Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time

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It was to be their last fiction together. They’d had five years of various fictions depending more on courtesy and self-image than passion. The first fiction—or at least the first formally agreed to—was the Open Marriage. (It was his idea, but authorship of ideas was never mentioned—they did everything together, the second fiction.) He had thought it was for him alone, a need based on misapprehended biology. She counted his infidelities as crimes, but quietly to herself. Her only remedy, as they say judicially, were her own infidelities. This last fiction, the Friendly Divorce, was also his idea, but came closer to collaboration than any of the others.

Everything would become “final” next Monday. Both had cars, incomes and apartments. Only money was left to be divided. In the spirit of a true rite of passage they decided to blow it all in Vegas. They went to the bank on Monday, the Monday a week before “Final” Monday, and turned everything into cash. They carefully and oh so scrupulously pushed it into two piles. On Wednesday they left. On the road they’d outdone each other in kindnesses—paying for gas, for picture postcards, for dinner and drinks. Both figured they’d lose their shares in Vegas. Going back to GO, starting a new game. They’d been penniless to start and a return to that status would somehow erase the intervening five years.

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