Under the lid of a gloomy, wet sky, a black hatchback churned through slush. The car moved more slowly than other traffic on the interstate: trucks and other cars overtook the vehicle, seeming to pause for a moment before passing. This slight hesitation, a sort of tremor, before accelerating around the black hatchback was due to the license-plate on the vehicle. It was lettered B Widow
. The letters took a moment to read, particularly in the gathering darkness through the flopping windshield wipers and the pelting sleet. And, then, of course, there was the challenge of peering through the car’s wet windows to try to pick out the features of the figure inside, doggedly hunched over her steering wheel. A dark plain, dismal with storm, fog at the end of all roadways, plowed fields full of sleet-colored lagoons and a black car slogging through bad weather toward an invisible horizon.
1.
Here’s my story for what it is worth. I must have visited some kind of toxic web-site because my computer caught a virus and became sick. My Facebook log in was deluged with offers from allegedly lonely and sex-crazed widows, all within a radius of seven miles of my computer. Curiosity killed the cat and so, of course, I clicked one of the invitations and, after several hours of bait and switch, was chatting with Widow B.
We arranged to meet for coffee at a Perkins on the freeway. I came early and sat by the window so that I could watch the parking lot.
Widow B emerged from a black hatchback. There was some kind of emblem tattooed on the side of the car but I couldn’t see it clearly from where I was sitting in the booth by the window. I watched closely to see if Widow B looked approximately like her photograph. In fact, the resemblance was striking although she was smaller than the picture posted on her website made her seem and, perhaps, ten pounds heavier.
I was afraid she would be disappointed with my appearance. But she seemed happy to meet me, vivacious, and talkative. I did notice that her grammar was occasionally bad – she consistently misused the verb "seen".
Widow B wore a silk scarf tied in an intricate bow around her throat. Her eyes were so bright and sparkling that, sometimes, it seemed to me that she had more than two of them. Her voice was an insinuating, half-whisper. I had to lean forward to understand her speech. She had a very slight accent that I couldn’t identify. When I bent toward her, lip-reading to make certain that I understood everything that she said, I could smell her scent, a sort of faint and floral musk.
We talked until the waitresses told her us that the restaurant was closing.
In the parking lot, we planned another encounter. I said that I had some Canadian walleye in my freezer and that the fish was very fresh and good. She told me that she liked fish. "I like all kinds of food," she said.
I bent over her bright face. She must have moved when I tried to kiss her because my lips touched one of her sets of eyes. She squirmed a little, pressed her small body against my chest, and, then, turned her head slightly so that our lips touched together. It’s been a long time for me and so I felt an electric charge surge through my body.
I should have stopped in the ‘john’ before leaving the Perkins. On the route home, I hit nothing but red lights and thought that I would wet myself. But I reached my home still dry, jumped out of the car and ran inside to the toilet. I unzipped my pants but was surprised that I couldn’t find my penis. It was not where it was supposed to be. I dropped my trousers and groped between my legs. Nothing. I checked my rectum to see if it had inadvertently been stashed in that place, but there was no trace of thing. A slight seam of flesh ran from beneath by pubic air curving in an arc between my legs. Otherwise, I was as smooth as a Ken doll. There wasn’t even a trace of a pee-hole.
But I still had to urinate. The dilemma made me feel faint and I felt a sharp pain in my lower back.
I raced to my car and drove to the emergency room.
"My penis is missing," I told the nurse.
She looked at me skeptically.
"Do you mean you cut it off or something?"
"I don’t think so," I said.
"Did someone else cut it off?"
"I don’t think so."
She sniffed at me: "Well you would remember a thing like that?"
We went into a small room where there was a white examination table and a poster on the wall showing a beach in the Bahamas. White cue-tips crowded a glass vase. What were those used for?
The nurse asked me to remove my pants.
"I don’t see any blood," she told me.
"There’s no blood."
"Right there," she gestured dismissively. "I suppose you could call that ‘normal male genitalia’. "
I glanced down and saw that my penis was back where it was supposed to be.
"Is there a bathroom I can use?" I asked.
"We should talk about whether you would like to see a therapist, maybe a counselor or something."
I pulled my pants up.
"Right now, I just need to use the toilet."
"Okay," she said. "Be my guest."
When I returned home and went on-line I asked Widow B why she had stolen my penis. She said that I was crazy and we agreed that future dates were out of the question.
2.
I shouldn’t have been cheating on my wife, but I was. That’s that. You know what’s right and you know what’s wrong, and, yet, you make a choice for what’s wrong. And, then, you have to suffer the consequences. It’s the oldest story in the world.
I said this to her: I want to be up-front about this. We will have to be secretive. I’m married. I suppose you suspected as much. But I’m married.
She said: What makes you think I’m not.
I said: Your website: "Widow B."
She said: I think you may have read that wrong. You have it turned around.
I said: Well, widows aren’t married usually.
She said: Usually.
Her home was decorated with roosters. They were on the walls, knick-knacks on bookshelves, salt and pepper shakers in her kitchen, toys and figurines. An Ipod linked to some Bose speakers was playing music, a man singing a tune that I associated with car ads on TV. I looked at the roosters.
