Free Coda (Songs of Submission #9) by CD Reiss Page B

working?”
    “Great!” I stuffed the bread back into the bag. “The odds are great. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But the odds of the one you have lasting even twenty years are worse, since they’re, like, zero.”
    I felt like a giddy schoolgirl. I wanted to sing and dance, and my smile was totally involuntary. I could barely contain myself. I felt as if the past seven months might be erased, put away in some jar in the china cabinet where we could ogle how cute and silly it all had been.
    Jonathan leaned against the counter, clicking the ice in his water glass and staring into it as if it were a problem. I felt crazy and childish in comparison. I cleared my throat, choking back the relief and trying to find that worry again. But it wouldn’t go away. I was over the moon, and he was still on the earth.
    I breathed deeply, trying to calm down. I was overreacting for sure, but it was his heart, his life, his chest. If he was somber over it, then I could take it down a notch. I moved the bread bag three inches. I touched a pan, shifting it on the stove. I smiled as I turned a knickknack a quarter way around. My mother had given it to me. It said BELIZE.
    “I thought you were going to eat something,” Jonathan said.
    “Fuck it.” I stood in front of him. “I want you for a snack.” I dropped to my knees and yanked down his sweatpants.
    “Okay, Monica—”
    I gave him big eyes from below. “You don't want me to suck your cock?” I felt him harden in my hand.
    “I’d love a blowjob, thank you. I have to take a handful of pills. Then I’m going to shower. So I need you to go upstairs, take your clothes off, and be ready for a quick go before we leave. And when I say ready, I mean mouth open and hands behind your back.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said through a smile.
    “Your legs should be open all the way this time. I mean it. We’re on a tight clock.”
    “Yes.”
    “Have I mentioned how much I love being married to you?”
    “Not today.”
    “Let me finish up here, and I’ll show you.”

chapter 13.
    JONATHAN
    I  loved being married to Monica—at least, I did once we had reestablished full participation by both parties. The weeks following my visit to the studio, minus the constant medication, had been exactly what I’d wanted from the honeymoon we never had.
    Things would get back to normal soon, whatever that was. I still couldn’t find a taste for the food I used to like. Anything spicy tasted like poison, and I craved sour foods as if I were pregnant. I thought less and less about having a strange piece of meat inside me. My chest didn’t feel as heavy with attention as often. I was in a routine with Laurelin, the medicine, the nutrition, and my odd addiction to jogging which made the team of doctors happy.
    Normal. For somebody.
    But at least I could still make plans for Monica’s body and execute them. If I couldn’t eat the spicy chimichuri, which we apparently had a never-ending supply of, at least I could spoon-feed her while she was on her hands and knees.
    I’d overheard her fielding calls from the people she worked with, putting them off, apologizing. She was an artist, and she’d need to get back to it soon. We still hadn’t talked about how to manage that part of our lives because when we did, I’d have to admit for the first time that I didn’t want her to travel so much. I didn’t know what to do about that.
    The visions of my heart leaving my body persisted. Sometimes it flopped around the floor and squirted blood; sometimes it only came halfway out; and sometimes, when I scratched the itchy scar, my fingers went through the soft tissue and touched the foreign, beating thing, and in response, it detached and slid into my palm.
    Monica was always there in those waking dreams. In the easiest ones, she was simply horrified. In the worst of them, I was driving and killed her when I died at the wheel. But traveling? I was convinced the heart would stay on the ground if I