I’m No Fairy Tale

“Gregory, goddamn that Wii – I mean, remember what Dr. Reynolds told us?”

I didn’t answer, absorbed in the game. Actually, I didn’t hear her come in.

“Greg, are you even listening?” I jolted back into our apartment, free momentarily from the mythical land of Hyrule. I could feel my corneas keeping the beat of my pulse. My eyes shut tight, moisture returning after hours of forgetting to blink. Only essential bodily functions, like breathing, had sustained me.

“Dr. Reynolds said we should be open with each other. I’m trying to express my dissatisfaction with finding you playing that Wii again. Remember, he said we should talk this out?”

That’d be my girlfriend, Charlotte. Once upon a time she encouraged me to play video games in my spare time. That was back when getting her shirt off was exciting and I could only dream of what pleasures I’d find in her pants. One night we got really drunk, like stinking Irish drunk, and her pants button, the one that she said would only unlock on her wedding night, well, let’s just say that tequila and vodka turned out to be the skeleton key. She woke up the next morning with a headache and a used condom inside her. I’m sure she expected her first time to be different, but I’m no fairy tale.

She was staring at me. I knew it was my turn to talk, but nothing came. I plunged my clenched fist deep into my eye socket and twisted up and down. When the stars cleared Charlotte was still waiting for me to speak.

“How was your day?” I asked. Charlotte gave me a disgusted look – the kind only a woman can give, where she does all the talking with her eyes – and started clanging pots around in the kitchen. I had taken the conversation down a one-way street the wrong way. We were at an impasse: I could recite Dr. Reynolds’ spiel about the importance of being open in our relationship, or I could keep my mouth shut and let her make dinner. I was starving.

Charlotte’s been the cook since she picked this tiny apartment up on Wallace Street to be our place. There were bigger, nicer apartment buildings all over the city, but she would not be dissuaded. Her heart and heels agreed, and their alliance meant I had only one choice: accept it. So I did. I was jobless and Charlotte thought her loving eye could help me focus on our future, but it wasn’t long after moving in that the fighting started. Back then, God help me if I lost track of the time when Hurricane Charlotte regularly made landfall. She’d hear the game through the door and bust in like a SWAT team. “What the fuck is this?” No hello, no how’s it going. My counterattack was silence and it served to enrage her. She treated me like a child so I acted like one: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then one of her friends from work told her about this psychologist who specialized in helping couples pre-marriage. I thought the idea was stupid, but Charlotte insisted, saying that she loved me enough to entertain an extreme solution to save us. I couldn’t argue with that.

Recently even Dr. Reynolds isn’t helping. How can he with the country in a recession? Some fat-ass executive in his corner office took the opportunity and sent my job over to India. Charlotte wants me to pound the pavement and find another desk job, but I have other ideas. I see the recession as an opportunity, a chance to follow my dreams. For starters, there’s my writing. I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life and this is my opportunity – my one chance, you know – to pursue that. This is the first time since I was six that I haven’t had school or a job to steal my time. Even in college, when you’re supposed to study and soak up the academia, I lived a double life stacking boxes in a factory in Hartford. Literally, taking a group of boxes and stacking them. It doesn’t get more mindless than that, but I didn’t complain. I was happy to be studying Chaucer and Hemingway and Byron, to be exposed to the symbolism in Wilde or the wisdom in Twain. I recited Frost as I worked to keep from going insane. I took an entry-level office job after receiving my Master’s at Trinity. One day I got home – I was living over on Canal Street with Steve – and he was playing Xbox. He asked if I wanted to get a game in. I said I’d play one so he wouldn’t be offended. Visual cocaine, bro; all it took was one time to get hooked.

I paused my game and switched off the TV. I sat at our lone bar stool and watched her chop broccoli; her hand slid up and down the stalk as she slashed at the bushy top. The vegetable was taking the brunt of her anger. Charlotte concentrated on the broccoli, ignoring me as I sat, head in hands, and waited. She suddenly dropped the knife mid-chop and grabbed her finger with her opposite hand. Her wounded hand waved around in an attempt to shake away the pain.

“Look, I fucking cut myself.” Tears came to her eyes.

“Here, let me see,” I said. I placed her pointer finger in my hand as though it were an injured animal. The single light above our galley kitchen gave off just enough light to not qualify as darkness. It was more of a dusk really. Even in the poor light I could see that her finger was fine. “No blood.”

