Free Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

hard-on standing at attention from my own dead body like an Italian baguette.
    In our bedroom, the Victoria’s Secret outfit is tucked safely into its dresser drawer and there are no candles or music. Anna is lying beneath the covers with her eyes closed and a copy of Runner’s World magazine open across her chest. I fall onto the bed, landing on my side like some doofus being cute in a movie, but Anna doesn’t stir, and for a moment I watch her sleep. Her moisturizer has left a little streak on one of her cheeks and her mouth is just barely open. I used to fuck this woman, when we were younger. It’s an ugly word in marriage, “fuck,” but that’s what we did. We didn’t make love or fool around, we fucked like people who didn’t know any better or didn’t care to do anything else. It wasn’t scheduled or worried about or something done when they’re wasn’t anything good on TV. It was an effortless thing, like breathing, something so natural and fantastic. I don’t remember when it became something that I had to think about so much or gear up for in the bathroom.
    I nudge her shoulder. “You awake?”
    She opens her eyes and says hello, and I rub a streak of moisturizer into her cheek. Just this simple contact, the warmth of her skin, starts things moving in my body—blood flowing and gathering—and I feel kind of dizzy, but not in a bad way. I cross the neutral zone between us and kiss her cheek, finding an earlobe and biting there lightly. I don’t know if it’s the pill or the fact that I know I’ve taken the pill, but I feel urgent and affectionate, and these goddamn things really work.
    “Did you put on cologne?” she asks.
    “What? No, this is what sexy smells like.” I slide one hand beneath the covers and find her belly and run my fingertips across the ripples of her rib cage. Her lips are soft and warm against mine, and I feel myself getting harder. The pulse in my head is beating and I move to her neck where things are warmer and softer still.
    That’s when I realize that I seem to be doing this alone. Anna is completely still. “Are you OK?” I ask.
    She looks at me, totally void of anything even resembling desire, and the whites of her eyes, big in the glow of her reading lamp, look blue. I recognize this face. It’s the face of an Anna who’s been thinking. Thinking too much.
    “So, you hate your job, right?” she says.
    I look at her for a moment and then I look around the room, wondering if perhaps I missed something while I was in the bathroom doing my push-ups. “Of course. It’s killing me slowly, like asbestos.”
    This is the answer she was prepared to hear, and she sits up against the headboard. “Then, I think you should do something about it. You’ve been there for years, and you’re always talking about how screwed they’d be without you. If that’s really true, then they should promote you to something better, or at least give you a raise. And if they won’t do that, then you should let them know that you’re not afraid to look for something else.”
    “Umm, not sure if you’ve been watching the news on a different channel or something, but this might not be the best time to pull ultimatums at the office.”
    “Or maybe it’s the perfect time.”
    I get the sense that my wife’s been through this conversation in her head already. She wrote the script this afternoon on the treadmill, and I’m really pretty defenseless here. Forethought is perhaps their greatest weapon against us.
    “You’re good at your job, right? You pretend like you don’t care about it, but if you’d actually apply yourself and take it seriously, you’d be doing everyone a big favor.”
    “I’m not pretending,” I say. “I’m not that good of an actor. I really don’t care about my job.”
    “Then why are you worried about losing it?” She takes a breath. “I can tell you’re worried about getting fired. You can sneak upstairs and smoke up with your dad like a teenager