TAR

“He’s here,” Tyler shouts from the sofa.

The racing game on the roll-up TV is interrupted by a video feed of Dr. Skow’s car pulling through their gate at a much more sedate speed. Sara rinses her hands in the kitchen at the other end of the great room and watches the security feed switch to the courtyard camera. She has never hired a therapist before, but Dr. Skow, climbing from his car, fits the bill. He’ll uncover the rot in their marriage—Tyler’s infidelity—which Tyler believes she’s ignorant of.

The doorbell chimes, but Tyler remains mired on the sofa. Sarah dries her hands furiously, then walks through the foyer and opens the stupid monolith of a door.

“Ah. Mrs. Fathom, I presume?” Dr. Skow says in a thick European accent.

“Sara, please. And thank you for coming.”

Dr. Skow wears an orange silk shirt buttoned one hole too high, above which a light-gray Van Dyke comes to a careful and prominent point where it juts forward from his chin. In his hands he clutches a slim leather satchel.

Sara introduces Dr. Skow to Tyler, the omitted the patient loud in her ears. She presumes Dr. Skow notices their age difference: Tyler, twenty-six years old, looks not five years younger than her, but ten.

Sara leads Dr. Skow through the great room, where the TV’s screensaver is luxuriating over a slow-motion aerial video of Venice, thankfully obscuring the video game. She invites Dr. Skow into the adjacent library, where there’s an Eames lounge chair the doctor might wish to occupy, and a sectional sofa that one or both of them can lie down on, if Dr. Skow is that kind of psychologist.

At the wet bar, Sara prepares a platter of seltzers and glassware and, turning back to the room, finds that the doctor has chosen a simple chair from the writing desk. Tyler, in the Eames, displays his callused feet on the footstool, revealing a tag of beach tar on the sole of his left foot, a Rorschach-like spread which explains the whiff of something ugly and primordial that’s grimed the air all morning.

“Might I have a straw? Or a spoon or a fork?” Dr. Skow says, as though he plans to make a meal from the seltzer he’s pouring into a glass. “It is to release a bit of the gas. Otherwise I start belching, and then follow the hiccups.”

“There’s some paper straws from last weekend,” Tyler says, and hoists himself up happily.

As Tyler plods to the kitchen and back, Sara pictures the new residues of tar he’s leaving behind. He hands the doctor a straw and pops another straight into his own bottle of seltzer. He slurps and gives Sara a where did you find this coot? look. He’s not supposed to be enjoying himself.

Dr. Skow stirs his drink, then sets the straw on the platter. “Tell me about last weekend,” he says, then takes a measured sip.

Tyler laughs.

“It’s not representative,” Sara forewarns.

“We did some cosplay with friends of mine,” Tyler says. “Dressed as birdwatchers from the 1800s and bombed a birding meet-up. We were all made up with fake mustaches and hats and shit. We used spyglasses for binoculars. No offense, but you’d have fit right in. Here, look.”

The doctor squints at a photograph on Tyler’s phone, then leans back. “Amusing. What birds did you see?”

“There was a black-headed grosbeak,” Tyler says. “Had a nice call.”

“Oh yes. A wonderful call,” the doctor says.

Tyler and their marriage therapist bonding over birds? Not on Sara’s bingo card. She wonders when the session will begin, that digging down to the pale grub of Tyler’s infidelity. If she were the doctor, she’d have already noticed that Tyler is high. Also, that his feet are inconsiderately bare compared to hers in Italian open-toed mules.

“Tell me…” the doctor says, gesturing to the room with both hands. He appears to be searching for a word or phrase.

Sara waits patiently, then is struck with the suspicion that Dr. Skow’s tell me is his invitation for them to talk, in which case his protracted pause is now retroactively hers.

“How did you come into money?” Dr. Skow says, Sara’s pelvic floor relaxing.

