Jill called me on my office phone, in the liberal arts building at the university where I taught Spanish, and explained that her husband had caught an early flight home from St. Louis. Because Jill was running a workshop in Richmond she had missed the initial text, so by now Don was close to landing, which meant he was about a half hour from the house.

“Your things are upstairs,” Jill told me, referring to the books I’d brought over the night before, after our dinner in the city, and the watch I’d carelessly laid over the nightstand and forgotten. “There’s no way I can get home in time. I need you to go clean up.”

Her voice was courteous yet pressing, each word escaping in its own capsule of pronunciation. I’d heard this tone of hers only a few times before, when I caught her side of a strained phone call—bad news from her agent, arguments with her college-age daughter, tiresome logistical exchanges with Don. Jill was only ever jocular around me, and any time she acted to the contrary was an unnerving reminder of her life outside our affair. There were all these responsibilities and complications that I was happy to overlook. I kept myself focused on the light-hearted banter, the magnanimous fornication, the way she told me that this was the happiest she’d been in years.

It was just after 4 PM when Jill called, the last week of winter semester before finals, and I was busy navigating the flood of student emails that tended to come at this time of year. I’d left Jill’s house that morning, though the memory of it was by now as loose and dream-like as the night before. After dinner we drove to her house in the suburbs, then gravitated to the bedroom where she kept the lights low and the blinds closed. We spent the rest of the night just lying in bed, Jill gossiping about the university and shit-talking the publishing industry in an entertaining way, her cackling laugh like a fire with a nice set of logs under it. Jill was a good ten years older than I was which inspired me to listen far more than I talked. From day one I had been following her lead, trying not to let my emotions go any farther than her own.

“You really think I should just go in there?” I asked, looking toward the half-opened door of my office and the long, empty hall trailing off.

“What other choice do we have? If Don sees the bedroom like it is, he’ll know something is up.”

I could hear the shame in Jill’s voice, masked by pushiness, given that this was mostly her fault. She had apparently not cleaned up at all after our night together, not expecting Don home for at least a couple days. I could only imagine the romantic disorder that the room had been left in—the sheets we spent hours in, fully naked, the musty fragrance baked into the linen. It would have been reasonable for me to refuse, to let Jill come up with a lie that would excuse the state of the house or confess to her husband if it came to it. But the truth was I felt too guilty to let Jill go through that. Back then I was like a spider caught in her web. I would’ve done whatever she asked, even if doing so was what had landed us in this position in the first place.

“How long did you say I have?” I asked, hearing a sigh of relief from the other end.

 ♧

A winter chill brushed against my neck as I flew out of the liberal arts building and onto the brick walkway that divided the campus. It was too cold for anyone to mingle outside. A few harried students burrowed into the library, their hands deep in the sides of their jackets, while the tennis courts raised up on the northern end sat empty. On these days our small liberal arts college felt even smaller. It was what Jill called the Bird Days, when you could walk the main stretch of campus and count more birds fluttering in the trees that lined the walkway than students.

Jokes like these kept Jill at the forefront of my mind, whether I was on campus or not. I had dated law-students, nurses, social workers—but this was the first time I’d been involved with a writer, someone who could come up with these unique ways of interpreting the world and lend them to you like keepsakes. It was because of Jill’s creative sensibilities that we were able to bear the more embarrassing aspects of the affair. Instead of carrying a look of shame into the one bedroom apartment I rented, with its crinkly popcorn ceiling and carpet abused by chemical cleaners, she made herself right at home, making us tea on the electric stovetop and stopping to talk with the old lady who lived on the floor below. Conversation about her husband and daughter—eighteen and spending a gleeful summer at an out of state college—was not awkwardly avoided, nor was it a source of therapy for Jill. She talked about Don as if she was already amicably separated, and her daughter like she was a wholly independent person who could not possibly be harmed by anything as frivolous as her parents’ sex lives.

Chaos, I soon learned, was Jill’s welcomed state. We met during a reading of hers hosted on campus, where she shared an excerpt from her memoir which focused mostly on her relationship with her father, a Vietnam War veteran who became an indie wrestler and functioning alcoholic in Las Vegas. Jill’s writing blew me away—and laid bare a childhood I saw as both tragic and profound. When I went to tell her how much I loved the work, she invited me to another reading the following week, this one from her new book, which was mostly a follow up to the first.

We got a drink after that reading, another one a few weeks into summer, and by mid-August I found myself in the back of Jill’s SUV, pinned between her bare hips and the leather seat, my mouth drifting about her neck.

If Jill was guilty about the whole thing, I couldn’t tell. We floated through the affair with a tacit naivete, not once discussing anything as complicated as love. She called me her best kept secret. And I gave her a key to my apartment.

