The knocking continued. Fearing the worst, Wayne immediately froze in his place. His mind began reeling all the different possibilities, chief among them being that Elias had been followed and was not as diligent as he thought he'd been. Of course, it might just be his mistress who had been there just hours earlier, coming back for her umbrella that she'd forgotten. In any case, it was far from the ideal time to host anyone. He stood silently not wanting to make the faintest rustle, reasoning that whoever it was, they would grow tired. And with the waning hope of anyone answering, they would simply leave. But the knocking only grew louder and louder and became more intrusive, more incessant...
Straightening his back, he plodded impetuously towards the door and flung it open. "We're closed!"
Slouching in the doorway out on the sidewalk was a nondescript man whom he did not recognize. The man stood silently for a few moments sizing up Wayne; up and down with bitter eyes that were visibly glossy with inebriation.
"Can we talk?" the man finally garbled, completely discounting Wayne's aggressive tone of inhospitality.
"What?! Do we know each other?"
"I'm Francis, Marie's..." Francis quivered and broke off midway, clearing his throat before he could begin again, "Marie's my wife."
Upon hearing his name, a spark of recognition flickered across Wayne's face. He did recognize Francis from Marie's Snapchat stories; the rare ones which he was in. After a few moments of silence, during which both men maintained intense eye contact with one another, Francis was first to break the silence.
Innocence was slowly leaving his face. "Can we talk?"
Wayne clenched his jaw. "Look, I don't know what you're hoping to find here. Marie's not here, this really isn't a good time for me."
"You're fucking my wife, the least you can do is talk to me for five minutes."
Wayne let out a defeated sigh as he shook his head before he opened the door to let him in.
Francis sauntered in with an air of intentional insolence, completely disregarding any etiquette or protocols of decorum. He did not even wait for Wayne to usher him in before he began surveying the halls of the art gallery. His begrudging eyes were absorbing the plush detail of it all... The intricate sculptures and other art pieces that hung across the walls of exposed bricks; timeworn, hefty, and full of heritage...everything had an intimidating pedigree about it... an air of superiority that left Francis feeling inferior, as if, unbeknownst to him, his wife had been measuring him against something grand and primordial... eternity. And now he knew. Wayne's coiffured silver hair...his well-groomed fit physique which was ensconced in all the modern trappings of comfort. This was a man of exotic refinements whose mere existence at such proximity was making him feel gauche by comparison.
All the while, Wayne was silent. Looking at Francis with curious eyes. It was too alien of a notion for him that a husband would want to meet the man who seduced his wife. He found Francis' coming here to be a strange penance of masochistic torture. It was needless. Too melodramatic for his pragmatic taste, and Wayne had no illusions about himself.
"You own this place?" Francis finally muttered as he turned to face Wayne who was making his way behind the bar.
Francis's dazed eyes were siphoning the fuel feeding the bitterness burning inside of him. It was a cruel bombardment of culture, of refinement, of sophistication, of affluence. It wasn't merely the fantastical arts and artifacts garnered from the far reaches of the earth that stabbed Francis like a dagger. No, no. It was the intangible stuff that they signified. Not only that Wayne was a well-traveled worldly man, but that the purpose of his travels was the acquisition of theories of life more precious, more delicate than can be attained from a place like Francis' suburban nest. Wayne could have easily given Marie more than he ever could; Francis gave her a slice of land; she wanted the world.
Preoccupied with the more serious Elias situation, Wayne replied blithely "Yes, sir, I own it, lock, stock, and barrel... What's your poison? Whisky?" Francis simply nodded as he approached the bar.
Although Wayne was simmering with agitation, his arduous years as a client-facing investment banker had honed his instincts for stoic sociability. He trickled down to Francis the surface geniality of fellowship that a banker reserved for clients whose business he wanted to win. And when an investment banker trickled, somewhere, someone was in trouble.
Wayne extended one of the Whisky glasses to Francis. Out of a combination of absentmindedness and sheer habit, he almost clinked his glass with Francis' and was even going to say 'cheers.' He could not be blamed, however. Compared to what he was grappling with pertaining to Elias, this trifling situation did not weigh an ounce on his guiltless heart.
The men drank in silence. Wayne began to size him up as his lips coiled in revulsion at the contemptible air of pathetic defeat that Francis was exuding. It was pungent. It was palpable. Wayne resented many things, but above all, he resented self-abasing weakness. In front of him was a ruffled, tired man, whose eyes were visibly bulging in the wake of tears and whose slouching spindly posture symbolized a man who recoiled from the demands of the world...of his wife.
"Excuse my brevity, but this really isn't a good time for me. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?"
"You've been having an affair with my wife..."
"...I didn't have an affair. Your wife did. I'm not the one who's married," he took another nonchalant sip as if he had just merely commented on the weather. But it was true. Sometimes, it couldn't be helped if the truth fell rudely on unwilling ears.
Francis wrestled with a wince of anger. There was a layer of reluctant admission peppered with visceral hate. Wayne's effortless rude-not-rude demeanor was like squeezing lime onto an already septic wound.
Francis was what Wayne deplorably considered to be a 'normal' person. And to him, a normal person was sentenced to live between two states bounded by the subconscious fear of death; living between convulsive anxiety and lethargic boredom...existing each day for each day's worth and working so hard in order to forget that there was actually nothing worth working for. The 'normal' person was busy being active without being alive. And in doing so, confining himself in a perpetual state of useless busyness in order to render the appearance of meaning while growing numb to the thrill of chasing money...the only allowable thrill of a life dedicated to the making of it...all with nothing to look forward to but a frightful old age steeped in regret. Wayne looked down on the 'normal' person with disdain and with the innate superiority of a human, looking down on primates.
