north of Currency, but could usually get most of his chapters done on the living room sofa with the Weather Channel glowing in the background. Bruce suspected he hated Tom. But there was rarely time for emotional truth as the arrangement stood recently.

He and Patty were so desperate for friends their first few months in town, especially that night in the strip mall dive by the Safeway. Patty was practically in tears with the cheap sangria dripping from the crotch of her new Nordstrom culottes. And with the choking indoor ash of the bar, its darkened pockets of white trash groping and vague pop music coming from shoddy speakers, Bruce was just as uncomfortable. His drinking needed pampering. A brief history of the establishment's ownership and, ideally, there'd be a connection to bootlegging, gangster trivia.

"I told you we should never have come here. I told you that." Patty's voice was deep in his ear canal. "Would you look at me, please?"

Bruce tried his best to comfort his wife. He put his hand on the small of her back. He avoided her leg for its stickiness. He ordered her a Brandy Alexander which was met with a wince from the busty grandmother in the tight black T-shirt and the bar towel hanging off her Ronco belt. Her yellow teeth showed behind purple lipstick.

Then like call-and-response, a gracious second and third voice sounded a foot behind Patty and Bruce.

"Brandy Alexanders always make me hungry," said the masculine.

"There's an old soul," followed the feminine.

Bruce and Patty turned to see another couple that looked only a few years older than themselves. The man was a freckled towhead whose traces of past boyish charm were made slightly funhouse in his middle age.

"Didn't mean to eavesdrop, however," he grinned and craned his head forward like he were telling a joke. There was a certain sag that ran from his high but wide cheekbones and ended in a noticeable layer right above his shirt collar.

"No not at all," Bruce jumped in, hoping to salvage whatever connection he and his wife had just blindly made.

"Good taste is good taste," offered the woman, who looked almost gaunt in her square-frame glasses and knit polo dress. "Am I right?" Chewing on her smirk, she appeared both devious and bored at the same time.

"Why not?" Bruce answered, drawn to the breast pocket of her dress. The way the clothing clung to her body it was obvious she wasn't wearing a bra. Bruce reasoned she rarely ever did with how small her chest was, and he tried not to stare.

"Oh you poor thing," the woman said to Patty, catching sight of the sangria stain. "On those beautiful culottes, too."

"I swear I'm not this clumsy" Patty replied. "It was that Hell's Angel over there." And following her finger the couple saw a bearded man in a ratty jean jacket playing darts with a group of likeminded flies.

Bruce felt a churn in his stomach. He was embarrassed the gaunt woman and her husband might find Patty too judgmental. To his surprise, the boyish man laughed.

"Hell's Angel. That slob wishes," he said.

The woman joined in. "Tom always says that there should be a law against drinking Bud Light over the age of eighteen."

All four were laughing now. "So this must be Tom," Bruce pointed an accusatory finger a few inches from one of the man's freckles. "Just the facts, ma'am," he said in his best parody of a police sergeant.

"Guilty," Tom threw up his arms much to Patty's delight. She nearly squealed and introduced Bruce and herself, then touched the gaunt woman briefly on the shoulder. "And…?" Patty smiled.

"And I guess that would make me Lydia," she replied.

Bruce felt the name move under his tongue.

Everyone shook hands. So Lonely by The Police was suddenly piping through the speakers. Bruce considered it a sign. And in an hour, they were across town at Currency's all-night diner. It was a homey little eatery, operating out of an old train car. In neon, its sign read: Fried Engine. Bruce and Patty hadn't been, and when Tom suggested they stop by the liquor store to pick up a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Stout on the way, how dark beer always went great with waffle fries, who could resist the temptation?

Patty complimented Tom's Volvo Bertone Coupe. "It's got a great interior, and this ride. Very slick." She felt the leather seats, the small space between her and Bruce as they sat with their knees up in their chest. They didn't mind at the time.

"We don't sacrifice style for efficiency around here," Tom said. His grin monopolized the rearview mirror.

