An Odd Man Out (part nine)

The Resident

Chapter Four

An Odd Man Out

[rerunning the last several entries to help readers catch up, because I haven’t added to this story for months]

Learning Experiences was still John’s employer. His income afforded not much for brightening the house. By that Christmas of 1990, their first anniversary, they had a sofa and love seat, twine-textured Herculon with honey oak trim. Nothing like the ’30s pieces pulled for their wedding from Oathbreach storage, but green, his wife’s sentimental green.

“What if…?” he started, behind her while she strung lights on the juniper. He had chopped the juniper off by the roadside. It was shaped like a Christmas tree. Teconieshe said it was a junk plant.

“Ow! Ow!”

“Do you want me to do that?”

“Look, I’m bleeding. John, did you say what if?”

“This year we’re not going.” He had wanted to say it preemptively, before Aura flattered her again, decided more colors for her, a menu to prefer, music. “Fix your finger.”

He heard water run in the sink, then: “Oh. I think I get you. I told Aura to keep tickets for us.”

“That’s fine. We’ll do Christmas at Oathbreach.”

“You said we’re not.”

“You want to, so we are.”

She came out of the kitchen, a watery glint in her eyes, and said a new thing to John. “We’re not. We are. Do you hear yourself, telling me what I’m going to do? I will have lunch with Aura, and you may stay at home. You don’t like her. I do. That sounds fine.”

He watched his wife climb to a guest room.

This was a fight, arrived from nowhere he knew of. He moved to the half-strung lights and stabbed himself at first touch. He worked the lights around with painstaking slowness, and when finally he plugged them in, his fingers were bleeding as well.

He knew Claudie wrote in her notebooks, in the pink gingham room, upstairs.

A sensible, a naturally-fitting person, married four years…

Would have asked his wife at some point, “Do you have a job?”

He was gone most days to his own job. Computers were surging, by 1993 so much new work being created because of them.

John was enduring a hateful period of professional success.

Learning Experiences now wanted five six-hour weekdays, a convenient thirty hours. They wanted weekend travel. They wanted training sessions. Even Oathbreach had booked him to train their techs.

He had never felt worse. Aura, his vehicle to this special relationship, and Stacy, were now his students. One of his textbook authors was a Cooper, and he had managed to give Aura a meaning look and odd smile, while telling himself, she’s only a student. You don’t officially know her.

45

Tithonians

An Odd Man Out (part ten)

(2022, Stephanie Foster)