Fun and Fresh
Flash Fiction Contest Winner
He found sex disgusting, and I found sex terrifying, and in that way we reached an understanding.
We found easy workarounds. My cardigan slumped over his backpack on the kitchen chair could take on a real sensual quality if you looked at it long enough. Sometimes I’d point it out to him over coffee, and he’d turn his head and study it carefully.
“Am I the sweater or the bag?” he’d ask.
“I think we can mix it up.”
He’d grin. “Very modern.”
We loved to splurge on elaborate weekday dinners, diagnosing the tiny imperfections of each course. A sandy clam could sustain our giggles up until the bill, when we’d sigh and descend back into life. On the weekends, we’d spend the morning listing all the events we could attend and activities we could do. Our phones grew hot with research until well into the afternoon, when we pretended we’d wanted to stay home in the first place.
Things got more exciting when one of us was sick. One time I got so sick that things were exciting for a very long time. My life looked so different I could hardly recognize it, and from the shadows on my husband’s face, I could tell he hardly recognized me too.
“There are always going to be new challenges,” he said one afternoon, holding my hand. “It just makes us stronger.”
I inhaled to reply and smelled bright white hospital bleach.
When I finally came home, I was shocked to find everything the same as when I’d left it. I flipped the light switch up and down in the bedroom a dozen times, in awe of its consistency.
“Electricity’s a miracle,” I said, watching my husband upend his backpack over the bed. Gum and garbage and balled-up tissues rolled across our comforter.
Sometimes he’d surprise me with a call during work. I’d duck into an empty conference room so I could take it all in, dying to know which part of his office he was calling from but too shy to ask. There’s something illicit about personal calls during work that reminds me of the cardigan and the bag.
Usually he’d call about a problem with his car or some rogue credit card charge. I’d close my eyes and make consenting noises. But on a Friday before a long weekend, he called after lunch to confirm I wouldn’t be coming home late. He wanted to talk after work. I left my phone in the fern by the door and then walked into the bathroom to feel water on the back of my hands. My boss was at the other sink, brushing his teeth at two pm.
At home, I learned that we’d only lasted two years before going rotten. It was explained to me that, above all else, we absolutely must find a way to remain fresh.
“Makes me feel like we’re vegetables,” I said.
“I’m being serious.”
Fresh people go dancing, and they don’t care if the music is too fast. Fresh people drive until they find a hotel and then stay there, no questions asked about the price. They meet other fresh people in the lobby and ask them if they want to join them for drinks, and then drinks become dinner, and then one night becomes a weekend. Weekends are packed for fresh people like you wouldn’t believe.
“I love the memories we’re making,” he said, turning onto the highway. “When we’re old, we’ll appreciate having these memories.”
“I never remember as much as I’d like,” I said, reclined in the passenger seat with an arm over my eyes to block the streetlights.
“There are quizzes you can take to improve that,” he said. His hand started floating toward the radio. “Brain teasers.”
Work was comfortable. Once a year my boss offered me greater responsibility in exchange for more money, but I was too smart to be tricked into something so transparent. My husband liked his job well enough for as long as I’d known him, and then suddenly, not long after I learned about the need to stay fresh, he said he hated his commute and hated his boss. He began to use all his free time to apply for new jobs. Each night he’d list off his latest applications and make me rank them by the probability of getting an offer. He started regularly calling in sick to attend interviews, and whenever I used his laptop, I was forced to close résumé drafts to find what I needed.
I always came home from work before him, but one day I arrived to find his car in the driveway. He was inside on the phone, writing hurriedly on the back of a receipt. When he hung up, he smiled and told me he got an amazing offer for a job halfway across the country.
“We can make it work,” he said. The rest of the night passed quickly. He held my forearms and sculpted his voice into reassuring sounds, but he couldn’t stop smiling. “I’ll come back on weekends. Most weekends I can be here. Obviously, there will be times when I can’t.”
I bought his plane ticket because I’m good at finding deals online. I drove us to the airport with plenty of time to spare because traffic was excellent. He had a big green suitcase with a smaller red suitcase that locked on top, and he looked handsome and tall and entirely new.
“You look like someone who travels first class,” I said. “You look like one of those confident business people.”
He laughed and squeezed my hand and repeated details and dates as I nodded. I thought about seeing him through to security but decided there was no need to leave the car. I could see him well enough through the window, rushing like a kid on his way to do something fun.
Jean-Luc Bouchard (@jlucbouchard) is a writer living in New York City whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, Vox, VICE, BuzzFeed, Bridge Eight, PANK, and other journals, publications, and anthologies. They are also a contributor to The Onion. They are the winner of Epiphany Magazine’s 2016 “Writers Under 30” contest, were included on Wigleaf’s 2018 longlist for best short stories, and were selected for Honorable Mention by the Speculative Literature Foundation for their 2016 Working Class Writers Grant. Their work can be found at jeanlucbouchard.com.