            ♧

Jill’s neighborhood was only ten minutes from campus, a community lined with million-dollar colonials and craftsmans pinned along a tight, sinuous road with generous tree canopy. It was intentionally cut off from the city, with two entrances and a residential labyrinth in between, built to house academics and researchers for a much larger and more renowned university than the one we taught at.

The sun was setting by the time I arrived. Pink-purple clouds floated across the sky, reflecting lightly off the freshly paved asphalt. I parked half a block down by a playground, changed into a black hoodie, and walked back to the house as casually as I could.

The key was under a potted plant just like Jill said it would be. Once inside, there was no alarm to turn off or curious dog to misdirect. I took the stairs to the second floor, passing framed photos of Jill, Don, and their daughter during various vacations and staged photoshoots.

Switching on the bedroom lights, I could see why Jill called me. Nothing was wildly out of place, just altered enough to prompt questions, questions that Jill would not have enough good answers to. On the bedside table next to where Don slept was that French steel watch, and on the dresser were my books, right next to the jewelry Jill had worn that night. A black bra straddled the ottoman, and the unmade bed held worn pillows on both sides of the mattress.

I could still picture Jill laying in bed that morning, her limbs stretching outward and joints snapping in familiar places, voice caught between a crack and a whisper as she said good morning. More and more she had been pushing the fantasy of our relationship. This week without her husband was the first time I had slept over, playing spouse in a home I could’ve never afforded. But Jill had a way of making it all seem normal. Happiness was something she pursued relentlessly, and I had to admire that.

I made the bed quickly, like someone not overly concerned with how it looked, then stuffed Jill’s underwear into a drawer and put her jewelry back in a box. I took the watch from the bedside table and put it in my pocket, gathered the books under my arm, and pulled the blinds open slightly. Something still felt off about the room but I had already been in the house longer than I wanted, and my feet were leaving imprints on the carpet.

After turning off the lights, I left the bedroom and strode down the hallway. By the time I reached the stairs, there came a creaking noise from the back of the house. I stopped and listened. It was the sound of the back door opening, followed by footsteps. Footsteps that shuffled forward, then froze.

“Hello?” a voice boomed.

The backdoor led to a garden where Jill said Don spent most of his time. It was just like him, I could hear Jill say, to park and then go check on the garden before coming into the house, trying to take advantage of the sunset. He must’ve heard me moving around as he came in.

After Don called out I stood completely still, noting a perfect silence that lay between the two of us, between all that I knew and what he was bound to find out. The stairs in front of me went straight to the front door. I could see its blue paint and silver knob. This was all the headstart I needed. When I heard footsteps being taken, I put on my hood and flew downward.

Don pursued me from the back of the house, shouting wildly. Stop you motherfucker! was what I heard, the violence in his voice like a train blaring its airhorn.

I dropped the books at the door and twisted the knob, sure that I’d feel the heft of Don’s body wrap around me, but somehow made it out untouched. The neighborhood was empty, and the streetlights had yet to come on and combat the growing shadows of the winter evening. I was on the porch ready to make my escape. And that was when I felt it.

The weight was enormous—like the earth jolting to a stop. The sole of Don’s leather boot connected with my back, striking me squarely above the ass.

And I flew.

For what felt like forever I flew from the porch into the air, chest outward, feet off the ground, landing halfway across the yard and rolling onto the curb. It was a strange sensation having been sent flying into the air so casually, without any control or say in the matter. There was no pain, really, only a bewildering weightlessness, like I was being sucked into the gulf of the night sky.

After that, I could’ve went through a brick fucking wall. I got up and sprinted toward the car, unhinged by adrenaline, feeling only a slight stiffness in the spot where I’d been kicked.

Once in the car I sped off down the street. Only at the end of the road did I look back to see if Don was close, but it was all empty in the rearview. Not even the neighbors had come out to investigate.

 ♧

What Don saw that night, or what he thought he saw, I didn’t hear about until the next day. Jill texted in the early afternoon saying that after “the break in” Don called the police but wasn’t able to offer a solid description of the intruder. He didn’t get a good look at the car either, and the neighbors’ security cameras weren’t close enough to make out the license plate.

I think you’re in the clear, she offered me.

Though I might have avoided identification, I found myself having to contend with excruciating back pain that showed up the morning after the break in. The kick that Don laid on me had severely bruised or fractured some part of my tailbone. All weekend long I hobbled through my apartment, unable to make it several feet without a sharp jolt of pain racing up from the bottom of my spine. There was an ache in my back at the exact spot where Don had pressed his gigantic foot. It sat there like a hook in the side of a butchered hog.

The weekend drew on slowly, without any news from Jill. By Monday, I crept onto campus for finals’ week, a bottle of extra strength tylenol rattling around in my briefcase. When my students saw me shuffling across the room or heard me wincing from my perch on top of the backless stool and asked what was the matter, I told them that I injured myself playing golf, a lie that seemed to wither away and die as soon as I said it. Their exams stretched on to infinity, and my mind raced the whole time.