A jokester would say that you like cocks.
I love cocks.
I had brought whiskey to drink. I drank whiskey. She sat on her couch chin-down, knitting. I didn’t know how to interpret this – perhaps, she was nervous and needed to keep her hands busy. She was very deft, making some kind of little cocoon.
The whiskey went to my head. She opened a bottle of red wine. The singing man on the stereo kept singing the same thing over and over again. But, then, I have no ear for music.
She set aside her knitting. Her arms seemed slightly too long for her body. She was able to reach across to touch me over an improbable distance. Her brow was full of bright eyes.
Everything went as well as you could expect on a first date. I was satisfied. She moved restlessly, wiggling a little on the old, squeaky bed.
I’m not done, she said.
Well, I aim to please.
She rolled over and removed something from a little drawer next to the bed. A window was open and, for some reason, the air reeked of rotten meat.
Here, she said.
That’s a realistic one, I said. That’s the most realistic one I have ever seen.
I like them to look real, she said.
Gentleman’s helper, I said.
She made it vibrate. I couldn’t tell where the batteries were inserted.
Very realistic, I said.
A little later, she asked me this question: Well are you happy?
That’s a pretty broad question.
No, I mean was this okay for you?
It was better than okay.
Well, if you are pleased, you need to show me.
How should I show you?
You need to tuck your fists in your armpits and crow like a rooster.
Are you kidding me?
No. I want you to tuck your fists in your armpits and flap your elbows like wings and crow like a rooster.
If it will make you happy.
But when I did this, something strange seized me and a weird high-pitched shrieking emerged from my throat.
That’s very good, she said.
I flapped my wings frantically and crowed.
That’s very, very good, she said.
She told me that she was done and that I could go home to my wife. She used those words: Go home to your wife. You’ll have to lie to her.
I don’t like to lie, I said.
You are a liar, she said. But she was smiling. We made plans for another date.
You are my little rooster, she said.
Your little rooster, I said.
So go home to your wife.
For the first time, I noticed a very slight trace of an accent in her voice.
I didn’t know the town and had a hard time finding my way back to the freeway. It took me two hours to drive home to the suburbs. It was very late. The moon had come and gone.
I took a hot shower to wash her smell from me. I gargled mouthwash to cover any scent of whiskey and wine on my breath. My wife was pretending to sleep.
The next morning, my wife asked me why my business away from home had kept me out so late.
Entertaining customers, I said. It’s a pain.
No, it’s not, my wife said.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and looked at me wearily.
For some reason, an impulse caused me to squeeze my hands into fists and push them into my armpits.
What are you doing?
I lifted my chin toward the ceiling and began to crow. I crowed very loudly. The dog began to bark and my wife looked afraid. She was startled and spilled her coffee, making a dark moth-shaped pool on the table in front of her.
Stop that!
But I couldn’t stop crowing.
The dog ran in circles barking at me. I flapped my wings frantically.
My wife took me to Acute Care. In the waiting room, I began to crow again, loudly, until my throat was raw. People stared at me in horror and, then, two burly men seized me under my wings and dragged me into a small room. A female doctor with a syringe approached me.
Why are you doing this?
I didn’t know.
Stop making that noise!
I can’t.
But why are you doing this?
Because I am a bad man. Because I am a bad man.
No one can say that I didn’t treat her with the utmost respect and compassion and generosity – most of all generosity. My intentions were completely pure. And, now, to be ousted from my home and ordered to pay medical bills for which she is, at least, fifty-fifty responsible – how is this fair? She should be deported, sent back to her beloved Mother Russia. That’s what I think and that’s what I told the Judge. But it didn’t matter. The system is rigged. No one heard anything that I said. I guess, everyone has human rights but me.
I’ve got other options. That’s what I told myself. Cheer up. You’re lucky. The restraining order has cut free the millstone that was locked around my neck and dragging me down. Believe me, there are plenty of other fish in the sea. I’ve got money, a reasonably good job. I work out once or twice a week in the gym and have a lot to offer a woman. It’s just a matter of finding the right lady. That’s my objective. She’ll see. I’ll show her. Once she figures out what she has lost, she’ll come back to me on her knees. You can count on it.
So, now, what about Widow B? Nice picture posted on the internet – admittedly, a little bit blurry but she’s probably not too tech-savvy. And she’s clear enough about what she wants. None of this coy bullshit. A widow, used to a man and a man’s needs – this is just what the doctor ordered for this present bleak moment in my life. It’s simple enough to contact her and start the ball rolling with an exchange of emails.
"Widow B – what’s your real name?"
"For me to know and you to ask. What’s your real name?"
So I make up something, a tough-guy’s name, a solid moniker like something you’d find in a romance novel.
"Intriguing," she writes.
"Meet and greet?"
"Sure," she says.
She sends me her telephone number. We talk.
Her voice is soft, insinuating, slightly desperate like a cry for help from a small animal trying to act bigger than it is.
"You have to tell me your real name," I say.
"Then, you have to tell me yours."
"But I did."
