Bethel's Meadow by Gregory Shultz

and you were about to lose everything? What if humiliation of the worst sort was about to come down on you like a thick, black fog? What would you do then?”
    “Your son told me about your husband,” I said. My statement elicited little reaction from her—it only seemed to darken her eyes for a second. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done in his shoes. I think there a lot of people who carefully plan their suicide, but I tend to think that most do it during an episode of profound depression. Some leave notes behind and some don’t. But all I can say to answer your question is that I learned a long time ago that, especially as a manic-depressive, you have to live your life one day at a time. It sounds trite to say it, but they are words that I live by. Well, I try, anyway.”
    “Have you ever tried?” she asked. “I mean, to kill yourself?”
    “No,” I answered. “I have to be alive in case someone needs me. It’s as simple as that.”
    “Who? Who needs you?”
    Maybe Miranda does , I thought. But probably not .
    “Maybe you do,” I said, trying to shake off memories of the one I’d left behind over a decade ago. “Hell, I don’t know. I could be the factor in someone else’s life that prevents them from doing evil, from doing something that could bring harm to themselves or to others. I want to stay alive so I can be counted on.”
    “You’re a romantic, then?”
    “Yeah, I believe I am.” Until this day I’d never really articulated these beliefs to anyone.
    “Devin said you were still mad at his father,” I said. “Is that true?”
    “He’s a son of a bitch for what he did,” she said acidly. I could see she was trying to control her anger. I quickly tried to make light of the situation.
    “You know what?” I said. “I used to work with this woman who had been widowed twice. The first husband died in a car wreck, the second had cancer or something. Anyway, she would just always tell me about how wonderful these men were, how they had been the salt of the earth, pillars of their community, men of high moral character. Each marriage had lasted less than five years.”
    “So what’s your point?” Samantha said impatiently. “I don’t like long stories. Get to it.”
    “I never said this to her but I will tell you: I think this woman was proof of the fact that death can be a good career move in marriage. If that first husband hadn’t been in that car wreck, maybe they would have made it to their seventh year. But maybe not. Most marriages nowadays don’t even make it for six years. If he had lived, he probably would have started fucking around on her, picked up a cheerleader type that he’d really wanted all along, bought her a Corvette and hidden her in some lakeside lodge up in North Carolina. The wife would have figured it out eventually—maybe a call from her accountant to alert her to some suspicious expenditures—and that would have been it. They would have divorced and they would have hated each other until their dying day.”
    “I have to admit,” Samantha said with a wan smile, “that’s a decent theory you have there. Depressing, but it makes a certain amount of sense.”
    “Damn right it does,” I said, slapping the table. “If Elvis had lived and not died on the toilet, he’d have ended up like most other rock stars or actors: a has-been with a really awful comb over.”
    Samantha laughed heartily, and doing so seemed to relax her.
    “I have a concern I would like to voice with you,” I said.
    She sighed and made a moue. “What’s that?”
    “Well, what happened last night kind of caught me off guard a little. Normally, after I break up with a girl, I go to the doctor and have a full series of labs run on my pecker. I get checked for AIDS, genital warts, any kind of STD, the works. I call it my Clean Pecker Guarantee . It provides some assurance to my next lover that I am not inserting into her vagina an instrument of disease and