We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone by Ronald Malfi

Author:Ronald Malfi [Malfi, Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JournalStone, horror, Ronald Malfi, We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone, collection
Publisher: JournalStone
Published: 2017-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

Couples Seeking Couples

At the restaurant, Jack Pagewater suddenly felt the urge to vomit. Lois was too busy fawning over the Capshaws to notice the sudden change of expression on his face, and the Capshaws themselves—well, their eyes hadn’t lifted from their drinks all evening.

“Excuse me.” He stood and accidentally bumped Lois’s chair. She waved a hand at him without interest. He hurried down the hallway to the restroom where he leaned his head against the tiled wall, staring into the mouth of the toilet, breathing in great, wheezing gasps.

Behind him, two young men entered and straddled a pair of urinals. He could hear them talking through the stall.

“You run the marathon?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Marines?”

“Twisted some tendons in my left calf. You know how the—”

“Isn’t it like the—”

“Twisted. And I had to stop at mid-mark.”

“What do they do for that?”

“Massage.”

“You can wear a brace?”

“Couple of weeks.”

Five minutes later, Jack was back at the table. He hadn’t thrown up, but his stomach had settled somewhat.

“Jack,” said Mark Capshaw, “we were afraid you’d left us.” Mark was forty and completely gray. His hands were slender and well-manicured. He wore French cuff shirts and 1940s swing-era tailored suit jackets with butterfly lapels. White teeth, shiny and even.

Lois patted Jack’s hand. “Too much to drink, dear?”

“No,” Jack said.

“We’ve got another round yet,” Mark explained.

“Several rounds,” Mark’s wife, Miranda, insisted. “Jack, don’t go all rubbery on us now, darling.” She patted his other hand.

“He’s been running lately,” explained Jack’s wife, as if apologizing for her husband’s abrupt departure from the table. “Mornings, evenings…trying to reach—”

“Miss the youthful body, do you, Jackie?” Mark said. He thumped his own broad chest with a massive fist. “Miss your jeunesse?”

“Where do you find the time, dear?” Miranda asked. She gripped Jack’s hand firmly, as if to offer condolence. She was an attractive woman in her late forties who did her best to present herself at half that age. Her fingers were cluttered with a wedge of sparkling rings—all real—and the perfume she wore was nearly cloying.

“Really, I haven’t even been running all that much lately,” he admitted.

“Ne pas etre si modeste,” Mark said.

The waiter returned, carrying a bottle of vin rouge and four snifters of brandy. Anxious to get at the drinks, Mark plucked the snifters from the waiter’s tray without haste and distributed them around the table.

“Wine?” the waiter asked them. “Ladies?”

“None for me,” Lois said. “My head is already spinning.”

“Lois!” Mark Capshaw said. He was drunk enough to be too loud now. “Lois, please. It’s on me tonight. Miranda and me.”

“Well,” she stammered. Jack watched her—watched her eyes—but she never thought to face him. To the waiter, she said, “Maybe just one glass.”

“Two,” added Miranda.

“And cigars,” Mark said. He looked at Jack. “What’s your preference?”

“Jack doesn’t smoke cigars,” Lois answered, wrinkling her nose. “Filthy, filthy things. That’s a dirty habit, Mark Capshaw. Miranda—what’s the matter with you, letting that fit man smoke such horrid things?”

“I am my own man,” Mark the fit man said. Jack thought his eyes were beginning to look red and sloppy.

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