Luther in the dark

1.

This was the fifth time that Luther Alvarez had gotten drunk and cheated on his wife. The first two times had been with strippers who were willing to break the no-touching rule for a hit of blow and a couple bills. He’d had one of them right in the piss-stinking men’s room of the club. Six months later he fucked Cherry Dawn in a parked Volkswagen that hadn’t belonged to either of them. Luther didn’t remember who the third woman was, and if you asked him (always assuming he would be truthful for once in his life) he’d tell you that this was only the fourth time he’d had another woman since he’d told that great big lie: I do.

Natalie Alvarez lay awake in the darkness of the bedroom she shared with her husband. He was so loud coming in that he surely would have waked her if she had been sleeping.  She smelled the booze when he got to the top of the stairs and almost laughed when the look of his shadow, stretched and tossed down the hallway floor, reminded her of a giant bottle of liquor. As she watched Luther stumble through the door and into the bathroom to take a piss somewhere in the toilet’s general area, Natalie’s feverish urge to laugh cooled to a tepid bitter sweetness. The man she had married almost made her rejoice for her barren womb.

Luther had very little in his life that he was proud of. Swaying on his feet in front of the toilet, so drunk he could only tell if he was pissing in the bowl by the sound, Luther thought of his childhood.

When Luther was two years old, he would take his bottle into a dark room and sit for hours just drinking and being quiet. His parents sometimes regaled Luther with this story, and the pride he saw in their eyes when they told it, was less than what he would feel in his heart when he heard it, or thought of it. It was romantic to him, and he saw bravery and a mysterious substance in himself within that story. There Luther was, content and alone in the dark, having only the pleasures he brought with him. He had accomplishments (no more than average) but they all paled when compared to the little boy in the dark.

It was that little boy Luther dreamt about after he climbed into bed with his wife and fell asleep wearing his shoes.


Natalie could smell perfume on her husband, mixed with the lower, thicker stench of sweat. She knew this wasn’t the first time he’d been with his secretary. Or the first time Luther had cheated on her. Volkswagens really must be the safest car in the world, Natalie thought, because after Luther came home from Cherry Lane he was still wearing the condom. There had been a thousand tears, oaths, and apologies from Luther that night. And in one of those tear-choked declarations of repentance, Natalie had lost her resolve to leave him. She had broken. Perhaps the aberration of her own weeping eyes showed her not the cheating drunkard, but the man she had fallen in love with a thousand years ago.

Natalie closed her eyes and decided what she would pack while she drifted into a surprisingly peaceful sleep.


2.

Luther slept past the afternoon and into late evening. He felt an instant gratitude that he had Sundays off. He looked around and didn’t think it strange that Natalie was nowhere in sight; it was 8 p.m., and the sun was on its way down; she could be anywhere, even downstairs watching the television. Luther’s eyes found a note on the bathroom mirror as he was getting out of bed. It was unlike Natalie to leave notes like that; she had always left her notices on the refrigerator. And so it was with some trepidation that Luther got out of the bed on wobbly morning legs and walked into the bathroom to check the note. As he crossed the bedroom his eyes happened upon the walk-in closet on the other side of the room. He understood at once what would be written on the note.

The closet suddenly looked meager and bare. Luther might have thought of Sunday laundry, but Natalie wasn’t in the habit of washing her shoes, which had been removed from the closet as well. His wife had left him. He stood still for a moment, and after allowing what he to take root in his heart, Luther let out a deep sigh and tasted the vile sting of the booze on his breath.

He walked into the bathroom and began brushing his teeth, not yet looking to the note, but not in anyway ignoring its implications. He didn’t feel sad. Luther was merely concerned about practical matters like splitting up assets and the divorce. Natalie was not here to bargain with, and the simple resolute manner in which she left told Luther that no drama or water works would change a thing. After taking a shower and deciding to give his secretary Brittany a call, Luther toweled off, threw on some clothes and grabbed the note.

3.

The note was not what Luther had expected. He very much believed there were good reasons for his affairs with other women, and if he couldn’t bring a single one to mind at this very moment, he could always fall back on Natalie’s disagreeable nature as the culprit.  But in the note, there was no fight. No name calling. No demands or chastening. And no accusations, except for a single one that didn’t make Luther feel the petulant rage he thought the note would inspire. Instead it made him feel small and unsure.

Luther put the phone (with which he intended to call Brittany) back into its cradle and looked back at the note.

‘Luther,

You’ll never change.

-Natalie’

Luther got up from the kitchen table where he had been sitting and went to the cupboard above the stove. He reached up, took down a bottle of Whiskey, and headed towards the dining room. As he passed the kitchen table Luther put his hand out, carelessly seized a chair, and dragged it behind him, chair legs screeching along the tiles as he slowly walked to a room just down the hall.

The sun had gone down while he was in the shower;  and even though the room was pitch black, Luther still closed the blinds in the little empty room he had been meaning to make into his office. He set the chair down in the center of the room, sat, and unscrewed the cap from the bottle of whiskey.  Luther began to drink from the bottle.

‘You’ll never change.’

‘That’s ok,’ he thought, ‘this is the Luther that’s always made me proud.’