Jack showed up on Sunday afternoon, during
the Packers game. He muttered a vague
greeting to Jonah, and then dropped onto the couch. “I was listening to the game on the radio during the drive over,”
he said. “We are so hosed.”
“Yeah.”
“Got
any beer?”
“In
the fridge.”
Jack
went into the kitchen. When he came back
he was carrying a beer in one hand, and the bag of Doritos Jonah had bought yesterday in his other. He opened the bag
and set it on the table, so that it was within easy reaching distance of Jonah’s
chair. “This flavor is pretty good,”
Jack said, crunching hard on a sample chip.
“Cool Ranch, huh? I’ve never
tried it before.”
“It’s
been out for a while now," Jonah answered, his attention still on the game.
“No
kidding? Guess I’m pretty clueless when
it comes to new trends in snack products.”
“There are worse
things to be clueless about.”
Jack grunted. “Yeah, like
stats. My fantasy football team is
getting crushed this year. I just
haven’t had time to keep up, you know?”
“My team is
pretty hopeless, too. I’m in last place
at work.”
“Your team is
always hopeless,” Jack answered, grinning.
“But that reminds me—you wanna go bowling this Saturday night?”
“I
thought Kelly didn’t like you to go out on weekend nights.”
“Oh. Yeah.
Well, she moved out.”
Jonah turned to stare at Jack. “She
did?”
“Yeah. Yesterday.
She said she was just waiting until Mom died.” Avoiding Jonah's eyes, Jack grabbed another
handful of chips. “She said I wasn’t
‘emotionally available,’ or some bull shit like that, but I don’t know what
she’s talking about. I was home every
single night, just about, and, I mean, I wasn’t going to give up poker
night. It was only once a month, for
christ’s sake.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Well,
you’ll find someone else. You always do,
right?”
“Not this time. That’s it for me. I give up.
Three strikes and you’re out. I
know I wasn’t married to Sheila, but close enough. I’ll never understand women. They could be locked up in a room and studied
for a thousand years by the world’s leading scientists and we still would never
understand them.”
“I
don’t know," Jonah said. “I don’t think they’re all that different from us.”
"Maybe
not,” Jack answered; suddenly he sounded very, very tired. “But if that’s true, it means we just aren’t
marriage material. You and me, I
mean.” Jack frowned to himself before he took a swig of his beer and pointed at the T.V. “Look at that moron,” he said. “A loss of two yards, when there was a huge
hole right up the middle. The Heisman curse
strikes again.”
