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Four Play
    by
    Kimberly Zant

    © copyright by Kimberly Zant
    cover art by Eliza Black
    New Concepts Publishing
    Lake Park, GA 31636
    www.newconceptspublishing.com

    I was both excited and nervous when I worked my way into the Aphrodite. I’d heard it was the place for singles to meet and mingle, and after spending half my life as a staid wife I was definitely, irrevocably, single and feeling the need to express a little wildness. Despite that, I’m not sure, if I’d known what would happen that night, that I would’ve been able to gather the nerve to go. Fortunately, I had no clue that I was about to experience a complete transformation--the most exciting night of my life—and that it would change my whole outlook on the world and my place in it.
    Inside, the music was the next thing to deafening. People crowded the place so tightly that it took me nearly twenty minutes to spot a stool to park myself. I pictured salmon fighting their way upstream to spawn, for it was a struggle to move more than a few inches at the time.
    I was actually surprised when I spotted the little table near the back, completely deserted. There were five chairs around the table. A couple of empty glasses and some wadded up napkins cluttered the table, and I wondered if I would be ousted if I sat down. Maybe the people at the table were on the dance floor?
    Finally, I decided to chance it. I sat down, pushed the debris to the other side of the table and looked around, trying to look open and friendly.
    I realized as I looked around that I was as out-of-place as a preacher’s dick at a virgin’s wedding—a crudity my former spouse had been fond of using—but which, somehow, seemed appropriate to the occasion. Everyone looked so young!
    My excitement took a nose dive. My nervousness intensified.
    My story wasn’t unique by any means. I’d married my high school sweetheart. He’d gone on to college and then medical school while I supported us as a waitress and produced children—four of them. By the time my husband had finished medical school, my youngest was ready to start kindergarten and it was my turn to go to college.
    Somehow, though, my turn never quite came. My husband needed money to set up his practice. There were bills, bills, bills, from his education that still hadn’t been paid off. I continued to work. He worked.
    Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye and one day I came home early and found my husband in our bed with one of his nurses.
    He wanted a divorce. I wanted to kill him, but I had my children to think of.
    During the divorce, I discovered my husband had been three jumps ahead of me all the way.
    Undoubtedly, he’d been planning the divorce for a while and so, despite the circumstances, he’d ended up with pretty much everything—which everyone told me he’d earned anyway—and I ended up with pretty much nothing—which everyone implied I deserved. I had slaved to put him through medical school, but he had become a wealthy doctor and I was now looked upon as a gold digger.
    With nothing more than a high school education, it didn’t look as if I was likely to have anything I’d earned myself either.
    Husband shopping seemed the only option for me. I’d only been allowed to hang up my waitress uniform five years previously to become the housewife my husband had promised I would be, but that five years seemed like a yawning cavern, apparently, to potential employers. In desperation, I’d had to take a job at a little coffee shop. Tips and earnings together produced an income well below poverty level.
    I wasn’t hanging out to snare a rich man. I was just hoping to find someone who would help me pay the rent so I didn’t have to face eviction every other month.
    So, here I sat, putting myself on the auction block for the first time in twenty years and discovering that I’d passed my expiration date.
    There didn’t seem to be a single male in the place over the age of thirty. Most looked as if they’d only