Charlotte ran her finger under the sink. She knew it wasn’t bleeding, but she still felt the urge to wash away the memory. “You know our sessions with Dr. Reynolds cost a lot of money,” she said with her back to me. I noticed the curve of her hips as she stood up on her toes to reach the towel above the sink. “You should really make an effort.”

“I know,” I said. I promised her again that I would try harder. I made a lot of promises like that. She turned again to face me with her hand on her hip, the blood red paint on her fingernails contrasting with her khaki skirt. Leftover moisture left a dark handprint on the fabric. Our eyes met and hers told mine that this was serious. They parted and mine drifted down; her white blouse billowed in the front and I could see her bra through a gap formed where the buttons met the fabric. It was the tan bra, the one that clipped in the front. Past where I was sitting, out our window and across the summer night was the only view from our solitary window. Charlotte’s eyes left our apartment and entered the one across the way. A family lived there; a family you could set your clock by. Six o’clock was dinnertime and they were eating. They were sitting around the table, the two adults and the two kids, passing food and stories from their day. Charlotte’s eyes had a tendency to linger with that family; I knew that was what Charlotte wanted, an old fashioned family that ate dinner together each night. She wanted me to be the type of man who kissed her goodbye at 7:30 each morning and hello at 5:30 every night. My six years of studying human emotion in classical writing told me that it wasn’t that easy. Ahab didn’t succumb to society’s idea of routine. Neither did Dantes or Hamlet or George Milton.

“I’ll try harder,” I said.

Charlotte stayed with the family across the street. Her long brown hair was swept to the side and her mouth was partially open, like a young girl waiting for a kiss. Her flowing blouse and tight skirt were indicative of her Parochial school upbringing, seductive and business-like at the same time. Watching the family across the way tended to slide Charlotte into a trance. I slid off the bar stool and approached her from behind, wrapping my arms around her stomach. She rested her head back on my chest. I reached around her to unbutton her blouse. She didn’t resist. My hands met the hot skin of her stomach and slowly slid up until I held a breast in each hand. I lifted her small limp frame in my arms and carried her to the bedroom.

Charlotte always cried afterward. We collectively ignored it; she didn’t talk about it and I didn’t press. I left her in the bedroom, facedown and naked, to cry it out. The menu for Nino’s was on the refrigerator and I called in an order for a large pizza and two bottles of Diet Coke, delivery. My wallet was empty so I took a twenty from Charlotte’s and then switched on the TV. I had a great idea for a short story, but I couldn’t get anything done in only twenty minutes. But twenty minutes was the perfect amount of time to watch an episode of Family Guy on the DVR.

Charlotte came out halfway into the show dressed in gray sweatpants and a t-shirt. Her makeup was gone, which I preferred, and her hair was a disheveled mess. She put the broccoli away and nestled quietly into the curve of my arm and watched the show. I was surprised because I thought she hated Family Guy. We ate and laughed and I finally stumbled off to bed around midnight. I was asleep when Charlotte finally came to bed.

She woke the next morning when her alarm went off. Our bedroom didn’t have a window, but I could see sunlight leaking into the living room. I’d have to close that shade before I signed into my game later – too much glare. Charlotte used to wear baggy flannel pajamas to bed, but I broke that habit after we moved in together. I liked to spoon at night and the flannel made me hot. I told her it was underwear optional, all other clothes disallowed. I watched her cheeks rise and fall as she walked to the bathroom to pee. The shower was my cue to fall back asleep.

When I woke later she was gone. There was coffee in the pot and some muffins – she baked them last night before coming to bed – were on the kitchen counter. I grabbed a couple muffins and a cup of coffee and sat down in front of my laptop.

“Ok, here we go,” I said. “Today is the day, baby. Today is when I go dynamic. Today is it.”

But nothing came out. My idea from the previous night – the one I traded for Family Guy – was long gone. I tried reviewing some of my older work, but it only made me depressed. The works were brittle with little connection to, you know, the common man. Why was this so hard? I took six classes in creative writing yet I wasn’t creative. Anyway, how could I work with this disgusting laptop screen? I hunted through our desk drawers to find the cleaner, but it was missing. I Googled how to clean an LCD screen without cleaner. One site said to use Windex, but then another said that Windex was the worst thing to use. I ended up an hour later buying more screen cleaner from Amazon Prime, with express shipping.