Patty laughed. Bruce noticed Lydia staring out the passenger window. The dark coastal roads drifted by with the occasional grove of red fountain grass showing in the moonlight. Bruce thought he heard the maudlin whir of the recycling plant in the distance. He assumed Lydia was enjoying the rural serenity. She adjusted the square-rim glasses, too big for her slender face.

"I just love Swedish cars," Patty said. "We should get one."

Bruce too had been jealous of Tom's car. It was all he could think about for days. The difference between a 1979 Dodge Aspen Station Wagon and a 1988 Volvo Bertone Coupe. Wood-paneling or Swedish leather. The difference between 180 and 110 pounds.

But those were only ballpark figures. Bruce didn't even know Patty's weight, only when she lost it in two-pound increments. And really, he prided himself in not idolizing gauntness, especially in marriage. He never wanted to be the type of person to agonize over surplus possession.

The day after their meal at Fried Engine, Bruce and Patty were invited to Tom and Lydia's apartment for cards the following weekend. The latter couple had peppered their invitation with the promise of homemade cocktails and stimulating conversation. They'd turn on Saturday Night Live since Gina Davis was hosting.

Patty offered to bring a cheese plate, an assortment of olives. She told Bruce the trek down to the Bristol Farms in Eugene would be worth the drive and heck of a lot better than anything from Safeway.

"We'll bring a cooler and make a little vacation out of it," she said. "The Friday before. I think they're worth it, don't you?"

* * *

Holding Lydia's diaphragm between his thumb and middle finger, Bruce observed the cold, drizzling sheet that surrounded his car and checked how much time he had left on his lunch break. He threw the diaphragm into the brown paper Hardee's bag and the contraceptive dropped next to a forgotten pickle and a squeezed-skinny ketchup packet.

He rolled down the Aspen's window and smelled the precipitation in the air. There were thin rays of yellow sun breaking through the gray haze. He crumpled the bag into a ball and stepped out of his car.

He remembered sitting in Tom and Lydia's pastel living room, their chintz vases and Picasso prints adding an air of pure class. Maybe he and Patty should've rented before buying a home in Currency. The Oregon coast was beautiful. But Bruce knew he often rushed to set down roots just so he could get it out of the way, so he could concentrate on keeping Patty happy. Keeping her manageable. When Lydia asked why they had moved up from Fresno in the first place, Bruce came up with some vague answer about breaths of fresh air.

"Well there's plenty of that up here," Tom said, almost slurring. He was acting different than the first night they all met. "If you can get used to the fog and all the rain. Depresses the Hell out of me sometimes." He took a drink. "I watch the Weather Channel waiting for good news but it never comes. If I didn't have that little office of mine with the sunlamp, I think I'd go just about crazy. I drive over there a few days to week to get some writing done."

"Business is good, huh?" Patty asked.

"Oh yeah. You can't imagine how many kids are just obsessing over standardized tests these days. Getting into universities. I guess no one wants to go to trade school anymore. I can't say I blame them."

There was an uncomfortable pause and then Lydia coughed, attempting to signal her husband to his misstep surrounding Bruce's education. Tom didn't pick it up. Patty adjusted her blouse.

"That's a shame," Bruce finally said and popped in a kalamata.

"I wish you two hadn't gone all the way to Eugene," Lydia changed the subject. "… as delicious as these appetizers are."

"Well, I think sometimes good food is just worth it," Patty said.

Bruce noticed how red Tom's face was. When they had first arrived, his hair looked like he had just stepped out of the shower. Patty complimented his scent. They all sat down at the card table. After a game of bridge, Lydia suggested hearts and that went on for a few rounds, someone invariably praising Tom's bartending every ten minutes.

Whenever the opportunity reared, Tom put his hands on Patty. He'd admonish her hesitation about having more cheese by squeezing her arm. He'd massage her shoulder when she complained about a cramp holding her cards for so long.

It occurred to Bruce that Tom was more than a little drunk. He had obviously started before Bruce and Patty arrived and his demeanor only seemed to get sloppier.

"Ya hear the one about the motivational speaker who gave a speech to the AIDS ward?" Tom was trying to stifle his growing chuckle. "Stay positive, the man said!"

