A Change in Gravity

"One Halloween," she said, "I think you two were five or six - you came over to trick or treat with us as a ghost, but Piper was a ghost too. You and Piper started arguing about who was the better ghost, and you both wanted the other to change. There could be only one. It looked like a tense evening, but you got together under one of your sheets and came to an accommodation. She was going to be the ghost of you and you were going to be the ghost of her. It didn't make any sense, but you guys were happy the rest of the night. You went up to doors and yelled 'Who are we?' but nobody could guess, of course."

He was going to miss Virginia.

**********

Piper braked gently to a stop shortly after eleven on Sunday evening. Her headlights illuminated the For Sale sign in Grampy Pete's front yard.

She turned off the car and the sign disappeared in the dark. She sat quiet and fixed, holding the wheel with both hands.

She could buy the place. Live there with three dogs and two cats.

She could buy it and burn it down.

Piper turned her head and saw her mother's outline against the curtains.

Then another shadow. Wider. Taller.

**********

Rose and Nick lived less than a mile from Grampy Pete's, but then again most every part of Pogonip was within that mile. This proximity made designated drivers superfluous. If you lived in town and wanted to go down to one of the two casino bars and have a few adult beverages, you just walked. Or if you had dinner with friends and consumed beers and wine, you walked home.

Mitch had done the latter and was now strolling slowly toward his bed in the pale output of Pogonip's antiquated street lights, relaxed and at peace with himself and his place in the blackness of the insect-noisy high desert night. He had just turned the corner of his street when he heard the shouts.

The back door was wide open. He ran through and into the kitchen. A very large man was facing away from him, holding a squirming Virginia by the upper arm in an awkward and painful-looking grip.

Mitch had not, as he had said, actively inquired after Piper over the years, but he had kept in contact with enough friends to know the that this was the guy Piper had married. From the tableau he found in Virginia's kitchen, wedded bliss was history.

The guy heard Mitch's entry. He turned his head and snarled, "Fuck off, Farias! This don't concern you!"

Neal Corbutt had been a year behind them at Pogonip High, one of a number of boys who followed Piper around in puppy-like worship.

"This is between me and my wife," he continued in a bellow.

Piper stood trembling with fury on the other side of the kitchen table. "I'm not your wife, Neal. We are divorced, you idiot."

Neal shook Virginia like she was a doll.

"What God has joined together, let no man rend asunder!" Neal delivered the line in a deep bass like he was projecting to a huge flock.

"You got the quote wrong... and that wasn't even in our vows!" Piper shouted, exasperated. "Let Mom go!"

"God has promised me that you will be fertile! We will be fruitful!"

Mitch watched the interaction carefully, trying to think of a way to defuse it. Neal had been on the offensive line when they played football, and even then had outweighed Mitch, a safety and wide receiver, by nearly a hundred pounds. He seemed to have filled out in the intervening years. Mitch guessed the guy must be about three fifty.

Mitch felt for his cell and realized it was home on the charger.

Neal shook his captive again. Virginia yelped.

Mitch took a step forward, angry, feeling like this was a bad idea, when Virginia took things into her own hands. Literally. Her cane lay on the counter, and Neal's most recent shaking had brought Virginia's free hand close. She grabbed it, and in one fluid motion jabbed the end down into Neal's foot.

The flurry of activity that followed this seemed to Mitch spread out over an hour, although in retrospect it must have been about five seconds.

Neal let go of Virginia with a shout of anger and pain. She fell hard and her head struck the side of a countertop. Neal started hopping on his uninjured foot and grabbing at the other with both hands. Mitch hit him with a shoulder tackle that sent them both careening into the table. Neal managed to punch Mitch square in the face, a disorienting blow that scrambled Mitch's internal time index. Mitch was wrestling on the floor with the big man when Neal shrieked like an excited little girl and his grabbing arms went slack.

Mitch rolled off and looked up at Piper, who stood over them in flushed triumph. She drew her foot back and gave her ex another size 7 Converse to the nuts.

Neal shrieked again, this time with less volume. He curled into a fetal comma. He had lost all enthusiasm for the contest.

"Fucking asshole!" Piper panted. Mitch felt his nose and his hand came away from the gesture drenched and dripping red. It was odd. He didn't feel any pain at all.

He heard the rest as if his head was back inside a football helmet. The sound was muffled, and amplified, and distorted all at once. He crawled onto the nearest chair.

Virginia, sitting on the floor and pressing a dishtowel to her ear, had her phone on speaker. "...kitchen. Back door.... No, nobody has a gun.... Yes.... Ambulance...."

Three cops came in, weapons drawn. Mitch knew two of them. He waved feebly with one hand. His other he had pressed to the hot flat wetness that had been his nose.

**********

Five years behind bars, he thought, and not a scratch other than that time I slipped and fell playing basketball. Back in my safe little town where nothing ever happens, and....

Well, this was a little more than a scratch. One chipped tooth and tissue damage around the nose. Unbelievably wasn't broken, but it was going to be a veiny red island in the middle of a deep purple ocean for a while. He emptied the cold water out of the bag they had given him at the hospital and refilled it with ice.

