Chapter 23
Crane
Three years ago
I come home after class to a dark house. It’s four in the afternoon, but the fog outside the windows, coupled with all the shutters being closed and not a single candle lit, means that it’s hard to see my hand in front of my face.
Marie must have a headache again, I think as I climb the stairs to the bedroom. I have other thoughts, but I do my best to keep them at bay. I try not to feel anything. Not resentment. Not pity. Not anger. I aim to keep my temperament neutral.
I walk down the cramped hall and pause in the doorway of the bedroom. She’s lying on the bed, her back to me, fully clothed. I don’t want to disturb her. I don’t want to have to deal with her anger, or worse, her indifference.
It’s been like this for as long as I can remember, though now my memory seems too fluid.
Has it been months? Years? Our whole marriage?
Has she always been this unhappy with me?
Had she ever loved me? For a while there, when we were trying for a baby, it seemed she did.
But when time and time again it wouldn’t stick, the blame would turn to me.
Then the malaise came. The melancholy. The headaches.
She started flinching at my touch. She started leaving the house at night, going for walks that I wasn’t allowed to go on. Day by day any control, any hold I had on my marriage, slipped through my fingers.
Now we’re just two passing ships in the night. I go to work at the academy, I come home. She’s in bed, she gets up, she leaves. Sometimes it’s not a walk, sometimes it’s dinner with friends, sometimes she says she’s seeing her uncle.
I haven’t let myself entertain the thought of what she could really be doing.
I don’t want to feel the shame.
I don’t want to feel even more helpless than I already do.
But…I’m curious.
I slowly take off my coat, damp with the San Francisco fog, and drape it over the armchair, then quietly walk over to her.
I pause by the bed and stare down at her.
Her chest is rising and falling, and I watch it for at least a minute.
Sometimes she pretends to be asleep when she’s not. I should know, sometimes I do the same.
When I’m sure she’s truly asleep, I take my hand and I gently place it against her cheek, palm barely pressed against her skin.
I close my eyes.
I travel through the void.
Through her skin, into her mind.
I break all trust between us, commit the deepest invasion of privacy.
Because I need to know.
I need to know.
I step through the darkness, so many doors in front of me, and I pick the one she’s laughing behind. I haven’t heard her laugh in years.
I open the door and step inside her memories.
She’s walking down the street, somewhere I don’t recognize at first, then I realize it’s a gambling hall, not far from us in the Mission District. She has her arm hooked around the arm of a tall, handsome man with a mustache. He’s not just any man.
He’s Raymond De Haro, a neighbor from across the street by the baseball stadium.
He’s staring down at her, smiling, radiant white teeth, tanned skin, and the sight of him does something to me, something I haven’t felt in a long time. I’ve always felt a strange connection to Ray, but I never knew how to put those feelings into words.
Now I know the word.
Desire.
I desire this man, and I desire the way she’s looking at him, wishing it was me.
My wife has been having an affair.
This confirms it.
I should stop watching the world through her eyes.
I should leave the memory, leave her mind, leave the room.
But I don’t.
I continue watching, and then things skip and then I see it, I see them outside his yellow house, the lanterns flickering on the red-roofed stucco. Beside them is the Recreation Grounds baseball stadium, the sounds of a cheering crowd filling the summer air. They disappear inside his house.
I want to see more.
I want to see what he does with her.
I want to see how he fucks her.
I want to see what makes him a better lover than I am.
I want to watch it all.
But her memories skip again, flashing faces, flashing bodies, and I’m starting to get dizzy, as if the nausea she gets with her headaches is seeping into me.
I withdraw.
Back, back, further back.
Until I’m standing in our bedroom and taking my hand off her face.
She stirs below me, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to wake.
She doesn’t. She continues to sleep, not knowing all that I’ve seen.
I’ve seen too much and not enough.
I vow to never do that again, never read anyone’s memories without their permission.
Because now I know the truth.
And now I have to fix this.
I quietly back away from her, let her sleep away her headache, lost in her memories.
I grab my coat.
I head downstairs and out the door.
The cool fog meets my face as I cross Mission Street, the day already sliding into night as it does so quickly here in November. I don’t know what my plan is, I just know I have to talk to Ray. The man who stole my wife.
