turn off the ignition.
âItâs Godâs business,â Gloria says, looking away from me, out the window. âEverything is.â
âBut why create gay people and then condemn them to Hell?â
âItâs aââ
I wait for her to continue, but she doesnât.
âItâs not fair,â I say.
âGod has a plan for all of us, but sometimes itâs difficult to see what that plan is.â
âOkay, but if your brother doesnât stop being gay, is he going to Hell?â
For a long moment Gloria doesnât say anything. But her eyes turn glassy, and her bottom lip quivers, and I hate myself for it. I wish I knew where we went wrong. Have I changed? Has she? Have we both?
âYouâre horrible,â she finally says, and gets out of the car.
I watch her walk past the car and into the house. I want to follow her inside, apologize, but I donât.
My mind isnât right. I need to compose myself before I talk to her again.
I close my eyes and picture the bathroom. I watch the old man striding across the floor, headed directly for me. I think about his black and white beard and the spidery capillaries in his nose. Iâve never seen that man in my entire life.
So why on earth is his face so familiar?
THREE
O ne of the reasons Gloria and I have been struggling is because we donât see each other that much anymore. Sheâs been spending a lot more time at church, helping run this council and volunteering for all sorts of fundraisers and charity events, and Iâve been working on my new screenplay. I donât think I mentioned it yet but thatâs what I want to do with my life. Write films. Iâve made some money at it but not enough to quit my job. Iâll tell you more about that later.
Right now I want to talk about Jack. This is the Jack I mentioned before, the one who dated Gloria before I did. She left him to be with me. I guess you could say I stole her from him, if you want to be negative about it, but I didnât do it on purpose. I mean I didnât set out to do it so much as it just happened. You canât help who you love in this world.
Not surprisingly, Jack was unimpressed with what I considered fate. He didnât give up on Gloria easily, and even after I proposed he swore he would win her back eventually. For a long time I worried about him, about his resentment, but after we were married he faded from our lives. In time I forgot about him.
Then, three years ago, Gloria took a job at the same company as Jack. She didnât bother telling me he worked there until deep in the interview process, long after I could mount an opposition campaign. She claims she didnât know about it herself. To make matters worse, three months ago she accepted a promotion that means she now works for him directly. Can you believe that? I mean, honestly. Has Jack really been plotting his revenge for thirteen years? Or is this another one of lifeâs infamous coincidences?
Either way, every time seven oâclock arrives and Gloriaâs still not home from work, I grow a little angrier. Wouldnât you? She sees him every day. She sees him more than she sees me. And then when I ask about her day, how things are at work, Gloria tells me Iâm being obsessive. But all Iâm doing is asking about her job. We end up talking about Jack by association. Heâs her boss, for heavenâs sake.
Isnât he?
Or am I hallucinating that, too?
I keep hearing the old manâs voice, the guy in the bathroom. I keep seeing his ruddy face and hearing his ominous words, but we all know I canât say for sure if it really happened. Just like no one else saw the blue orb. I clearly hallucinated that. And once you accept you are hallucinating, how can you say, really, when it stops? When you have a bad dream at night, it ends when you wake up. But when youâre talking about a real-life, daytime hallucination, how can you