This is a sad story about a sad man who tries to shake things up with an affair. Things do not go well.
The Story of Frank
Frank Arkner stood dazed before his wife of twenty years as she stumbled from the bathroom, her hair completely gone except for a few patches. Dorine smiled triumphantly. Frank blinked, convinced he was dreaming, but he wasn't. This was reality. This was his bald wife.
"Can I ask a question?" Frank said. Timid Frank Arkner, processor of claims at a middling company downtown, a town whose name he wants to forget because he's wanted to leave so long that he's erased bits and parts of it, worn it down to a nub of a memory.
"You can ask, but I can't promise I'll answer," Dorine sang, running her hands over her bald pate. "Dammit, I missed some spots. I'll have to touch it up again."
"Why did you do it?" Frank asked quietly. He never lost his temper, kept most of his thoughts—the crazy, untamed ones that ran through his brain like pissy children wielding knives and guns—tamped firmly down. What he wanted to say was…well, it didn't matter what he wanted to say. He didn't, and the universe creaked along its Don't-Give-a-Damn axis.
"I did it, dearheart," Dorine said as she liberally applied shaving cream to her head, "because I needed a change. Change is good for the soul, or don't you know that?" She punctuated her question with a blasting fart. She regarded Frank's horrified reflection in the mirror. "Sorry. I had eggs for breakfast."
"I'm going to work now," Frank said. "Will you be here when I get home?" It seemed a reasonable question given the strange events of the morning.
"Doubtful," Dorine said. "I'm going to pack a bag and head out. I'll be back eventually with divorce papers, but I don't know when. Sometime later this year."
"I see." Frank remained rooted to the carpet. He was dressed for work, his tie perfectly knotted, wearing the khaki pants with the coffee stain that never came out in the wash, his favorite blue shirt he secretly thought brought out his eyes. "Well, have a good day."
"Might as well wish me a good life, Frank," Dorine muttered as she dragged the razor across her scalp.
For the last six months, Frank had carried out a pathetic affair with a woman in his office, someone even sadder than he was. Perhaps that's what drew him to Melissa, the cavernous gap filled with sorrow that run through her life. She was forty-two but looked fifty; she had a face that had come to terms with itself. Melissa had never married, dated two boys in college, the last of which twisted her arm behind her back one night, breaking it, and then shoved her down a flight of stairs. She had never told anyone about the incident until she started sharing afternoon hook-ups with Frank.
It all started when Frank asked Melissa out to lunch. Normally, Frank ate at his desk while pouring over online newspapers, hoping to understand the news of the day. He usually felt vastly unprepared to interface with the world's woes: Egypt, Libya, the economy, Obama, Tea Party loudmouths, the whole shebang. He used to be smarter and quicker, or so he thought. The plain truth was that Frank had always skimmed along life's surface, never taking risks or standing up for anything. He mostly believed in God. Dorine had asked him to marry her. They never had children because Dorine hated children. Literally, she hated them and thought they ruined people's lives. Dorine was even convinced she had ruined her parent's lives. As usual, Frank kept his little mouth buttoned.
Over a bowl of tepid coconut soup at Wangy Changy, Frank studied the woman in front of him. She had a matronly bosom, after which Frank suddenly found himself lusting. Dorine had tiny breasts, not even a handful. He had rather liked them, but Dorine slapped him hard even time his tongue sought them out in bed. Eventually, he just quit reaching out for her and started having dreams that his penis had shriveled up and fell off. And then those dreams stopped, too. He might as well have been a eunuch.
"So why'd you ask me out to lunch?" Melissa asked. "You're married."
"So?"
"So it's weird."
"But you said yes."
"I like going out to lunch. No one ever asks me."
"Oh." Frank knew how mind-numblingly awful the conversation was and he knew he'd have to steer it in a better direction. "Well, I wanted to have lunch with you. You're pretty."
Melissa stared down at her soup bowl, half-empty. "No, I'm not."
"I think you are."
