Cynthia was on her way to a sex club. She had announced this as she threw back the apartment door, leaving Chris in the now pitch-black front hallway. He curled his toes and pressed his palm to the door as he heard Cynthia’s staccato stomps down the stairs. She even managed to slam the main floor door on her way out, which was a feat—the door was heavy glass, the hinge was sluggish—a dramatic flourish, Chris thought. He imagined her squinting as she stormed into the dense February snowfall, stomping along the unplowed sidewalks while she ordered an Uber. He pictured her face, illuminated by the glow of her iPhone. Her mouth would be hanging open, just slightly, a slit between her lips—her natural resting face, which had rapidly changed in Chris’ mind from evoking sexy self-assuredness to reminding him of a particularly dopey looking Neanderthal they had seen at the Natural History Museum.

The idea of going to a sex club started out innocently enough. Cynthia and Chris had been living together for three years and had done it all: brunch at the Mockingbird, a screening of Modern Times at the Rio, sneaking M&Ms to monkeys at the zoo, the happy trip to Europe and the grandpa’s-dying trip to Europe, the late-night voyage to buy Dollarama burner liners and more popcorn. They took waltz lessons in a musty dance studio by Cynthia’s office for a few months, and she beamed whenever they could bust out this unexpected skill at a wedding. She would whisper to Chris how they looked so much better than the bride and groom. 

One time, Chris bought Cynthia a Numatic vacuum cleaner named Henry because Cynthia had always used one just like it in her old apartment (until her college roommate took it shortly before graduation and pretended she hadn’t stolen it). Chris mocked Cynthia for regularly picking up Henry and hugging and kissing it/him. Later, Cynthia bought Chris a case of 500 custom pencils inscribed Henry is our child. They had sex on the living room floor the evening they arrived.

Cynthia was certainly more exploratory when it came to sex. She wanted to have anal sex. She wanted to film them masturbating together, and then masturbate to the video of them masturbating. She wanted costumes—she wanted food—she wanted Chris to lick her on the city bus. And he did, and did, and did, even when he thought he didn’t want to, or said he didn’t want to, or messaged Cynthia before she arrived home saying that he didn’t want to.

The week that Chris moved from substitute teaching to full time work, the two of them did not have sex. Chris would come home from a long commute and shed his clothes and bags in the hallway, lean his back against the wall and say that he loves those little kids but damn it, they tried his patience. Cynthia would rub Chris’ shoulders, sigh with him at the right moments, and retreat into the armchair with a glass of wine, a dozen Triscuits, a block of cheese, and her iPhone. The evenings passed like time-lapses of waterways, thick with predictability, and the couple would fall asleep with the dishes mostly done, Gmail inboxes mostly emptied.

One night the two of them were silently driving home from the grocery store—the one on Stevenson, the one with the fancy, massive loaves of bread that Chris liked and the organic figs that Cynthia liked—and Chris’ face reddened. He moved his right arm from his lap to the steering wheel and diplomatically stated:

“You’re mad at me for not having sex with you.”

Chris cleared his arid throat. He imagined Cynthia calculating the most casual answer she could and her impatient self-righteousness—a new phenomenon—made him feel like he was shrivelling up.

“Chris, relax.”

*

The more Chris saw Mary, the more he realized what Cynthia could have been. He always assumed that Cynthia’s attempts to define herself through unpredictability would wane—that her adventurousness would domesticize itself. Instead, Cynthia would sign up for silent yoga retreats, parasailing courses, or the international oil painters’ conference in Amsterdam, pepper these plans into conversation for about a week, and then call whoever she could reach and abrasively demand her money back.  Mary, in contrast, seemed to find no greater joy than detailing plans for a picnic she had been curating in her mind for weeks. Mary laughed easily and was always ready to launch into a tale of her daughter’s languid kindergarten classmates. When Chris thought of Mary, he often pictured her—eyes wide, lips full—lifting her four-year-old daughter up by the armpits in the grocery store so that little Scarlett could pick out a favourite apple. He’d once dreamed that Mary was one hundred feet tall, and he curled up between her breasts like a cat-nipped kitten. 

