Chapter 8: Profile Shopping
The living room sunlight was a liar. It streamed through the bay window, dappling the expensive rug Eleanor had chosen, catching motes of dust that danced like something celebrating. Arthur knelt on that rug, the wool coarse against his knees through his trousers. The position was becoming familiar, a new and terrible neutral.
Eleanor was sprawled along the length of the sofa, one arm tucked behind her head, the other holding her phone aloft. She wore soft grey leggings and an old t-shirt of his, the fabric stretching across her breasts. The domesticity of it was the cruelest joke. The soft hum of the antique clock on the mantle measured out the seconds of his new life.
“Hmm,” she murmured, not to him. Her thumb scrolled, a slow, deliberate flick. The light from the screen played over her intent face.
Arthur kept his eyes on the weave of the rug. He traced a pattern, a swirling vine that seemed to have no beginning and no end. His mouth still held the ghost of that salt-bitter taste, a phantom limb of shame. He’d brushed his teeth until his gums bled, but it was in his sinuses, in the back of his throat, a permanent contamination.
“Look at this one,” Eleanor said. Her voice was light, conversational, as if pointing out a interesting bird in the garden.
He didn’t want to look. His neck muscles pleaded with him to keep his head down, to remain a lump of ignored furniture. But his head turned, obedient to a deeper, broken wiring. She tilted the phone toward him.
The screen was a grid of thumbnails, muscles and scowls and suggestive shadows. She’d tapped on a profile. The man was shirtless in a gym mirror, his torso a topography of exaggerated muscle, veins ropey on his arms. His swim trunks were low, bulging conspicuously. ‘Dominant, fit, hung,’ the bio read. ‘Know how to treat a lady.’
“Christ,” Arthur breathed, the word escaping like a leak.
“I know,” Eleanor sighed, a sound of faux sympathy. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?” She zoomed in slightly with a pinch of her fingers, centering the man’s groin. “Think I could even fit this whole thing in my mouth?” She asked it with genuine, breezy curiosity, as if inquiring whether he thought a new sofa would fit through the door.
A hot, dizzy wave crashed over Arthur. The image of her, on her knees, straining to accommodate something that monstrous—it wasn’t just humiliation. It was a vivid, technical impossibility that somehow made his own failure more absolute. He saw her jaw locked, eyes watering. The fantasy was violent and captivating.
“I… I don’t know,” he stammered, honestly.
“Probably not, but definitely worth the effort. He’s local too.” She gave the profile a like and scrolled again, pausing on another: a darker, more brooding man holding a tape measure suggestively near his belt line. “Ooh. ‘Builder seeks renovation project.’ That’s clever. Mark’s profile is so bland by comparison. Just a bunch of emojis.”
Hearing Mark’s name spoken so casually, in the same breath as these other men, did something strange to Arthur. It diluted the singular, terrifying focus of his jealousy, spreading it into a diffuse, endless anxiety. Mark wasn’t a person; he was a category. A standard. And Arthur was seeing the marketplace where Eleanor shopped.
“Are you… looking for someone new?” The question was out before he could stop it, thin and reedy.
Eleanor lowered the phone to her chest and looked at him, her head tilted. “Just browsing, Arthur. Window shopping. Is that a problem?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. They were cool, assessing. “You seemed to appreciate the last selection well enough.”
The reference to the kitchen, to his kneeling compliance, hung in the sunlit air. He flinched.
“No,” he whispered. “No problem.”
“Good.” She returned to the screen. “Because a woman has needs. Complex ones. Mark is… fantastic, obviously. But he’s busy. He has other jobs.” She said ‘jobs’ with a slight, knowing inflection. “I've been repressed so long, I need to broaden my experience.”
Arthur felt the rug fibers under his fingernails. He’d started picking at them without realizing.
“This one,” she said, her tone shifting to something brighter, more engaged. She sat up a little, swinging her legs to the floor so she was perched on the edge of the sofa, close to him. She held the phone between them, a shared secret. The profile showed a man in his forties, handsome in a weathered way, with intelligent eyes. His bio was longer, full of coy references to ‘mutual appreciation’ and ‘discreet adventures.’
“He looks… older,” Arthur managed.
“Experienced,” Eleanor corrected. “That can be nice. Different.” She bit her lower lip, thinking. “He’s a corporate lawyer. Divorced. Lives in The Cedars.” It was the affluent neighborhood on the hill. “I bet he has a beautiful house. A king-sized bed. No cheap nylon sheets.” She glanced at Arthur, a flicker of their old, shared domestic critique in her gaze. It was a gut-punch of normalcy.
She tapped the message icon. Her fingers, nimble from years of yoga adjustments, began to type. Arthur watched, hypnotized, as the words appeared on the screen.