Bruce and Patty managed a polite response.

"Tom, I told you not to tell that joke," Lydia swatted her husband's shoulder. "It's offensive."

"Come on now," Tom threw up his arms, still laughing. "Just between friends."

"I thought it was funny!" Patty lied. Bruce could tell by her body language, how she jostled her leg in an up-and-down motion under the card table.

Tom gathered everyone's copper mug and headed over to the Verdigris bar cart by the TV. "Anyone else for another Dark 'n' Stormy? Lydia, where'd you put the rum?"

"Let's switch over to canasta," Lydia said, loading the deck in their electric shuffler. "I'm tired of hearts now."

"Lydia, my love…" Tom was banging a set of metal tongs on the bar cart. The glassware was vibrating. "Come on, baby--"

"I set the rum by the ice bucket," Lydia answered in a strained voice. She had her back to Tom and didn't turn around. She was inspecting the shuffler which had stopped in the middle of its operation.

"Oh, but that's not Black Seal, my love. It's not a Dark 'n' Stormy if it's not Black Seal Rum. Come on, baby, these people came to drink!"

"Tom, please--!"

"I'll take any old drink," Patty offered in a voice Bruce only heard during tax season. Or when she was locked in the laundry room with snack cakes. Shame mixed with a loss of gravity, like something insidious was orbiting around her. Patty balanced a terrible checkbook. And she had been in Weight Watchers since she was twenty-four.

"They came to be entertained, baby!" Tom yelled out.

"A little dab will do you…" Patty almost sang.

It dawned on Bruce that everyone was probably drunk. Tom's off-color joke was the first time sex had come up in conversation between the couples, even adjacently. Bruce didn't understand why that mattered, but knew it did.

Recalling what happened next that night, Bruce paced his Dodge Aspen in a half-circle, getting as far as the taillights and turning back towards the front bumper again. Then back to the taillights. He was thinking he should toss the Hardee's bag, contraceptive contents and all, in the behemoth green dumpster that loomed on the other side of the parking lot. But disposing of Lydia's rubber device in the granulator of the recycling plant seemed more poetic. What would that signify? Bruce kept pacing. He could appreciate anything if it wasn't too experimental. Then he thought of high school again, his dream of becoming an elected official. Back then he was in love with the phrase grass roots. He abused its relevance in casual conversation. He imagined stump speeches that would make his personal generation gap widen. He had seen his father vote for Nixon twice and was disgusted by the old man's complacency, his proclivity towards self-deception.

Dying from a scarred liver in her hospital room, Bruce's mother had given her son some advice to round out his late twenties. She told him that often the characteristics one finds most objectionable in others, is their own.

"People of Fresno…" He still saw his lips move in fantasy. "I have seen your prisons, I have smelled your tar. I have seen an industry in crisis." His hair was like Bobby Kennedy's and he was wearing a pinstripe suit from Brooks Brothers. "Ask me not what we carry into the future, the American Dream has things yet to be discovered."

One thing Bruce knew, he never had it in him to be a hippie. He never considered himself an advocate for free love, but that didn't mean he was impervious to passion. When he was twenty-three, he worked at a water treatment facility in Modesto. He cheated on Shelley, his girlfriend at the time, with a secretary working in the facility's front office. The secretary had an inner-labia longer than the outer, and it was the first time Bruce had seen something like that. At first it alienated him. But then the voluptuous presence it radiated in pink heat got all tangled-up in Bruce's guilt. It became token to the desk lamp thrill he wallowed in on the rough carpet of the front office. So by the time he admitted the affair to Shelley, he was ejaculating to the thought of elongated genitalia, its inherent eroticism, twice a day.

Shelley was half-Peruvian and volunteered with the ACLU. She wore turtlenecks and her wallet had a hummingbird stitched on it. On their second date, she went into a long tirade about how men were taught to hate monogamy from an early age. She had been hurt before and Bruce convinced himself again and again he was the type to put up with anything. Shelley cried for hours when Bruce told her about the secretary. Still, they didn't leave each other. Bruce slept over more often at Shelley's apartment after that. The infidelity had brought them closer together.

