A Block of Broken Houses

Bad Company (Part Three)

Vincent smelled her cooking immediately—the heavy and even backdrop of boiling pasta overshadowed by heated pesto—and had his mind been calm and clear instead of curious he would have noticed it from the hallway. The fan in the range hood hummed on low, he thought. And a little louder than that, music coming from the wireless speaker set snug in one corner of the kitchen counter. The lyrics were lost to him amid the low racket but he could make out the rhythmic bass line clear enough. And underneath all of it he thought maybe there was something else, something sporadic that may have been hushed laughter or conversation or both. He set his bag down in the foyer and began to ease down the short hall to the kitchen, not calling her name but not slinking, not hiding.

He rounded the corner and came to see close to what he had expected: Arlene over the stove top, her back to him, her one hand, he assumed, holding the frying pan, and her other shifting something around within it. She wore a relaxed jean skirt and a faded salmon top he knew well because it was cut low in front. And over top that salmon shirt, looped around her neck and waist in bows he somehow knew had not been tied by her, she wore the one and only apron she owned, the one he found adorably tasteless because across the front was I'M SIZZLIN'! written in obtrusive, nearly conceited red lettering. Her hair was tied back in two dark and curled pigtails resting neatly against her neck, the way she always wore it when she set to work in the kitchen. The fan in the range hood was running, yes (he could see it greedily eating the steam rising from both the frying pan and the boiling pot), but on low or medium or high he could not very well say because the man leaning with his back to the counter and just to Arlene's right had stolen all existing sounds from him entirely; gone were the low chatter which may or may not have existed between the two of them and the distant drum of some top-forty bass line.

The man leaning against the counter was observing Arlene's work but seemed to be taking a more appreciative interest in her. He was dressed casually in faded jeans that drooped relaxed but not offensively so on his tall, thin frame and a crisp, dark green tee-shirt that seemed at least one size too small. Across the man's chest was a yellow football helmet with a large white, green-trimmed G printed on its side. Underneath the helmet, in the same solid yellow, was written PACKERS.

He instantly found this tee-shirt as equally obtrusive and conceited as Arlene's apron and not in the least bit adorably so.

Packers leaned close to Arlene. She glanced up at him before understanding that he meant to whisper something in her ear. He did—something quick—and then she glanced up at him again, this time biting her lip and smiling a lustful grin, the food atop the stove temporarily forgotten. Packers leaned in close and kissed her, his hand finding the firm hump of her rear and squeezing, squeezing. She kissed back, tilting her head and rising onto the balls of her feet to take full advantage of all that Packers was offering, her hand slinking up his chest and around his neck in the process.

Vincent stood in the suddenly too-snug doorway leading into the kitchen and watched them, his one hand shoved deep into the pocket of his pants, either searching for a place to hide or attempting to refrain from regretful action. His other hand had found his throat, massaging it as if to loosen the muscles that had abruptly grown tight around his windpipe. Spots of darkness began to inch around his vision, closing in and threatening to take him. His breathing had grown short and sharp, and each lungful he pulled in was like swallowing jagged splinters of rotting wood.

And then the hand in his pocket found his crotch and squeezed, squeezed. It hurt—by Christ, did it ever—but the pain was an easy trade for losing consciousness. The blotches in his vision turned first a muted blue and then slowly settled into a throbbing red, fading as the pain steadily pulsed. A sickening and weighty knot formed in his stomach, the knot that sometimes grew in his chest but always in situations like these.