Andy tells me he was in Nathalie’s house this morning, the home they shared when they were married. After their divorce it became her house but he still has keys. I don’t know if she knows that but after today she’s bound to figure it out. I mean I can’t count the number of times I’ve told him to give them up or she’ll put a restraining order on his ass. This is San Diego, I’ve reminded him. They don’t play that shit here, but he never listens. He says she’s rearranged the furniture so he went and put it back the way it was when they were together. Not like she won’t notice. I’m sure I’ll hear from her. She always calls me when he does something stupid. One morning when they were still married she found a cold beer in the shower. She assumed that when he woke up he went into the kitchen and popped open a Budweiser and carried it into the bathroom with him. It wasn’t too long after that he called me in tears and said she’d left him.

I want to show you something, he says.

He hands me the printout of an email: Looking forward to us getting together this week again. Love ya, Craig.

Where’d you get this? I say.

While I was at the house. She left her computer on and it was open to her email.

You read her messages?

Some of them. This one.

You made a copy?

I wanted you to see it. She’s already fucking someone.

Andy, you can’t be doing this.

They’re fucking.

They could just be friends.

I don’t think so.

Andy collects things. He’ll see a piece of furniture on the street and say, That’s too good to throw away, and he’ll take it home but do nothing with it. Let’s it sit and take up space in his garage. Nathalie was kind of like that, something to collect. He saw her at a coffee shop after we got back from Afghanistan and thought she was too hot to leave alone. He hit on her, won her over, they got married and he took her home and then did nothing with her, at least not husband-and-wife things. Having her was the point and not a whole lot else. She called me one night to complain that he’d get so drunk before they went to bed he couldn’t get it up. Nathalie, I said, that’s way too much information. Married just eight months before she decided she’d had it, she was done.

It’s not your business who she might be fucking, Andy. You’re divorced, dude.

She’s my wife.

Not anymore.

I don’t care.

The last thing I want is to argue. I can get pissed off just like that and then I kind of lose it, and then I feel bad. I don’t want to go that route so I drop it, or try to but Andy’s gotten into my head. Divorce means she’s no longer your wife, I want to say. Don’t be fucking stupid.

I go to my room, get my duffel bag and zip it up. I take deep breaths and try to relax. Andy’s hurting, I appreciate that. He’s here to drive me to the bus station. He’s doing you a solid, I remind myself. I’m moving to Texas. I look at my watch. Bus leaves at one. I had plenty of time. I go back to the living room and leave my bag by the front door.

You all packed?

Yeah.

That’s it? Just your bag?

Yeah.

Travel light.

Yeah.

Love ya. He said, Love ya.

People say that all the time, Andy.

He slides down the wall and sits on the floor, wraps his arms around his knees and starts rocking back and forth, his shoulders pinched up against his neck. He looks small, shrunken. I got rid of my furniture or I’d tell him to get up and sit in a fucking chair like a grown-ass man.

Was I a bad boy for going into the house? Andy says, his voice high like a child.

Was I a bad boy?

He says that shit when he talks about Nathalie. Was I a bad boy, what the fuck? Like he’s angry with her one minute and then the next he’s like a kid who expects to be punished. It gives me the creeps hearing him talk like he’s five fucking years old. His old man was an evangelical pastor in Kansas. When Andy was little his father would make him stand in front of the congregation every Sunday and confess his sins. I was a bad boy on Thursday because I took a cookie before dinner when my mom told me not to but next week I’ll be a good boy and obey her, and the congregants would clap. That’s some strange shit right there. I guess his father still calls him out even though he died of a heart attack years ago.

You always liked Nathalie.

I did. I did like her. She was your wife, you’re my friend and I liked your wife.

She’s not my wife now.

About time you realize that. You shouldn’t be going into her house.

You shouldn’t like her.

He gets up and walks over to the ‘frig. Nothing in it but bottled water I’m taking with me on the bus.

Got beer?

Nope.

He shuts the door and folds his arms. When they separated I called Nathalie and told her I was sorry to hear they were having problems and that whatever happened I hoped it would be for the best. She told Andy I was the only friend of his who called her. He thanked me. At the time, he thought they’d work things out. Now he holds it against me. Ticks me off. A decent, innocent gesture and that makes me the bad guy. I close my eyes. Settle down, I tell myself, settle. I hear the scrape of palm tree branches against the house and a little shudder runs through me. Why does every noise have to be so loud?

Have you talked to her?

Nathalie? No.

But you like her.

Jesus.