One night making things up to each other, having what Bruce still considered the best sex of his life, Shelley wanted fresh details about the affair. She wanted Bruce to disparage the secretary and when he did Shelley pushed her heels harder into his calves. After that, in the supermarket picking out ingredients for a casserole or taking a drive through Sequoia National Park, one of them might mention hanging vulvas swinging in the breeze and the other would meet it with a good-natured eyeroll. They might laugh. They might change the words to Nina Simone's Strange Fruit. Shelley begin volunteering less with the ACLU, and Bruce cheated on her again before the year was up.

"Only Black Seal!" Tom had howled that boozy Saturday, then the electric shuffler shot out a stream of cards all over the room and Patty jumped.

Everyone laughed. Bruce sighed quietly, feeling the de-escalation in the room. Lydia stood up, still smiling and walked over to the bar cart. She squatted down slowly, her long legs bending into perfect arches. Tom watched his wife only inches away from her, his mouth slightly open. Reaching among the liquor and fancy tumblers, Lydia pulled out the bottle of Black Seal Rum and handed it to her husband.

"I was mistaken," she said. She kissed Tom and it turned into a long embrace. Bruce and Patty didn't look away. Tom's tongue could be seen pressing up against the inside of Lydia's mouth.

"Do I love this man?" Lydia turned back to her guests, her nose a little creased. "I guess I have to."

Tom spanked his wife with a sloppy spasm of his arm. "Now who wants a proper drink?"

Bruce met Lydia's stare. She rubbed her ass and really there was nothing much to soothe back there. Lydia was all leg, practically up to her clavicle. Still Bruce was aroused. And with Patty making eyes at Tom, laughing at the man's garbled non-sequiturs, Bruce felt good. Like he was getting away with something. He looked away from Lydia and took a sip from his drink when Tom placed it front of him. Soft rain was prattling on the apartment's bay window.

"Bruce, I don't think you have anything to be afraid of," Lydia had said in the back of the Dodge two weeks later. Patty and Tom had already met on their own several times. And although he'd given his blessing more or less, Bruce had shirked Lydia's suggestions for a rendezvous of their own, usually with thin excuses about working late at the plant.

But that warm afternoon, after she had been so insistent they meet, they drove down to the beach and it wasn't long before she was guiding his hand down, underneath her waistband. "We've already done it, so what's the big deal?" She had slipped down to a white lace underwear set and Bruce saw how her bra lay flat against her chest like a large line of gauze. "It's more fun in the car anyway. Have you ever done it in a car? I love station wagons."

He moved two of his fingers inside Lydia. He felt the warmth of her feminine swell. Every excess of Lydia's was internal. She removed his hand, wanting to progress. Lydia undid his belt and craned her head down.

"I really do, I love your car, Bruce." She said during a breath. "You just don't see woodies anymore"

For some reason that Bruce could never really figure out, he and Patty rarely had oral sex. Maybe it was because Patty had always been self-conscious about her weight. She didn't like Bruce's eyeline to dip below her midsection, and Bruce didn't like to feel guilty about getting something for nothing. Sometimes Bruce would try to picture his wife naked and the image was always hazy, shrouded in vapor. Patty treated parts of her body with a certain foreignness. There were things Bruce couldn't get inside his marriage and that, he often thought, was why he didn't bother to discuss the arrangement in any shade of emotional truth with his wife. He didn't believe experimentation was a symptom of unhappiness.

Gina Davis hadn't been very funny on Saturday Night Live, that's really what it came down to. That and all the liquor. Lydia had turned on the stereo and the two couples started dancing to the Bangles. Then the Nancy and Lee rendition of Summer Wine. It wasn't long before Tom cut in on the slower song. Bruce didn't object when he saw Lydia staring at him again. Her square-rim glasses had drifted down the bridge of her nose. She was standing next to the bay window and the rain which had grown steadier made Bruce crave warmth in a rustic climate. It made him think of childhood sleeping bags, of masturbating while away at camp.

