Because My Ex-Wife Was a Cunt

The shift bell at the warehouse went off at five in the morning and I'd been standing under a loading dock light for eleven hours by the time it let me go, my shoulders screaming, forklift exhaust and cardboard dust caked into my skin so deep I could taste it in the back of my throat. I drove home the long way, past the turn that would've taken me by the old house, because I still hadn't trained myself out of avoiding it. Six months since Denise packed her half of the marriage into cardboard boxes labeled in her neat cursive and drove off behind Rick's truck without once looking at the porch where I stood.

I got to the apartment at six-forty and had the first can open before I'd even set my lunch cooler down. The kitchen light buzzed overhead, that same cheap fluorescent tube flickering every time a truck rumbled past outside, and I sat under it the way I sat under it every night, working through a case of beer like it was a second job. The divorce decree lived on the table now, permanent as a centerpiece, its corners curled soft from humidity and handling. Half my pension. The house on Willow. The Camry. Even the good knives, because apparently twenty-two years of marriage bought her the right to itemize down to the fucking cutlery.

By can four the numbers stopped being numbers and started being just noise in my skull, and by can six the noise organized itself into her face, always her face, Denise at thirty-eight standing in a doorway with a lawyer's smile, telling ...