I met Andy in Afghanistan. Turned out he lived in San Diego, too, in a house not far from my apartment. We served in the Army reserves. Didn’t do shit but patrol empty villages. That’s why we got them. The regular army guys didn’t think shit of reservists. All the pointless work was kicked down to us. Shocked the shit out of everyone when an old man stepped out behind a hut at this one village and shot at us, grazing me on my right side. Wasn’t deep but it burned like fuck. One of our guys, another San Diego dude, Roy, we called him Roy Boy because it rhymed I guess, fragged him. He couldn’t stop talking about how he got a fucking haji. Andy said he let me down by not fragging the old man himself. We were buddies and he felt he should’ve taken him out but that’s bullshit. He was jealous of Roy Boy. Roy Boy could go home and talk some shit and I could too. I was shot, a pussy wound, but I was shot all the same. What would Andy and everybody else have to say? Nothing except they got bullshit duty, even Roy Boy and me, but then we scored. I got shot and he killed a fucking haji so you know he and I were warriors. At least that’s how we saw it. More him than me. Me, I couldn’t help but think how close I came to dying. Not to be melodramatic but my guts could’ve been ripshit. Of all people, me and Roy Boy, heroes. He’s working security at a bank now in the Gaslamp Quarter. Andy sees him when he deposits his disability check. After we got back from Afghanistan he got drunk one afternoon and crossed a street without looking and a guy on a bike hit him and fucked up his knees. He did rehab, the whole bit. Dried out while he was in the hospital but started drinking again as soon as he got out. He didn’t see anything disturbing in Afghanistan to make him put down beers like he does. Nothing I know of anyway. Hell, I’m the one who got shot. He’s as bloated as the Michelin Man. Liver so swollen he only wears pants with stretch waist pants. At least I assume it’s his liver. Couldn’t be stomach fat, he barely eats. When we go out to breakfast, he nibbles around the edges of his fried eggs and then complains that the food isn’t going down right. You eat it, he’ll say, so I take his plate and put it in a to-go box and give it to a homeless guy. It pained me to see so many starving people in Afghanistan. Even the guy who shot me couldn’t’ve been any thinner if he’d tried. I saw him fall when Roy Boy popped him. Like he busted in two.

When was the last time you talked to her?

Andy, stop it.

I pressed my hands against my temples. I get dizzy when people piss me off.

I haven’t talked to her and even if I did, you’re divorced. She can talk to anybody.

Not you. Not any of my friends.

Chill. We’re not talking. You’re really getting on my fucking nerves.

I let out a long breath and held my hand against my side. Just something I do when I get aggravated, it doesn’t hurt. I feel the scar under my shirt. Nathalie still calls me but I’m not going to tell Andy. My phone’ll ring and she’ll go, Andy is parked outside the house. Can you come over and talk to him? Or, Andy came by my job and gave me flowers again. Can you call him and tell him to stop doing that? I can’t, of course, because then, well, he’ll know I’m talking to her and then he’ll go off on me and I’ll get pissed and it’d be a shit show from there. Instead, I check in on him the next day and say something like, How’s it going, Andy? You doing all right? And he’ll say, Yeah, I’m fine, and then sometimes he’ll just bring it up and say he’s been following her, and I’ll tell him he’s got to quit that. If he ever hopes to get her back that’s not the way. She isn’t going back but I figure if I give him some false hope maybe he’ll stop. I expect she’ll still call me in Texas. At least then I’ll be too far away to get involved. Two days on Greyhound and I’ll be in El Paso. A reservist buddy offered to put me up until I found a place. He said I’ll need a car. Maybe. I’ll see how I do with public transportation. I junked my car a year ago after the driver of a cement truck switched lanes without looking and slammed into my Honda Civic on I-95. I remember him hitting me but that’s it. At the hospital, a doctor told me my car rolled three times.  I didn’t break any bones, thanks to the airbag, I guess. I spent a good forty-eight hours in the hospital before they let me go. Andy picked me up and offered to stay with me but I told him I was fine. I was, too. Small noises bugged me for no good reason, still do, especially the ring tone on my phone which seems awfully fucking loud but I don’t know I don’t trip too much off it.  My doctor connected me with a therapist and she prescribed anti-anxiety medication and helped me apply for disability. I didn’t ask for that but she said I was eligible so I’m like, OK. I already had VA disability benefits for getting shot, and I collected a big settlement from the truck company. With the additional disability check I’m fat cash-wise. I could get another car if I wanted, easy, but driving freaks me out now. I think it’s kind of funny, well maybe not funny but it’s something else that after nine months in Afghanistan and being wounded, too, wrecking my car is what blew my mind.

