The door was locked.  I didn’t take it amiss: instead, my eyes stole through the changing leaves toward our guest room-slash-studio, seeking the familiar silhouette of David at his easel.  He painted; I donned pantsuits and inhabited a Donna Summer song. 
        I mostly didn’t mind. 
        David had set rat-race records in the hurdles while I was struggling to get even a toenail inside the proverbial door.  Then: a job for me, a few promotions, a paycheck that didn’t evoke guffaws from the IRS.  By that time David, constantly looking as though he’d hugged a Van de Graaff generator, announced, “I’m taking a year off.”
        After three straight weeks as his sole nexus of human interaction, I had pressed his keys into his hand.  “I think you need a walk.”
        “I don’t.”
        “Go babble at the neighbors for a while if you want to save our marriage.”
        He took me at my word.  During his Van Gogh phase, he lyrically painted the hands of three-quarters of the neighbors on our block.
        Then he tumbled headlong into Escher, and asked the neighbors if he could loiter in their anterooms and sketch their stairs.  (I hated that phase.  David’s ideas on ‘warped perceptions’ permeated his political ideas and seeped into our dinner conversation.)
        Then Dégas. 
        But for David, every cocktail hour with my colleagues equaled drinking turpentine.  Amanda from marketing, manicured talons screeching against her cider glass, tossed an apple of discord:
        “So what exactly are you doing these days?” 
        “And have you done any shows?” 
        “I see.”
        David offered her a Jim-from-The-Office deadpan look.  “At least working from home allows me to ransack an empty Safeway on Tuesday mornings.”
        And indeed, this crisp autumn morning, I had reminded him – while blowing him a kiss – that we needed milk and apples.  He’d replied, “Got it covered.”
        I unlocked the door, entered the house.
        It transpired that David had found a model for his newest phase.  The southern exposure illuminated David blanketing the balletic coed from down the block.  Milky skin and blooming apples on her chest fully present and accounted for. 
        And now he’s forced me to end a sentence in a preposition.
        No use crying over spilled milk: practically our family’s crest.  I Googled divorce lawyers and filed a court order for eviction while the lyrics to Fiona Apple’s “Fast As You Can” rolled trippingly off my tongue.  We had been hoarding a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for “someday”; the cork popped with astonishing ease.
        Later, David’s lawyer tried to argue that he required alimony, as he had not held a job involving a W-2 in over a year.  My medium-priced, high-value attorney slammed him for trying to milk our dissolving relationship for all it was worth.
        The judge ruled that he planned to divide our assets evenly.  Including David’s seven-figure retirement fund.  The judge banged his gavel and we all rose to go.
        I passed just close enough to David to murmur, “How do you like them apples?”


Linda McMullen