Cash

Anna wished, as she dusted the bedroom furniture, that Marvin would help with the housecleaning. All he could think of these days was that damned Saturday afternoon poker game and that idiot family of his. He wouldn’t dare lift a finger around the house. No laundry, no cleaning, no cooking, no shopping, no nothing from Marvin these days. Who did he think he was, the lazy bastard, and why’d she ever marry him? When she finished the dusting and started on the windexing, Anna wanted to spit, she was so mad.

Anna picked up the photos of Marvin’s family. That mother of his with her plastic surgery and cellphone, that lunatic father who never passed a woman without coming on to her, that pretentious sister who never lifted a finger herself around her own house – and never gave an ounce of affection to those bratty children that Marvin doted on, why would Anna ever be surprised that Marvin had turned out to be such a good-for-nothing? She removed all those damned photos and then Marvin’s box where he kept his rings and things (that college ring from the West Virginia University he was so proud of, made her puke) – and looked inside the box.

Stashed inside was a roll of $1000 bills, at least twenty of them. She counted out $23,000. Where’d he get money like this? And then she looked underneath, the secret compartment she always knew was there, but Marvin didn’t know she knew – and found a little black book, A to Z filled with names of girls like Tiffany and Buffy and Jennifer and Madison and Stephanie and Gertrude – all in handwriting that was new and fresh, as if he’d written the numbers down only yesterday.

Anna picked up the box and threw it against the wall. She pulled those damned photos of Marvin’s damned family out of their frames and tore them into shreds. And she took the $23,000 and put it in her purse. Before she left, she wrote a note. “I’ve had enough and I’m out of here.”