Tyler swings down his tar-spotted foot and leans forward. “In a nutshell, Doc, it’s all from my work on gutturals to enhance AI speech models.”

It’s the most complicated sentence he’s uttered in months.

“Explain,” the doctor says.

“I started college at fifteen, but was bored until switching my doctorate in computer science. My work was on adding pauses, throat-clearings, vocal fry—that sort of thing—to voice architectures. To evoke trust and believability and make AI sound more human. I had some patents others wanted, was scooped up, worked for a bit, then exited when my stocks vested and…voila,” he says, pronouncing it wall-ah as he holds up his bottle of seltzer. The straw bobs so high on a riot of bubbles that it looks like it might eject itself.

Sara misses this version of her husband. Not the boaster, but the one passionate about his projects and whose liveliness of mind pulled her in. He was always talking—and brilliantly. These days, more dialogue goes on between the NPCs in his video games than between the two of them.

“And you?” Dr. Skow says, the point of his beard directed at Sara. “Your money comes from…?”

Sara doesn’t like the question, or how Tyler has omitted crucial details from his own origin story, like that he comes from money, or that his GPA at fifteen that freshmen college year was mediocre.

“I was his assistant,” Sara says.

“Behind every great man there’s a great woman,” Dr. Skow says, and gives her an unwanted smile.

Although Sara arranged the marriage counseling session, she is beginning to reconsider the wisdom in hiring a psychologist who makes house calls, despite the trusted referral. Tyler is far too comfortable. The impending confrontational dirty work feels like it should take place at a clinic with an uncomfortable waiting room.

“When did the two of you last have intimate relations?” Dr. Skow asks.

Tyler laughs. “An hour ago.”

Money, sex: these are not places to start. Their problems lie in that sore of boredom, purposelessness, and Tyler’s new inextinguishable adolescence. The crux of the problem: she married a man who has morphed into an immoral boy, a nerd reborn as a jock. And yes, fine, there’s the other problem: she continues to enable him rather than do the other thing: confront him over his infidelity, followed by separation, divorce, pennilessness—for her. A whole life ahead in which to fend for herself and regret the prenup.

“Children,” the doctor says, and for a moment Sara thinks they’re being addressed.

“Nope,” Tyler says.

“But sexual relations at ten in the morning on a Tuesday,” the doctor says.

Sara imagines the doctor opening his leather man purse and recording the date and time in a notary book, then pressing Tyler’s inked ruddy glans onto an empty square in the book, leaving an imprint of what Tyler has taken to calling Sir Weenie Wang.

“And before that?” Dr. Skow asks.

“Sex? This morning,” Tyler says. “Woody o’clock.”

“Tyler,” Sara scolds, though what he says is true.

The doctor puts down his drink and stands. He walks to the bookshelves, then turns and takes in the room. “You have an enormous house, those fine cars I saw in the drive, the beach and town at your doorstep. So much to experience and engage with.” His hands reach out at the word engage as though grasping an imaginary bosom or an enormous pair of balls. “But twice in one day, on a Tuesday? Is this still your honeymoon? How many years married?”

“Three,” Tyler says, and gives Sara a wink as though he’s proud that he knows.

“How many hours do you sleep?” Dr. Skow asks. “Are there lights on in your bedroom at night? What is the size of your bed?”

“Excuse me. Just going to use the ladies,” Sara says.

She sweeps quickly out of the library, removes her mules, and sprints through the great room and down the hall to their bedroom, mobilized by her fear that Dr. Skow is on the cusp of asking to see the room for himself, which is still in a state from the morning’s goings-on, and where he will spy the horrid streaks on their white bedding. But now she sees that the marks are just tar—just tar!—brought in on Tyler’s feet from his morning run. She flips and straightens the comforter, concealing all. She plumps the pillows and lets them fall. The doctor is right, though: entirely too much sex, especially given the circumstances.

