His meeting with the Swedes ran longer than Kari anticipated. She envisioned its end, herself coming after. He told her she could wait in the patisserie across the street. Her bank app told her a stoop around the corner from his building would be better.
"I like your boots, " she said, as a Lara Croft stand-in klomped down the sidewalk.
The experts on CannaRama.Com, she'd once read, say that smoking in a new location impacts the high. She believed this because when the woman said thank you, Kari heard nothing. Everything must sound different, she decided, where no one knows how you vote. Opinions are announced with checkbooks in board meetings, not sun bleached BLM signs in windows. Two weeks before, Kari and the man met at a Nu-Wave Jazz show, full of men she was sure had never been punched in the face, their hands too soft to know real pain, to know what made jazz. When the man introduced himself she felt the callouses on his palm, and made sure to take his number when he offered. The first time they had sex, she fished the used condom out of herself, feeling as though they hadn't used it at all. When he went to take it from her hands, feeling unsafe with his sperm available to her whims, she dropped it. Together they stared at the ground as he leaked onto the floor. She looked up at him, then pushed out her lower jaw.
"You was my brother, Charlie. You shoulda been looking out for me," she said.
He told her she could use the bathroom while he wiped up. Kari made herself at home. She put on Carole King, then reached for the peach colored loofah hanging in the shower, lathering her body in something grassy, almost dirty-sweet. It stayed on her, and she relished it, smelling like the first time she mixed rose petals with her pot. She sniffed herself the whole train ride home, sticking her face into her shirt, audibly moaning, nose drunk on skin.
Prior to the following visit, Kari had gone to three different natural markets to find the exact same body wash, only to find it in the Sephora on Madison, eager to erase her existence, sure it was his wife's, the vetiver and tonka bean. It came in a glass bottle from a vaguely French company, something made up and hard to pronounce. When Kari went to replace what she'd used, she noticed something off. It wasn't any lower than where she'd left it herself. She stepped out and reached for the nearest towel she saw, drying off with the softest thing she'd ever felt. Kari inspected it when she was done, searching for a label, but instead found a monogram stitched in Tiffany blue. HLD. She memorized the letters.
In the living room fully dressed, Kari eyed the paper-filled glass bowl on the coffee table. She asked the man a good question.
"What's this?"
"Movies for when we don't know what to watch. My wife's idea,” he said, giving Kari a chill. “Go ahead, take one.”
So she did, but only to put it back when he wasn't looking, folding it as his wife had folded it. Kari gently rustled it into the mix, trying to avoid the stain of a papercut. I'd hate for you to get to the bottom of the bowl and discover you'd never watched Chantal Akerman's News from Home, she thought. Riding back to her borough Kari passed the time looking for HLD to no success. She held her breath looking at the picture she took on her way out, of the wife and their maltese snuggling sweetly, held up by a magnet on their fridge. The woman's hair matched the dog’s, roots overgrown, both of them turning gray. Shaggy and a little punk. Her husband was hardly someone one would describe as punk. He wasn't much; he was barely alive.
Spit flew from the man's mouth when he spoke, if he spoke. He'd thus far said almost nothing of his marriage, or why he was outside of it. Kari knew better than to ask. If he wanted her to know he would have told her, and anything he'd say to her then could have very well been a lie. Instead she'd take to asking him questions about his soul with her head in his lap, as a form of aftercare, since he wasn't big on touching if it wasn't contributing to the fucking they'd already done.
"What do you do," she said. "Not for work but for fun."
He grunt-spoke, his words gristled by the thick cop stache above his upper lip.
"One more time," she said.
He repeated himself a smidgeon louder.
“I like the crossword.”
It must be her ears, she thought, why he sounded that way. She'd gone for a swim at the Y just before and told him so. He suggested she use a Q-tip. Kari got up to dig around under the bathroom sink. Behind a plastic bag stuffed with other plastic bags, a box by the hundred appeared, and a small satin pouch behind it. She pulled out the pouch, forgetting about the swabs upon hearing the distinct rattle of pills. Kari unzipped the pouch to find a clipped joint and a small prescription of Trazadone for Harriet Lee Deveaux. She pocketed the weed and let her lungs do their job.
Several times a week Kari began to see the husband, and each time she'd bob her head with enthusiasm thinking only of his wife, the critic, as told by LinkedIn. She made a fast habit of reaching into the glass bowl with hunger, folding and unfolding the slips by the boatload, writing down titles when the man would take work calls in the bedroom. Harriet's taste in film was phenomenal and it seemed she was always away, the dog in tow, be it in the mountains, or overseas for a festival, Kari sorted, and such explained why the man was available for on demand trysts. During her seventh or so visit, the man came into view as Kari was wrist deep in the glass bowl. Caught, doing what neither could be sure, she yanked her hand out. Red vines soaked all of the Coppolas, a Gregg Araki deep-cut. She hadn't even heard him hang up the phone. The man stood still, his mouth agape. They kept silent watch of each other until Kari turned her head towards the door, running cold at the sound of jangling metal. Bleeding, she wondered if the dog was good company for a three hour screening about the quiet grind of a broken marriage.
