The Deal Is Off (an experiment in fiction).

It was a typical Sunday night. Ben & I were flopped in our respective stations - he: reclined with beer in hand and fat cat burrowed in the crease of his thighs; I: propped on my elbow, stretched the length of the couch, compulsively eating the Trader Joe’s knockoff of Good & Plenty. As I sorted the candy-coated pieces, making sure that at no point two of the same color passed my lips at the same time, I was still unaware that this night our life together would change irreversibly.

The Simpsons was on in the background, the current scene centering on a fiasco involving pickled hard-boiled eggs.

“Gross,” I said.

“They’re not that bad,” Ben countered.

I realized that this admission could only mean one thing: that he had, at one time, eaten a pickled hard-boiled egg.

“Twice actually,” he beamed. “One was homemade; the other was from one of those convenience store brine jars.”

Licorice-tinged bile rose in my throat. My head prickled as the blood dissipated, leaving me translucent and chilled. For 18 years I had kissed this man without ever knowing this vile secret. 

I thought of all the relationships I had ended over a breakfast order of scrambled eggs, unable to cleanse my mind of the spongy, jiggling, fart-scented morsels touching the same tongue that had explored my mouth so intimately the night before. 

Or the times I had cut brunch short on the arrival of my companion’s plate of glossy, over-easy discs with oozing yolks that gushed a pus-like discharge.

In third grade, I had a falling out with my best friend, who one day at the cafeteria table produced from her lunchbox a solid, cooked egg wrapped tightly in cellophane. With every bite into the white, rubbery flesh, the pungent outhouse odor filled my nose. When she turned to me with a toothy grin caked in chalky, yellow residue, I stumbled from my chair and dashed to a safe spot near the playground swing sets. I lunched alone for the remainder of the school year.

The too vivid image of my husband’s hand fishing into a vinegary vat to retrieve his slippery prize (he claims they use tongs)...the vision of his teeth ripping into its taut, putrid skin... our fate was sealed. I picked myself up, silently left the room, and started packing my bags.