Lydia suggested Tom and Patty take the bedroom. She sat Bruce down on the Camelback sofa, almost cradling him. John Cougar Mellencamp was in the middle of his second song of the night, his image on the TV was reflected in a vodka bottle on the bar cart.

"Oh, that was nice," Lydia lit a Benson & Hedges and took a drag. "Didn't it feel good…? I think we should do it again sometime."

They were fifteen years too late for this. That's how Bruce really felt about it. Too far removed from key parties and tales of suburban wife-swapping in supermarket tabloids. Their lives weren't a John Updike novel. Bruce knew that, he had read his share of Updike. He liked to stay informed. He had paid his dues.

People were more interested in executing serial killers and debunking UFO sightings now. Reagan had just finished a two-term tenure, herding America back into moral territories. Away from cultural havoc and silliness. And even though Bruce still considered himself a Democrat with extreme potential, he could appreciate The Great Communicator's ability to bring people together. The more money Bruce made in sanitation, the more aspects of Conservatism made sense to him. Sometimes he imagined himself late in life, in his seventies like Reagan because there was always time for a career change. He saw himself with a black-dyed presidential haircut, a pocket square completing his dark suit, campaigning on promises of continued prosperity. Of a Dodge and a Volvo in every two-car garage thanks to a big fat economic surge.

"My fellow Americans, let's not lose this momentum." He saw his clean and crisp hand gestures excite the crowd. "Don't be fooled by those outsiders that say upholding traditional values is not forward-thinking. Our country is the greatest in the world… His eyes twinkled like a movie star's. "… so why not forge ahead with the keen work ethic and respect for family that got us to the top in the first place?"

Bruce hadn't met Patty until he was twenty-seven. Crossing paths at a particularly heavy Al-Anon meeting, they shared a one-night stand and Bruce was too polite to completely fade from the outgrowth. It was during a dry spell and a week later he called Shelley from a Red Roof Inn. They hadn't spoken in a year. He hadn't had too much to drink, he had no reasonable explanation for dialing her number. He was on a business trip surveying sewage ducts in San Jose and Shelley never returned the call. Patty suddenly seemed more attractive after that, like a romantic fail-safe.

"I'm asking for your support, your labor of love, to sacrifice this country for nothing less than its worth. And let me assure you, America is priceless!"

"Oh, that was good," Lydia lit a cigarette in the back off the station wagon just like she had on the sofa. "I can still feel it."

Bruce wasn't sure what she meant by that exactly. "Benson & Hedges," he read, holding the pack in his hand. "I used to smoke Marlboro Mediums."

"Used to? Oh baby, you gotta have more fun in life." She started to fix her hair. "Didn't it feel nice to let go?"

Bruce knew it did. They'd been so caught up in the beginning passion, he had forgotten to ask if she wanted something more, for his eyeline to dip. But he knew he would ask next time. Bruce wanted to do it, to reciprocate. That's what was fair and American. Like many men, he attached vague patriotic notions to making women orgasm; a love of country bled into a self-assured understanding of female genitalia. Thinking of Lydia lately, Bruce was filled with a kind of hope he hadn't felt in a long time.

That is, until the feeling was replaced with a dull pain behind his eyes, a knot of disillusionment, when he heard about Tom's particular gift for "eating pussy."

That's what Patty had called it. Just this morning, after their night at The Cordial Room celebrating.

Bruce was heading down to the laundry room with a basket of towels when he heard her. Usually he slept in as long as he could on workdays. But having stayed up listening to his wife's latest weight-loss victory, her measly two pounds, while George served them a round of Gin-Campari Sours followed by a couple Waterloo Sunsets, Bruce arose early, unable to sleep.

Patty was on the extension in the kitchen. "It felt so good when you went down there. You're so good at eating pussy."

Bruce couldn't remember the last time his wife spoke like that. Standing just to the left of the archway which opened up into the kitchen, Bruce began to imagine Patty with her chunky legs up, sprawled on the carpet of Tom's sad little office and under the glow of a sunlamp. Bruce pictured her chewing on a SAT practice test in agonizing pleasure, the writer doing his stuff down below in the girth of Patty's crotch.