He had dismissed his attraction to Mary as futile, juvenile even, but allowed it to tip-toe into the quiet moments of his day. Chris would spend many small moments staring aimlessly, surreptitiously peeling back the skin around his nails until a trickle of blood would send him blinking back to reality. He’d remove a Band-Aid from the front pocket of his shoulder bag and loop it firmly around his thumb. While he slid the perforated plastic, one way round, then the other way round, he imagined Mary joking with him, and reaching out her sure and tender hand, wrapping the bandage around his skin. Her touch triggered a tingling behind his blushing ears as she looped the bandage slowly—slowly and precisely. 

 

The reason Chris saw Mary regularly is because Chris and Cynthia had started hosted dinner parties on Wednesday nights. This ritual had started more out of necessity than choice. Cynthia had begun complaining that her friends, many of whom were either pregnant or incessantly working or both, never invited them out anymore. Chris found that when anyone other than himself entered the apartment, Cynthia would inevitably perk up, and he would be startled to find himself looking at her with genuine affection again. Deciding who to invite always filled silence during a drive on the weekend, and there were usually seven or eight people invited. More often than not, Mary and Scarlett ended up being their only guests. 

That evening there were two tall candlesticks bookending a woven basket of earthy buns, the sound of rain underneath the minimalist piano playlist Cynthia must have put on before Chris arrived home. Cynthia had spent an inordinate amount of time preparing a shepherd’s pie—vegan shepherd’s pie—which sloughed apart beside a bird’s nest of salad on Chris’ plate. He fixed his eyes as Mary turned her bare shoulders and (with a cactus flower laugh) wiped the splotch of potato dangling from her daughter’s chin.

Cynthia had met Mary back when the city was a novelty and gladiator sandals still fetched compliments. They had met at art school—a drawing and painting program—and bonded through a mutual sense of artistic superiority to their naïve classmates. When Cynthia recalled the first years of university, she would tell Chris that she would skip meals, forget to sleep, miss class—all because she was intent on finishing a painting.

“I’m so glad you hung that up, Cynthia! It still looks so good.”

Mary was pointing a long finger at the oil painting behind Cynthia—an oil painting crowding the dining room wall. It was an exploding toaster: Cynthia’s thesis project from art school. It looked like a photograph from a Kohl’s catalogue—a sleek, stainless steel device floating in an infinite expanse of white—but if a bomb had just gone off at its centre. Charred, warped plastic chunks; twisted lengths of wire; screws; springs; a dust cloud of crumbs, flew in all directions, off the extremities of the canvas. Chris no longer stopped himself from thinking that the painting was stupid. “The psychological destruction that underlies North American suburban domesticity,” Cynthia had announced to Chris in the rec room of Cynthia’s parents’ house, where he had first been introduced to it. She had said this with a dollop of sarcasm, but Chris did not really hear her—he was thinking of the hundreds of hours she must have spent painting, pondering, researching, explaining, and boasting about this piece. It was worse that the painting was so realistic. 

Cynthia swallowed her bite and presented a small smile.

“Oh, well, it had just been hanging in my parents’ basement for so long. You know, Mary, I’ve been sketching so much lately, and I feel like I could continue this type of work, make more pieces in this series.” She paused to dab her lips with her napkin. “I know that Chris thinks it’s stupid, but—”

Chris let out a cadaver laugh and smiled tightly towards Cynthia. He managed a monotone, 

“Of course that’s not true—” 

 “Oh Cynthia, come on. It’s amazing that you’re still creating for yourself, not just for ridiculous clients.”

In the years that intervened since Mary and Cynthia’s art student days, Cynthia had proceeded to graduate and fall into freelance design work with all the enthusiasm of a limp squid. Mary had chosen instead to persistently hand in plaster casts of her vagina stapled to canvases of various shapes and sizes until her grades matched the incredulous looks of her classmates—Chris wishes he could daydream more vividly about Mary in those years. She explained that she had moved out west and told her parents she’d dropped out and was going to get a real degree instead. Eight years later, she was back in the city, working as a paralegal. She told Chris she was surprisingly good at it.

