He turned to her, and their closeness side by side seemed too close dead on. "You want to live in the darkroom?"

"Just a thought."

"Well, it's not a bad one."

She waited for him to say something more, but he just watched her. She knew his eyes were on her, but it was too dark to tell how he watched, with curiosity, pursuit, or a sadness she thought she could feel from him.

His voice, so close, drew her in. "The dark is like Vegas."

"Vegas?"

"What goes on in it doesn't ever translate into the real world. It doesn't count, doesn't matter after the color comes in."

She held her breath, waited, and then had one thought. What was she waiting for?

She reached for him, arms around his neck, and pulled his mouth down to hers. She felt the length of his body tighten as she lifted her right leg and half wrapped it around his hip. He kissed her so hard her head fell back, and he bent her with it, arched so far she would have fallen without his grip on her.

And he did have a grip on her, their bodies vibrating together, and she tilted her head to the side, felt him nip at the sensitive skin under her earlobe.

His hand under her thigh, he pulled her closer and tighter to an erection she couldn't get her own body close enough to, and there were sounds coming from both of them that whispered like a sex soundtrack in the silent room.

Finding his lips again, she swallowed a moan, hers, his? She had no idea just that there were things in the way, shirts and pants, and she wanted to tear them all off with her teeth and feel nothing but skin and muscle against her softest, wettest-- The wham at the door caused Max to straighten, and she felt him lose his grip. Her back was too arched to keep her upright since her center of gravity was altered and her thinking shut off with lust. Her arms swung out, windmilling for balance, and her hand whacked a jug of liquid. The jug stayed upright, but her skin stung from the slap of contact. She braced for the floor, but he reached for her, righted her on her feet and then stormed to the door. "The red light is on, dickhead!"

"Max?" The French accent was unmistakable, and Gwen fought the impulse to hide under the table. It was dark. She could live there.

Max left the door and moved toward her, a cat in the dim. He took her hands and kissed the back of each one. "I suppose we can't just pick up where we left off."

Where they'd left off? What was he thinking? If a beautiful, successful woman like Nicola couldn't keep his interest and he left her standing at the door, Gwen Ciarrochi Frame didn't stand a chance. What had she been thinking? She wouldn't go back no matter how crazy he'd made her, how crazy he could make her still. She needed to find a good path forward not take another step into the meat grinder that had been her love for Max. "No."

She felt the pulse of his grip once on her hands. "I meant right now."

She blinked back tears, glad again for the darkness. "I didn't." Pulling her hands away, she walked to the door, and stopped with her hand on the latch. "Finish. Please."

"Max?" The French voice, less soft, demanded a response this time.

"He'll be right out."

There was silence for a minute and then Nicola answered. "I'll be in my office, cher."

Gwen felt Max watch her, but kept her back to the room and waited for the green light to go on.

After a long silence, she heard the swish of washes like the ocean in a seashell and tried to relax into the change of tides.

"I can't live at Max's. I need to get a place right now." She felt panicked, trapped, like she'd gone spelunking underground and her life had been a cave-in. She'd dig herself out with a spoon if she had to.

"Okay," Missy patted her hand, and for a moment Gwen wondered when the caretaking shift had occurred. She didn't like it even as she knew it wouldn't last for more than a few minutes. The time would come, if she lived long enough, that the shift would be permanent. The caretaker always became the caretaken. She'd done it with her own mother, well, her whole life.

Her child would, hopefully, do the same if called upon in the final days. Gwen considered she may be in the kind of final days that weren't fatal but definitely painful, and Missy was being called upon to take care of her.

What was next? Missy's mom and grandma were alone and screwed up. Would the girl have to snag a man for the family so they'd have a roof, car care, and lawn maintenance? Grandma had lots of options, but Gwen knew she'd done her time with a spouse and had no intention of losing another twenty years to one.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Focus."

When Gwen heard her own voice coming out of her daughter's mouth, she tried to stop the smile she didn't really feel, but couldn't help. She wouldn't be pointing it out to Missy anytime soon.