I decided to play one quick game and then get right back to work. I’d accomplished a lot already today – a good night’s sleep and finding a solid solution to the dirty computer screen problem. Anyway, I worked better at night. Who works while the sun is out?

Charlotte came home around six and I was still playing. I hadn’t eaten lunch and I’d left the laptop unplugged so the battery was dead.

“Goddamn it, Greg,” she said. She ran the blood red fingertips through her brown hair. “Every night it’s the same thing. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t, Greg.”

She started to cry and then took a deep breath, willing the tears back into her eyes. Stubborn and angry, her green eyes shifted across the street to the happy family. They were eating dinner.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” I said. “You know how hard I’m trying to succeed at writing. I just need a little more time and then I’ll create something, create something Charlotte. It will change the way people look at writing. I can feel it in me.”

She continued to stare at the family across the street. My argument was the same one I’d been making since I chose writing over a steady job.

“How about this?” I asked. “How about if tomorrow night I show you a new story? You can read it and become, like, my editor. We’ll do this thing together.”

Charlotte slowly turned her eyes from the happy family. “You would let me do that?” she asked.

“Of course, baby. I couldn’t do it without you.”

She was wearing her blue pantsuit. It had a little buckle on the inside that I’d ripped off twice previously in my hurry. I undid the buckle carefully and pushed her pants down over her tiny hips. Boy hips, she called them. She was limp against me as I slid the pants off her ankles and led her to the couch.

Charlotte’s smart. I don’t mean Einstein smart, but definitely straight A’s from a public high school smart. That was why I always wondered why she went into business. She could have been anything, whatever she wanted really, but she chose to boss around immature losers who still lived in their parents’ basements. I’d seen Office Space so I knew what the business world was all about. I told her she was a shepherd and the people she worked with were sheep. I was trying to make the point that her co-workers were idiots, but she told me she considered that a compliment because the bible says the Lord is a shepherd. See what I mean about her being smart?

But a part of me, the ambitious part that wants to write a game-changer, wonders how she can sit in a gray cube all day, answering questions and doing busy work for people she’s smarter (and better) than. When I ask her she tells me that her parents sent her to college to learn to be an accountant like her father, and I know it’s not in Charlotte’s DNA to disobey. Her parents planned out her entire life for her; sometimes I think I’m the only choice she ever made for herself. So she’s stuck in her little cube for years until the fat starts to stick to her sides and her ass becomes as wide as the sliding desk chair they gave her. The fatter the ass, the bigger the salary. When she starts to shop at Catherine’s she’ll be ready for the executive suite. She’ll be qualified to run the company because she’ll have experience. Experience in the business world is measured in layers of fat, like the age of a tree by its rings.

I could never submit to that. I need my freedom, man, you know? Creativity needs to breath. So when Charlotte came home two months ago and said her company was hiring, I laughed in her face. Literally, side-splitting, can’t-catch-my-breath laughed in her face. She had these grand visions of us riding the train together to work – me in a two-piece suit, dapper and trim with a go-get’em smile. We’d read the paper and type on our BlackBerry. She then told me the salary for the position, noted that we could really use the money and said she had put in a good word with the hiring manager. From what she said it was just a formality for me to interview. Charlotte pressed and pressed until I finally submitted to go on the interview, but just the one interview – no promises. When the day came I totally spaced on the interview because I was trying out this new brainstorming approach I had learned. I read that Dickens was famous for his long walks in the country, and some air was just the thing missing from my routine. I was crossing the street by the CVS when a killer idea dawned on me about this kid whose brother dies right at the point when his innocence is lost. His parents mourn for the dead brother and neglect the living son. The son eventually goes on to become President and the story ends with the parents wishing the brother were there to help celebrate. I could see it, you know, see it, but then I got stuck trying to name the brother. I thought maybe James, but then I drifted toward Zach. By the time I settled on Harvey the idea was spoiled and the interview was hours ago. That was the first time Charlotte seriously talked of leaving.

