Mark is on the living room floor and his wife Sheila, she’s walking all over him. It’s like he’s one of those sushi platters at Sexy Tokyo, but instead of tuna, uni, live conch, he’s a platter for her feet, which are kneading him, hard, because Sheila is bigger than her profile picture lets on. I’m the third, prepping. Mark tries to say something but they’ve slid a wiffle ball into some leggings, all mouse-in-boa like, and stuffed that into his mouth. And plus, his hands are tied, tight.

Sheila at this point has gotten off her husband to pull me in the sofa direction. She provides swift instructions for me to top her, fill her up. Things have been strange since I got to Little Rock.

Those first months I’d browse Craigslist early. I’d make my Café Bustelo, throw the neighbor’s newspaper onto his porch, and scroll casual encounters. I scrolled the couples’ pages. Played out fantasies of inclusion. My wife and I on vacation, maybe honeymoon. The kids at their grandmother’s. The kids off at college. No kids.

Shit, no wife either. She left me when we got to town. Took this pilot into her. Had, at the Chili’s in Terminal A, an epiphany. I still am frustrated, though we all do our best. She let me keep the house. A shotgun affair with the feng shui of a lazy river.

One morning the Bustelo is fuming and I’m bored but curious. Here’s this ad. They’ve got pics. Both of them on hotel sheets (you can tell from the safe in the closet, and plus nobody has headboards like that) and her tied up with a phone cord—an endless white curly fry. Him, just grinning at the camera. Gap in his teeth and a big belly. His penis, it’s concave at the base. You know when you push a plunger too far into the bowl and it flips inside out? Anyway, they were looking for a third. As far as I was willing to take it, though just to watch was fine. They welcomed me into their nest.

“What’s going on, Mark?” We’re at Fairways, doing our Wednesday nine holes of Mich Ultra. He’s just on his second hole and I’m nearing my fifth. Outside it’s rude hot.

“Sheila, she doesn’t respect me.” Something has shifted in their dynamic. Now Sheila doesn’t want to take her clothes off in front of strangers. Wants to redefine their love limits. I say I understand both sides of the situation, but that doesn’t mean I support him any less.

“It’s this new manager, I know it.”

So we take the rest of our beers to go, hiding them in our pockets,  and stake out a corner of the Kinko’s lot. Sheila’s car is up front, which seems suspicious, even though she does work here. We drink those beers and wait, AC chugging. Sure enough, after two long hours—Mark, I love him, his conversation doubles back on itself—Sheila and this manager of hers, a charmer down from ArkAgriTech, we see them bounce next door to the Subway. Sheila squints in our direction so we drop down behind the dash.

And that’s how we get to see what real adultery looks like. $2 six-inch specials of the week. “Bourbon chicken,” Mark says, but he pronounces it bourbon, like sour, or like our, which breaks my heart a little because obviously it’s no longer theirs, his and Sheila’s, and also have I known Mark for three months and didn’t realize he can’t read? That’s something I should have paid attention to. 

Mark, I say, maybe it isn’t what it looks like. I mean, I only said that adultery thing because I was kind of drunk, and bored too, and I felt that our stakeout would be better if we uncovered something real big.

“No, it is. She’s been dropping this kid’s name,” Mark says. “He’s with Christ.”

True, I have witnessed this turn in her sensibility. Like last week, Sheila was pegging Mark. She said “The young ones are with Christ.” And Mark grunted, “That’s, ugh, great, ugh, the world needs more agápe.” But he pronounced it hard a, agape, which made me snicker apropos the pegging.

“So what do you want to do?”

Mark says go in there and shout this kids name. It’s Murten. If he looks at you, wave through the window and I’ll take care of it. 

I look over to suggest to Mark this plan is stupid. Sheila knows me, the element of surprise would be ruined, and also, how’s he going to “take care of it,” and also, Murten? Are you sure?

Then I realize Mark has big tears running down his cheeks and the boy’s name must be Martin, but Mark has pronounced it that way because he is trying not to cry in front of me, his best friend. So much then was over.

Months. The doorbell spooks the cat I bought for company. I’m mid-house. “Come out,” Mark shouts. “We need to discuss your soul,” Sheila shouts. I stand there without opening the door. Them and Martin. They wear white, are nametagged.

 “Please,” says Martin through the glass. He speaks in a shining young man’s tenor. “What is the expansiveness of your love?” Mark and Sheila, they look on, together in their humility. “Who knows the heart’s parameters?” A pamphlet clicks through the slot to my feet, and they are gone.

I slide down to the hardwood, a cramp of loneliness.