by Lawrence R. Dagstine

"Well, you should be!"

"Good. Now quit pestering me!"

Brian felt relieved, but he was still annoyed. No, envious. It was ironic, he knew, because so many men sometimes resented his height and looks-especially the short ones who had hang-ups about sitting next to him. Or standing next to a tall woman, like his wife. Yet they were the ones who banged her while he was off at work.

"Short men!" he cursed under his breath. "Mary broke my heart because of a short man. She took my kids away from me and sent me packing because of a short man."

Little did those same men that angered him know of the problems of a great height such as the too-short beds and bathtubs, the bending over to hear someone, and the low ceilings he had to watch out for. He wasn't even spared the problem of lovemaking; bed was usually the great equalizer, but for Mary, it no longer felt that way. Being so tall meant living in a special, precarious world in which constant adjustments had to be made in order to squeeze in various forms and spaces not designed for him at all. He was always being caught unawares-bumping his head going through some doorway or banging his shins trying to get inside a low-slung car. And it had been even worse a few years before, when he had no hair and had been almost sixty pounds heavier.

"Two-timin' bitch loved me then!" he muttered. "I can live without her. I just know I can. And I will."

He saw now that the man next to him was reading the sports page, and for a few seconds, he himself scanned the headlines. According to the caption and picture, an NBA star in his mid-thirties had committed suicide in an airport bathroom. "Whoa, sick," he said, shaking his head. "All that money and it wasn't enough. Wonder what could have drove him to it." The article stated something about a love triangle. Headlines like that always gave him a vague feeling of guilt, as if they referred to him. He didn't know why, just that it did. The picture of a dead man's face, bloated and blue, staring fiercely at the camera, the corpse leaning forward in midair from the edge of a toilet seat and trying to touch the floor after being hung from the ventilation grate above. It was death's tragic pose which affected him in the strangest way, as if the man photographed was some impostor, some no-name person using the easy way out of this world to get into the next. Could you imagine?

Gazing forward as he sat in the plane, he suddenly thought of Mary again. Did his height really bother her that much? Could he really live without her? Could he deny the depression that he'd been holding back since leaving Denver? Basketball players were tall; maybe height issues had played some kind of role in the love triangle which caused the NBA star to hang himself. It wouldn't have surprised him. He sat very still. Whenever he thought of basketball in general, he thought back to his college days. Fifteen years ago, and he remembered most vividly the party where he had first met her. He could see her so clearly in his mind at this very moment, so fresh-faced and golden-golden-tanned, golden-haired-not drop dead gorgeous, but with a wonderful soft animation in her face that made her seem prettier than she was. A stunning girl with a stunning figure. He had smiled, a sudden dazzle in his mind, as if someone had just turned on a light behind his eyes.

It seemed astonishing to him now that he had been so drawn to her. He had been such a serious young man, both his feet very solidly on the ground. At twenty-one he had gotten her pregnant with their first kid, and they worried about where they would be at fifty and planned accordingly; they both dropped out of college and went for the job that offered the greatest permanence, the best hospital and dental coverage. Security and love was what counted.

Looking down at his ring finger, he still couldn't believe it. Mary was always daring, unpredictable-but she never had a wild streak in her where she'd cheat on him. Not intentionally. He didn't know where it had come from-certainly not her staid Southern California parents. It was as if she had suddenly become capable of crazy acts that no so-called "nice" mother of her day would have dreamed of. He shook his head. Well, maybe the "nice" mother would have dreamed of it, but she wouldn't have had the courage to follow through.

Sitting there now in his cramped position, the memory of their one-time fairy tale life seized him with such vivid clarity that he forgot his discomfort, even forgot where he was. Staring forward into nothingness, he felt alive again, almost as sharply as the moment he fell into that exhausted sleep, and with the same sense of shock he had felt then; the very moment he scrambled into his pocket for the engraved penknife he had gotten her for their first wedding anniversary.

The plane dropped suddenly and he was jolted back to the present, the loud whirr of the motors filling his ears once more. But the memory of their once perfect little life had been so real that he found his breathing was irregular; or was it something else? The thought amused him as the scene faded from his mind; he even smiled, although the smile was tinged with sadness.

Oh, Mary, he thought. But the name and her image no longer had the power to hurt. Now she was like some grey, shadowy figure in his mind. His mouth twisted slightly as he sat there. He thought: she was too anxious to keep me, to latch on to this thirty-five-year-old oversized nobody she was once so crazy about. And the rest of it went down the toilet, as they say. Maybe she thought better of it; maybe she took a long look at who she was married to and finally wizened up.

He stared down at his locked knees, tried to shift his weight to give them relief, but couldn't. It was like being in a straitjacket, he thought. No, cement. What the hell was this strange feeling he couldn't drop? People spoke different. People looked different. Material objects felt different. Thank God this departure flight from Denver to New York was almost at an end; he finally realized his perception was off, and didn't know how much more of it he could take.

Then his mind went back to his soon-to-be ex-wife and the unknown young man, the "short" man, she had gone off the deep end for. He had never even seen him, but scraps of information and description had drifted his way through one channel or another. A dynamic, good-looking chap, they said-very ambitious, an itch in his bones to get in some married woman's pants fast.

Brian closed his eyes. Who could blame Mary for falling for a man so exactly his opposite? They had been mismatched from the beginning; it was a miracle that their marriage had lasted this long.