Slim Chance by Jackie Rose

patting my hand.
    “Would you mind if I come home with you tonight, Claire?” Bruce asked, managing to make me angrier than I already was.
    She laughed loudly. “Brucie dear, you know there’s always a bed for you at my place. You’re a pleasure—a real pleasure. Evie, I wish I could say the same for you.” Bruce snickered.
    Claire wiped the corners of her eyes and sighed. “But I’m afraid you’re on your own tonight, Bruce. You two go inside, talk it out. That’s what separates the good marriages from the bad, you know—not the fighting, but the making up.” She paused to think for a moment, then looked at me. “We had some doozies, your grandfather and I. And don’t believe that crap about never going to bed angry. There’s nothing wrong with going to bed angry. Nothing wrong with waking up angry, either, come to think of it. That’s going to happen. So long as you can agree to disagree, you’ll be fine. Respect each other’s differences. That’s the real truth of it,” she smiled, and winked at Bruce.
    I hugged her and we got out of the car. “’Bye, now!” she said cheerily as I closed the door. She turned the stereo up right away, and we could hear the muffled strains of James Taylor blaring from behind as we trudged up the steps to the front door. We turned and watched her old Lincoln float off down the street until it disappeared out of sight.
     
    By Monday, I couldn’t do up my pants. After a brief period of abstinence Friday morning, I’d spent the whole weekend in sweats, eating leftover turkey and, when that was all gone, cranberry sauce out of the tin. If I could have called in sick, I would have, but I’d just used up my last sick day of the year the week before when Morgan needed some hand-holding at the gynocologist’s following three inconclusive home pregnancy tests. It was the second time this year she’d thought she was pregnant, but, mercifully, it was not to be. She suspects Billy’s been poking holes in the condoms, although there’s been no real evidence of any tampering.
    “Maybe you should go on the Pill,” I suggested.
    “Yeah, right!” She cackled, tightening the lid on her cup of pee. “Me—on the Pill. I’d be pregnant and I’d have the clap.”
    “The clap? Are you kidding me? Do you really think Billy would sleep around? He doesn’t seem like the type. I mean, you know him better, but I just thought he was really into you and only you, you know?”
    She raised her eyebrows and looked at me like I should know better.
    “Oh,” I said, the light dawning. “Who?”
    “Peter.”
    “Morgan, not again,” I groaned. Peter is Morgan’s boss. He’s an absolute jerk—gorgeous, married, rich and heartless. Morgan adores him, or rather, adores being thrown down onto his big glass desk and ravaged every once in a while after everyone’s gone home.
    She shrugged her shoulders unapologetically. “After a fewmonths, the sexual tension just builds to the point where we have to release it or it’ll become obvious to everyone.”
    “Couldn’t you ask for a transfer or something?”
    “Why would I want to do that?” she said, throwing her long red hair back over one shoulder. “I like Mergers and Acquisitions. Besides, I didn’t spend all those years busting my ass in business school just to let a prick like Peter get in the way of what I want.”
    “Well, excuse the hell out of me, Madam Maneater,” I said.
    “Gimme a break, Evie. I’ve been working my way up there for three years and it’s one of the top investment banks in the city. I’m not about to throw it all away!” She slammed her bottle of pee down on the desk in front of a frightened receptionist, and plopped down on a chair between two very unhappy women who appeared to be about ten months pregnant. What a piece of work.
    I pictured poor Billy, sitting at home alone poking holes in condoms by candlelight, an uneaten dinner for two laid out on the table. Innocently believing Morgan was