The plate is what did it. George hated the damn thing ever since him and Hannah got married. She said her aunt told her it was a relic from the Civil War, that her great grandad had it in his pack when he was shot in the nose at Vicksburg. Horseshit. She probably bought it at some flea market and conjured up some make-believe like all them old Kentucky women do. The chipped, porcelain circle – white rim decorated with blue flowers – was a shrine to deception and fabrications. George couldn’t stand it.

Hannah was yelling when he grabbed it. She was starting in on him about drinking when he reached into the cabinet with all the ceramic dishes. He flung that damn plate through the dining room window. He was sure the neighbors across the street could hear it shatter, but he didn’t care.

He and Hannah stared at each other for what felt like centuries. Her mouth agape, eyes traveling from the window to him in disbelief. A breeze strolled in where the glass had once been. It was October, the season of death, and he felt powerful.

This was his last chance.

He moved quickly and silently, heading into the hallway and ascending the drop-down staircase into the attic.

“Go then!” she was yelling.

He removed the board over the hole in the floor and reached down, grabbing the duffel bag by the strap and pulling it over his shoulder. He checked the contents – clothes, some cash, several packs of N95 masks he stowed a couple of weeks ago – and then came back down the stairs. She was sitting on the couch, staring at her bare knees..

“I’m not coming after you again,” Hannah said.

“Fine by me.”

“You think I didn’t know about that bug-out bag?”

“I’m going to the hotel,” he told her spitefully.

She didn’t even watch him go. It wasn’t until George was in the SUV he heard a cry come up from the house, but he had already come this far. He turned the key and pulled out onto the road.

He made a phone call and then put on a Styx CD. A few months back, George had been standing in his dead father’s apartment. The complex had been one of those pathetic communities for seniors near the end of the line but too stubborn to live in a retirement home. The bachelor pad was unbearably tiny. The old man hadn’t even had room for a couch. George was thinking about his father having to watch Kentucky Wildcats games from his bed when he spotted the Styx album on the shelf.

The two of them used to listen to that CD on road trips all the time when he was seven or so, mouthing the words to “Crystal Ball” as they made their way to the campgrounds at Dale Hollow in Kentucky. His father had always made it seem that they were on the lam, running away from an overbearing mother and pointlessly difficult homework. Sure, their adventures always amounted to burnt marshmallows and mosquito bites, but still, both had briefly felt liberated from the chains of routine.

Now, as the headlights of George’s truck cut into the darkness toward the hotel, excitement danced up and down his arms. Glancing at the duffel bag, he saw an endless world of possibilities. A short stay at a lakeside Airbnb cabin. A new apartment in Santa Monica. Free in the way his father had never been.

He got to the Days Inn around 10. Andreas, a balding man with a wispy mustache and a drooping eye, was still the manager. He was wearing a cheap surgical mask. “Mister Delworth,” he said. “It’s been some time.”

“It has. Times treating you well?”

Andreas shrugged. “About as well as they’re treating anyone.”

George gave his fake laugh. “I hear that. Is my regular available?”

“I’m afraid 107 is taken up tonight. 109 is available, however.”

“Any difference between the two?”

“Just the view.”

“I’ll take it.”

Andreas ran his credit card and then gave him the keycard. “I’ll keep the other one for her,” he told him, flashing another keycard.

“Thanks buddy.”

George went to his room, took off his clothes, and grabbed a dress shirt and a pair of jeans from the bag. He liked how he looked in the shirt – it hid his paunch. He dug the bottle of Jim out of the bag and put it on the table. He looked around. As cheap and tacky as this room was, he felt safe here. For the entire night, this room belonged to him alone.

He poured himself two fingers, drank it iceless in a gulp, and then poured himself another pair. George knew he shouldn’t get loaded but decided he would make himself a little loose for what was to come.

An hour went by. He poured himself another drink. He knew she would come. All the women in George’s life had been like that: imprisoned to patterns. They’d put up a fuss when he acted out of turn, but in the end they couldn’t resist the intrigue, to see what dark and delightful places his whims would take them.

He heard the click of the key reader a little after midnight. She stepped inside. Blonde hair tied up into a bun, stunning blue eyes. Her N95 mask hid what he imagined was a familiar and disapproving frown he always found sexy. She was wearing jeans with a hole over the left knee and a T-shirt featuring Jack Skellington’s face. It was an old shirt. He remembered seeing her wear it in high school.

She stared at him for a couple of seconds, sitting there in the chair with his glass, before tossing her purse on the bed in exasperation.

“Well, your wrists aren’t slit, so that’s something I guess.”

“I think Domino’s is still open if you want to order pizza,” he said.

“What are you thinking calling me at 10 at night? You woke me up. You almost woke Terry up.”

“To hell with Terry.”

“To hell with you, George. I gotta get up in the morning to open the salon. You don’t get to call me up in the middle of the night anymore. This has been dead. For a long time.”

“I was being stupid when I ended things.”