Lowering his gaze to the ground, Francis noticed an umbrella leaning on the side of the bar. "You know I bought her that..."
Wayne's lips curled even further with distaste. The banality of Francis's sickly character was testing the limits of his capacity for amicability. All of this emotional gooiness was such a nonissue.
"Look, I don't know what you're expecting from having this conversation with me...but at the risk of coming off rude, you need to get on with it...this is really not a good time for me."
Frustrated by his hardness and indifference, Francis's toes began to curl in his tight shoes. Although he had not expected much from coming here, at the very least, he expected some form of a groveling apology. "You know we've been married for ten years...she's a mother...she has two kids...a five-year-old and....".
"...Look it's nothing personal, my friend...she piqued my interest and I approached her on the street, and then we got coffee and the rest was history..."
Francis instinctively began sneering at him, riding on the courage of the liquor of the man who had taken something from him. Not merely his wife, but what she represented in his imagination. She was the fulcrum upon which his picture-perfect life had been delicately balancing. And Wayne had marred it into something heinous. Or perhaps, unintentionally, had elucidated the fragility of its conditional equilibrium; but that was too much to confront.
Noting Francis's wobbly and non-starter attempt at having a hackneyed conversation, Wayne, with his aptitude for persuasive oration, decided to commandeer the exchange to lead it to a swift conclusion.
"Look here, friend, it's like I said...it's nothing personal...marriages are tough...they require hard work...smart work...work that most men and women can't even afford to exert...that's why...what was the stat? fifty-five percent? of all marriages fail...and I'm not saying yours will ...you and Marie can still work to fix this...I mean you said you've been married for ten years...how do you even know that I'm the only one that Marie cheated on you with?"
No sooner did that question fell on his ears, than Francis's stunned look immediately focused on Wayne's unpitying face. It was something that Francis had not considered. It was a question that, upon verbalizing, had rendered the impossible to happen. Francis's already fragmented heart was being ripped apart again after having been mistakenly pronounced dead. Like a deceased heart being resuscitated back, not for a second chance at redemption, but to be brutally pulverized again.
Tears began swelling on the precipices of his eyelids. But it would be an unbearable humiliation to cry in front of the pitiless man who was sleeping with his wife. Francis inhaled sharply as if to pull back the tears with the force of his panting. His breathing became unsteady.
Wayne took a sip and continued, "and you can't really blame Marie...it's always the man's fault...it's a husband's responsibility to balance the familiarity of their own marriage with the thrill of new romances, otherwise you end up like this..."
Francis's mind began to throb. Rude awakenings were being hurled at an unprepared psyche.
"...Passion needs reviving every now and then..."
That statement. The abyss compacted in a single sentence. Twice in one day.
Francis snapped. He grabbed the knife on the countertop. In an instant, he leapt towards Wayne, stabbing him with vicious animosity.
Wayne meanwhile kept frantically backpedaling and knocking over everything in his way as he tried to escape Francis's bloodthirsty reach. But Francis was visceral about his knifing assault. His animalistic eyes were glazed with the insentience of an unconscious rampage as he continuously pierced the flesh of Wayne's abdomen. A deluge of blood spattered out of Wayne's gaping holes until he finally began succumbing...
Gasping for air in muffled groans of agony, Wayne's legs began to fail him as life oozed out of his perforated body...he collapsed into himself like a dying star...his lifeless body fell forward onto Francis who still held the knife planted deeply between his ribs...
Like the tall timber of a dead tree that had been violently axed, Wayne's lifeless body fell to the floor in a thump, his unresponsive head rebounding at the tip of his stiffened neck...
...Hearing the rowdy commotion, Elias hurried down the stairs.
A tremor jolted up Elias' spine as he took in the monstrosity of it all...Francis was standing barbarically over Wayne's bleeding corpse, panting like an angry animal...
Elias' eyes met Francis' in the intensity of bewilderment...like two souls wandering the afterlife amid an ocean of people, suddenly recognizing each other from the lingering memories of another time and place...not comprehending what the other person was doing there.
"Francis!" Elias ran towards Wayne's lifeless body on the floor. He began checking his neck, searching desperately for signs of pulsating hope in his veins...but to no avail. The only thing about him moving was the ever-expanding pool of his blood.
Hearing his name called out loud snapped Francis back to his senses; his madness began dissipating as the glaze of his eyes retracted like the scales over a reptile's retinas... In much the same way as the eye of a tornado sees nothing of the havoc it wreaks, he was looking at the goriness he'd perpetrated.
"El...Eli...El," Francis immediately let go of the knife and collapsed in a quivering sob. Struggling to swallow, he took out his phone and began dialing with twitching fingers stained with Wayne's blood. Elias was still scouring Wayne's body for signs of life.
"I...I'm at the Gothic gallery...I...I killed someone..." Francis stuttered out his confession to the 911 dispatch through his loud sobbing and sharp sniffles.
Elias, blotched with blood and swelling with tears, immediately sprang up and flung the phone from his hands, "What have you done?!"
"They're on their way..." Francis cried with eyes shut in disbelief as he shook his head inconsolably from side to side...
In the frenzy and confusion of it all, Elias shifted into survival mode. He rummaged through his pockets to make sure Wayne's keys were on his person. Immediately, he went upstairs to retrieve his duffle bag, leaving Francis to wallow in pitiful sobs under the weight of his complete mental collapse, rocking himself on the floor next to the lifeless Wayne.
Elias hurried down the stairs, duffle bag swinging over his hips... in a blink of an eye, he was out on the streets where he quickly slipped into Wayne's car, briskly shifted it into gear, and floored the gas pedal.