But today – today would be different. Today I had a deadline and everyone works better with a deadline. I needed something to show Charlotte when she came home. She even called me during the day to see how the writing was going. I told her that I couldn’t get anything done with her constant interruptions and she insisted on hanging up to allow me “to focus.” Around that time I remembered that I had a copy of The Odyssey from the library, and I felt compelled to walk down there and return it. It was unconscionable to keep a library book past the due date. I mean, this is a government owned book that they loaned me for free! Some kid could be waiting for the book so he could write a book report. It’ll be my fault that he fails and ends up on welfare, sucking up funds that should be given to people who I’m not personally responsible for ruining. I can’t have that over my head.

It was sunny out. And bright. I couldn’t see a thing so I ran back upstairs to get my sunglasses. Charlotte must have moved them when she cleaned because they weren’t anywhere I looked. Finally I found them in a drawer in the kitchen. Who puts sunglasses in the kitchen? Anyway, sunglasses in place I braved the sun and walked the couple of blocks to the library.

I went to the library on West Street, down by Sal’s; during the war it was used as a bomb shelter. Book deposited and conscience clear, my feet were heading back out the door when I recognized the librarian. She was a face from a previous life; one where the world seemed bigger and rooms were filled with desks. “Ms. Howard?” I asked. She looked up from her computer and it was her! Well, we made small talk and I snuck in the tidbit about my being a professional writer. She gushed over my career choice and asked when the library could showcase some of my work. She was also very impressed with my choice of literature and we talked on and on about the beauty of the Greek epic poem and how Homer was the father of all modern writing. Lunchtime was approaching so I asked Ms. Howard to a little restaurant around the corner that served the best chicken wings in town. I ordered a tray for us. I told her to dig in, but she said she didn’t care for chicken wings. Can you believe that? Who doesn’t like chicken wings? The chicken wing fiasco really brought me down and I had the rest wrapped up to-go.

I got home around two, disheartened. I decided to start my writing process again by reading some old stories, but the desk was a mess, such a mess that I couldn’t work without first organizing it. I carved out forty-five minutes to focus on cleaning it up. I organized all the stories into one pile and then sorted them by genre and overall quality. The one left on top was really quite good, although I didn’t remember writing it. Strange how writing evolves to the point of not recognizing itself. Halfway through my review The Need started to pull me toward the couch. I hadn’t played all day and I really wanted to find out the end to Link’s story. I decided to play for a few minutes, but only enough to help me better focus on the story I had promised Charlotte.

Charlotte came in quietly. I didn’t hear her until she put her purse down on the kitchen table. The room was dark and I couldn’t find a clock. The happy family across the street was finishing dinner, so it was after six.

“I thought you were going to write today,” Charlotte asked. It wasn’t accusatory; more depressed than anything.

“I did,” I lied. An idea hit me. “The story is over on the desk. It’s the one on top.”

“The one titled Playing With House Money?” I thought it one of my cleverer titles. She put down the mail and sat at the desk. I switched the TV over to Friends and tried to look cool. If I appeared too anxious then she might see through me. She’s too smart for my own good.

I’m not sure how Charlotte read over the rumbling of my stomach. I thought about politely asking her if she could finish the story after dinner. I decided a more prudent plan was to go in the kitchen and rattle some pots around. Maybe that would clue her in.

Charlotte shook her head and looked up at me. I dropped a pot, which went rolling across the linoleum. She ignored the pot and concentrated on the story. I took two plates and noisily stacked them on the counter. I was starting to wish I’d thought this plan out a little more. Charlotte flipped through the last few pages and carefully laid the story down where she had found it. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and crossed her legs. Her foot, the one suspended, bobbed up and down accusingly.

“You wrote this today?” she asked.

I tried to look aloof, nodding slowly as I stacked and restacked the plates. The heat inside my body was turned on high and I could feel it radiating out of me through my chest. Soon the sweat would show through my t-shirt.

“Oh, Gregory. You didn’t write this today.”

“Yeah, I did.” I was going to go down with the ship. “Why can’t you believe me? You have trust issues, you know. Well, I worked hard on that story today and I’d appreciate a little credit.” My spiel ended with a plate falling from my hands and shattering on the floor. I wondered if I should storm out for effect.

Too late. “Honey, I wrote this. It was my final manuscript for my college English class. My name is at the end.”

“Let me see that.” I snatched the papers off the desk and saw the story ended with “by Charlotte Danz.” “Let me explain,” I started.

