Utter Despair Again

I can't figure out where stopped when I was posting "Utter Despair" so I am going to start at the beginning—again. I don't like the way it looks on the page, though, That I do remember. I can't seem to get my web-expert husband to make it pretty because he is busy making Witnessing Life pretty. (And it IS pretty. Go there.) So I guess "Utter Despair" will go on looking stupid. Here it is—again. Some of it, anyway. It is basically finished so the rest will be up soon.

"Do you want something to drink?"
She was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room and he couldn't look at her face.
"Maybe just some water," he replied.
He listened to her flip-flops walk across the tile to the cupboard and he heard the door squeak as she opened it to take out a glass. Then she went to the freezer door for the ice, and next the refrigerator door opened and closed just long enough for her to remove the filtered water pitcher.
She put the glass on the table in front of him and said, "Do you love her?"
"No." He paused. "I don't know."
"I don't love him. I like him a lot, but I'm not in love with him," she said.
"It must make this thing with us easier."
"Sometimes, yes. The emotion, definitely. The logistics, just sometimes."
"Right. Of course."
He sipped his glass of water and focused his eyes across the square plywood table to a watercolor hanging on the opposite wall.
"Where did you get that painting?"
"I don't remember," she replied. "Maybe California. Do you like it?"
"No."
"Oh."
"I mean, it's fine."
"If you don't like it, it's all right. I don't care how you feel about the art in my dining room."
"It's fine. I just don't like orange."
"Okay."
She was still standing behind him, in the doorway, and he still couldn't look at her face. He finished his water and stood up slowly. He pushed the chair under the table and closed his eyes.
"I have to go."
"Sure. It's late."
"I'll call you."
"That way you won't have to look at me while you're talking to me."
"Look, I'm sorry."
"I know."
He started for the door, but she put her hand on his shoulder to stop him.
"Please turn around."
"I can't."
"Please."
He took a deep breath and spun around on his heels.
The swelling around the eye had reduced but the hours had only enhanced the bruising.
"It looks awful. Does it hurt?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I just wanted you to see it. Now you can go."
"I'll call you."
Once he was inside his car, he started the engine and sobbed violently for about 30 seconds before driving home.

But he didn't go home. Instead, he went to his store. He owned a postal annex on the corner of West State and Wells. He opened the door with his key and disabled the alarm with the numerical code he himself had devised. Then he stood at the island in the lobby with his elbows resting on the counter and stared at the copy machines. There were two, one color and one black-and-white.
He didn't turn on the lights. He preferred the stripes of shadow and light that the streetlights created. He moved to the back of the store and sat at his desk with his hand on the phone.
He had met her at the store. She had come through the door one day just like any other customer, except that he knew instantly that he would try to have sex with her.
She wasn't beautiful and her nose was pierced. His wife was probably a little prettier than she was. But she was interesting looking where his wife's beauty was standard, run-of-the-mill attractiveness. Her hair was short and kind of messy, as if she hadn't taken the time to brush it before she left the house. She was wearing torn blue jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt. Her glasses had brown plastic frames and he could hear his wife calling her "eccentric." His wife didn't like eccentrics and, usually, neither did he.
He had been watching her on the security camera while his assistant manager Tanya, who was also his wife's sister, helped her. When she was about to leave, he emerged from the back and offered her a business card.
When she looked at him and he saw her face up close, he realized that she was probably at least ten years younger than he was, maybe closer to twenty.
"We have printing services and finishing services, like binding and laminating and stuff," he said.
"Okay. I'll keep that in mind," she replied politely. Her voice was soft and distracted.
"It isn't just about shipping packages."
"I saw the copy machines."
He nodded. "We have a really terrific color copier."
"Okay. Thank you for the information."
He knew the exchange was awkward, but he himself was an awkward person so he was used to the feeling.
"Please come back," he said as they neared the door.
"I will," she promised.
"I'm Keith Taylor, the owner."
"You own this store?" She seemed surprised and, he thought, perhaps a little bit impressed.
"Yes, for four years now." He left out the part about how he was laid off after 17 years at International Harvester and then was unemployed for almost a year before he got a small business loan to open the store.
"Cool."
In the parking lot, she got into a gray Honda Civic and turned left on to State.

Eventually, he did go home and his wife was waiting in the living room with the lights off.
"Why are you sitting here in the dark?" he asked.
"Where have you been?" she replied.
"At the store."
"Busy day?"
"Yeah."
"Henry called."
His son was away at college, supposedly studying history at IU.
"What did he want? Money?"
He sighed and sank into a chair across the room from where his wife was sitting on the sofa.
"Yes. He wants to go to Europe this summer."
"So do I."
"I told him we would talk about it this weekend. He's driving up."
"Okay."
"Are you going to be here?"
"When I'm not at the store."
"I'll help you on Saturday morning. Tanya can't work."
"Okay."
There was a small silence as he untied each of his shoes and slipped them off his feet.
"Keith."
"What?"
He heard her exhale slowly, through her teeth.
"Never mind," she said. "I'm going to bed."
"All right. I'm going to watch some TV."
He sat in his recliner and looked at the images on his TV for about 15 minutes before he picked up the phone.
She answered on the first ring.
"Hello."
"It's me."
"Hi."
"Does it still hurt?"
"It's a black eye, Keith. Yes, it still hurts."
"We may have to stop seeing each other."
"Why? Because you hit me?"
"Yes."
"You're right. It's not fun anymore."
"So it's over?"
"Yes."
"All right."
"Bye."

