Things hadn't always been this way, Arthur reflected as he drove the walkable distance into town. He and Lilia had gotten along well enough. Seventeen years of marriage, and up until ten months ago, they'd always made a show of their contentment. "Commitment, hard?" they'd say to friends and acquaintances. "We've never had a difficult day with one another!" No matter behind the scenes, no matter the costumes. The show was the thing. Well, now all the days were a complete and utter slog, and there was no hiding it. The nights, too. And there'd been no intimacy for nearly half a year. Damned boys probably get more action than I do, Arthur couldn't help thinking. It wasn't only the lack of sex that depressed him, though—everything else about their relationship had changed as well. Whatever respect Lilia might have pretended to have for him had been tossed out the window, now, that was clear. She made sure to remind him of that in nearly every conversation, with every incisive nag, through each repulsed glance, chipping away at her husband slowly, tortuously, as if he were a block of granite and she were trying to shape him into something weak, something no longer reminiscent of the person she believed he'd used to be, not because she wanted him to be someone better but because she wanted him to portray the monster she was sure he'd always been.

They really were charming, the streets of Blackswallow Beach. His wife had done nothing but complain since they'd arrived the night before, but really, she had little if nothing at all to bitch about. The morning had dawned amber and golden, warming the soft sand as willets darted to and fro, pecking for tiny sea creatures left by the receding waters. In the distance, a sort of haze had hovered over the ocean, rippling upward into the air, morphing into a mirage of movement that'd burnt off with the rising temperatures. Sitting in a wooden chair on the master bedroom's balcony, looking out over that halcyon vista, Arthur had known he'd made the right decision. At about six AM he'd left Lilia and the kids sleeping and behaved the proper paterfamilias, gone into town and found an open bakery, picked up coffee and donuts.

It'd been fortunate they hadn't brought perishables in last night and even more fortunate they'd Fed-Ex'd the rats to the College's lab a week earlier. With the electricity out, they'd been unable to use the refrigerator and freezer. They'd lugged all sorts of canned goods and crackers and cereals and sodas from Chicago, but thank God they'd not listened to Arthur when he'd suggested they stop at the Walmart twenty miles out of town to pick up the meat and dairy and frozens prior to arrival. Lilia had insisted on just getting there, and though she'd annoyed her husband at the time, they'd been lucky to listen to her, a fact she hadn't let him forget.

Arthur gripped the steering wheel, didn't realize he was clenching his jaw. Lilia hadn't used to be like that. She'd always had her knives, but she'd never thrown them with such precision.

The addresses—he needed to start paying attention. Greg Martin, the owner of the rental house, had told him to contact the hardware store in town, ask for Max. They were brothers, apparently, and Greg was inconveniently away for the week. Max had been friendly enough, though, told Arthur he'd be happy to come out and replace some electrical bit that tended to give out whenever that house sat empty for too long, that Arthur would just have to wait until that evening when he could close shop. Well, waiting wouldn't have done for Lilia. Her husband knew that. He knew, too, that picking up the part himself would give him a brief respite from her disapproving eye. What exactly she disapproved of these days, even he didn't know, but it was crushing him constantly, the weight of her unspoken censure.

There it was: Martin Hardware. An unassuming brick building painted white with red trim, an ancient sign with a hammer and a screwdriver crossing at their handles hanging over the door. Arthur turned into the small front lot and parked.

"What can I do you for?"

A gruff, mustachioed man polishing some unidentifiable metal object turned and caught sight of Arthur as the door chimed his entrance. "Oh, hey there. You gotta be the Curry fella up at my brother's place."

Relieved for reasons he couldn't fathom, Arthur nodded. "Yes, thanks for—"

"You all right, son?"

Caught off guard by the question, Arthur surveyed the scene. Martin Hardware was small enough to take in with one viewing, even with its shelving of odds and ends, everything apparently from nuts and bolts to birdfeeders. The store was warmly lit and organized though a bit grimy due to its age; it was obviously one of those places that'd been a staple of the town for decades, maybe even a generation or two. A family-owned-and-inherited business, no doubt. Max Martin, Greg Martin—brothers, Greg the one who'd rented out the beach house, maybe or maybe not involved with the hardware store, Max the one running things here. Arthur hadn't actually met Greg; they'd spoken only through messaging. But the man had seemed pleasant, educated. This Max, on the other hand, embodied a sort of country bumpkin persona. His attire consisted of overalls with a plaid button-down tee and thick dirtied black boots. The lack of gray in his hair and mustache implied the multitudinous creases across his face were likely more from sun exposure than age, and his close-set eyes sat glinting good-naturedly on either side of a large round nose. In all, Max presented as entirely amiable and forgettable, save for the one distinctive detail of a gold earring in the shape of a little person dangling from his left lobe, which Arthur would have thought more on had he not been asked out of the blue whether he were all right.