On the other side of the street is a row of houses, including the yellow stucco one from Marie’s memory, just a little out of sight from our house, just enough so that I wouldn’t see her enter during all those nights with her “friends,” with her “uncle.” She had her affair in the open for anyone else to see but me.
I haven’t thought about what I’m going to say. It’s not enough to yell at this man, to strike him, reprimand him. I’m not here to make him pay, I’m not here to ask him why.
I’m here to know why.
I stride over to the door and knock on it.
A tanned man with dark chestnut hair opens the door.
His face falls once he sees me.
“Expecting someone else?” I ask him pointedly.
He frowns at me, thick dark brows furrowed together. God, he’s handsome. The thought strikes me like God is smiting me from above.
“Mr. Crane,” Ray says uneasily. “Can I help you?”
“You can,” I say, surprised at how even my voice is. “Can I come in? I’d like to discuss my wife with you.”
Ray’s golden face pales. He stands there, hand on the door, like he’s unsure if he wants to close it in my face. He glances down at me, checking if I have a gun. He thinks I’m here to murder him.
I should be there to murder him.
But the shame I feel over Marie isn’t because she’s broken my heart.
She hasn’t.
I stopped loving Marie months ago, probably around the same time she stopped loving me. I stopped when I realized she had no room in her stone-cold heart for mine anymore.
I’m here because I need to know what kind of man I should be.
I’m here because I need to know what kind of man Ray really is.
“I’m sorry,” he says, fumbling for the words. “This is a bad time…”
I put my hand on the door and push it open, my height coming to my advantage and intimidating him. “I would like to talk to you,” I tell him calmly, removing my hat and holding it in my hands. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to talk. Please,” I add.
He takes in a sharp breath, his eyes wild, trying to calculate what I really want, but he still opens the door.
I step inside his house. I’d never been in here before.
It’s smaller than mine, so it can’t be a money thing.
And though he’s dressed in neat clothing, nothing about what he’s wearing says that he’s more sophisticated or smarter than I am.
I admit I don’t know much about my neighbor, but this isn’t giving me any clues.
“We’ve never really had a chance to talk, have we?” I ask as I eye the small living room, the roaring fire, the loom rug on the hardwood floor. “Do you prefer Ray or Raymond?”
“Ray,” he says uneasily. “And you?”
“Call me Ichabod,” I tell him, turning my hat around in my hands. “That’s what Marie calls me.”
He blanches. “Of course. Look, Ichabod, I know you say you don’t mean to bring me any trouble, but I can’t…can’t imagine that you won’t. If you want to strike me, beat me, go ahead. Just get it over with.”
I frown at him. “What kind of man do you think I am?”
“One that’s found out his wife has been cheating on him.”
I give him an acidic smile. “That I am.”
He gulps, his eyes darting around the room.
They’re a beautiful shade of green, like spring moss.
His mouth twists into a grimace and his lips are beautiful too, wide but full.
I can see why Marie wanted this man. He is warm while I am cool.
He is the sun, where I am the fog. He is soft where I am hard.
And from the pressure building in my cock, I am hard.
Shame hits me for a moment.
I’m a sinner for even having these thoughts.
I’m a deviant for wanting them.
If my father only knew his son was fantasizing about another man, he would condemn me straight to hell.
But he knew I was going there anyway, didn’t he?
I had already been too different from him, from everyone, right from day one, and no amount of church would change that.
There would never be any salvation for Ichabod Crane.
“What do you want from me?” Ray says.
I step toward him, slowly, and he backs up until I have him cornered against the wall. The wallpaper is peeling in places, a painting of a bull hangs askew.
“I want…,” I begin, breathing hard. I lick my lips as I stare at him. “I want to know what you have that I don’t.” My gaze drops to his mouth. “And I want to have it.”
I place my hand on his throat and give it a squeeze.
Ray’s pretty eyes bulge, his fingers wrapping around mine to pry me off, but I’m not applying much pressure. I’m just trying to hold him still.
Because I want to take from him.
I lean in and I kiss him.
He doesn’t kiss me back, but it doesn’t matter.
His lips are surprisingly cool to touch, but still soft, and the scratch of his mustache against my bare upper lip sends a lightning bolt direct to my cock, my balls rising up, a fire stoked inside me.
Ray sputters against my lips, one hand trying to pry my grip off his throat, the other on my chest, trying to push me off him.
I relinquish. Drop my hand and stand back.