The Ocean Dark

44

Streetlights strafed the windshield as Gabe drove his aging BMW through Miami traffic. Gleaming neon and pastels flashed across the hood in a blurred reflection of the shops and bars and restaurants. Night had fallen a couple of hours ago, but the streets were still busy for a Tuesday night, and the traffic clogged the center lanes thanks to vehicles parked and double-parked on either side.

He gripped the steering wheel tightly, somehow both muddled and focused by the four bottles of hard iced tea he’d had at Jamie’s Reel Life — a divey little fish joint a few miles from his apartment building. Jamie’s had a streetside patio, where exhaust fumes mixed with the flavor of the mojitos and fried lobster tails that had made the place a local favorite. No one seemed to care.

Gabe had eaten dinner — popcorn shrimp and fries, just something to soak up the alcohol — but his stomach felt all twisted up anyway. He tried to tell himself it was the hard iced tea, but knew better. Nearly a month had gone by since that night Maya had caught him at Cinco, the night she hadn’t come home. Ever since, he’d been on edge, flush with anger and resentment that were directed just as much at himself as at his wife. It had been difficult enough the morning after, when she’d told him she had slept at a friend’s, her eyes like flint and that challenge in her voice daring him to ask for more details. Gabe had bit his tongue. He’d been the one cheating, after all. She had every right to be furious, and the truth was that if she had gone out to even the score and had sex with some guy, he really didn’t want to know.

Or so he’d thought.

For the first few days, they had barely spoken to each other, the air between them thick with bitterness. Gabe had swung wildly back and forth between rage and guilt, between jealousy and self-loathing. Then, the night before he was headed out on a voyage for Viscaya, he had tried to talk to her, only to have it degenerate into a tirade in which he blamed her for having driven him to stray with the weight of her expectations.

Maya had smiled for the first time in days, but it was all teeth and cruel eyes. “Oh, no. You don’t get to put it on me, Gabriel. You changed the rules, papi. Make sure you remember that.”

His heart had sunk and he’d tried to get her to elaborate on what she’d meant. Why did he need to remember? What had she done? But Maya had said all she would say. When he woke early the next morning, he tried to talk to her before the Antoinette sailed — a short jaunt before the South American trip that was coming up — but Maya pretended to be sleeping. Even when he called her on it, and whispered to her, and tried to apologize, she kept her eyes firmly closed and her breathing even.

Half-drunk, Gabe pulled the BMW onto the side road — little more than an alley — that led to the back of his building. The car slid through darkness and then into the splash of light from the lampposts that lined the drive. He slowed at the entrance to the underground parking garage, steadying his breathing, fingers still tight on the wheel.

You didn’t want to know, he thought.

But he needed to know—want had nothing to do with it — because the rules had changed again. In the ten days since he had returned from that brief voyage, Maya had transformed. The night he had come home, she had been quiet and depressed and had slept on the sofa, breathing softly, only half-covered by a thin cotton sheet, the bronze curve of her exposed calf making his heart ache.

“You did this,” he had whispered into the darkened room, the new carpet crushed under his bare feet, the wall clock ticking loudly and impatiently. “You expected me to give up everything for you.”

But Maya had slept on, her expression peaceful. If she dreamed, there were only pleasant things in her subconscious that night, and he had envied her that peace. Speaking those words aloud, Gabe felt a storm of conflicting emotions raging inside him. He blamed her — damn right he did. But how could he hate her when the worst thing she had done was want him home with her more often?

The following evening, when she had stayed out all night for the second time, all his guilt and hesitation vanished. When she finally showed up at the apartment looking freshly showered but still in her clothes from the night before, he had flown into a rage. Instead of fighting with him, she had apologized, smiled sweetly, and lied smoothly.

Gabe had been sleeping with other women. Now, Maya was either cheating on him in return, or she wanted him to think she was. And all he’d been able to think was, You fucking started it, you bitch.

Since then, she had been in their bed every night, but there were long periods during the day — while he was at the Viscaya offices or out after work — when she didn’t answer her cell phone. He had come back to the apartment at six or seven o’clock to find her not yet home. Gabe had inquired at first, but she brushed off all of his questions with that same smile, the same denials.

Tonight, that would end.

Gabe had told her he had a meeting with Frank Esper down at the Viscaya offices. More than likely, Maya would not believe him. Many times before he had claimed to be at meetings and found his way to Cinco instead. Thoughts of Cinco made him think of Serafina, the woman he had been flirting with when Maya had caught him, a month ago. Serafina had been exquisite. He became wistful whenever he thought about that lost opportunity, remembering her seductive smile and the delicious scent of her. But there would be no Cinco for Gabe tonight.

On Friday night, the last time he’d gone out, he had come home to find Maya in the shower, singing quietly to herself, a private moment of bliss. The bedclothes had been a mess. She had stepped out of the shower, toweling off her hair, still singing. It had been at least a couple of months since he had seen her naked and a wave of desire swept through him.