Missy leaned back against her dorm bed's headboard. "I'd let you stay here, but Mranda would call security. And I think, you know, you really do need some time to, you know, think about your life, Mom."

Gwen hesitated. "Uh, thank you?"

"So, let's get you a place. We'll check this afternoon. Maybe you could go to somebody like, I don't know, a real estate person."

A college town was bound to have lots of rental agencies. Gwen calculated what first month's rent, last month's rent, and a security deposit would run her. She'd need to dig herself out of her messy life with a really big spoon, a silver one. "Maybe later."

Missy sat up straighter. "Why not now?"

Gwen could picture her checking balance. Two-hundred-fifty-nine dollars and seventy-six cents. Steve hadn't deposited any money into the household account, the one she did have access to. "I need to straighten out some, uh, finances with your Dad."

"He has the money, doesn't he?"

"Well, it's not like it's not half mine, Missy."

"He has it, doesn't he?"

"You know he took care of the finances."

"You signed the papers, and he was going to take care of everything wasn't he?"

Gwen didn't have to answer that. Missy wasn't her caretaker. Yet.

"Mom..."

"Your Dad and I will straighten it out."

"You've gotta talk to him now, Mom. You know, adult to adult, a well thought-out conversation. You gotta be clear and, you know, really tell him you need some money."

"I'm aware of that, Missy. I am sleeping on a couch."

"At Max's."

"At Max's."

Missy grabbed her own phone and held it out. "He'll answer mine for sure."

Gwen dug hers out of her bag. "You think he won't answer if I call him?" For heaven's sake, when had her daughter gotten so dramatic? And when did she say things like adult to adult, well thought-out conversations?

Missy shrugged. "He doesn't hear what he doesn't want to hear."

Gwen hesitated. He did have the capacity to be deaf to an answer he didn't like. He had once or twice, or dozens of times, gone ahead with something she'd said no to.

She thought back to the last time she'd seen him. He hadn't gotten the response he wanted that night in the dorm room when he tried to get her to leave campus. It was possible he'd avoid her until he thought she was ready to concede defeat. She took Missy's phone. She didn't need it. It was... "Just in case."

Missy held up her hands, fingers crossed for luck.

"Very funny."

The whole thing was significantly less funny after he hung up on her.

She sat with the phone still to her ear while Missy shook her head. "You gotta drive there, Mom."

Drive there? What the hell had gone wrong? She re-ran the conversation in her head. She'd asked about splitting the assets, then he'd said some things, then she'd said some things, and then... "He hung up on me."

Missy shrugged as if Gwen simply hadn't done the math right. "He told you to stop acting like grandma, and you told him to intercourse off."

Gwen held her hand out for Missy's car keys. "I should drive right now."

"Yeah. You should drive," Missy got up and turned on the electric tea kettle, "in a couple of minutes. Maybe an hour."

He'd be home. Well, his condo. She wasn't sure she could ever call a condo home, although she'd managed to consider a dorm room one, and currently a couch. No. By no stretch of the imagination would she ever call Max's couch home. A couch? What was next? A street corner? A dumpster?

Parking in Steve's lot, she saw that the mid-range cars indicated a thorough vetting of applicants. Their incomes seemed to fall beautifully in the same level. There weren't any clunkers, no vans with the rear bumpers crunched and car seats jammed in but no over-the-top sports cars that couldn't be afforded either, just the mid-range, mid-sexy sedan of the single professional.

She spotted Steve's car from Missy's description. New. Blue. Something borrowed, she thought, and stopped herself from hot wiring it and driving off. As if she possessed that skill set. She may need to rethink her major if things didn't go well with Steve. She could become something really lucrative, like a car jacker or an ex-husband.

