A Season for Second Chances(2)

A lot of frightened screaming and the sudden change from dark to light had left Annie temporarily dazzled, so it took her a moment to register what she was seeing. Sprawled across the banquette at table nine, desperately and inadequately trying to cover her nakedness with cushions, one of which had the words Keep Calm and Carry On embroidered across its front, was Ellie, the newest waitress. And before her, with a fast-drooping erection and a blue bar towel held up against his nipples, was Annie’s husband, Max.



* * *



—

Later, as Annie lay back against the crisp white pillows in her hotel room, she would think of all the clever, cutting things she could have said to her husband in that moment.

“It’s not what it looks like!” Max had said.

Behind him, Ellie sat very still, eyes wide like Bambi, as if she thought by not moving, Annie might not be able to see her. In an ideal world, Annie would have whipped back smartly with something like:

“Ah, I see you’re training young Ellie in the finer arts of customer service.”

Or:

“Don’t tell me; there was a blackout and all your clothes fell off and Ellie was so frightened you had to put your penis into her vagina to calm her down?”

But what Annie actually said, when faced with her naked husband, clearly screwing the waitress half his age, while she, his long-suffering wife of twenty-six years, stood before him, deflated with crow’s-feet around her eyes and an electric flyswatter hanging loosely by her side was: “Gup . . . Gup . . . Ubber . . . Affphoof.”

Then she’d stumbled backward, zapped her own thigh with the swatter, and let out a tiny bit of wee.





Chapter 2



Annie slept surprisingly well, considering she had just entirely changed the course of her life, and woke before dawn on a strange sort of high. She called Marianne, her head chef at the Pomegranate Seed, filled her in on the situation, and handed over the responsibility of the kitchen.

“What a shit-bag!” said Marianne. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got this. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet,” said Annie. Her heart began to pound as she realized she had no plan beyond the next two days she had booked at the hotel. “Can you remind Max to feed Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle?” Annie asked. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was her cat.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Marianne.

“Don’t I sound okay?” said Annie.

“Well, yes,” said Marianne. “You sound a bit too okay. A bit manic. Like you’ve taken speed or something.”

Annie laughed. The sound was high-pitched. “I’m fine!” Annie said, a little too brightly. “Really! Absolutely fine!”

She looked around her hotel room, knowing that every room in the building would be identical; generic “modern art” canvas above the bed, satin silver bed runner to break the expanse of white linen, a brown faux leather chair in one corner, and walls painted in a pale gray, which would no doubt be called something ridiculous like Husky Shimmer. There was a desk along one wall with a hair dryer, a travel kettle, and two cups on a plastic tray, and above it a flat-screen TV. It was the traveling salesman’s home away from home, the hen-party haven, and now, a wronged wife’s bolt-hole.

“Do you want me to come over?” asked Marianne.

“No, no. Don’t be silly. Somebody’s got to run the kitchen.”

And then, almost as if her voice were speaking without her brain’s permission, she found herself saying: “They were on table nine, you see. I chose that sofa. I picked the color out of a book of swatches. And the weird thing is, when I caught them, I kept thinking, What about the velvet? Semen is a hell of stain to get out. That’s mad, isn’t it? What kind of a woman worries about stains when she walks in on her husband screwing another woman?”

There was a silence on the line for a moment.

“Your silence suggests you think I’m bonkers,” said Annie.

“Sorry,” said Marianne. “I got sidetracked there. I was trying to remember which supermarket sells a product that claims to remove semen.”

“From velvet?” asked Annie.

“From anything, I think,” said Marianne.

“Good lord!” said Annie.

“And if it doesn’t work, we can always get it reupholstered.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at table nine without feeling completely humiliated,” said Annie.

“Then we’ll skip reupholstering and go straight to burning!” said Marianne. “We’ll have a ceremonial burning of table nine in the courtyard.”

“I’m not sure burning sofas is very environmentally friendly,” said Annie.

“We could build effigies of Max and Ellie and burn them along with it. Like the ultimate closure!”

“You’ve got a dark side, Marianne,” said Annie. “My kitchen is in good hands. The staff will never dare to cross you.”

As she ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Annie complimented herself on how well she was handling everything. She felt fine, she really did. And then she got back to the hotel room and found ten missed calls, seven texts, a dozen messages on Facebook Messenger, and an e-mail—all from Max. Annie didn’t read them. She was suddenly very tired. She didn’t want to think about all the things she was supposed to be thinking about: the business, finances, the twins, Max, Ellie, the end of her life as she knew it. Annie turned the volume on her phone down low and got back into bed, where she stayed for the next three days.