They fought over sex, of course. Of course! Even so, it was horrible and humiliating all around. Each believed sex to be a great mediator, a mollifier, a rich black coal to stoke the fire of love. For they did love one another, in spite of their frequent and intense hatred. Their love and hatred were simply two sides of the same emotion, easily flipped. And so when they were enraged one with the other, and when the intense heat of the argument had cooled down, one or the other would sometimes attempt to blow gently into the embers, warm things up, maybe get it on. Timing was crucial, however, and almost never correct. You couldn’t make your move a moment too soon, or the argument started right back up, and to wait a moment too late was futile, exhausting, as if years had passed, as if the one had spent much time in a coma, traveling eons in a cocoonlike, strange-dreamed world, awakening to this weirdly familiar stranger mooning and touching and whispering terrifying words into an ear.
Their secret, not necessarily kept from one another but an openly shared secret, was that each knew the other was the only kind of person either might be remotely capable of continuing to care about, much less stay with for any length of time. Each knew that the other was the kind of person who, little by little, inevitably, grew to hate whomever it was that they had once (perhaps) loved. That the other was just like them, the kind of person who hated him- or herself so deeply and thoroughly, and was so rottenly insecure of his/her intellect, moral fiber, looks, and so on, that it was impossible not to hate anyone who genuinely cared about them. And, if that person perhaps did come to genuinely despise them at some point, it only served to confirm their bitter certainty that such a betrayal was bound to happen. But—but—if you were with a person who was just like you, not only in those ways but also in terms of being overly temperamental, extremely hypercritical, constantly suspicious of one thing or another, and who abused you verbally and sometimes, to some degree, physically, who in other words both treated you exactly as you deep-down believed you deserved and gave you damn good reason to think of him or her as the meanest, sneakiest (son of a) bitch, well, it was a marriage made by the gods, that’s all there was to it.
In her own humble and quiet way, the dog was in accord with this assessment of the situation.
THEN THERE WAS THE business of the gun. One could argue that it would be insane for either of them to believe that one or the other should bring a gun into their house, of all places. Even so, when a colleague of his gave him the gun, he was delighted, though later on he was mystified that he had been delighted over the gift of a gun, that he had not thought it an unusual gift, a dangerous gift, a gift almost never given, especially not to someone who is simply a colleague and not a frightened spouse who must on a regular basis get to his or her car across a forlorn and empty parking lot in a bad part of town, or deliver large bags of cash from the till to the bank in the bleak evening, or rob a store or a bank. It was not much of a gun, a little.25-caliber semiautomatic pistol, cheaply chromed, with a white plastic handle that was a little loose in the screws. The colleague had laughed and called it an Italian Assassin’s Gun, given to him by a friend after a poker game one night for the same reason the colleague was giving it to him right now, which was that his wife had demanded he get rid of the gun, she would not have the thing in her house, and so would he like to take it home and — HA HA HA, the colleague had laughed — try it out on his wife?
And so quite possibly, of course, even he had to admit it, this was why he had accepted the gun and taken it home and pretended to be nonchalant about the fact that he was bringing a gun into their house. Their house, of all places. Because of the challenge, the bald-faced effrontery serving some vague, untethered resentment or another.
Of course they fought over it, the gun. Over the wisdom of having it and keeping it around. She was in the camp of those who believed having a gun would only, inevitably, put a gun in the hand of an intruder who otherwise might not have a gun. He was in the camp of those (or so he told himself conveniently at the moment) who believed that, whether or not one was especially handy with a gun, it was better to have a fighting chance with a formidable weapon in the admittedly unlikely but not beyond-the-pale chance that one would indeed be confronted by an intruder with a knife or a gun. I will not be a passive, helpless victim, he said. What difference would it make, she said, whether you had a gun in your hand when you got shot or did not have a gun in your hand? At least we’d have a chance! he said. What are the odds — the chances, if you prefer — of it ever coming up? she said. Then they fought over the quality of the gun, which was obviously not good, and over whether that mattered since it had been a casual gift from his colleague whose wife had told him it couldn’t stay in their house any longer. I’m not talking about the manner in which we acquired the stupid thing! she said. And if she didn’t want it around what makes you think I would, for God’s sake? Well, it shoots just fine! he said. At aluminum cans, she said. CANS ARE NOT ARMED AND DANGEROUS!
Where are you going? he said.
To throw the goddamned thing away.
He ran ahead and blocked her from entering his study, where he had put the gun. She tried to get around him, and they began to wrestle. She dug her sharp fingernails into his arm, and instinctively he did something he’d never done before. He slapped her across the face. They both froze in disbelief of what had just happened, their faces two variations on some kind of horror. Then, giving him the coldest look she’d ever given him, she walked away.
It was late in the evening. She went into the bedroom and began taking clothes off the closet rack and from the dresser drawers and throwing them onto the rumpled bedcovers and took a duffel from the closet shelf and threw it onto the bed beside the clothes and began to stuff them into the bag. He followed her and stood in the doorway.
Where are you going?
I don’t know, a motel, whatever. Maybe I’ll just get into the car and drive, I don’t know where.
You can’t just do that.
Watch me.
She made for the front door with the unzipped bag in her hand, still in her pajamas and furry slippers.
Come on, she said to the dog, who had retreated from her pallet to a safer place beneath the coffee table. The dog looked from her to the man, and didn’t move.
You’re not taking the dog, he said.
She’s my dog! she said. I’m the one who got her from the shelter. I’m the one who feeds her, gives her her medicine, brushes her coat. You don’t give a damn about the dog.
I do, too! I do those things!
Where’s the leash?
She found the leash and snapped it onto the dog’s collar and started coaxing the dog from beneath the coffee table. The dog reluctantly began to creep from under the table to follow her, eyes frightened and moving rapidly from the woman to the man.
Stop that! he said. You’re freaking her out.
Me! she said.
He went to stop her, trying only to restrain her from leaving the house, but they grappled in the foyer, her bag falling open into the living room and spilling her clothes, the dog trying to scramble out of the way but she was restrained by the leash held tight in the woman’s hand. He knocked over a hat and coat stand with his elbow and sent it tumbling. She let go of the leash and the dog scrambled past them on clickity claws toward the rear of the house, trailing the leash.