"What do you mean?" he replied to Max's query, his appraisal of the situation having taken no more than a moment. He himself wore the traditional garb of one unused to ocean weather and relaxation in general: tailored pants and polo shirt, shoes too nice for sand and small towns. At forty-two, Arthur remained exceptionally youthful in appearance; during the schoolyear, he kept a trim goatee to counter that impression, but he'd shaved before this trip, and his smooth jaw with its faint auburn stubble in conjunction with the waves of hair he'd allowed to grow as a show of appreciation that he still had it conspired to make him seem at least a decade younger if it hadn't been for his stodgy clothing. Nevertheless, there was no call for Max to refer to him as "son." Max himself couldn't have been out of his forties.

Max leaned against the register, placed the convoluted piece of metal he'd stopped working with on the counter, and nodded in indication, not meeting Arthur's gaze but looking slightly above, at his forehead.

Baffled, Arthur could only assume the man saw something there and put a hand up, patted above his eyebrows, around his hairline, and as he touched his right temple, the flesh there stung. He withdrew his fingers and saw a bit of gleaming red. Though it wasn't enough to worry, he gratefully accepted the tissue Max held out to him and dabbed at the presumed cut.

"You got a cat or something?"

"No, no. No cat."

"Dog?"

"No."

"Lizard?"

"No! No. No pets. No animals at all. Just . . . just three kids and . . . and a wife."

"That so?" Max guffawed rather inappropriately, considering they'd just met.

Disconcerted by everything, Arthur asked whether there was a restroom.

"Well it's employees only, typically, but I think we can make an exception for you." Max fumbled about beneath the register for a moment then, grinning, handed his customer a key and pointed to a particular row of shelves. Arthur set off, briefly glancing back to see Max with arms crossed, watching him expectantly, his bit of gold jewelry catching an odd glint of light.

Arthur shivered as he moved along the watchful displays of drawer pulls and knobs, hinges and hangers and myriad other items he had neither the ability nor inclination to identify. Why did he feel as if he were under some sort of surveillance? As if he'd done something wrong and were under suspicion? The fluorescent light directly above him flickered, buzzed erratically, then went out, and Max's gruff grunt of irritation echoed somewhere near the front of the store. The restroom door was right there, though, its sign presenting only a bi-gendered image of a stick figure wearing half a skirt. Arthur fumbled with the key for a moment before catching it in the lock and letting himself in.

The lights immediately flicked on. Must be the sort that sensed movement, Arthur figured, and he was at once taken by how nice the space was. It was not the stained toilet and damp tiles of gas stations, nor was it the closet-sized single-use stalls of small establishments; the restroom was expansive, with (he counted) four stalls, all of which had the swinging doors one might envision gracing an old-time saloon. The tiling was new, a deep sea-colored green, and the walls were made of reflective black glass. Two pristine sinks with cut-crystal handles twinkled beneath the recessed ceiling lights, and the mirror running the length of the counter was slightly angled into three so that Arthur saw himself reflected in each panel. The effect of the place was so jarring that the man momentarily forgot where he was, that he'd just left a dingy hardware store behind, that the door would take him back out into it. This bathroom felt as if it belonged to some other world, everything in it so pure and polished.

The cut, though. That's what he'd come for—to examine that cut. He drew nearer the mirror (or it seemed that three of him drew nearer the mirror) and looked closely at the scrape that ran from his hairline to the top of his cheekbone. It wasn't particularly deep, but the flesh was an angry pink around the crimson thread-of-a-line. It'd not bled much, thankfully, though studying the thing, he was surprised that he could recall acquiring it.

A quick wash with soap and water, just for good measure, and Arthur was confident the scrape would be fine. He was sure Lilia or the kids would've mentioned it to him had it been there in the morning; he figured it must've happened when he'd gotten out of the car. He must've scraped it on something. No matter, though.

