The New Girl
by Nathan Graziano
After Lisa's car pulls out of our driveway, I get on the phone with Jackson and start telling him about this woman I met, online, and then I place my wedding ring in the top drawer of my desk, beside my handwritten list of divorce attorneys and vacancies for one-room apartments.
Jackson cracks a new can. "I don't want to moralize, Mark," he says, "but you better be careful. Lisa will kill you if she finds out."Two days before, Lisa and I went to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant and two margaritas later (three for me), she told me—her eyes squeezed shut and Spanish guitars blasting like gunfire in the background—that she slept with another man. I haven't told Jackson. While Lisa and I are still living together in our house, for the time being at least, I'm planning on moving out as soon as I can find a place. But seeing I don't have a driver's license and have a jail sentence hanging over me, this is no small task.
Meanwhile, everything in this house reminds me of this other guy: every couch, every chair, every table in every room, I surmise, is sullied by his sperm.
"This chick sent me her picture over email," I say to Jackson. "She sent me a picture of her tits. She was wearing a corset, some push-up device, but I can tell she has great tits."
"You met her on the internet?"
I open the last beer in my fridge and wash down a Percocet. There's vodka below the sink. Lisa said it was an accident, a terrible indiscretion. She said she thought about me while it was happening. Isn't that sweet? "She has a couple of kids," I say.
"Mark, buddy, she isn't real. Your wife is real. This other girl isn't. Why are you dicking around with some lonely single mom when you have the real thing there?"
Tonight, I'll end up passing out on the couch and most likely not waking up until long after Lisa leaves for work in morning, assuming she comes home. But before I pass out, I'll lurk like a fog online and look for this woman who told me I was sexy, who told me I "sounded sweet." And I'll tell her what she wants to hear. I'll tell her she's sexy, and her picture made me hard, and I'm looking into cheap flights so I can visit her in Florida. I'll tell her to send another photo, maybe a video, a full-body clip; and maybe, instead, she'll send school pictures of her kids with forced smiles in their best pressed clothes. I'll tell her I'll be there in a week, maybe two, and I might. I'll tell her I'm going to meet her at the airport, kiss her with a tongue like a drill bit, fuck her in the darkness, rape her if she cries another guy's name.
That bitch.
Suddenly, everything is as quiet as a knuckle.
"Jackson, are you there?"
There's no response on the other line, not even a nasal sigh. "Jackson, Lisa fucked another guy, and I'm moving to Florida."
There's still no response, just this heavy, grating silence. I reach into the drawer and put on my ring before searching for this woman who isn't remotely real.
Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire with his wife and two children. He has his MFA from The University of New Hampshire and teaches high school English for a living. Graziano is the author of Teaching Metaphors (sunnyoutside, 2007), Not So Profound (Green Bean Press, 2004), Frostbite (GBP, 2002) and seven chapbooks of poetry and fiction. His work has appeared in Rattle, Night Train, Freight Stories, The Coe Review, The Owen Wister Review, and others. His third book of poetry, After the Honeymoon, was published in Fall 2009 by sunnyoutside press. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com.