She pulled out her phone. He'd have to answer this time, or she would just walk in on him with the other woman. The other woman was still hazy since he'd never fessed up about it, but she was invading whatever private life he now possessed that didn't have anything thing to do with the private life they'd shared. Private life didn't seem like a good description of their marriage. They'd had sex and a child and a water bill, but a private life... theirs alone in the dark, two as one? Probably not ever that. Half her life and she hadn't gotten that right.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Steve."

The silence told her he was there and playing hard to get. Well he wasn't. "I'm in the parking lot."

"You're what?"

"Here."

"Here?"

"I see your new car." She got out of Missy's college car and walked closer. "You left your Coffee Bean Cafe travel mug in the driver's cup holder. But the rest is clean as a whistle. Way to maintain blue book value, mister."

"What is wrong with you?"

"I'm here to talk to you since you hung up on me, and it's pretty hard to talk then."

"No, what's wrong with you? You're odd and sarcastic. Like Missy." There was a pause. "Like your mother."

She counted to ten and got to eight. "My mother is not sarcastic."

"Maybe not, but she's an odd duck, Gwen. You've said so yourself. This is not news."

"You leave my mother out of this."

"Did she really dress up as Hannah Montana, get drunk, and fall off a table?"

"No." She cursed herself for drawing the no out for two syllables. He'd guess right away that she was lying, the buying time kind of lying that didn't ever accomplish anything but discomfort.

"Riiight. So, Gwen, this really isn't a good time for me."

"I'm on the stairs." She dashed across the parking lot and started up the metal staircase so as not to be accused of lying on top of being odd and sarcastic with a drunk duck of a mother.

"Gwen."

"Steve. Be prepared." She hit the first hallway and double checked the sticky note Missy had given her. Nineteen A.

"For what?"

"I'm knocking on the door. Do you hear it?" She gave the shave and a haircut two bits knock. Nothing said smart ass like the shave and a haircut two bits knock. Of course, it was the call of cartoon characters so maybe it wasn't entirely what she should have gone for.

"I'm hanging up now, Gwen."

"Are you hanging up to open the door?" She waited but there was no response. "Will I be forced to make a scene in front of your neighbors?"

"You're bluffing, Gwen."

"Am I?" Was she? It didn't give her any confidence to know they were both wondering.

The door opened, and Steve stood there, deliberately snapping his phone shut.

She slowly closed hers and tucked it into her bag. "I would have done it."

"Ah, but the definition of a bluff is when someone doesn't have anything in their hand, anything to bring to the table." He smiled. "You are bluffing."

He had the paperwork in color coded files. She'd lost track after the second shade of green and before they'd ever hit the yellows. It felt like the terrorist alert. She wasn't sure what chartreuse should tell her about her safety, but she knew she was screwed no matter what shade anyone named it.

"So, any questions?"

She'd slumped in the dining room chair, a hard chair to slump in with its creaky tight leather back. Any questions? She had a million, and none, and no words for any of it.

"You'll want to go over this with your attorney. Oh, well, you'll want to get an attorney if this is what you want." He paused as if to give her time to burst into tears or make him the bacon frittata that he loved.

She stared at him and watched his expression soften. She realized that even after telling her she didn't own half of anything, he might be leaving reconciliation on the table for her to grab. She studied the large living area again. She'd spotted a microwave dinner on the kitchen counter, but there'd been no sign of another woman. There was no sign of another woman because she was gone.

Steve was alone and didn't want to be, and when all else fails, go back to what you know. Wasn't the expression better the domestic laborer you know than the one you don't? She couldn't call herself a housewife since he'd taken the house part away from her. She glanced over at the dreaded yellow folder, so sunny, so promising, so evil.

Legally, his mother still owned the house they'd bought from her. And they had bought it. Steve had put the budgeted money in the household account, and all those years, Gwen paid the mortgage and the utilities and picked up groceries and new shoes for Missy. But the house had remained in the corporation his family had set up. It was owned by the Frames and not Gwen Ciarrochi Frame at all. Not Steve Frame either, he assured her, although he had all the money he needed. And she needed.