Maya had turned and seen him standing there, watching her, and she had mustered that infuriating smile. But there had been an instant between her solitude and that smile, a fraction of a moment when she had been startled by his presence, during which he had seen a different emotion flicker across her features. Fear.

And then his suspicions had turned to certainty. Until then it had been possible that she might only be pretending to have an affair to torment him, out of vengeance. But that glimpse of fear in her eyes had given her away. Gabe had not asked her why she was showering so late, or why the bed was a mess — she would only have made up some story about a migraine and a nap. But he had heard it all before.

That night, while she slept beside him, he lay awake, convinced he could smell the stink of another man in his bed.

The BMW idled at the top of the ramp that led down into the garage. Light washed across his rearview mirror and he glanced up to see a mini-SUV pulling up the drive behind him. It wouldn’t do to have horns blowing out here. If he got into some kind of argument, he might draw attention and give himself away.

“No more,” he whispered, hands wrapped around the wheel.

The alcohol rode quietly along at the back of his thoughts now, urging him on, comforting and antagonizing him in equal measure. Gabe lifted his foot off the brake and drove down the ramp. The gate opened for him and he let the BMW roll, purring, into the garage, then pulled the car into his spot, right next to Maya’s Corvette. His wife was home, just as he had known she would be. But she wasn’t home alone.

Who the fuck is he, Maya? Gabe thought. Who’d fucking dare?

A cold numbness filled him then, and he moved as though he no longer had any control over his body. In the back of his mind, somewhere behind the alcohol, a small voice still warned him not to go home in this condition. As long as he didn’t know the truth, he wouldn’t have to do anything about it. Maya might forgive him someday. They might be able to go back to the way things had been when they had been able to laugh together, and the days seemed longer and the sky bluer. Romantic bullshit, he chided himself, and wondered which of his urges was more fueled by the drinks — the need to confront her, or the temptation to turn away.

He rode up the elevator, the keys gripped tightly in his hand.

The corridor smelled like disinfectant, and he heard the DeSimones’ baby crying as he passed their door. The smell of frying fajitas drifted from one of the apartments. Mixed with the stink of the disinfectant the maintenance staff used, it made his stomach roil. Outside his own apartment door, he gripped his keys. His breathing sounded very loud, though he tried to be quiet.

Gabe slipped the key into the lock, turned it silently, and rotated the door handle. He held his breath, thinking: You changed the rules, not me. You knew what you were getting when you married me. The door slid open and he saw the antique mirror he’d bought her with money he’d made breaking the law, and the gourmet kitchen he’d put in himself, and the glass-top table in the eat-in. On the table were a cell phone and a key ring that didn’t belong to Maya.

And he heard her laugh, soft and girlish, like she had laughed for him in better days.

Lost in fury and despair, he clapped both hands to the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Alarms were going off in his mind as though to drive him out, to force him to flee before the imminent catastrophe could unfold. What he saw now he could never unsee.

But then a horrid sound began to build in his chest and throat — a bestial roar. Gabe had been frozen to the spot, but now he stormed through the foyer and the eat-in kitchen and turned through the archway into the living room, big hands curled into fists, tasting violence on his tongue.

“You made a big fucking mistake, having him here, puta! Whatever happens now, it’s on your goddamn …”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Gabe stood mutely, just inside the living room, staring at the scene before him. Maya sat cross-legged in a plush chair. On the sofa, a beer on the coffee table in front of him, Miguel stared back at Gabe in obvious dismay. What broke Gabe, though, was the pity in his brother’s eyes.

“Bro,” Miguel said. “What the hell are you doing?”

Gabe’s fists opened and he shook his head. “No. Don’t you do it. Don’t you take her side.” His voice grew louder once more, rising to a shout. “She’s a lying whore, man! She’s been fucking some guy, doing it in my own damn bed!”

Maya let out a long, disgusted sigh and shook her head. “That’s enough.”

“It’s not nearly enough!” Gabe yelled. Then he turned on his brother. “And what the hell are you even doing here?”

Miguel stood up, decades of sibling fireworks coming into play. “Trying to help, you asshole. Maya called me, looking for advice. I was trying to help save your marriage.”

“You were wasting your time,” Gabe sneered.

Miguel threw up his hands. “I can see that now.”

He started to leave. Maya reached out and grabbed his wrist, held him in place.

“Miguel, wait,” she said, and her gaze shifted to Gabe. “Take him with you.”

Gabe started to argue. He had been wrong tonight, but that didn’t erase the past month. He knew she had been cheating on him.

Maya shook her head. “Just leave. You want to spend your life on the ocean, banging girls in clubs whenever you’re in port, have fun with that. I tried to give you a home.”

“I wanted a wife, not a home.”

Maya’s upper lip curled and her eyes nailed him to the spot. “Well, now you don’t have either.”