Sara does a pro forma flush of the en suite toilet. Returning to the library, she finds Dr. Skow and Tyler standing by the baby grand piano, both grinning. She doesn’t like the way Tyler tells the doctor that he is “all right,” nor how they both go and sit on the sofa together, leaving her to choose between the straight back chair and the Eames, which is no choice at all.

“Sorry to step away,” she says, taking the chair. “May I ask? When does the actual therapy start?”

“My apologies. To be serious now.” The doctor takes a long pause, then points at her with his middle finger, mindlessly European. “You have cancer,” he says, tapping the air on each word.

Sara feels assaulted. “Excuse me?” But also—of course she has cancer. Dr. Skow has picked this up in only minutes, whereas the knowledge of malignancy has been simmering in her subconscious: the recent fatigue, that dizzy spell, the eye twitching last week, yesterday’s cloudy pee. Something is growing inside her, something that wants to be the death of her.

“I don’t mean to frighten,” the doctor says. “What I mean is, let us say that you have cancer, a disease of some kind. You would not expect to be recovering after only your first meeting with an oncologist, yes?”

Heat somersaults to Sara’s head, then escapes through a sudden exhalation. “Ah. As an example. I see what you mean.” I don’t have cancer. I don’t have cancer! I DON’T HAVE CANCER! She knows that her suggestibility is a trait they should work on in these sessions. First infidelity, then suggestibility, then maybe a crash-course for the doctor on bedside manners.

“Let us continue,” Dr. Skow says.

The next half-hour feels like a job interview: short questions with long answers which Sara feels are inadequate, off the mark, and possibly misleading, though she strives for truth. The tip of Dr. Skow’s goatee points metronomically between the two of them as he poses his questions about their relationships, their families and family dynamics, friendships, childhood pets, as well as how often they participate in specific activities together, and how they feel about each other when they are apart. Broad questions are asked about their ambitions and envisioned future, their fears and their fantasies. Missing: any questions about infidelity, about the woman Tyler picked up in the next cove over who was seen coming down their house’s beach stairway by a neighbor who thought Sara should know what she saw and heard.

After seeing the doctor off at the door, Sara and Tyler sit on the sofa in the great room. Dr. Skow’s car appears on the video feed on the TV as it circles the fountain of succulents and ferns. The car departs out the open gate and the television returns to the paused video game.

Occupied with unpacking the session—what did she divulge, what did she save for later, did she guide the doctor too subtly toward discovering their marriage’s rotten core?—it takes Sara a moment to realize that Tyler has peeled off his shirt and is giving her those eyes.

“Now that we’re not supposed to…don’t you wanna?” he says.

Here’s something for Dr. Skow to consider before he inevitably judges her for enabling her husband’s impulses: the man pulling off his boxers isn’t the Tyler she met and married. He’s a far leaner, sculpted, waxed Tyler, one with multiple physical trainers and who, in his moneyed, Calvin-Kleinified rebirth, is a drug, a compensation, the one bright perk in her marriage.

Sara begins to undress, then stops. “Wait.” She marches to the kitchen and peels off a length of paper towel. She uncaps a bottle of olive oil, then returns with both and hoists one of Tyler’s legs, pivoting him supine on the sofa. She grabs his ankle, then his foot.

“Kinky.”

“Hold still. You stepped in tar.”

She dribbles olive oil on his sole and scrubs the black streak so vigorously that Tyler giggles, his Sir Weenie Wang flailing back and forth. There is still a flattened legume of tar just before his toes, but Sara loses her grip on the bottle, which expels several glugs onto Tyler before the bottle falls onto his abs. He looks no worse, oiled.

A minute later, with Tyler tongue dabbling where it should, the TV gives a little bwoop alert sound, then displays a video feed from the open gate. A familiar car has pulled alongside the intercom console. Dr. Skow’s face appears on the TV, larger than life.

