“Isn’t it about time for you to get up?” a voice said. He couldn’t be sure the voice wasn’t his own. The words repeated in his head. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Time? they insisted. The twitching lids of his eyes shot open. There were red lines on the clock, and at first he had no idea what they meant. As he watched the lines change, assembling themselves in a different order, he failed to make note of the body next to him. Finally the lines settled themselves into something he knew as numbers.
It was only 12:46 in the afternoon. Not yet time to get up. Fourteen minutes. Fourteen precious minutes remained. Darius rolled onto his back with a sigh. Then he saw Violet lying next to him, perched on one elbow. She was silent and smiling. He sprang up against the headboard, dragging the blanket with him.
Violet ran her fingers over the strip of his bare chest not covered by the blanket.
“You’re not happy to see me?” She’d learned to pout even while smiling. Her nails flickered with a fresh coat of polish, her favorite ruby red.
“How’d you get in here?” He pulled the blanket up the rest of the way.
Violet removed all but her index finger from a swirl of chest hair and looked at him sideways. “What’s your problem?”
He cupped her shoulder in his palm. The softness of her skin invited touching. His fingers slid down her fleshy arm, lower, up the incline of her hip, and around the curve of her behind. She was entirely naked and larger, fuller than he was.
“It’s too early for surprises …” he began. And then again, “How’d you get in here?” He spoke slowly, the better to control the anger he felt rising in his throat.
She rolled over onto her back, fluttered her eyelashes. The sheet had slid down below her breasts. They were smaller than Sylvia’s but firmer, and they made it impossible for him to forget how young she was. Violet’s skin was a deeper, richer brown than his wife’s, and soft — the softest living thing he’d ever touched.
“Sylvia let me in to borrow an egg—” Violet paused, adding a moment later, “As she was leaving.” Then she sighed, dramatically, her chest rising and falling. “Looks like I forgot to lock the door when I left.”
He saw her arm move, and then he felt her hand between his legs.
“I remembered there was something else I needed to borrow.” Her fingers fumbled in the fly of his boxers. She gripped his shorts by the elastic and gave them a tug.
Darius held on to the side of the bed, and she let the elastic snap back against his hip.
“What’s your problem?” she said, turning away.
From behind he could see the outer swell and lift of her breast, and he felt regret. He reached out and put an arm around her waist. She allowed herself to be pulled toward him, even helped. Their bodies came together, stopping only when they both felt the length of his erection between her buttocks.
“So you are happy to see me,” she said.
He was, in part, and it was that part that ruled the moment.
They finished just seconds before the alarm went off. Darius was glad when its wail gave him an excuse to let Violet go.
He was a stupid, stupid man. As they lay silently, several inches of sheet between them, Darius swore to himself that it would never happen again. But then again, not only could he remember each of the reasons he’d already thought of for breaking off the affair — finally and completely — he could recall himself on this bed, in exactly this position, making the exact same pledge.
Violet stood naked before him, her body strong and confident and intimidating.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he said.
She slipped on her panties, a faint sliver of fabric that somehow seemed to make her even more naked than before. “I switched.” She pulled on her sweatpants and a T-shirt that had been washed almost to transparency.
“Otherwise I never get to see you.” She reached out and touched his toe, and the sweetness of the gesture only increased his misery. When she bent down to pull up her socks, Darius ducked under the blankets. He allowed a minute to pass, pretending to search for his underwear. When he resurfaced, Violet was gone.
He leaped out of bed, still undressed, and sprinted to the living room. As he locked the front door behind her, Darius felt again the loss of those fourteen minutes. There’d be no getting them back, not when every minute of the next five hours was accounted for in advance. He’d already promised Sylvia he’d do the shopping. They’d talked about it the night before. He always called her during his break, just as she was getting into bed. He’d been careful to set aside just enough time to get to the store, but that was before Violet.
He walked over to the window and lowered himself into the recliner with a sigh. Now, on top of everything else, he’d have to wash the sheets, too.
The vinyl cushion squeaked against his naked skin as he reached out to raise the blinds. The afternoon sun washed through the glass, pouring over his body. He didn’t bother to cover himself. There was nobody outside to see him. The street below was empty. The building across the street was empty, too. There’d been a fire a couple years ago. But if it hadn’t been a fire, it would’ve been something else. The emptiness was everywhere. All across the city it was the same, a landscape full of monuments to loss and oblivion.
He stood in the shower just long enough to rinse off the smell of Violet’s perfume. He passed a razor over his cheeks and chin. And then he was running down the stairs with the laundry basket. It was a three-and-a-half-block sprint to the Laundromat, and he made it there in record time, only to find that the few washers not out of order were already in use.
The TV in the corner was playing a telenovela, but the Guatemalan lady who ran the drop-off service was nowhere in sight. Darius collapsed against the wall, letting the basket fall to his feet.
A woman sitting in one of the slick plastic chairs by the windows nodded at the TV. “He doesn’t know she’s his sister. Hermana,” she said. “It means sister.”
Darius glanced at the screen, an airbrushed young couple smashing their mouths together.
The woman in the plastic chair wore fuchsia stretch pants with matching toenail polish. “I dated a Spanish guy once.”
Darius slid into the seat beside her. A zipper ticked in one of the dryers, round and round with every rotation. It was impossible not to feel the time slipping away. “I have a hard enough time following these things in English.”
“You get the hang of it,” the woman said. “Everyone’s diddling everyone. The ball to keep your eye on is who’s got the loaded gun.”
Darius turned back to the drop-off counter. “Do you know where she went?”
The woman shrugged.
He hadn’t seen one of these shows in years, but nothing seemed to have changed. “They’re too beautiful,” he said.
“You want to watch ugly people going at it?”
“It just doesn’t feel real,” Darius said.
“That’s kind of the point.”
It was hard to see how that made anything better. Was that what he needed to feel less guilty about his own bad choices — better lighting and a personal stylist?
The telenovela broke for commercials, a white woman lathering her head in the shower.
“You like to live dangerously?” the woman beside him said.
“I’m just waiting for a machine.”
She nodded toward the window at his back. All he saw outside was a paper cup blowing down the sidewalk.
“There.” She reached out, pointing.
It was something in the glass itself, a small hole just level with his chin. Darius touched it with his finger, feeling the smooth, sharp edge. A bullet hole.
“Why would anyone shoot at a Laundromat?”