Standing at the sink, he touched it gently to his bandaged face. He thought he saw movement in the dark yard across the street. Virginia had been kept for observation, and Neal was in the county lock up. Mitch took a deep breath. It hurt. They had only given him some Tylenol, but it seemed to be doing its one minimum job of keeping him from passing out. He took another deep breath and decided it was manageable.

He searched all over before spotting Piper though the door opening of the treehouse. He climbed carefully up the ladder, remembering that Piper's dad had engineered it to support six-year-olds.

She was sitting in the far corner. She watched him pull himself up from the last step of the ladder. He stood in a long awkward silence not knowing what on this green earth to say.

Words came and were discarded. All inane, all inadequate.

Finally, he prodded the nearest wall with a toe. "Your dad built a good treehouse."

Of all he could have said, this was apparently the wrong thing, for Piper's head snapped up and her eyes blazed.

"Then it was the only goddamn thing he got right." She looked off, out the window. "When Mom was diagnosed, her doctor said something that devastated her. And when you've just found out your body is turning to shit and you are going to die and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, that is saying something.

"She told my mother to consult a divorce lawyer."

Mitch said nothing. His face started to throb again. It must have been stunning. Piper's dad, even for his surprising opposition to the education of his daughter, had always seemed such a solid, even-keeled family man. This demonstrated to Mitch the kind of perceptive insight into human nature that he had.

"The doc had seen it all before. When a husband gets sick, the wife rallies and takes care of him. And holds the family together. One hundred per cent. But when the wife gets sick - especially with the kind of long-term debilitating thing Mom has - the man bolts. It's such a good predictor that Mom's doctor always takes her female patients aside and advises them to be prepared for the worst. And guess what? Daddy dear was out of here six months later."

Piper's statement just made her angrier. Her voice rose until she was shouting. "What is wrong with you fucking men? If we get sick you run. If we can't get pregnant... you run. What is wrong with you?"

She put her face in her hands and began to cry, gulping sobs.

"He...." She swallowed and composed herself. "He was so sweet to me after.... He wore me down. I needed somebody. He was there. He was always there."

Mitch's tongue sought out the chipped tooth. Upper left canine. He stood and took the blame without excuse.

"He wanted to start a family. Now I think he mostly wanted to mark me. He was always afraid you would come back for me and so he wanted a baby to tie me to him. But I didn't get pregnant and I didn't get pregnant and.... It was a personal insult to him. He thought it was my uterus cheating on him and staying faithful to you. Crazy."

Mitch grunted. Just to show her he was listening, without prejudice.

"No," Piper said, wiping her eyes. "I mean actual crazy. He started going to church three times a week and getting drunk six times a week. The last day of the week, oddly, was the night he stayed sober and beat me. For not loving Jesus. Or something.

"Then he decided to have a baby without me. I found out about this plan late one night when he slammed open the front door. I jumped out of bed and heard him talking in the kitchen... and a woman answering. They came into the bedroom, kissing and unbuttoning each other. I was drowsy and out of it. He pushed her down into the bed. Ignored me. Right where I had been sleeping. By then he had his pants off and she was jerking him while he stripped her. Then they... started to fuck.

"I didn't even know who the hell she was. Not a local. I was still waking up as Neal started to pump her. She was yelling. Obviously faking, but the asshole thought he was just doing a great job. Like he ever.

"He grunts and finishes. She says Oh God Oh God. Didn't fool anyone. After he stops panting - I was hoping that the fat fuck would have a heart attack, but no luck - he informs me that when she gets pregnant, he is tossing me out.

"I went and made coffee and drank it in the dark until the sun came up. They got dressed and left. Back to the bar. Bars should shut once in a while, don't you think? Anyway, it was a little performance just for Piper's sake, I suppose. What the point was, I had no idea other than to make me feel even worse that I could not conceive.

"Over the next few months, he brought home four other girlfriends. I got a repeat show a few times. Other days I came home from shopping to find him in our bed with some new skank.

"None of them ever got pregnant that I knew. By him anyway. I never asked for details.

"You might wonder why a woman who was so damn smart that she could get into Duke with a full ride and who was certainly smarter than a guy she used to know who everyone in town always assumed was the smartest...."

She looked at Mitch. He gave a slight nod to acknowledge that, yes, he knew she was smarter than him.

Always had been.

"I put up with the abuse - the cheating, the insults, the fists - for way too long. It took me forever to admit to myself - and then admit to my mother, and then to a lawyer - that Piper Clarke had failed. Marriage, babies.... I had never failed before, Mitch. You know this better than anyone. I never failed at anything I put my mind to doing.

"We lasted four hellish years. I found myself with no job skills, no resume. And a sick mother to take care of. So I...."

There seemed to Mitch to be no good way to indicate his interest in her story other than another grunt, but multiple grunts also seemed to not be a good way to accomplish this. He did nothing and hoped for the best.

He was surprised. Piper started to laugh.

"They have a website. You can apply right there, online. Of course, you have to send them pictures. You can guess what kind of pictures."

