Puzzles

By Sysisphus

Bob arrives home to find Linda in front of the t.v., half a bottle of wine gone. She is watching some kind of reality show, her face slack, eyes glazed.

“Wanna head over to Luciano’s and have some dinner? Or would you prefer some Mexican?”

He tosses his keys onto the table and heads for the bedroom to change out of his work clothes.

“Not hungry,” Linda’s reply. “Already ate.”

“What the fuck…”

And soon they are into it. Nasty, mean-spirited, hurling insults, pushing buttons – the kind of argument only years of commingling inspire. Ferocious.

Bob ends up in the garage. Empty-nesters, they had purchased the three story townhouse last year. The previous owner finished half the garage- drywall, humidor, fridge. Linda parks her car in the other half, but this had become his space. Occasionally he had friends over and they’d smoke cigars, drink beer and play cards. But less and less often. He thinks about why he doesn’t have them over more and realizes Linda doesn’t like his friends.

He slams the door shut and from a cabinet pulls tequila and a glass. He plops into a leather chair and pours himself a drink.

He flips on the television. The Dodger game is over. Nothing but crap on. He channel surfs until he finds a reality show. He drinks his tequila. Sitting in the room watching contestants do incredibly stupid things he realizes he is probably sitting underneath Linda watching exactly the same show. He throws the remote against the wall.

On a nearby shelf he sees a box. A jigsaw puzzle. One of those white elephant gifts he’d received last Christmas. On the cover is that castle in Germany, the one Disneyland was designed after. 500 pieces. He shrugs. Nuthin’ else to do.

Day in and day out. He comes home, Linda drinks. He drinks. He builds his puzzle. Soon other puzzles follow. Underwater landscapes, then a beautiful sunset, followed by the Zodiac, a bridge in Venice, the Dallas Cowgirls. Dozens of puzzles. He works all night sometimes, completing a 750 piece puzzle in time to shower and head off to work.

At first, upon completion, he let the puzzle sit a couple days to admire it. Once, he tried to get Linda to join him.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “Just come downstairs and hang out with me.”

“What’s the point,” acidly.

“Just to hang out.”

Instead, she drank more wine.

He tries gluing the pieces together, it seems such a waste to just throw it back in the box. He even considers framing the puzzles, at least the nicer ones, the ones that were basically photos of famous paintings or places. The Mona Lisa, Starry Night, Monet’s Water Lilies. He did the Sistine Chapel, Norman Rockwell and Fenway Park. But eventually he reached the point where the night after he finished a puzzle, he tossed it in the trash and started a new one.

A flyer in one of the puzzles he’d bought advertised puzzles produced from a personal photograph. The idea intrigued him. He sent in photos of his son as a child, decked out in a fireman’s outfit for Halloween. Then came puzzles of the prize swordfish he’d caught off of Cabo San Lucas, followed by a wedding day photo of him and Linda. She laughed at this.

“Is that how you waste your time down there? Jesus Christ!” She laughed. She peered at the photo on the box cover. “You were so skinny back then.”

Searching some of the boxes in the garage rafters he found old photos. He had them put on discs so he could upload them to the computer. Soon he had thousands of pictures to choose from.

***

Linda stumbled up the front steps. She tripped on the welcome mat, her shoulder slamming against the door. In the dark she fumbled with her keys until she finally found the house key and jabbed it at the lock. Over and over again until it slid into the lock. Finally she threw the door open, the rebound nearly striking her.

“Bob,” she screamed. She tumbled into the house. “Bob! Goddamn you! I told you to fix the garage door. It won’t open.”

She walked into the living room, her hands on her hips imperiously. Quite a few moments passed before she realized Bob was not in the room. Her head swam and she considered opening a bottle of wine and just turning on the t.v., when she recalled her car parked askew, outside the garage door he said he would fix.

“He’s probably working on one of those goddamned puzzles,” she muttered.

She slipped off of her shoes- they were only and inch or so high, but drunk as she was, she didn’t want to walk down a flight of stairs in them. At the bottom of the stairs she paused to look at the space her car should now be parked in. She was angry again. She marched across the space and threw open the door. It was dark. No Bob. She flipped on the light switch.

Floor to ceiling, photos staring at her. Not photos, she realized, but puzzles. Each glued together and somehow attached to the wall. She recognized herself. On the wall facing her, maybe two feet by three, there she was. In that red prom dress, but without her date, as if he’d been clipped out of the picture. In the puzzle beside it, she posed in a cap and gown, graduation day. Next, the trip to Mexico, her and Bob wearing silly floral shirts and ridiculous straw hats; their first vacation together.

She followed the images to her right. They seemed to tell a story. Bob and her dating. Getting married. Matthew as a newborn. She felt tears fill her eyes. Then there was picture of her standing next to Alex. She paused before the puzzle and studied it. There was something wrong with this one. And then she realized. Bob had cropped this from a group picture. In the original the entire hospital staff had been pictured, with Alex standing beside her. Her breath caught in her throat. There was another, this one of Vance beside her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “He must have known.”

The affair with Alex had been short-lived, but with Vance… she nearly left Bob.

There were pictures – puzzles – of Bob with women she knew from his work but in settings she could not place. One was definitely in another city.

She followed the puzzles around to her right until she was facing the door, now closed. Three puzzles covered the entire door. She her stomach drop and she covered her mouth. Two of the puzzles were created from photos of her- one in lingerie, the other completely nude. Years and years ago, she had let Bob take some photos of her. He had access to a darkroom where he could develop them himself, so she had let him. Besides, she had enjoyed seeing herself all sexed-up. The third photo however, she remembered from the one time they had filmed themselves having sex. Bob directly behind her and she is on her hands and knees looking directly into the camera. Two feet by three, all in color and too much detail.

Linda stepped up and furiously ripped the puzzles from the door. She pulled and tore and once they fell to the ground she stomped on the torn pieces. She cried and cursed.

Turning around she looked at the table in the center of the room. There the scattered pieces of puzzle covered the entire surface. Here and there clusters of pieces were interlocked, but not enough to make visual sense. But a foreboding overtook her as she studied the color of the pieces she could see. All flesh and pink and red. Upside down on the table was a box. She turned it over and found a pornographic image. A woman with huge breasts, her legs lasciviously stretched out. A huge, well endowed, overly muscled man pressed into her.

Long moments passed, Linda’s eyes fixed on the image, her face twisted in disgust. She gasps. Seamlessly attached to this grotesque woman is her own head, her eye closed. She appears to be in the throws of ecstasy. And Bob’s head attached to the male figure, a wolfish grin on his face.

Linda takes deep breath. She afraid she’s going to throw up. She’s certain she’s going to be sick. She screams. She turns over the table. Spinning, spinning, spinning, sick.

She finds the tequila. The lighter. She stuffs some paper into the bottle and lights it. Wait, wait, wait. The paper in flames. She opens the door, and standing there, throws the tequila bottle as hard as she can against the far wall. She rushes up the stairs and can smell the singe of her hair.

She rushes to her car. She wants to drive and disappear, but drunk and angry, she has forgotten her keys. She hears the pop and crackle of flame through the garage door. She closes her eyes.

       

Filed under Fiction, Stories |