"Yes, I love your office, it's so cozy. And I'll return the favor next time. Today?"

Bruce uncrumpled the brown Hardee's bag and pulled out Lydia's contraceptive. The mist in the parking lot had begun to dissipate. If he was going to do something, Bruce knew it had to be now. There was only so much he could manage. He was tired of thinking, of rolling sounds and images over in his head again and again. Last night, buying Patty's drinks, he tried so hard to be attentive. Why was he so frightened Patty might open the glove compartment and find evidence of his own fun?

Bruce didn't bother to run inside the recycling plant with an excuse. He dropped the soiled paper bag on the wet asphalt and jumped in his car. With one hand folded around the diaphragm, pressing it into his palm, Bruce used his other hand to steer the Dodge left out of the parking lot. The direction farther away from town.

* * *

There was a small line for the payphone outside the Red Roof Inn. Bruce waited anyway. He didn't want to call from the room for a reason he couldn't explain, and he guessed most of the people in the line felt the same way. When it was his turn, he spoke clearly into the receiver, to the point. Nothing like the message he had left for Shelley years ago from San Jose.

"No, Bruce. Tom's not home. Where'd you say you were again? It sounds like a great idea. No, don't worry about picking me up."

Then he called his house. Patty didn't answer and that confirmed things. He didn't bother with the machine and felt relieved he didn't drive over to Tom's sad little office like he had originally planned. Imagining it was one thing, but Bruce knew he couldn't handle seeing his wife in the actual act with another man. Why he had wanted to visit the office in the first place was something he didn't know. Maybe he would've just trashed the place, broke the sunlamp and ripped Tom's papers to shreds. Placed Lydia's diaphragm squarely in the center of his desk. Hamburger grease and all.

Bruce kept driving instead. Past the turnoff and further inland until he saw the sign for motels outside Junction City. Unlike the one in San Jose, this Red Roof Inn had a pool and Bruce thought he might like to take a swim in the morning. There was a Kmart across the street and maybe he'd run over to buy a suit. Maybe he'd stay more than a night and pick up a few spare shirts and some toiletries. He had a few sick days at the plant. He had plenty of cash. Patty had left on her own adventure, so he would do the same. Green faces and far enough away from a forgotten place called Currency.

The sun began to set and Bruce was still standing in front of the motel when Lydia pulled up in a gold Toyota Cressida. He should have known they were a two-car couple. He had a sudden desire to sell his Aspen and buy a Ford Bronco.

Lydia walked up, readjusting her glasses. "This is the place then?" She looped her arm in his and they walked past the few white trash families smoking and drinking by their cars. Their children played in the parking lot and Bruce noticed how many were overweight at such a young age. Fast food wasn't a treat for them or even a secret.

After securing the room key, but before making his calls, Bruce had stopped by the liquor store to pick up a case of Bud Light. A couple cans were resting in the ice bucket now. He offered Lydia one and she stifled a laugh.

"Still you're sweet, Bruce." She took a seat on the bed. "Tom always says that there should be a law against drinking Bud Light over the age of--"

"I know what Tom says," Bruce interrupted her. "I know what he does and how well he does it, alright?"

Lydia didn't say anything. She crossed her long, spindly legs.

"I don't see what the big deal is about slumming once in a while." He cracked open a can. "I really don't think it's such a bad thing."

"No," Lydia almost whispered, then stood. "You're right. There's nothing wrong with it."

As she started to walk over to him, Bruce felt like he might cry. It was another feeling he didn't understand. Lydia took a sip from his beer. She kissed him. Their hunger for each other grew and Bruce nearly spilled the Bud Light moving Lydia over to the bed.

She asked if he ever found her diaphragm. Even though Bruce had put it back in the glove compartment of his car, he told her no. He told her he'd pull out.

When it was over, Bruce lay with his arm trapped under Lydia's boney ass as she smoked a Benson & Hedges, her neck resting on the headboard. He had forgotten to eat her pussy again.