Mitch grunted. If he were running the place, he certainly would have scheduled her in for an interview at her earliest convenience.

Which is what happened. A month after she had first browsed to DoubleDRanch.com, Lulu was handing her a room key.

Mitch lowered himself to the floor. His strength had drained right out of his body and he sat crumpled, weak as a newborn. He had known this. He had seen her as she walked to the lineup, still to his eyes obviously Piper even in her outsized wig and black eyeliner and crimson lipstick.

But for some reason hearing it from her undecorated lips seized him with remorse. He felt the loss of something infinitely precious and impossible to recover. And it was all, all, every last bit of it, his damn fault.

"I told my mother I had studied online and gotten certified as a therapist. Which was kind of true. So - hey presto! I was a whore. No.... A sex worker.

"The ironic thing was - I was a therapist. You think normal men come into a brothel and hand over hundreds of bucks to get laid? Hell no. Normal men don't have to pay. They get their ashes hauled very nicely with dinner, flowers, and a sincere compliment. My customers were the other guys - shy, ugly, insecure, disabled. My God, Mitch. The number of men in this world who live in fear. They keep a brave face but deep inside they feel insecure and worthless. And most you would never be able to tell unless you had their pants off.

"After a while, I had an epiphany - I was doing good. I was helping men feel better about themselves. I provided momentary pleasure to men who were finding no pleasure in the rest of their lives. I took the virginity of a lot of young men and left them feeling confident. I coached guys old and not so old how to deal with erectile dysfunction. I made so many referrals to a urology group in Vegas that they awarded me a plaque."

Piper scrambled to her feet and looked at him with sudden satisfaction.

"And I made two hundred and forty-five thousand dollars last year, Mitch. Legal. After taxes."

Wow. Mitch considered that for a second. It explained her new Camry. Then he realized she had been describing her work in the past tense, so he ventured, "How long do you plan to...?"

She snorted. "Work? Oh, I quit. I quit the second I found out you had seen me in costume. I saw - saw? shit, what a euphemism, huh? - a few more customers after that, but my heart had peaced out. I left and stayed at the condo one of the girls owns. Same one where you found me by the pool.

"Suddenly I wasn't the good sex fairy heroically saving the world one sad man at a time. I had seen myself through your eyes and it broke the spell. I was a cunt with a price. It was a hell of a good price, and I will miss the cashflow, but still... a sex worker. No.... A whore."

"I don't-" he tried to object.

"Stop bullshitting yourself," Piper said quickly. "I'm a whore to you now. I'm a whore to everyone I have fucked and everyone from now on who finds out. It's a Scarlet W. Let's not pretend it isn't. And I have to wear it but without the benefit of the money. I'm back to the starting line, Mitch. No career, no job."

She shook her head. "Most Likely to Succeed, my ass."

She crawled over to him and their eyes met.

My mother told me we used to play together when we only old enough to squirm across the floor, Mitch thought. I've known this woman forever.

"I'm cold," she said.

He held out his arm and she snuggled in. He hugged her and they watched out of the treehouse window while the Milky Way spun slowly in the ebony sky.

She shifted position. Turned her face to him to ask if he was comfortable and he kissed her.

She kissed him. Carefully, around the bandage.

Her lips remembered. He felt familiar. He felt like home.

She stroked an undamaged portion of his face.

He cupped her breast, then moved his hand down to the tight denim of her crotch.

"No, Mitch."

No? This is the only man you have ever loved. Say Yes! Yes! Yes!

"Sorry," Mitch mumbled as he pulled his hand away.

"Don't be sorry. It's just...."

I can't say it. Can't tell him that I dare not risk this encouragement. Can't tell him that if he leaves me again, it will be the end of me. Can't say that I am ashamed of how used it is. Can't say I am afraid to have him touch me again, smell me again, taste me... after all the... mileage.

But this was Mitch, and he knew. Somehow knew. He pulled her close and wrapped both arms around her.

"It will be all right, Piper."

"How?" She whispered. "A retired hooker and an unemployable ex-con. How does that turn out all right?"

There was no answer he could find. Neither could she. So they huddled together in the increasing chill of the night.

Each, for different reasons, thought about the realtor's sign across the street.

"What are we supposed to do?" she said softly.

We? We? Mitch flushed warm.

She was going to be the ghost of you and you were going to be the ghost of her.

"Something completely different," he said.

**********

Epilogue

Pogonip

One year later

The young nurse shut the door softly. Behind her stood one of the senior nurses.

"They're all asleep," the younger nurse said. "Mommy, daddy, and the little one. Peek in if you get a chance. So sweet. Daddy crawled up on the bed and the baby is in a nest between them."

"I'll give them some time," the older said. "They could use the rest."

The younger was not from around here, and something in the familiar way her colleague spoke of the patients gave her pause.

"You know them?"

The older nodded. "Went to school with both of them."

"Oh." The younger paused, thinking. "I know having a baby is exhausting, but even so.... Those two seem like they've been through a lot."

The older nurse smiled. "You have no idea." Then she repeated, mostly to herself:

"You have no idea."