Admit This to No One by Leslie Pietrzyk

Author:Leslie Pietrzyk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

ANYTHING YOU WANT

A few years later

You really hammer down the nail, the man I call my boyfriend says the second he taps off his phone call. Thank you?

Not a compliment, Madison, he says.

I arrange a hurt, pouty look on my face, a look that does okay with ticket-threatening male cops. I say, What are we talking about here?

He pushes a hand through his hair, bristling it. I checked his hair products online: thirty bucks a bottle. Innnn. Sane.

He’s twenty-six years older than me, grateful to have hair.

What are we talking about? he says, mocking me. Are you for real?

I pinch my arm. Smile. Appears so, I say.

Though I do guess what we’re talking about. His credit card. Which I used. It’s platinum. When he hauled it out at dinner when we met, I confessed platinum was my favorite color. He said, Me too.

That spiky hair of his would be platinum if he didn’t color it at the place in Georgetown where his wife goes.

Goddamn it, he says now. I want to love you.

Then do, I say.

I can’t trust you, he says.

We’re at a baseball game, by the way, in a fancy box next to the owner’s even fancier box. Shrimp on ice keep coming. I’ve eaten maybe fifty. He’s telling everyone I’m his research assistant. No one believes him. Oh, and the Nats are winning, up by seven in the fifth inning.

I say, I want to love you too.

Not technically a lie because I do want to love someone.

Oh, his wife is in the box, too. Sure I’ve met her. She’s pleasant. She doesn’t care. Never you mind why we stay together, he said to me once, we have our reasons and our arrangement. It’s spelled out, he said, in writing.

Like I don’t know what “spelled out” means.

I’ve seen everything. I don’t even care anymore.

Earlier I told someone I started at AU this fall (true), wanting to be a doctor (false).

The Nats rack up another run. Everyone in the box whoops and hollers except the two of us. Did I mention it’s a playoff game? Everything—Amped Up! It’s cold for October, like forty. His wife is wearing this gaudy National League leather baseball jacket with a shitload of garish patches and logos. It’s unbelievably ugly, I mean unbelievably so. Guess the platinum card paid for it.

He’s been spiraling out this long, whispered hiss, badgering me to do this or that instead of that or this. You know, it’s not awful. I’m getting paid. Not trashy, in cash, but he takes me places and buys stuff. I grew up with a mom constantly wanting things she didn’t have and couldn’t possibly get, not even in a thousand lifetimes.

We met on Craigslist.

I catch the wife glancing. She gives her head this tiny shake and zips up her ugly jacket. I feel dismissed. I feel like the people here know things I’ll never know, not in a thousand lifetimes.

You’re the hammer here, I say, can’t we watch the game?

Why’d you steal my card,

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