For the first few days I held back from trying to find Jill on campus, figuring that it made sense to lay low while things settled down at her home. Each morning I woke up in the throes of anxiety. I had dreams where I was curled up in a dark corner being kicked in the gut, neck, and back by faceless assailants. I had to remind myself that Don did not know who broke into his house, and that no one was out looking for me. Still, I kept my car parked a few blocks from my house, behind a hardware store few people drove past.

At the end of each day I had just enough energy to shuffle into my apartment and lay down on the couch. I ate frozen dinners and watched TV, finding it hard to focus on the plot or connect with any of the characters. In bed, I slept with the phone’s volume turned way up, not wanting to miss a message or call from Jill. I closed my eyes and thought of her lying next to me, her fingers curled around my forearm, reassuring me that everything would be alright. It was the first time I really felt like I had come to rely on her.

By Thursday, Jill texted me asking to meet up, and we got together at a coffee shop a few blocks from the university.

It was a spacious place, with high ceilings and a whole separate room and cocktail bar that people hung out in at night. It was a favorite among students and faculty, which was why we’d never chosen to meet up there before. Jill was seated by the time I got there, in the corner by the window. Her head was down and hands looked fresh under the morning sunlight.

“I think we need to put things on hold,” Jill told me, taking a slow sip from her cappuccino.

My back hadn’t gotten any better, and I caught myself wincing as she said this, though Jill didn’t seem to notice.

It was a gut punch, to be sure. Somehow I had not expected this—to be put to the sword at an overpriced coffee shop before 9 AM. I thought if anything Jill was going to reaffirm our relationship and thank me for what I did. I had proved myself loyal, reliable. Not many could have taken the kick I received and pressed on.

“For how long?” I asked.

Jill sighed, and cracked a bitter smile as she looked out the window. Something told me that this wasn’t her first time having this sort of conversation. She seemed annoyed with herself—with me, even—for having to go through it yet again.

“Is this what you always do?” I asked before she had time to say anything.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you start affairs and then call them off whenever you want? However you want?”

Jill sat back slightly in her chair, appraising me as she slowly curled her fingers around the coffee mug. I could see her impression of me irrevocably shift. The clarity of who I was snapping into focus. A smile crept over her face and I never felt more cheated in my entire life.

“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry things got this far. It’s my fault. I should’ve been clearer about my intentions.”

There was a sickness in my stomach, and I thought of the force of that giant foot striking me in the back. The misery washed over me, and I realized, for the first time, that I might have fallen in love.

 ♧

About a month later, just before the start of the spring semester, I ran into Jill at a party. One of the university’s biggest donors was having a function at his highrise condo in the city. It was the type of thing Jill said she hated going to, so I was surprised when I saw her there, mingling energetically in a small group, her arms looped through Don’s.

“David!” a colleague in the group called out.

I had no choice but to go over, having been marooned by the window after a conversation with the host fizzled out. A few people in the group turned to smile, including Jill, who in place of the black blouse and slacks she typically wore had on a blue dress and yellow shawl. A pearl necklace laced around her neck that she was gingerly touching, more coquettishly than nervously. I thought of her fingers wrapped around the coffee mug.

The closer I got, I noticed that the group had been laughing and that the attention was focused on Don, who was standing a head taller than the rest, the fluorescent light singling out the whites in his otherwise bushy, bacon-colored hair.

“Show David, Don,” said one of the professors.

They made room for me to stand next to Don. Jill was on the other side of him but had no air of awkwardness about her. She acted as if she knew me only in passing and had heard good things.

“We had a home intruder in December,” Don told me, turning the phone my way. “I chased him out and the neighbor’s camera captured this. You want to watch?”

I must have nodded because Don hit play, and on the phone I saw footage of his front porch, recorded from across the street, zoomed in and grainy. After a few seconds of nothing, I watched as a hooded figure sprinted out of the house. Behind that man, Don appeared, and with inconceivable power, struck the intruder and sent him flying.

The crowd at the party went wild. Laughing and clapping.

“Fucking perfect,” someone said.

Out of everyone Jill was laughing the hardest, the beautiful cackle that I had come to know so well. I looked over at her bewildered—in her eyes, a puddle of maternal kindness, as if to say let it go David, let it go.

I found myself grinning with the group. Then I began to laugh, too. Truth be told, it was funny, and beautiful in a way, seeing that man fly through the air, his arms and legs wide as if receiving some spiritual blessing.

“The guy was trying to steal some of Jill’s books,” Don said, a campaign-worthy grin perched on his face. “Can you believe that?”

“No,” I told him, “I can’t.”

Don laughed and looked at his wife, their eyes swooning like thread and needle. He turned back to me.

“You want to watch it again?”

♧

November 7th, 2024