Jacking the shower
By James Marx


“You just want there to be a reason to pawn that necklace. You just couldn’t wait to hear me rattle-off those bills, and then you could talk yourself into it”. She shouted this from the bathroom, with windows open through out the house, as she stripped for a shower.

She was right, but she was on a roll. I’d gone upstairs to get stoned, ‘before dinner’. So her favorite thing was to try and make it such a drag and be such a buzz-kill, that I’d then be sorry and regret having chosen to get high.

She’s in the shower, now. She’s still yelling.

She went on for a minute or two, over-talking the sound of the porcelain shower. I guess she’s taking a rest. Feeling the water cleanse her pores and wash away her feelings, her resentments. Showers help her think things out.

“He’s probably watching porn. He’s done it before when I shower. He knows I’ll look. I only look to see that he’s taking care to cover his tracks. It’s a dead give-away.”

She hadn’t heard him walk out of the office yet. She couldn’t help but listen for it. The ‘office’ was the name Jim had given Amanda’s room, since she’d moved out, and he’d moved in. He wanted it to be the office to fill the emptiness created when he’d lost his house; the house that had an office.

He wasn’t jacking this time, though. This time he was pounding at the keyboard, writing; writing this. He refused to let her negative demeanor penetrate where his mind had chosen to hide this time.


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Carpenter 47 yrs. old, waiting to sit still long-enough to write a novel.