Neighbors

There was a young family who lived above us. The husband wasn't very smart, he was overweight and he loved his wife's soft face. Below them lived a couple who spent their weekends either fucking or fighting with equal severity.
On a daily basis, I explored new ways to provoke in her some cheer. I characterized my efforts not as labors of love but as the things I had to do for marriage, the rudimentary things I'd always overlooked in relationships with women beginning with an impassioned elimination of me.

Some women simply leave the men they no longer love. In my case, they contact sisterhood underground, gain new identities and go into something akin to a former lover's witness protection program. Those first few days, sunning by a five-star pool with a bottle of chardonnay, her pleasant face, had begun to show symptoms of my patchy success.

Her skin was no longer flushed with apprehension. Her big round eyes no longer appeared off balance, always puffy from crying. I had never been able to promise anyone anything close to devotion, but for her I'd pledged to myself to always try to keep her spirits from lapsing. Those first few days were all we had to go on later, when we used to call a truce, not much later, when things got out of hand.