Free The Jezebel Remedy by Martin Clark Page A

cold outside, the January day already dimming, shades of common gray curtaining off bright blue and white. Brett ordered a scotch but wasn’t fussy about it, asking for “whatever’s good and single malt.” Lisa picked a merlot from a list the waitress brought.
    More people came to the bar, the speaker music changed to rhythm and blues and the waitress announced a dollar-draft special. Lisa and Brett drank and chatted and told stories and laughed and shared a bowl of pretzels, then left their heavy coats across a chair and carried their second round into the adjacent room and played pool at a table with red felt and woven leather pockets. During the first game, Lisa leaned over to reach the cue ball and take the measure of a difficult shot, and Brett let her see him staring at her, her hair pitched forward and almost touching the felt, the stick slowly sawing through a finger bridge as she tried to solve the angle. Her thigh was mashed against the table. Chandelier light bounced off a thick silver bracelet. She flicked her eyes away from the game and toward him and then missed the shot by a fraction, almost sank it. “Nice,” he said. He grinned. “Good try, I mean.”
    The last rack they played nine-ball, and despite having lost all the games before, Lisa wagered dinner.
    “And drinks,” Brett added. “The whole package.”
    “Absolutely.”
    He broke and never allowed her a turn, finished matters on his fourth shot, running in the winner with a long combination. He stayed bent over and peered up at her as the balls kissed, was studying her, not the pocket, when the nine fell and clicked against the other ball already there. His expression let on that he realized his no-look trick was cheesy, a flash of courtship swagger and preening tail feathers, and she laughed at how he was showing off for her. A younger man wearing a sweater and slouching against the bar’s broad doorway complimented Brett’s skill.
    “I’ll call a cab,” Brett said. “So we can ride together and not worry about how much we drink.”
    “Meet you in the lobby. I need to find the restroom.”
    She peed and washed her hands and dried them on a small cloth towel she tossed in a wicker basket. She wet another towel and rubbed a blue pool-chalk wisp from her sleeve. Still at the sink, she phoned her house and left Joe a message that the seminar had ended and she was going shopping downtown, then to the mall, where she’d probably grab a food-court meal. For him, there was baked chicken to warm and a salad she’d made that morning. She was lying about her plans, but it was a faint lie without any serious impact or consequences, a dry-run untruth, a practice deception, a little baby distortion that would for certain prove to be meaningless.
    It was Wednesday, so Joe was at the gym, lifting weights and exercising. Strong and fit, he could bench-press three hundred pounds multiple times and do a hundred sit-ups in under three minutes. Comically though, he began every session with toe touches and oafish jumping jacks, like he was a sixth-grade PE student from 1953, and he simply couldn’t remember to bring white athletic socks and often worked out in tennis shoes and his dress socks—blue or black, whatever he’d put on for the office. Occasionally, he skipped the socks altogether and popped off the spastic jumping jacks with reddish, elastic imprints ringing his calves. She still found
this
hopeless quirk endearing, and she’d usually grin and wisecrack and needle him if he wore his colored socks and old Nikes home from the gym.
    She tasted the wine in her mouth, but there wasn’t very much saliva along with the merlot, and the bathroom seemed hot, the heat stagnant and sweetened by chemical scents. The alcohol and anticipation pinched her stomach. She wasn’t about to focus on the mirror and mire down in her own thoughts and reflection, had no interest in taking the clichéd inventory where she’d stare at her failings and dither and