After a pregnant pause, Mary swivelled to face Scarlett. “Lettie, why don’t you tell Cynthia and Chris what you’ve been making at school this week?”

Scarlett stopped pushing a carrot in an orbit around her plate. She tilted her head, shyly. 

Chris was considering Mary’s face in profile and thought of her as the ideal of a mother. He saw mothers like Mary at work, when he would pass the kindergarten class near the entrance of the elementary school. They would sweep their pudgy children up into their wingish arms and twirl them around. They made him feel a deep joy that he considered slightly pathetic, and he would share brief, knowing smiles with these mothers, as though he were in on some kind of eternal secret. Mary had the keys to this secret, Chris thought.

Chris had his forearm on the table, and he leaned down over his bicep to encourage Scarlett. “Come on, Lettie, what did you make?”

Scarlett wiggled her legs and mumbled, “Vawentine.”

It was Valentine’s day that weekend. Chris suddenly recalled last year’s Valentine’s day, or evening rather, when Cynthia was lying beneath Chris directly beside this dining table. She had interrupted a chaste kiss in order to push Chris’ head towards her waist. She was tender with her hand, but firm with her arm. Chris’ mind had gone blank as he dragged his lip across her breast, stomach, pelvis. It smelled metallic. He felt robotic.

Cynthia suddenly reached her arm in front of Chris’ face to grab the last roll from the bread basket. “Well isn’t that cute. A valentine for mum.” Cynthia looked at Mary while ripping her bread roll open, and spoke quietly. “Did you do anything on the 14th? Still meeting creeps on Tinder?”

Cynthia seemed unfazed as Mary glanced at Scarlett nervously for a split second, only to turn back to Cynthia with a little smile and intone, her hand shielding her mouth from dopey Scarlett. “Oh, I’m giving up on those ridiculous apps…but we can talk about this later.”

“Chris, why don’t you take Scarlett to the office for a little while so that Mary and I can really talk?” Before anyone could answer, Cynthia faced Scarlett and said simply, “how would you like to play with Chris?”

Scarlett mumbled an “okay,” and hopped from the boredom of the dining room table. She started walking towards the colouring book Mary had brought for her, which was lying on the hardwood floor of the adjacent office.

Chris figured Mary didn’t care to talk about men with Cynthia, and and tried to give Cynthia a subtle glare that indicated this. He pushed back his chair and leaned over table. “I’m glad you’re not using those apps anymore, Mary. Any number of guys would be lucky to be with you—don’t make it too easy for the creeps!”

Mary gave a dismissive wave, an easy grin, and went back to her salad. Her eyes were downcast. Chris was reminded of a swan curling its head underwater. He playfully projected,

“Are you ready to play, Scarlett?”

*

It was eight thirty. Mary and Scarlett had left, leaving an ugly parade of dishes across the table. Cynthia grabbed her nearly emptied glass of wine and collapsed onto the couch. She rubbed her cheeks up and down.

“Mary has way too much energy for a parent.”

Chris plopped down beside Cynthia. He worked his finger along the base of her ear, tucking her hair back. He rested his other hand on her thigh.

“She’s something else. Really fun kid, though.”

“If I ever had to raise a kid on my own, I would lose my mind.”

Cynthia drew out the “i” in mind, squinting slightly, and Chris nearly chuckled, but stroked his chin instead. 

“Some parents are better off raising kids by themselves. I feel like Mary just balances things perfectly.”

He watched Cynthia as she fought with a loose thread at the base of her cardigan. 

“You’re supposed to say, ‘no, Cynthia, you wouldn’t lose your mind, you would do just fine’”

“Cynthia, we—.” Chris softened, as though it were a reflex. “We can talk about this later.”

Cynthia simply blinked. Chris’ hand had worked its way to the back of her neck. The look of Mary’s waist while she walked flickered in front of his eyes.

“Guess what Mary told me when you went to play with Scarlett?”

