Entrepreneur’s Lament by Peter Grimes

I started an agency to investigate my wife’s future lover. Her name is Claire. We don’t yet know his name. We haven’t snapped his face. I am the only one who could have started this business. I had the vision. I had the fear. I work out of my home.

“Will you be you dead?” my sole employee wants to know. “Was it He who killed you?” We call him Him, or He, depending upon the syntax of the moment, in flagrante delicto, and so forth. “At some point, I will be dead,” I tell my employee and he drops the line of questioning.

I need only one guy working for me right now. I don’t want it getting around my wife has a future lover. Maybe if I get less certain, I’ll hire more.

“In the Case of the Possible Death of Your Sole Employer”: That’s the section my employee’s examining today and tomorrow, possibly Wednesday. It eases his mind. I tell him to examine or analyze, never devour. This is my life we’re talking about.

My wife may or may not, at this time, know her future lover. Logic already told us that. It’s just the may part that gets me expanding, keeping my options open.

I read philosophy: “The future is born in the present, which was born in the past.” I was born in 1976, which means nothing. Yet, nothing means nothing.

On Mondays my employee and I—his name is Frank—so Frank and I—my name is Mike, okay?—it’s not a secret, on Mondays we sift through the previous week’s surveillance. Most footage is shot at the workplace, because 34% of all affairs are born at the place of employ, the home away from home, the alternative home. The percentage increases when the adulterer loves the job. Always, always love for work will shift to a coworker.

I love my job as a toe loves its corn. Frank I do not love, for it is hard to love the man who thrives on your weakness.

I leave notes for Him, though my pen is limited to the present. I practice cursive to disguise myself. In 71% of cases, future lovers know more about their rival than the other way around. And so I started the agency.

Once you start a business you don’t know when to fold. Once you start a letter you don’t know where to start. It’s on a case-by-case basis even when you have only one case.

“How do we know he isn’t active now?” Frank torments me. “How do we know there isn’t more than one?”

I have been suspicious of Frank, but what I tell myself—what I tell Frank—is that my life isn’t a murder mystery. Suspects need not be introduced in the first act. There are no acts, only indiscretions.

Someone said that to pursue happiness is to pursue folly. Fifty percent of small businesses fail within the first year, ninety-five percent within five. Sixty-seven percent of adulteries happen close to the home, especially if home is close to work. Claire works as a receptionist within walking distance of our brick rancher.

Taken as a whole, laid out on a spreadsheet, the percentages don’t add up. It is possible, or certain, that I am my wife’s future lover. It is possible or certain that I am not. It’s a matter of sorting myself out from others. The camera footage is dodgy, and the letters are even worse. No one writes by hand anymore.

Frank fears I will let him go, so I wonder sometimes about the evidence he brings. Typed notes: “5:30, the usual place?” “I heard Mike works late lately . . .” “I never would’ve guessed you wore pantyhose.” Perhaps he fabricates these clues to keep himself employed.

I started a business because I had a dream. I had a dream because my mind was uneasy.

I fire Frank on Tuesday. I hire Jack on Wednesday. I close up shop on Thursday. This is my cycle. The overhead is low, and unemployment is high.

When my wife brings me lunch each day just past noon, sweeping into my home office, on break from her office office, I am suspicious. I can’t help it. “Where is Frank?” she asks. “Where is Jack?” I was raised to feel threatened by characteristic behavior, quests for information.

I spread the roast beef to look for powder. She thinks I’m checking for mayo. She rubs my trapezoids and calls me a hard worker.  She thinks I’m writing a book. Today she smells like the lavender I picked in 1993 and tried to tie back on the stem, and she folds her legs, foot under calf, and she brews tea. I slip her love notes she pretends not to notice, my fortunes—“Yes, I will love you tomorrow.” “Thinking of you.” “My five-year plan: Darling Claire.”

When, on slow days at the agency, when I feel uncharacteristically calm, when I close up shop for the day and fire Brandon, or Nick, or Billy, when I am not threatened by her beauty for a few hours, and at lunch break I ask her to lower that strap, when I snap a risqué photo, when I surveil my life and find it full of wanting itself, when I start a business, when I start a business. Then what?

Peter Grimes is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where he teaches fiction writing and edits Pembroke Magazine. His fiction has appeared in journals such as Narrative, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mississippi Review, and Sycamore Review. Recent stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Memorious, Tahoma Literary Review, and Fiction International.