The Cardboard Dress

Adelle is my wife and I ache to be with her. I know I’m the man-of-her-dreams because she tells me so in the daytime and because she shows me when it’s night. We get into a car and drive to a restaurant, where we have dinner people with people we mistook as friends.

We get out of the car and they are there waiting for us on the sidewalk.

“Charlie!” says Marcus, a man almost as handsome as he is boring.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s so good to see you again.”

He hugs me and squeezes very hard, and I am momentarily afraid that my chest will collapse under the pressure of his grip. I feel immensely afraid and I want to kill him. I hate this guy for no discernible reason other than it feels good to loathe him. He is that type. But he lets go before I slay him.

“Adelle!” That’s Marcus again. “How are you?” Marcus stares at her—this woman I love—like she is made of cheesecake.

“Wonderful!” says Adelle.

Marcus briefly looks at his own wife, Dary, and nods at her. It looks like a business transaction instead of the lover’s twitch it’s supposed to be. He turns back to Adelle and continues staring. There is a silly grin on his face, like he wants to eat her. I feel strange that I’ve never seen it before—this mouth lust—during any of those countless meals we’ve shared over the last year, the four of us: breakfast, brunch, lunch, that strange snack time halfway through to dinner, and dinner itself. Always when we were feeling crazy and insecure and fearful that we had no friends.

We’re social eaters.

There is a slight pause as Marcus admires Adelle, too short to be awkward, but then he just keeps staring at her while telling some anecdote about a blind kid that was walking a dog and not the other way around.

I want to crush him now because of the way he is looking at her. But I do nothing because I am just so sure that I am seeing things. That I am imagining them. That I am fabricating, breeding, and composing tidbits that simply don’t exist.

Adelle says I do that on occasion. That I make things up.

“Shall we eat?” says Dary.

“Yes, I’m hungry,” says Adelle.

I fake a smile, throw my arm over Marcus’s shoulder, and say, “It’s so good to see you as well. You and Dary. You are both charming-as-hell. Really, I mean it.”

We move indoors. We sit and we order. The food arrives. Someone is eating crab, someone is eating a salad that has a very fancy name, and someone is having some sort of tenderloin. I’m having soup and a dinner roll, which I’m enjoying in a simple-pleasures kind of way.

There is talk the size of marbles. It is about the weather. It is also about our pet turtles or pet hamsters or pet fish and how long we expect them to live. It is about what we want our children to be like when we have them (if a boy, I’m going to name him Truman and I want him to stutter when he is young so that he may learn to be fierce and colorful with his spirit; if a girl, I’m going to name her Maribelle and I want her to be slightly overweight and terribly funny so that people will love her first for her wit). And we talk about whether or not we’re happy. With ourselves and with each other. One wife or one husband. The same body sitting there. The same voice droning on about cornflakes and flowers.

Adelle and I look at each other, almost on cue, and smile. She tilts her head curiously. Blinks. Says that together we’re like popcorn and chocolate, different to the core but made for each other.

Then, with admirable nonchalance, Marcus brings up the notion of sharing lovers. He says you can endure life or you can mix it. Give a little, take a little. Shake things up. Stir them. As if variety were some sort of spice. As if we were meant to taste the people we fuck, like they were hamburgers

Marcus, you old shoe! is what I think at first. But as soon as I realize he is talking about us, my thoughts become considerably more vulgar and violent. I mean, you pretend to know someone but then they undress themselves at dinner and choke you.