“There’s no need to explain. I see what you did. You thought you’d pass off an old story as a new one to make me happy. Actually, it’s kind of sweet…in a demented way.”

“Sweet? You think it’s sweet?” Sweet was the last way I expected this situation to be described.

“Not sweet like you bought me roses sweet,” she said, “but sweet because you picked out the best story you could find and it was mine. Obviously you didn’t even know it was mine, which only makes the whole thing sweeter.” She was talking herself into the idea.

The fire built inside me. I knew I should let it go and be happy we weren’t fighting. But I couldn’t. Not with her sitting there, bobbing her foot up and down in that smug way and telling me that she thinks she’s a better writer than me. Hell no. The story was good, I mean it was OK, but most of the other stories in the pile were just as good, if not better. I wasn’t going to stand there and let her think she was a better writer.

“Fuck off,” I said.

She pulled her head back over her neck like a surprised ostrich, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” I said, my voice starting to rise. “You think you’re a better writer than me.”

“I never said that. I only said you were sweet.”

“It’s not sweet. That story just happened to be on top. And, by the way, Playing With House Money is a stupid title.”

I’d hurt her. It was my intention, but I immediately regretted it. I thought Charlotte was going to cry, but her stubbornness kicked in. She again willed the tears back. “You’re a liar. You told me you would write today, but you sat at that fucking Wii again. All day you sit there while all day I bust my ass to pay the rent.”

“I work hard,” I hissed. “It’s not my fault I was laid off.”

“You don’t work hard,” Charlotte yelled back. “You don’t do anything! And stop telling people you were laid off. Let’s call it what it was: you were fired!”

There was a knife on the counter that I had used to open a package a few days ago. My eyes drifted toward it and the dead end where it would lead me. Charlotte saw my eyes stray toward the knife and she took a step back.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

I tore my eyes from the knife and threw my gaze across the street. The happy family was playing a board game at their kitchen table. Their lives carried on without fighting, their only worry who would win on board game night. I hated them. I hated that they were so happy. I hated that they never argued. I wanted to take everything from them; no one could be happy if I wasn’t.

Charlotte came over to me then. She too looked across the street and saw the happy family huddled together. Except the look in her eyes wasn’t hate or anger; it was longing.

“You wish you lived there, don’t you?” I asked. Charlotte didn’t need to answer. I already knew. She was silent for a long time. A warm breeze drifted in from outside; I held Charlotte and we watched the family play.

My thoughts drifted to makeup sex when I felt her start to sob against me. It is amazing that two people who’ve lived together so long continue to react differently to the same situations.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Charlotte remained glued against me. Her brown hair fell in waves over my t-shirt, tickling my arms. “You don’t know who they are, do you?”

I didn’t. They were just some random family who happened to live in a big apartment across from our tiny one. I thought it coincidence they chose to live there and surprising they didn’t invest in drapes.

Charlotte continued, “I don’t know the woman or the children. But the man, his name is Paul Sinclair.”

I knew that name from somewhere in the past. It was familiar but distant, like trying to pick out a loved one from across a crowded room.

“I know that name,” I said.

“He was my boyfriend when we met. We broke up when I told him about our night together.”

My jaw tightened. Paul Sinclair. The man Charlotte’s parents had hand selected for her. He was smarter than me, taller than me, better looking than me. His hair even did that wavy thing like Travolta in Grease. Everyone thought she would end up with Paul. Now I knew the only reason it was my arms wrapped around Charlotte was that I had been the first into her pants. “Do you still…” I didn’t finish the question and Charlotte didn’t respond. We watched them finish their game. The boy won and they all helped clean up. Charlotte then gently broke my grasp and walked the two steps into the kitchen.

“How about tacos for dinner?”

I nodded in agreement and took two small tomatoes from the fridge. The tomatoes were cold, but started to warm beneath my touch. I took the knife off the counter and started to dice the tomatoes into small squares. Charlotte stopped stirring the ground beef and watched me. I felt her eyes on me, the same eyes destined to come home each night to see her reality set against a backdrop of what might have been. She didn’t linger long and we moved in rhythm in our tiny kitchen, preparing dinner. She did the rest and I diced tomatoes. It wasn’t the least I could do.

***

Brian Biunno

Brian has been accepted for publication by Slurve Magazine, Writing Raw, and Red Fez. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.