Ted was planning to dump Margot over breakfast. He just had no idea how to drop so heavy a thing on someone so... light. She might break, and Ted just couldn't afford it. Literally.
He needed finesse, something he was smart enough to know he didn't possess. He couldn't bullshit his way through this one; he needed a woman's touch. So he began his daily routine, hoping inspiration would strike by the time the clumpy shit she tried to pass off as scrambled eggs was served up on one of their blue willow china plates. Margot always served breakfast on them; there was a story in those plates, he knew. His grandmother had told him that when he was around six. And although they had been in his family for years, slowly becoming chipped and faded, he had never bothered to figure it out.
Luckily for him, there was still his morning salvation. Every morning, right before breakfast, he drove the recycled garbage up to the dump. And every other morning, at precisely seven-twenty, the payphone at the Texaco across the street from the huge metal bin would ring. Margot, darling slip of a woman that she was, probably thought he didn't know the first thing about love anymore. She was wrong, but simply because she had the wrong equation in her head. Ted knew a great deal about being in love. Just not about being in love with her.
Stepping out of the shower, he caught a glimpse of Margot, eyebrows slightly furled, staring in consternation at the bay window. She ran her delicate hands tentatively along the frame, which he had installed two years ago himself. Watching her now, Ted was reminded of the way her hands tread the same way over his chest, and then his stomach, on their third date. It was as if she verifying his solidity with more than just her eyes. She had never gotten past touching him like that, actually. Except nowadays, when she didn't touch him at all.
Looking beyond her, he saw the Washington Post still sitting in the yard, its plastic wrapper glistening with the morning dew. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants and headed to the kitchen, briefly wondering why Margot hadn't brought it in.
He started her Maxima and backed out, turning around in the cul-de-sac. He had always enjoyed Margot's sleepy little suburban neighborhood, preferring it's sense of community and sprawling expanses of green lawns over the hostile selfishness and boxed-in apartments of DC. He truly didn't want to move; that was the main reason he had delayed the inevitable with Margot so long. Her family had left her the house, and not much else, when they had moved to Connecticut. Her childhood home, his furniture, right down to the damned blue willow plates. Except for the curtains in the kitchen. Someone else had bought those as a joke. His licked his lips, and they curved upwards, remembering.
He checked the clock on the dash, and eased his foot onto the gas. Seven thirteen. Wouldn't be long now.
The phone shrilled out into the foggy chill of the morning, and Ted snatched it up, performing a quick scan of the desolate parking lot out of habit. He smiled, heady with a strange mix of adrenaline and arousal, and pressed his ear a little harder against the receiver, as if he could pull the voice on the other end inside of him and use its strength to propel him through breakfast. Often times, it did.
She told him not to leave Margot just yet. Her view was that Margot had that beautiful house, was often gone for weeks at a time visiting her family in Connecticut, and besides, Margot hated surprises. And there was no way to say something like this without the element of surprise. Ted had laughed at that, but he secretly wished Margot would, first off, recognize the futility of the situation, and secondly, do something about it.
As long as he had known her, Margot hadn't been able to attempt one thing with confidence, forcefulness. She always looked to him for approval; quiet hurt or, more recently, disdain filling her eyes when he pretended not to notice some accomplishment of hers. He had started it as an experiment, and now it continued out of stubbornness.
But Kat. Kat was everything Margot was not, an intensely opinionated woman who's blow jobs made his head spin, and who's fiery after dinner talk had him laboring through the maze of her fears, passions, and contradictions for hours on end when he returned to his tepid living room. Her every word was laced with intention, and a hint of depravity. Her body and mind crackled with an energy she couldn't seem to contain, even when it was muted with eight or nine shots of tequila. Even then, it bled out of her; smearing over him, rendering him nothing more than putty in her insanely capable hands.
Driving home, he was thinking about love, and lust, and the nature of denial. He was replaying the sweet bourbon huskiness of Kat's voice in his eardrum. He was leaning back, and closing his eyes, and he was almost free. And then there was a mailbox.
Margot picked him up at the hospital, her hair shining, her heels clipping along at a rapid pace towards him. He thought about Kat and how she always moved like nothing was more important than the feeling of each step. She moved like she was wading through heaven. He smiled, humming a few bars of some classical song he had heard on the radio right before his untimely meeting with the mailbox.
Margot was looking at him, her smile wilted. They went to lunch.
At the office later on, he left a quick message on Kat's cell. He didn't know how, but today was the day he was going to do it. He asked her to come over at about seven; Margot usually took her walk then, and they could have an hour or so alone before her return.
He hung up, his hands clammy. He still hadn't said it, and that was because it was possible it wasn't true. Maybe he wasn't in love, after all. It was quite possible that he was obsessed.
Thank God Margot had never expressed any interest in marriage. He thought of her now, of the things he would say, of the blank look of shock that her face would arrange itself into. And though a tiny aspect of him was disgusted when it started, peals of laughter began to work their way out of his mouth. Like his Kat always said, laughter is the best substitute. When there was no Cuervo, that is.
He arrived home in time to see Margot's boyish form rounding the opposite corner, walking steadily, as if to escape her own ambivalence. Fine sheets of rain blurred the effect of the headlights on the garage door as he parked, manuevering carefully to leave enough room for Kat's Eclipse.
A heavy knock sounded on the front door just as he was pulling the Cuervo down from the pantry shelf. Ted thought it was funny how it always worked out like that, as if the irresistible mix of hot sex and a bottle of her favorite distraction inexplicably drew her to the house. Once, while they were in bed, she grabbed the bottle from the nightstand, ran her tongue up the inside of his sweaty thigh, and took a huge swig. Remembering her lips, pursed and wet in the semi darkness, he had always hurried to retrieve the bottle first thing from then on when he knew she was scheduled to arrive.
He answered the door with the bottle in hand. She sidled past him, and, moving an array of flowers Margot had picked two days ago, slid up onto the kitchen table. Opening her legs, she reached in between them, and came up with part of the checkered tablecloth. He crossed the room towards her, and she took the bottle in hand, setting it down beside her.
She told him Jared had dropped her off, and slowly began rubbing her ring with the tablecloth. She looked thoughtful, and began to talk, the words forming thickly; she was talking about deja vu.
He was thinking about Jared, the husband. And about the wedding ring, and how beautiful she was, backlit by the track lighting. Like a work of art on display.
And suddenly he heard her words. She was telling him that he should stay with Margot. And the reason he should stay was simple, but she couldn't say it over the phone. She wanted to see his face when she told him, and, to be completely sure she was making the right decision, be able to look into his eyes.
Ted felt far away, suddenly; vacant, and recalled the blue willow china. There was a story here, but he didn't want to figure it out. Kat wasn't giving him the out, though. She leaned in close, and he could smell the perfume her body heat had captured; a scent he knew Margot wore on occasion, as well. A brief flicker of confusion tore through him, and he looked at Kat's eyes, almond shaped like Margot's, though a deeper brown.
She told him, slowly, lowly, annunciating every word, that she didn't want him. Not anymore. And that she would walk home.
Ted stared at her. His hands fumbling uselessly beside him, he found the bottle, and gripped it for leverage, his knuckles whitening. He looked down, fixating on Kat's wedding band, which was shining garishly due to the track lighting and the recent polishing.
Kat jerked her head around. Ted was still staring at the ring. And in the back of his eardrums, a sound was echoing, as if he was underwater.
There it was again; coming from the living room, he realized. Something shattering.
11:55 p.m. - 2001-08-14
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