"I think I like it here," she said, blowing a haze of smoke. "I think we should come back sometime."

Bruce moved his arm out from under her and Lydia nearly fell off the bed.

"Hey..." She steadied herself on the bedside table. "Easy, baby."

"It's a dump here."

"Well there's no denying that. But it's got my vote."

Bruce's father used to say that in America everyone was always running for president in their own head. That they almost always won up there. The old man had voted for Nixon twice, had cast his ballot for Ford in '76 and never lived to see Reagan take the ultimate position. After Bruce's mother died from liver cancer, the old man was quick to fade.

"There's nothing wrong with slumming." Bruce turned to look at Lydia after he put on his underwear. "Unless you lose sight of what's important." He laid back down. "Get trapped by the excess."

"Do you want another beer?" she asked.

"I was in love once."

"Your wife's a very charming woman," Lydia stifled a burp and took a drag of her cigarette. "Honestly."

"She wanted to make a difference. She volunteered with the ACLU."

"Patty volunteered with the ACLU?"

"Just please stop talking," Bruce moaned and stood up. He began to pace a half-circle around the bed.

"Jesus, Bruce," Lydia muttered.

"I know," He rubbed his forehead. "I know and I'm sorry…" Sitting back down at the foot of the mattress, Bruce felt like singing Strange Fruit with the words changed like he and Shelley used to do it.

"You just don't like to enjoy yourself," Lydia moved from the headboard and kneeled on the bed next to him. "Living in that head of yours all the time…"

"We didn't move up here just for fun." Bruce swallowed. "Me and Patty."

"What does that mean?"

"She cheated on me, with someone I worked with. At a company party. I was employed at this water treatment facility at the time, the one I worked at after Modesto." Bruce saw in Lydia's eyes that she was at a loss. Maybe it was because he had never spoken this openly before. Or because Lydia was never really clear on what he did for a living. "I couldn't stand looking at the guy every day anymore," he went on, "I told Patty we had to leave. All she could think about was her fucking Weight Watchers group and she kept crying the whole car ride up."

Lydia chewed on her lip. "I'm sorry, Bruce."

He could hear the strained sympathy in her voice and he didn't expect anything more. "I guess cheaters find each other and make do. Make a game or an arrangement out of it."

"I guess so."

"And Patty had eyes on you guys that first night at the bar. I went along with it thinking I wouldn't get hurt this way. Get hurt over something I don't even care about. Or, I guess I do care. I liked you and Tom. I really did in the beginning."

Lydia laughed but from no real place of amusement. Not even surprise.

Bruce lowered his head, feeling the rough motel blanket that had fallen halfway to the floor. The other half was bunched together near Lydia where she still sat kneeling. He moved his hand slowly past the blanket and then onto her leg. "I've neglected something," he said and craned his neck forward to kiss her navel. It was an awkward angle, but his meaning was clear.

"It's alright, Bruce." She touched his arm. "Really. I mean, I got there."

"I just want to make you feel good." He looked up at her. "I want to."

So then reclining back, Lydia slowly opened, expanded into a writhing and energetic party, more present than Bruce had ever seen her taking the lead. He watched her compulsively when he knew she wasn't looking. After fifteen minutes he started to get a dull pain from Lydia pushing her thighs into the sides of his head.

But if he kept his promise, addressed her needs, Bruce suspected she might stay. She might walk over to the Kmart with him and buy a swimsuit of her own. Maybe a bikini. It would be cheap, but it would still look beautiful on her. And as Bruce muttered things like greatest in the world and I'm asking for your support between slips of his tongue, Lydia might have assumed Bruce was trying to talk dirty. More often than not, his nose was scrunched up against her clitoris.

---

Malik Selle is a writer and visual artist. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, he earned his B.A. in literary studies and creative writing. His fiction and poetry have appeared in America and abroad, in publications such as Beyond Words Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The West Trade Review, and others. Recently, he has presented artwork in several group shows at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto and to independent collectors in San Francisco.