“Shit!” Sara cries, shoving Tyler away. She scrambles to her feet, seizing her clothes to cover herself, as though the doctor can see them and is chastising her for enabling her husband’s impulses—or, when he learns the truth of Tyler’s infidelity—also trying to placate him, make herself enough for him (but leaving out the bit about her enjoying it.) Of course Tyler’s the weak one, Dr. Skow looks to be thinking now. But you, Sara, I thought better of you.

“Apologies,” Dr. Skow says, instead, then belches. “Have I left my satchel inside?”

“Help me look,” Sara commands, then bounds to the library. She finds the doctor’s man-purse beside the sofa, while Tyler, naked, places his well-oiled heel on the tile floor, his body going down at a new angle. Sara dresses hastily and forces her feet into her pair of mules. If she can be seen in shoes, then nothing has happened, she tells herself, ignoring Tyler’s little noises.

At the front door, Sara feels her chest about to implode as the car door slams shut. The doctor’s footsteps across the gravel seem so loud for someone so short and lean.

Tyler lies naked in a fetal position on the floor, like a fucking turd. “Hide!” she hisses.

She cracks open the door a beat after the knock, then hands over the satchel. “Found it,” she says, her smile faltering as she notices the oily gropes her fingers have left on the leather.

“Ah, thank you. I apologize for…” Dr. Skow cocks his head. “Didn’t you say you don’t have a dog?”

Sara is puzzled, but then she hears the whimpering behind her. The doctor rises on his toes and looks past her.

“For chrissakes, Sara, help me!” Tyler shouts, but softly, like he’s affecting the sound of being a great distance away.

“Tyler, uh, slipped,” Sara says, allowing the facts of the past minute to coalesce. Before she can close the door, the doctor is in the foyer, then kneeling beside Tyler, the Hippocratic Oath also applying to head doctors, apparently.

Sara places a pillow over slain Sir Weenie Wang, then another under Tyler’s head.

“Can you stand?” the doctor asks, but Tyler shakes his head, his face and skin the color of peeled eggplant.

After locating the source of Tyler’s pain, his Achilles tendon, they decide to drive to the hospital rather than wait for an ambulance. She and Dr. Skow drag Tyler through the foyer, Dr. Skow gripping her husband under his arms while she hoists Tyler under his knees, his ass riding atop a pillow. They make it out the front door and nearly to Dr. Skow’s car before Sara has to set Tyler down on the gravel for a moment to get a better grip. He winces like he’s been placed on a bed of broken glass. The doctor climbs backwards into his car through the passenger side and heaves Tyler into the seat with surprising strength.

“Clothes,” Dr. Skow commands, as he tosses out a few pieces of gravel.

Sara runs into the house, vaulting over the swipes of oil. By the time she is at the car again, the doctor is settled behind the wheel, his phone pulling up a driving route. Sara throws jeans, a T-shirt, underwear, and a pair of flip-flops into Tyler’s lap, then slams the door and steps back.

Dr. Skow points to the back seat, but she shakes her head. “I need to…” she says motioning vaguely back at the house, and waves him on.

Dr. Skow engages the car and drives around the fountain. It feels to Sara as though Tyler has just been committed. She walks slowly back into the house, then picks up the pillow and returns it to the oil-spotted sofa. She catches Dr. Skow’s car on the TV’s security feed as it speeds off. She sits down and feels, after this whirlwind of action, nothing.

When Dr. Skow calls and leaves a message from the hospital’s waiting room, giving her the cross streets, Sara is again sitting in the great room, this time wearing a towel from her recent shower. Through the open bifold doors rise the sounds of the sea: the waves, the gulls, also the little whine of a drone that’s shown up in the last minute or so, hovering about and taking in the view of the coast or of their house, of lives it can’t possibly imagine the full, fucked-up states of. It whines off, this coastal pest.