‘Your profile caught my eye. You mention a love for fine wine and conversation. I have a rare ’95 Bordeaux that needs opening. Perhaps you could advise on the bouquet?’
She showed it to him before sending. “What do you think? Not too forward?”
He was being asked to proofread his wife’s solicitation. The absurdity of it was a towering, silent scream in his head. He stared at the words. They were clever, elegant, dripping with a subtext he understood perfectly. He imagined the lawyer reading them, a slow smile spreading on his face.
“It’s… fine,” Arthur choked out.
“You’re right, it’s a bit try-hard.” She deleted it with a backspace clatter. She thought for a second, then typed again, faster now.
‘Saw your picture. You look like you know how to use your hands. I have a knot in my back my husband can’t work out.’
This time, she didn’t show him. She just hit send. The whoosh sound effect seemed to echo in the quiet room.
She placed the phone face-down on the cushion beside her and stretched, arms overhead, back arching like a cat. The hem of his old t-shirt rode up, revealing a strip of toned, smooth stomach. Arthur looked away, but the image was already seared into him: the casual power in that stretch, the utter unselfconsciousness of her body in this space she had redefined.
“There,” she said, satisfied. “Now we wait.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and looked at him, really looked at him, kneeling there. Her expression softened into something that, in another life, might have been concern. “Your knees must be sore.”
He nodded, mute.
“Come here,” she said, patting the space on the rug directly in front of her feet.
He shuffled forward on his knees, the movement awkward and belittling. He stopped where she indicated.
“Good.” She reached out and tousled his hair, the way one might pet a dog that had performed a simple trick. Her touch was gentle, almost loving. It was worse than a slap. “You’re being so good about all this, Arthur. Really. I see the effort.”
A sound, pathetic and small, caught in his throat. The validation, twisted as it was, was a drop of water in a desert. He hated himself for feeling it.
Her phone buzzed on the cushion. A single, vibrant trill.
Eleanor didn’t snatch for it. She let it buzz again, a second time, before lifting it with deliberate calm. She read the screen, and a slow, triumphant smile bloomed on her face. A real one, reaching her eyes, crinkling the corners. It was the smile she used to reserve for when he’d brought her flowers for no reason.
“Well,” she said, her voice a low, pleased hum. “The lawyer has a free evening. Tomorrow.” She looked down at Arthur, her eyes bright with a terrifying, shared conspiracy. “You’ll need to make yourself scarce. Maybe a movie. A long one.” She tapped a reply, her thumbs flying.
Arthur knelt before her, the sun warming his back, and felt the last solid ground within him dissolve. The planning was no longer theoretical. It was logistical. He had a task: to be absent. He was the husband scheduling his own irrelevance, clearing the stage for the next act.
Eleanor finished her message and dropped the phone into her lap. She slid off the sofa, down onto the rug with him, so they were both on the floor. She took his face in her hands, her palms cool against his flushed skin. She searched his eyes, and he saw her own reflection in his pupils—small, distorted, and utterly in control.
“This is our thing now,” she whispered, her breath smelling of coffee and mint. “Our arrangement. I get what I need that you can't provide. You get to be here, with me, in all of it. In every part. Isn’t that better than being left in the dark?”
He couldn’t speak. He could only look at her, at the beautiful, familiar face that had become the portal to his hell. She took his silence for assent, because that’s what it was.
She kissed his forehead, a dry, chaste press of lips. Then she stood up in one fluid motion, picking up her phone. “I’m going to run a bath,” she announced, walking toward the hallway. “I want to be relaxed for my day tomorrow.”
She paused at the archway, glancing back at him, still crumpled on the rug. “Oh, and Arthur? The front door lock is sticking again. Text Mark, will you? Tell him to come by Friday to fix it. He can have lunch.”
Then she was gone, the sound of her footsteps fading toward the bathroom. Arthur heard the pipes groan as the tap turned on.
He didn’t move. He stared at the spot where she had been sitting, at the faint impression left on the sofa cushion. The sunlight had shifted, now falling across his own hands, pale and limp in his lap. Slowly, very slowly, he pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen was blank, a black rectangle.
He opened his messages. He found Mark’s name. The last text was from months ago, about an invoice for gutter cleaning. A lifetime ago.
His thumbs hovered. The lawyer was tomorrow. Mark was Friday. The schedule was filling up. He was the secretary, the keeper of the calendar.
He began to type. ‘Hi Mark. Eleanor says the front door lock is sticking…’
The words glowed on the screen, a stark, humiliating proof of life. He didn’t send it. Not yet. He just knelt there in the lying sunlight, holding the invitation to his own ongoing replacement in his hands, waiting for the strength to press ‘send.’ The bathwater ran steadily in the distance, a peaceful, drowning sound.