Vladimir(70)

Then he turned to Vladimir and said, “What’s up, man?”

I intervened before he could reply. “Vladimir’s in the guest room, John. He needed some space. We both did.”

“Oh, okay,” John said, nodding. “That explains it. I mean, it doesn’t explain why you smell like another man’s jizz—”

He could be so crass. I blushed to my forehead. Vladimir looked wounded.

“I do not—” I protested.

“Please.” John gestured to interrupt me and smiled. “Who am I to judge.”

“I didn’t know you were here, Vlad,” he continued. “It’s truly a surprise. I love it, actually. I’m very infrequently surprised.” His face was screwed up and mean.

I told him it was only fair. I felt unexpectedly moved, resentment swirling in my chest.

“Only fair?” He crossed his legs and leaned on his hand like Rodin’s Thinker. God, he was so bellicose and pompous. “What do you mean?”

“You and Cynthia.” Tears were hot against my eyes and I didn’t understand why.

“Cynthia and me?” he said, and began laughing again, then repeated it several times in different intonations—“Cynthia and me, Me and Cynthia.” He bobbled his head around, his double chin as bulbous as a frog’s.

I snapped at him to stop. I felt like taking the chain from the floor and wrapping it around his fat neck.

“I saw you together.” He wouldn’t do this to me—shrug me off like a hysterical woman. He wouldn’t turn me into the paranoid wife. I wouldn’t let him.

“Oh, my friends,” he said, dropping into a solemn register, “let me reassure you. Cynthia is far too far above my pay grade.”

“No, I saw you.” My face contorted, I leaned so far off the couch I was nearly standing.

“We’re complicit, don’t get me wrong. But not in a physical manner. Honestly.” He held his hands up like a nabbed bandit. “Honestly.”

Vladimir looked from me to John and back. “I thought you saw them ‘in flagrante delicto.’?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrinking back in the couch, my bottom lip heavy.

“We write together,” John said.

“You’re writing?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, snapping. “You’re not the only one who writes.”

“Writing what?” I was being cruel but I didn’t care, for once I didn’t feel an obligation to protect him.

“I don’t like your tone.”

“I don’t like you.” He was infuriating, talking to me like I was his child.

John stood and lurched from the room. “Where are you going?” I called after him.

“I have to piss,” he said over his shoulder, and slammed the door to the bathroom.

Vladimir watched him go, then turned toward me. “I thought you caught them in something.”

I assured him that I thought that I had. I explained to him what I had seen, and how surely he would have come to the same conclusion.

“You lied to me.” He looked wounded, like a little boy who had been left out of a game.

“I thought it didn’t matter to you, whether it was true or not.” I was shivering. Ever since childhood, whenever I “got in trouble,” my body would respond by dropping in temperature. I moved from the couch, turned on both space heaters, faced them toward each other, and crouched between them. Vladimir rose and stood over me.

“But I believed you. I wouldn’t have—”

“How do you know that he’s not lying?” I was vibrating with cold, my teeth were chattering. I turned both heaters up to full blast, they roared.

“I’m not lying,” John said, emerging from the bathroom, wiping his wet hands on his pants. “I’m writing an epic poem and Cynthia’s working on her memoir. We have a writing club. We do drugs, then we write. It’s fun.”

I think I looked to Vladimir to try and offer some words of peacekeeping or explanation, but before anyone could say anything, he lunged at John, tackling him to the ground, my husband falling like a scarecrow stuffed with wet sand. It was unfortunate, really, how mismatched they were. John barely struggled; he simply attempted to pull himself into the fetal position, trying to cover his face with his hands. My eyes rested on a scratched message on the medieval chair: “Death to Yuppies,” written in script decorated with thorns. I found myself thinking about a time when yuppies were a thing we despised. What was a yuppie other than a young professional? What made them so objectionable? They were selfish, they had money, they were blind to societal ills. They liked nouveau cuisine and fitness. Was that it?

“You fuck,” Vlad kept repeating, until he had John flattened out on the ground with two shins on his upper thighs and his hands pressed on John’s biceps. I couldn’t help but feel slightly stirred at the sight of Vlad on top of my husband, his knees spread wide, the fabric of his pants stretched against his rear.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Vlad said, seething and trembling. “You give her drugs? Do you have any idea how fucked-up she could get? She’s a mother. I have a kid. You might as well give her gasoline to light herself on fire.”

He pounded on John’s chest with his hands, more a shove than a blow, then rolled off and lay on the ground, staring at the ceiling.