Her name was Rachel, which she told him the second time they met. She came into the store when he was the only one working and he flipped the "open" sign to "closed" so they could go have a doughnut at Tom's Donuts.
She asked him questions about his life, his routine, his background, and his store. His one-word responses began to frustrate her and then she sighed.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't apologize. I'm sorry about all the questions. I was just trying to figure out your passion."
"My passion?"
"Yeah, what drives you, what makes you interesting."
"I'm just an ordinary sort of guy. There isn't anything interesting about me."
"I'm not so sure. I think you love your store, but still you closed it in the middle of the day just to have a doughnut with me."
He shrugged.
"Why did you want to have a doughnut with me?"
Did she want him to say the words? He wasn't going to say the words. He was only barely thinking them. "I was hungry," he replied.
She smiled and he saw that one of her front teeth was slightly longer than the other. "Luckily, I was hungry, too."
She showed him pictures of her cat—a mangy-looking gray thing with a tuft of fur missing from its back.
"What happened to the fur right there?" Keith asked.
"He got in a fight about three years ago, when we were living in Indy. For some reason, it never grew back."
"When did you move here?"
"Well, I grew up here, went to high school at North Side, and then I went to Indy for college, but it didn't really take, you know? I felt disconnected there so I came back."
He nodded and wondered briefly if Henry ever felt disconnected.
"You don't like cats," she said.
"Not really, no," he admitted.
"Maybe you'll like George. He has character."
But he met George about 15 minutes later and he didn't end up liking him and it was entirely because of his "character". It was because he growled whenever Keith crossed within five feet of him. It was because he slept on Rachel's bed 23.5 hours a day and it didn't occur to her to move him for any reason. It was because he managed to be on the bed and in the bathroom at the same time and he guarded the bathroom as if it were the White House and made it impossible for Keith to piss whenever he was there.
It was clear that she was living with someone. There were men's sneakers in the living room, two toothbrushes by the sink in the bathroom, and men's clothes hanging in the closet next to hers. He never mentioned it and she never offered any information.

The affair went on for four months. They met mostly in the mornings, always at her apartment. She was usually just waking up when he arrived. Like Henry, she liked sleeping in and valued this sleep time above most other things. Sometimes he brought her breakfast.
She would answer the door in her pajamas, with the back of her hair sticking up and sleep still in her eyes. They didn't talk about their lives, their families, their work, or their dreams, but they did spend a lot of times talking in abstracts—about politics, TV shows, the weather, and George. He knew that she secretly liked soap operas and that she had voted for Bill Clinton but he didn't know if her parents were still together or if she had any siblings.

He drove to her apartment before going to the store the next morning. It was 8:30 and her car was parked in the small lot behind the brick building. He pulled his pickup truck into the empty spot beside her car and looked up at the third windows. She was probably still asleep since she didn't usually wake up until noon or later.
He got out of his truck and climbed the stairs to her door.
It took her almost five minutes to answer the door and when she did, she was wearing only a t-shirt.
"Rachel, you can't just open the door dressed like that. What if it were someone else?" he said.
"Who else would knock on my door at 8:30? I don't know any other morning people, Keith."
"I'm not a morning person." Being with her was, for Keith, a constant struggle not to seem boring. "It's just that I have a business and somebody has to open the store."
"I know. What are you doing here?"
"I changed my mind."
"About what?"
The eye was even more black and blue and now there was yellow and green, too.
"About us."
"You don't want to end it?"
"No."
"What if I do?"
"Do you?"
"I don't know."
"I'm not going to hit you again."
"I know."
"But you don't know if you want to keep seeing me?"
"Right."
"I have to go to work."
"All right."
"Will you come by the store later?"
"I'm not sure."
"Rachel, I need to see you again. I can't let it end like this. If it has to end, fine, but not like this."
"Okay."
"You'll come by the store later?"
"Yes."

He hadn't hit anyone since he boxed in high school, and, of course, he hadn't intended to hit Rachel. In fact, when his fist struck Rachel's face, for a split second, he thought she had hit him.
They had been arguing because he came over after he closed the store and didn't call first.
"Alex will be home in half an hour," she said when he arrived.
It was the first time she had used his name, had mentioned him directly at all.
"I won't stay long," he promised. He leaned in to kiss her and she backed away.
"Keith, I have a boyfriend."
"I know. I have a wife."
"I assumed as much since you wear a wedding ring."
"His name is Alex?"
"Yes."
"I see."
"What is your wife's name?"
"It doesn't matter."
"I'd like to know it."
"It isn't important. It doesn't change anything."
"Then just tell me."
"I don't want to."
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't matter."
"You don't want her to be real for me the way that Alex is real for you now."
He shrugged. "I'll go."
"Please tell me her name."
"Don't push me, Rachel. I'm leaving."
He reached for the doorknob and she grabbed his arm. "Keith, what is her name?"
"What the hell is your problem?" he barked suddenly.
"I don't have a problem. I just want to know her name."
"I'm not going to tell you."
"How long have you been married?"
"22 years."
"Do you have kids?"
"One, a boy. He's 19."
"What is his name?"
"Henry."
"Why will you tell me his name but not hers?"
"Because this thing between you and me doesn't have anything to do with Henry."
"Your cheating on his mother has nothing to do with him? He might disagree."
"He won't have a chance to agree or not because this isn't his business."
"What is her name, Keith?"
They were standing side-by-side, but he had turned his head toward her. Her hand was still on his arm when his hand formed the fist. He shook off her grip and drew his arm back so that his hand was level with his shoulder, and he turned his body so that they were face-to-face.
She said it again. "What is her name?"
Then he punched her. His fist just moved quickly toward her cheek, and when it made contact, her eyes widened in shock.
"Brenda," he said as his hand fell limp at his side. "Her name is Brenda."