When I got home from the hospital I spent a lot of time alone staring out the window at homeless people hanging out at a bus shelter across the street. I didn’t have food to give them and that disturbed me. I took my meds and waited for I don’t know what. Nathalie to call, I guess. I liked talking to her even if it was about Andy. She has a deep voice, a husky voice. I could imagine being with her.

Between waking up and hearing from her I had a lot of empty time. That’s why I’m leaving. Maybe El Paso will be different. Maybe I’ll have more things to do there. Maybe I won’t think so much of this old Afghan guy who washed our clothes on base. We called him Phlegm because he had a bad cough. He’d return our shit folded and damp at the end of the day. He could never get it fully dry. Afghans like Phlegm got to me. How in winter they’d wrap themselves in what I thought were thin blankets but later learned were prayer shawls. I figured they must’ve been freezing and that bugged me. I gave Phlegm a real blanket, a heavy cotton one I got from the PX and a coat, too,  but he always showed up on base coughing with only that fucking prayer shawl around him. That bothered me along with how skinny he was.

Did you know she was seeing Craig? Andy says.

I don’t even know who the fuck he is. You’re losing your mind, Andy.

I take a water bottle from the ‘frig, twist off the top and offer it to him but he shakes his head so I drink it. In between sips I take deep breaths. I remind myself again that Andy’s doing me a solid. I consider the empty living room. A short stocky guy who lives on the street behind me owns a pickup and he and his buddy stopped by yesterday and took what I didn’t want to the Salvation Army. Actually, I think they divided it between themselves. Do you want this? And this? And this? they’d ask me, pointing at chairs and what little else I owned, all thrift store stuff. Yes, I  said. Take it.  They carried out my shit like gnomes in my own fucked up fairytale. I’ll get new shit in El Paso and if I don’t stay I’ll get rid of it like I did here. It’s an odd feeling. Eager to leave to get these crazy thoughts out of my head but unsettled, too, by the sadness of packing up and abandoning what had been my home. I felt that way when I flew out of Afghanistan. Kind of depressed as I went through airports unnoticed among so many other unnoticed people, all of us milling around like ants, my life of no consequence to anyone but me. I wanted to shout, I got shot, but no one would’ve cared, and then after all that travel and hustle I got home and the silence crashed in on me like a wave. A few months later I got hit by the cement truck. Like I said, that really messed me up.

Have you been seeing her?

Nathalie? Jesus, Andy, no. Let’s go.

When’s your bus leaving?

I have time but I don’t care. You’re driving me nuts.

I want to show you something, Andy says.

He digs into his hip pocket and pulls out a folded envelope. Opening it, he shakes out a piece of paper and flips it at me. It floats unevenly and settles on the floor. I let it lay there.

What’s that?

Pick it up.

Fuck you, pick it up. What is it?

Pick it up!

I stare at him but don’t move. I feel a twinge in my side. My throat tightens. I try to control the shaking in my voice.

Don’t tell me to pick it up, I say. Don’t even think you can talk to me like that. What the fuck is it?

Nathalie’s phone bill. It was by her computer. Seems it’s not just Craig. You’ve been talking to her, too.

I glance at the paper. I presume it shows my number and the many times she’s called me.

I just had to know who she was talking to, Andy says, who she’s fucking.

Andy…

Pick it up!

He stares at me, his eyes tearing.  I look out the window at the houses across the street blurry in the heat. The veins in my temples are taut as ropes.

Was I a bad boy?

He stands between me and the front door. My temples throb. I feel, I don’t know what. I step forward, snap kick him hard in his right knee. He gasps and crumples forward and I punch him in the side of his head. He falls and rolls on his side pulling his knees to his chest and I kick him again. Bitch! I shout, bitch! I step over him, walk out the door rubbing my hand and yell into the sky. No words, a scream until I have no breath left. I wait for my heart to slow. I don’t know why I hit him. He just got to me. He kept pushing his bullshit. He didn’t deserve it, not really. I should go back in and see how bad I hurt him. I should apologize. I should do a lot of things. Well, I’m going to El Paso. That’s one thing. Maybe I’ll call Nathalie. That could be another. Ask her to take me to the bus station because Andy sure as fuck won’t. Me and her we’ll drive through downtown and see all the homeless people on Fifth Street and I’ll think of Phlegm and the thin as fuck hajis in villages we assumed were secure. Nathalie’ll ask, Are you all right? because she knows about the cement truck and how I get nervous in cars, and I’ll say, I’m good. I relax at the thought of seeing her, sinking into the warmth of a goodbye-hug when she drops me off before I feel forgotten enough to board the bus. I always did like her.