Sara remains there in her towel, nearly catatonic for another five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes—delaying her responsibility to dress and grab her keys and rush to the hospital and to Tyler’s side. It strikes her as unfair that Dr. Skow is with Tyler, when—if he only knew—he should be here with her. She’s the one deserving of his sympathy and care. Shivering in her cold, damp towel, Sara is visited by dispassionate visions of Tyler permanently injured and walking about with a cane and a little limp. She doesn’t want him to be okay, but for this injury to be his taming, to transform and mature him, his days no longer spent working out, the video game console put away. Other women will no longer give him the time of day, but Sara will learn to love Tyler again, safely, non-competitively. He will start wearing wool flat caps and grow a little belly. There’ll be games of Scrabble in the evening, their minds pondering, their lips sipping a stiff drink.

The little fantasy postpones her departure to the hospital. She stretches her passivity so it encompasses another half hour of her not leaving, of her not being on her way, of her not parking hastily and rushing through the emergency room doors. Of not doing the right thing. She understands that she is deliberately failing in her duties as a partner and as a good and decent human being. Has Tyler ever felt this way? Or is what she’s feeling now, this lack of care, his heart’s tempo?

She hears the whine of a drone again and spots it hovering, a camera protruding from its belly. She stands and does something she’s never done before: she acknowledges it. She waves to it, beckoning it inside. The dark gray drone drops down and tentatively floats into the great room.

“Can you hear me?” she says.

Surprisingly, the drone does a little bump up and down, then hovers steadily after the nod.

“My husband cheated on me,” she confesses, for the first time, to anyone. “He doesn’t know I know.”

The drone does that little bump again, perhaps a gesture of consolation from the person controlling it, peering at a screen or through goggles. They’re a few hundred feet away, or miles. Anyone. Everyone.

Sara becomes aware that she’s only wearing a towel. She gestures toward the hallway. “C’mon then. I’ll show you where it happened.”

The drone is hesitant at first, but then follows her like a thousand wasps. Sara turns and smiles at her confessor. She isn’t Sara now, but that other woman who Tyler weenie wanged. Did they run down this hallway, giggling, hand in hand? Or did Tyler press her up against the wall here and do that thing with his hands? She gives the drone a good length of her bare leg and watches it swivel its camera as they reach the bedroom.

“Go on, then,” she says, loosening her towel and giving the drone a shameless peek.

The moment the drone is inside the bedroom, Sara slams the door shut, then hurls a pillow. The drone takes an evasive swoop, skittering off the ceiling, once, twice, a rain of white paint flecks falling. She mounts the bed and hurls another pillow. The drone darts to the side and bumps off the wall, then steadies itself as if temporarily dazed. Whipping off her towel, Sara captures this spinning, buzzing demon in a net of plush terry. The blades deaden through the towel and leave her stung fingers free to wring its neck until it lets out a monotonous groan. She twirls the towel tight around the drone, then whacks the bundle against the tiles again and again. A hairline crack forms across the stone. Dr. Skow would appreciate how the drone is not simply a drone, but Tyler, his infidelity, her own cowardice in confronting him and facing penury, her weakness in indulging him and indulging herself, this mass of accumulated marital tar she doesn’t know how to remove.

She unfolds the towel on the bed and gazes at the tangle of defunct parts. At first she feels completely alone, but then, comfortingly, not. At the end of the drone’s broken transmission is a person who not only knows about Tyler’s infidelity, but also what it’s like to pretend you haven’t suffered a betrayal, to try to believe in temporary glitches. She’s not sure Dr. Skow and continued therapy can grant her this compassion.

But this emotional compatriot, whoever they are, doesn’t know about the drone’s punctured battery, the sudden Roman candle-like spurt of flame, the bedroom sheets catching on fire, the woman’s odd laugh. The acrid smoke blocks a view of her fearlessly packing a small suitcase, then passing from sight out of the bedroom. Instead, the drone operator maintains a hope that in a moment or two a clear signal from the bedroom will appear. They will make the drone rise from where it’s fallen, then maneuver it down the hallway and into the great room, then out over the garden, over the roiling beach, free.