More out of curiosity than need, Arthur used one of the toilets and was gratified to find it as sparkling as everything else, but on exiting the stall, he faced the wall opposite, and he took in a painting he'd not noticed on the way in. It was enormous—nearly floor-to-ceiling—and it was centered across from the toilet stalls. While many restrooms had quirky or banal art as decor, this painting was no reprint but appeared to be an original, with thick oil-painted brushstrokes. It depicted a lifesize woman in a suggestive pose, garbed in a rich red dress, her breasts voluptuous above her glittering décollatage, her face gauche with overt clownish makeup, her hair in some plain updo in contrast with the lush, shining, majestic mustache and beard she displayed with obvious pride above her robust bosoms.

It was the sort of painting whose eyes followed, Arthur realized, and as he stepped side to side, just to see if he could fool it, he learned he couldn't.

The sense of the thing's animation was uncanny, he thought. Why, that bewhiskered woman was flirting with him, he was sure of it! The twinkle in her eyes, the cherry moisture of her lips—she was not merely eyeing him but leering! Ogling!

Arthur was startled back to reality by his own cry. The bathroom walls refocused around him; the lights dimmed. He'd forgotten himself for a moment, there.

Giggling awkwardly (though at what exactly, he didn't know), the man tore his eyes from the painting of the bearded woman and returned to the sink, where he again splashed a bit of cool water on his sweating face and inwardly scolded himself for whatever idiocy he'd allowed to overcome him. It wasn't as if she'd even resembled . . . but that beard! Its texture was bizarre . . . and this was exactly the sort of thing Lilia was afraid of, erratic moments where his thoughts would stray, the sort he'd promised he'd never had—

"You all right in there?"

Arthur turned off the faucet. He wasn't surprised to hear Max's voice on the other side of the door, strangely enough, even though he'd been startled to hear his own. Rather than answer, he straightened up, reminded himself he was a grown human, and stepped out of the bathroom.

"Thank you," he said, all confidence, returning the key to the waiting Max's hand. "Now I've got to get what I came for, if that's all right." He himself led the way up the aisle toward the front of the store, and Max followed, keeping up business-like conversation.

Seven minutes later, and Arthur had checked out and was listening to instructions on how to insert the electrical bit he'd just purchased (with the assurance the cost would be taken off his rental bill only that "Greg will have to do it cause I don't know the to-do's and to-don't's of those things"). He had some skill with home maintenance, enough to take care of the task at hand.

"Oh, and, uh," Arthur added, turning back as he'd begun to head toward the door, "just wanted to ask. That—that painting, in the bathroom." He wagged a finger, tried to look preoccupied with thought. "I swear I've seen one like it. I was just curious about the artist. Didn't see a signature." He looked point-blank at Max. "Where'd you get it?"

A curious, discomfiting grin pulled up Max's cheeks. He didn't blink as he responded, "Like it, do ya?"

Arthur's face fell in spite of his attempt to remain stolid. "Oh, well. Not really. Just, striking. It—it was interesting. Just forget I asked."

"Well-known around here. Local artist did it."

"Right. Ok, then. Thanks."

"Maybe get one for your family if you'd like."

Arthur nodded. "I'll think on that. Thank you, Max. It was nice to meet you. Appreciate your help."

"Enjoy your stay! Always here if anything else goes wrong!"

Exiting to the sound of the man's raucous laughter, Arthur blinked in the bright sunlight. He hadn't realized how dim it'd been in the hardware store, nor how empty. There were still no cars in the lot besides his own. Across the street, an elderly woman walked a small dog, and a bike whizzed by too quickly to identify the age or gender of its rider, but the town was otherwise still entirely sleepy. Perhaps that was the norm for a vacation town off the beaten track, though, and wasn't that what he'd wanted? How different from the bustle and chaos of Chicago! Arthur inhaled deeply, the fresh, clear, unbreathed air invigorating him cap-a-pie. Small towns were quirky. That was part of their charm, their allure. Blackswallow Beach was surely no exception.

Best to get back, though, he figured. Lilia would be wanting to use the stove, to make a shopping trip to pick up her cream and butter and lemon juice and expect a cold refrigerator to put them in.

As he approached the car, Arthur had the thought to look for a bird, or a tree branch, anything that could've caused the scratch on his head, but he saw nothing suspicious, and after carefully sliding into the driver's seat, he backed out of his spot and left Martin's Hardware for the short drive back to the beach house.