 “What?”

“Mary started going to this club. It’s called Eden, on Grosvenor, by the Farmer’s market. It’s basically a sort of sex club.”

Chris watched Cynthia’s shoulders tense up as she said the last two words.

“But she said it’s not really all about sex. Mary said that when she goes, she usually just sits at the bar. But it sounds really—” Cynthia paused. Her mouth hung ajar, her eyebrows sloped nearly imperceptibly. She was speaking entirely for her own benefit, fighting against Chris’ evident discomfort, his face contorting into a whirlpool grimace: “—wild. They have a pool, and a hot tub—some people go there just to use the tanning beds—which is obviously stupid—but what’s really great is that it’s really female and trans positive, or inclusive I mean, and Mary told me that men can’t come in without a female partner on weekends, and the staff is always helpful and they police—well, police isn’t the right word—they monitor all the sex stuff going on and make sure people feel safe.”

More than anything, Chris was frustrated at his inability to picture Mary the more Cynthia talked. He traced a constellation of crumbs on the burgundy rug and knew what Cynthia was trying to do. She was trying to include Chris in her quirky experiment, her latest, biggest declaration that she was not done painting, she was not done dabbling in deliberate mania. Cynthia was twisting a strand of hair beside her neck. Chris’ arm was curled behind her, but he rested it on the back of the couch now. He turned and was almost surprised to see it there, as though someone else had slid their arm into frame when he wasn’t looking. The word fell involuntarily, like a wet pillow: “Okay.”

“And you can be totally naked or wear clothes, it’s up to each person apparently. I think that it’s maybe—forty bucks for a couple at the door? But they have first-timers events where you can tour the building—it has some upper floors too, with toys and cages and stuff—and you can get to know other adventurous couples—and there are even nights where you can just hang out in a viewing booth and watch guy after guy gang up on one woman, and I think on the fourth floor you can actually chain yourself to—”

“Did Mary really tell you all this? You two were talking for, like, three minutes.”

Cynthia frowned at the interruption.

“Why does that matter?” Cynthia sighed quickly. “When you and Mary and Scarlett were all in the office playing, I looked it up.” She paused, leaned slowly and deliberately into the couch, and adjusted her tone.

“Chris.”

She said his name in a sultry, almost pornographic whimper. Cynthia would use this voice to sneak around Chris’ reluctance to have sex with her—he would always be aware of her motives, as she slinked behind him when he was placing the final plate onto the drying rack after a dull weeknight. Some phantom fantasy would lull Chris into reciprocating. She would feel his erection with her palm and he would stroke her neck.

But now, her whimper was far too uncanny, sloppy with desperation. “I just know how good this will be for both of us, Chris.”

“Stop.”

Chris closed his eyes and smoothed his eyebrows with his thumb and index finger, his entire body focused on the simple fact that he did not want to be there, on that couch, with Cynthia clinging to some lost idea of who she should had become. He considered calling Cynthia a number of bitter things but let the unformed words die under his hard tongue.

“I’m not doing this, Cynthia.”

Cynthia pulled back from Chris and forced herself upright. She spat, “I am going.” She turned to face her painting; Chris’ eyes followed. “I am going tonight, whether you join me or not.”

Chris looked at the exploding toaster and felt like he was also dangling in an expanse of white, senseless when put up to scrutiny. He invited a universe to insert itself between him and Cynthia.

“You’re too old for this,” Chris tossed. Cynthia paused, sighed violently, then flew off the couch like a cat whose tail had been trampled. It was only then that Chris was left to hear her boot stomps down the stairs.

When he was sure she was really gone, Chris worked his way to Cynthia’s armchair. He picked up his phone. He thought of Cynthia getting into the Uber, curtly confirming the address with the driver, and peering out the window with those hard, unfocused eyes. Her mouth still hanging open. Chris let this image of Cynthia—slumped in the backseat gazing at the snowdrift—dissolve in his mind.

Then, without thinking, he scrolled through his contacts to find Mary’s name. He pushed the call button.

“I’m coming over now.”