Heather was a scheduler at the clinic where Rick did the electrical retrofit on Tuesday nights for a month. Thirty-eight, divorced, a laugh that worked on men who were tired of being the one who remembered the trash. Rick had remembered the trash for years and had also wanted, this fall, to be a man in a gray shirt in his own doorway without a list. He told her Lisa was at her sister’s on Sundays. Sometimes Lisa was. Sometimes Lisa was on the couch with a cold twelve-year-old and a plate of wings. The lie was a schedule he did not check against the real house. The real house had a son on the carpet.
The one time was not one time. It was three, and the third was this morning, and the photo was a joke Heather thought was private. Private ended when a preview lit a lock screen. Lisa did not know the three yet. She knew the shirt and the wall and the sister. That was enough to clear a jersey off a man before a snap.
Rick drove to the clinic lot and did not go in. He called Heather. She answered on the second ring, cheerful, and heard his voice and stopped being cheerful. He said his wife had the phone. Heather said delete it. He said he could not. She said then don’t come here. He said he had been told to watch the game at her house. She said that was not an address she was offering. He sat in the lot until the game ended on the radio, a loss, and then he drove to his brother Mike’s and slept on a couch that smelled like dog.
Lisa called Pam after Cole was in his room with headphones and a show he was not watching. Pam said, “I am not your alibi.” Lisa said, “I know. He used you anyway.” Pam said she would come in the morning with coffee and a fury. Lisa said bring the fury. She sat on the couch where the phone had been and muted another game she did not care about. The wings congealed. She threw them out. The throw was the first ordinary act. Ordinary was going to have to carry a week.