"Okay," she says. She speaks a mishmash of syllables, foreign-sounding or, perhaps, Latin.
"Are you Italian or something?"
"I’m American," she says.
"Your name sounds like some kind of species in Latin."
"That’s just my last name."
I thought that I detected a very faint accent in her words.
"But there’s no ‘B’in it." I say.
"The ‘B’ is from my nickname."
"What’s that?" I ask.
"I tell you if we meet."
"You mean when we meet," I say.
To my amazement, she says that I can come to her house to pick her up. This is moving quickly and exactly according to my plan. She must be more desperate than I thought.
"I’ll pick you up," I say, "and we can go to Perkins for some coffee and pie."
"It’s a plan," she says.
"Do you want meet to come tomorrow night?"
"What about tonight?" she asks.
"But’s it’s getting late," I say.
"Well, I’m sort of hungry," she says.
She gives me her address. It’s not far, just across town, in the subdivision by the old slaughter house. I know the neighborhood. The air smells of blood and big semi-trucks are always prowling the side-streets and, after midnight, you can hear the lonesome whistle of the freight trains limping along the old railway tracks. There’s a church on every corner right next to a cinder-block tavern with pickup trucks bellied up to bar’s curb like suckling pigs and, down the street, a Mexican bakery and butcher shop. Undoubtedly, her husband cut meat in the packing plant until cigarettes and emphysema took him down. She probably has a nice pension, a good vehicle, a couple of daughters better educated than her who don’t come around much anymore – there are a thousand widows just like her in our town.
Sure enough: a little flimsy-looking house in the middle of the block. I can see a black hatchback in her garage, sleek and, I suppose, sporty for a widow-woman, some bedraggled shrubs under the picture window which is dark with drapery pulled tightly shut.
Widow B is compact, wiry-looking, with arms that seem a forearm too long – it gives her an oddly elongated look. She scuttles when she walks, leading me from the front door through dim rooms that seem funereal and dusty. The house is gloomy. Like every widow living alone, she keeps the thermostat at sweater temperature and conserves electricity by maintaining darkness in as much of the house as possible. Tonight, because she has a visitor, Widow B is splurging on the power. There is music playing in some room that always seems just to the right or left of the dim chamber through which are passing. I recognize the muffled voice: Pavarotti – is that it? was he one of those three tenor guys?
"Pavarotti?" I ask.
"Yes," she says.
"I’ve heard that song before."
"I think it’s been in ads and stuff. Maybe for cars. I don’t know."
I cock my head.
"It’s called ‘None shall Sleep’," she says.
"I wonder what that means."
"Who knows," she says.
We sit at her kitchen table and she offers me either beer or a glass of wine. Widow B must like roosters. Everywhere I look, I see little rooster figurines – the salt and pepper shakers are matching red roosters and the trivets by the stove have roosters painted on them and there is a potholder embroidered with a little fighting cock hanging next to the oven and a ceramic cookie jar also shaped like a bantam-cock and napkin-holders in rooster form holding napkins crimped in their yellow beaks. A painting of several roosters strutting through a barnyard hangs over the light switch.
"You must like roosters," I say.
"I love them," she replies. "They are wonderful animals.
She pours me a glass of red wine. The music has come to a stop and, now, the house seems very silent. It is not an empty, vacant silence but tense, expectant.
"So what does the ‘B’ mean?" I ask.
"You’ll find out," she says, winking at me.
A piercing, hysterical cry sounds in the next room. It startles me and I spill my wine across the table-top, a big irregular puddle in the shape of a moth.
"What is that?" I say.
"It’s a clock, a time-piece," she says.
"What a sound!"
"I don’t mind," she says. "It’s made like a rooster crowing. Do you hear? It crows out the number of times like a bell on clock tolling."
The cry continues in the other room, shrill and desperate-sounding.
"So what time is it?" I ask. "It’s awfully realistic."
The rooster’s automated shriek continues.
"Time to go for our pie and coffee," she says.
I take her to the Perkins near the interstate. I want the waitresses to see me with her. Perhaps, the word will sift through the gossip-network back to that Ukrainian bitch.
She orders lemon meringue pie. But she only picks at it.
"Aren’t you hungry?" I ask.
She shoves the dissected pie on its white plate across the table toward me.
"I am," she says. "But, you know, if I start eating, sometimes I can’t really stop."
"Who would stop you?" I ask.
"I know," she says.
The set of eyes in the middle of her face glitters at me, black as the coffee in the mug in front of her.
It’s dark outside, trucks howling on the freeway and wind kicking rubbish along the gutters.
"Do you want to come in for a night-cap?" she asks.
I follow her from my car parked at the curb through her garage and into the shadowy house. The air smells of carrion – it’s the big black carcass of the meat packing plant hidden in the darkness a block or so away. The bulb overhead in the garage drizzles wan yellow light over her black hatchback sedan. The license plate reads B WIDOW. On the back quarter panel, the hatchback is adorned with a cream-colored spider-web painted on the metal.
"You’ve got it backwards on the license plate," I say.
"No that’s the way it’s supposed to be," she says.
"I see."
She smiles, showing her teeth: "Well, come into my lair."
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