Chapter 2

This was the teahouse's floor manager, Jessica Lane.

Gary felt half his soul get pulled away by that perfume. He threw out his beer belly and put on a big smile. "Oh, come on, my friends are just being generous."

"You're being far too modest, Gary." Jessica had spent years working the nightlife scene, and she read the mind of a middle-aged man like him at a glance. She leaned forward slightly to pour his tea, her neckline offering a glimpse of what lay beneath. "If you ask me, you can't be a day over forty-something. That's when a man is at his most attractive. Not like those young guys, all jittery and impatient."

That warm, familiar "Gary," plus that "forty-something," sent him straight up to cloud nine.

When he got home that night, nothing looked right to him.

The moment he walked in, he saw Gloria sitting on a little stool, mending something under the dim light.

He stepped closer. It was a pair of his old underwear, worn through. The elastic had gone slack, and there was a hole rubbed through the crotch. Gloria was patching it, stitch by stitch.

In that instant, the perfume, the cheongsam, and the red lips from the teahouse collided violently with the dim living room in front of him, his wife's hands as rough as tree bark, and that ragged pair of underwear.

A wave of intense physical disgust rose inside him.

Bang!

Gary kicked over the little stool beside her.

Gloria flinched, and the needle jabbed into her finger. A bead of blood welled up. She hurriedly put the finger in her mouth and stared at her husband in fear.

"You damn old hag! Don't you have any shame? Huh? Any shame at all!" Gary roared. "I give you three thousand dollars a month for the household, and this is what you sew for me? You want the whole world to know Gary Peterson wears underwear full of holes, is that it?"

"No... they're still good. With a little patching they'll be wearable..." Gloria mumbled, like a child who had done something wrong.

"Wearable, my ass!"

Gary snatched the underwear, tore at it a few times, and hurled it to the floor. Still not satisfied, he stomped on it twice.

"Throw it out! Throw all of it out! Just looking at it brings bad luck! Same as you. Bad luck!"

He turned and went into the bedroom, slamming the door with a bang.

Gloria stayed sitting on the floor, looking at the underwear he had trampled, then at her bleeding finger.

After a long time, she slowly got up, picked up the underwear, brushed the dust off, and silently dropped it in the trash can.

Then she picked up the broom and swept the dust off the floor.

Just as, for thirty years, she had swept away every unpleasantness and every grievance in this home.

Only this time, Gary didn't see the flicker of something in Gloria's eyes as she turned away... a cold glint.

It wasn't weakness. It was the dead stillness of someone pushed to the very edge.

The next day, Gary texted Jessica: "Hey, sweetheart, you free tonight? Let me take you to pick out a gold bracelet."

After sending it, he turned to Gloria. "I've got overtime at work tonight. I won't be home."

Gloria was trimming vegetables, rotten leaves piled all over the floor. She didn't even look up, just gave a soft "Mm."

"Go easy on the salt," she said.

Gary let out a cold laugh, turned, and walked out the door.

With Jessica as his cozy little hideaway, home really became nothing more than a hotel to him.

Jessica was a skilled operator. She was in no hurry to demand any official status. She simply kept calling him "Gary" sweetly, one day saying she wanted a new handbag, the next saying she couldn't make rent.

Gary never turned her down. Every dollar he squeezed out of Gloria went straight into Jessica's bottomless pit.

To save money, he started splitting everything fifty-fifty at home.

At dinner that evening, Gloria brought out a plate of scrambled eggs and a plate of stir-fried lettuce.

Gary picked up a forkful of eggs and said, smacking his lips, "From now on, we split the grocery money between us."

Gloria froze, her fork stopping in midair. "Gary, what did you say? All I have is my little pension..."

Gloria had been a temp worker at the factory, and her pension was pitifully small, just eighteen hundred dollars a month.

"So what if it's eighteen hundred? Eighteen hundred isn't money?" Gary slapped his fork down on the table. "I'm retired now, and I'm making less. This house costs a fortune to run, so why should I be the only one paying for everything? You eat my food, you live off me, what more do you want?"

"But... the utilities and the HOA fees, don't those all come out of my money..." Gloria said quietly.

"How much can that be?" Gary cut her off impatiently. "I don't care. Starting tomorrow, keep every grocery receipt, and we each pay half. That's fair! All the young people do it now. It's called splitting everything fifty-fifty!"

Gloria said nothing more. She lowered her head and pushed the plain rice around in her bowl.

From then on, the house truly became like a tomb.

To drive Gloria out, Gary started giving her the silent treatment and cutting her off financially.

At night he watched TV in the living room with the volume blasting. When Gloria, trying to sleep in the bedroom, asked him to turn it down, he cursed at her: "Too loud for you? Then get out and sleep on the street! This is my house!"

To save on electricity, he wouldn't let Gloria turn on the overhead lights.

"What do you need the light for? You blind? Can't you walk in the dark? You think electricity's free?"

One night, Gary came home late. When he stepped inside, the house was pitch-black.

"Gloria! Where the hell are you?"

Nothing.

He fumbled for the switch and turned on the light. Gloria was sitting alone in the corner of the couch, not making a sound, like a ghost.

"What the hell are you doing? Trying to spook me?" Gary jumped, then immediately started cursing. "Sitting in the dark, you trying to scare someone to death? You've made this place look like a tomb!"

Gloria slowly raised her head, her clouded eyes on him. "You're the one who said it wastes electricity. You wouldn't let me turn on the lights."

"I..." That shut Gary up for a second, and it only made him angrier. "Then you couldn't turn on a desk lamp? You've got a pig's brain! Living with someone like you is taking ten years off my life!"

He stormed back to his room, lay down on the bed, and texted Jessica.

"Baby, you're the only one who's good to me. I've had it with this frumpy old housewife. Just looking at her makes me sick."

Jessica quickly replied with a voice message, her voice sugary sweet with a hint of hurt: "Gary, I want to be with you all the time too. But... my stomach hasn't felt right lately, and my period's half a month late..."

The moment Gary heard it, he shot up in bed.

"Really? Have you gotten checked?"

"Not yet. I'm scared..."

Gary's heart began to pound. He had a son, Ben, but he had always thought Ben was too much of a wimp, nothing like him. If Jessica could give him a big, healthy baby boy...