Read Tampa for Free Online Page A

of smells on the mouths of adolescent boys, which is an honest mixture of good and bad: bubble gum, Red Hots, cola syrup, stale sleep, rubber bands for braces, the occasional cigarette that leaves a taste less like tobacco than something very damp and mossish.
    I slid the patio door open theatrically, dressed to the nines in exercise gear. The more I did for Ford’s ego publicly, I’d found, theless I had to do to satisfy him privately. “Hello, boys,” I called. They all looked up with too-large approving smiles, the alcohol having given their facial muscles an increased range of movement. “I’m gonna hit the gym for a bit, Fordsie.”
    “Take my wife with you, will ya?” Ford’s partner Bill called. At last year’s police fund-raiser he’d gotten blackout drunk and put his hand on my ass shortly before vomiting behind the DJ table. “Her idea of working out is putting new batteries in the remote control.” The men chuckled into their beers, the guns strapped around their waists and chests gleaming in the setting sun. “Get her working on that ab machine thing,” he specified. I shut the door and waved good-bye at Ford, who made a show of watching my ass as I walked away. This was the reason Ford married me, and why I could make the argument that I was a better wife for him than a woman who was actually smitten: love makes people feel accepted, and like Bill’s wife they then begin to break the rules. I had a far clearer picture of our marriage contract’s unspoken line items than most women: Ford wanted me to stay in shape, look good in front of his friends, and make him look good in return.
    Outside I passed our neighbor Mr. Jeffries watering his plants, holding the hose flush with his groin like a bad practical joke. I waved and he looked up at me for a too-long ogle that resulted in the hose turning on the crotch of his pants and wetting his entire front. He pretended not to notice. “If you need any fire ant poison, I bought enough to send every one of those damn biters straight to hell,” he offered.
    “There are actually a few fire ant questions in the natural science section of the eighth-grade state proficiency exams,” I replied. Mr. Jeffries’s eyes squinted up as though I was a sign he was struggling to read. “Their queen lives for six or seven years,” I continued, “but the male drones only live four to five days. Their sole purpose in life is to mate with her and then die.” I couldn’t help but imagine an equally preferential scenario played out by several fourteen- year-old boys and myself. I wondered what percentage of the Jefferson Junior High students—if I came to them in the middle of the night, naked—would agree to have sex with me even if it meant they’d die forty-eight hours later. I guessed there would be at least a small few.
    Mr. Jeffries bit the inside of his cheek and turned the hose pressure down to a low, impotent trickle. Despite his fervent watering of the plant bed, the three shepherding garden gnomes at its centerpiece remained covered in bird shit. “That is an unholy arrangement ,” he declared.
    I’d memorized the directions to Jack’s house; an old online listing divulged it was a one-story five-bedroom home with vaulted ceilings. The upper-middle-class purchase price from a few years ago was encouraging: I hoped for a set of working parents who didn’t have time to decode lies or do micromanagement parenting. An online map reported a 5.3-mile drive. Before starting my car, I was sure to reset the odometer to double-check the distance. Any fact or statistic related to Jack felt like progress.
    Due to a series of overprotective stoplights and explosive suburban growth, the short drive took fourteen minutes, which felt both too convenient and painfully distant all at once. I was able to park just across the street from Jack’s house at an angle that allowed a view of the sliver of backyard between his home and their sole abutting neighbor. My car