Hooked by John Franc

Author:John Franc
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935639176
Publisher: Tin House Books

“It will come. It always comes at the right time and it hasn’t come yet so it must not be the right time.”

Now it was pretty dark. The lonely Mexican restaurant down the street had its storefront display lights on, and a waiter came out and lit a cigarette and nodded all the way up the street at us as if he could tell we were the only punks out.

“You don’t think the kid thinks we left her, do you?”

Reluctantly we checked our watches, smoke curling momentarily around our wrists, our drinks long empty.

“The thing is, if we rang, we might wake somebody.”

“You’d think a mother would be desperate to get back to her children, that that would be her first move.”

“I think shock and humiliation would be her first move, and then I don’t know.”

“What would your wife do if you confessed to her?”

“First, that would never happen. I’d sooner shoot myself than confess, and both would have the same outcome, because we’re both a very good shot. So, second, the better question is what would happen if my wife found out everything or, say, most of the things I’ve been into. Incontrovertible and all that, and she herself was totally innocent. I have some defenses up for that scenario, some safety nets, probably nothing I’m prepared to share right now. What about your wife?”

“What about my wife?”

“If you confessed or whatever.”

“She probably wouldn’t care. She’d probably find some of it amusing, some not. She’d probably say something like Let me know when you get it out of your system or Just get it out of your system.”

“That’s a good wife.”

“I’ve got a good wife.”

“We’ve all got good wives, give or take some issues. But you aren’t telling your wife anytime soon because . . .?”

“Because I don’t need to. But I really don’t think there’d be a huge problem.”

“Sure.”

“Nobody really knows anybody else’s wife.”

“At least not in our little group.”

We peered up at your second-story window. The light was still on, the curtains drawn, the shutters still open. That was about all we could see from the distance and the angle.

“I think his wife is kind of hot.”

“You’ve mentioned that before.”

“I wonder why they don’t do it more often.”

“I believe he said something along the lines that when she was pregnant with their fourth she was so pissed at him she wouldn’t go near him, and for the year after her miscarriage he was so pissed at her having been so pissed at him that he reciprocated.”

“And once they both fell off that horse it was hard to get back on?”

“Something like that.”

“What a waste.”

“The girls don’t help, of course. Once you’re getting girls in their early twenties, it’s hard to go back to the woman in her mid-forties. He always said that.”

“He did. He did.”

We finished our cigarettes and crushed them out and looked blankly but searchingly at each other.

“I guess it’s out of the question to dash off for a quick drink?”

“Out of the question. They’re just kids up there, you know, alone for the moment in the big city.

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