"You're married, Frank. This isn't going anywhere."
"It doesn't have to. We're just two people having lunch."
When Frank opened his car door for Melissa, she shocked him by grabbing his neck and pulling him into a deep kiss. His world exploded. Melissa jumped from pretty (and Frank had exaggerated the point, she was only decent-looking with enormous tits) to the sexiest creature on the planet. His head spun, and when they pulled back from each other, he knew beyond the shadow of any doubt that this was the woman he'd been searching for, the one to pull him out of the slump. He would be funny, sexy, the life of a party he and Melissa would sneak t off to the bathroom for a quickie. Frank would be a man who had quickies!
"Sorry about that," Melissa said. "It's just…been a long time since I've kissed a man."
"Don't apologize," Frank breathed. He couldn't believe how hard he was; it felt like the front of his pants were about to bust apart. "That was great." The best, he went on to himself, the top of the charts, your tongue is a magnificent thing, I want to kiss you again I need to kiss you again againagainagainagain.
Frank jumped in the car and pulled around back of Wangy Changy, killed the engine, and stripped off his pants. When the outside air hit his erection, he thought he come right there. He knew the moment the tip entered Melissa, it would be over, but he didn't care. Melissa yanked down her skirt and her large, white panties. Frank stared in awe at her pubic hair. It swirled and curled and called for him to nestle his face in its warmth. There wasn't time, though, because he had to be in her and quickly. He descended on her, moaning, and slipped inside Melissa. She gasped and tightened her legs around his butt cheeks…and that was it. He was finished.
Frank and Melissa had sex a few more times behind the restaurant until they settled on a supply closet in their building's largely unoccupied fifth floor, which was largely unoccupied. Frank also went to Melissa's apartment a few times a week after work before trudging back home to be ignored by Dorine.
Melissa often cried during sex, which worried Frank until she explained that she was just happy to have found someone to care for her, to really care for her. She begged him to leave Dorine. After all, they didn't have kids, so who would be hurt? Dorine, possibly, but based on what Frank had said about her, how badly would she really take it?
"I made a commitment," he said, lying beside Melissa one late afternoon. Her cat, Cinnamon, perched atop the dresser and stared sleepily at the two.
"You broke that commitment a long time ago, Frank," Melissa said. "You know that."
And so Frank found himself in position of weak men throughout history: afraid to leave the woman he betrayed and terrified of the prospect of not leaving. It would only be a matter of time that Melissa grew tired of waiting, packed up her newly discovered confidence and set out to find someone else.
It ended up being sooner than Frank. The next Monday, Melissa didn't show for work. Frank found himself standing before her empty cubicle, desire raging through him. He called her house and cell phone but got no answer. When he came into work the next morning and walked to her cubicle, he discovered it gutted. All pictures, all paperwork vanished. Frank flagged down a middle-manager he thought was named Joe, but it could have been John, and asked where Melissa was.
"She quit," Joe/John said bitterly, "and didn't even give notice. Can you believe that shit? Came in when the cleaning crew was here and got her stuff. Didn't even have the courage to talk to us face to face."
After lunch, Frank faked being sick and took off for the rest of the day. He drove like a madman to Melissa's apartment, pounded on the door, but Melissa wasn't there. Frank couldn't find her car in the parking lot, either. Utterly defeated, he drove home for another night of leftovers and disappointment.
The next morning, Frank found the newly shorn Dorine. She told him to wish her a good life. Frank walked out the door, got into his car that still smelled of Melissa, and drove himself into the Gay River. When crews managed to drag the car from the water, they found Frank still buckled in.
Dorine took the news well when the police finally tracked her down. She came back to the town, slapped the house on the market and sold it within two months. She took her bald self out west and set up camp in Arizona, began dating a retired rancher, and lived until she was ninety-two years old, dying peacefully in her sleep.
Melissa found another job and another man. She got pregnant a month later and said yes when the man proposed to her.
Frank simply decomposed.
