Dirty Love by Andre Dubus III Read Free Book Online Page A

seems to pause in his throat. “Not for a long time actually.”
    “That’s too bad, ’cause I kind of like the one I met.”
    “What’d you like about him?” He presses the phone into his ear. He seems to be holding his breath.
    “His eyes. His sad eyes.”
    Mark knows he is supposed to speak now. He knows this, but he can’t quite summon his voice from wherever it is it just went. He looks down into his orange cart and stares at tools and substances of repair.
    B EHIND THE S EA S PRAY M OTEL on Hampton Beach, white sand is feathered across the asphalt under the sun, and he parks behind a faded VW Bug, its top down. There is still the far-off feeling that he is watching his body do things, but now he is a bit more interested in sitting back to see how things play out. In the trunk of his sedan are the tiling materials and the wood glue, and he tells himself he is just having lunch, that’s all, that he is going to eat a meal with this Lisa Schena, then he will drive home and get to work. But he checks his face in the mirror twice and puts an Altoid under his tongue, letting it dissolve slowly as he walks through the heat of the lot.
    Ocean Boulevard is thick with slow-moving cars and Jeeps and vans with open doors, its men, women, and kids looking out at the T-shirt and surfboard shops, the video arcades and pizza bars, the fish shacks and vending carts selling fried dough and cotton candy, the sidewalk crowded with sunburned people in their tank tops and baggy shirts and bikini bottoms, many of them ringed with sand and sea salt above dimpled or skinny thighs, rubber flip-flops flopping, Mark stepping into the dim, cool lounge of Carlo’s.
    It’s a place he’s never been. Its bar is U-shaped and there’s a flat-screen TV hanging above a fish tank built into the wall, five or six gold and black fish drifting listlessly up against the glass. Above them, men play baseball in a bright green field and a song from long ago plays on the sound system, something about rain falling on all our heads, she is sitting at the bar, her back to the wall. A man is leaning close and talking to her. He is sunburned and wears a white beard and a short-sleeved shirt with blue parrots etched all over it. She’s blond, her hair clipped, two things Mark did not notice the night before, but there are her bare brown shoulders in another sleeveless top, this one white, and now she sees him and her expression turns from warmly tolerant to genuinely pleased, and he is not sure he is up for any of this, he is not sure why he is here at all, but he feels himself walk between the tables of families and couples eating and talking and being happily together, toward the bar and this Lisa Schena and the man turning to him now.
    “Oh hi, hon,” she says. “I got us a table by the window.”
    The man leans back slightly. He takes in Mark Welch as if weighing whether or not he is a true rival for her affections. Lisa Schena is off her stool. With two fingers, she taps the back of the man’s hand. “Thank you for the drink. I have a lunch date with my husband.”
    She moves by the man, and Mark follows her. A black denim skirt hugs her hips and she’s wearing leather sandals, and again, there is a stirring where nothing has stirred since there was snow on the ground and his wife, at least in his head, still belonged to him. He disciplines himself to lift his eyes as Lisa Schena leads him through the restaurant to the only available table in the corner near the window. It is small. On it are two dirty plates, a wadded napkin on one, half a Coke sitting in a glass beside an empty breadbasket. Mark glances back at the bar and the man in the blue parrot shirt. His eyes are on the game above, both his hands cupping his glass like he’s afraid it too will disappear on him.
    “You look different in the light.” She’s sitting already, smiling up at him. She has less makeup on today, her cheeks only slightly pockmarked. Her eyes are a washed-out