“Being stupid is your whole life story but that’s not my problem.” She sat down in a chair at last.

He took a sip of his whiskey. “Why you gotta be like this? I was vulnerable and I called you.”

“Is that supposed to be a privilege? Be a big boy. Get a therapist. Or a prostitute. Or whatever it is you need and leave me out of it.”

“Can’t you just listen to me for a few minutes?”

“It’s midnight. I came out here because I was worried about you.”

“Maggie, just look at the bag.”

She looked over at the bed. “I see an old-ass duffel bag.”

“My clothes are in there. Some masks. Money. I was thinking we could do that thing we always talked about for all them years, y’know?”

“What thing?”

He downed his glass. “We get out. Go west. To California.”

She laughed. “In the middle of a pandemic?”

“That’s what the masks are for! And why not now? My job’s gone to shit. They’re probably going to start firing all of us soon. Gas is cheap. Hotels are cheap. We can get away, Maggie. Go live somewhere where civilization amounts to more than a dying mall and an Outback Steakhouse.”

“We’re both married,” she said. George’s heart started racing. She wasn’t angry anymore. She was considering things. He had an in.

“We don’t have no kids, and we don’t love the people we’re with.”

She shot him that look.  “How do you know who I do and don’t love?”

“Tell me, God’s honest truth, do you go home and look at Terry the same way you look at me?”

“And how do you think I look at you?” she asked spitefully.

“Angry and hungry and more than a little sad.”

“You sure seem to think a lot about yourself, don’t you?”

“Don’t give me that. You know I feel the same way about you.”

“Oh I do, do I?”

He poured himself another drink and then grabbed another glass.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m pouring you a drink,” he told her.

“I’m off the stuff. Have been.”

“For how long?”

She shrugged. “Two years, I guess. Ever since our thing was done.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. See? That’s what I mean.”

He could feel control slipping away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You say you love me, but you don’t even know something important like that?”

“It’s not like you were advertising it.”

She looked him directly in his eyes. “You haven’t even reached out. Haven’t talked to me, none. You talk about love, but you don’t love me. You don’t want to be with me. You’re in love with a bunch of moments that happened a long time ago. They’re gone now. You understand that? Those people, they’re not here – we’re not them.”

“Maggie, come on.” He took a sip.

“I’m real sorry your life is hard right now. I’m sorry about your daddy and your job and the pandemic, but have you thought about how Hannah feels about all this? How things are hard on her too?”

“I don’t care what Hannah wants. She’s an asshole.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“You don’t know her like I know her. Always resenting me. Always demanding things from me when I just want to be left alone. When I want to be out in the world instead of dying in this excuse of a town.”

“None of that’s her fault.”

“I want out of things with her. I want out of things in this boonies-ass place. I know you gotta feel the same itch. Maggie, where we going from here? We either spend all our years here with people we shouldn’t be with – like our parents did – or we get out now.”

She looked at the bottle, back to him. “Miss me with that Born to Run crap. What do you think is going to be different out in California? Let’s say I did go with you. How long do you think it would take for me to get on your nerves or for some pretty thing to catch your eye? Would we even make it across Oklahoma before you dumped my ass at a gas station?”

“Of course not,” he said, not meeting her eye.

“Of course not he says. How many times have you told Hannah you wouldn’t leave her?”

He didn’t say anything.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Maggie.”

“Maggie nothing,” she said, coming around to sit on the edge of the bed, near him. “What would you do if I went into that bathroom and came out naked.”

She gave him a few seconds. He didn’t answer.

“See? You don’t even want to fool around. You just like the fantasy of running away from what is into what could be. There’s no shame in that. But people grow up, George,” she said, gently putting her hand on his knee. “We had our time. When we were young. It was a good time. I don’t know if you’ve ever been capable of really loving another person, but I did love you and I still love the things we had together. But it’s all gone. You went left and I went right. If something was meant to happen, it would have happened.”

“But something could still happen. We could have that life, y’know?” He reached for the drink but she grabbed his hand. “Stop,” she said. “Baby,” she said in that old, gentle way she used to say things. “Stop.”

He put down the glass and stared at some chipped wallpaper for a few seconds and sighed, rubbing his face with his hand. “It just feels like all the good things I told myself I’d have when I was older – they didn’t happen. I was gonna leave and go become a lawyer or something, move somewhere far away with a woman I love. New York. Los Angeles. Instead, I’m a middle manager at a cold calling company who’s about to get axed.”

Maggie patted his back gently. “You think it’s any better on my end? How many people come to get haircuts during a pandemic?”

He looked at the ring on her finger. “Why did we settle, Maggie? Tell me that? We wanted the world.”

“I don’t think of it as settling,” she told him. “I think of it as dismantling.”

“Say what?”

“We were told all these things, right? About how important it is to be rich and shit or have a family and kids. I started thinking about that. It’s someone else’s idea of happiness, not mine. Everyone just tried to make it my idea of being happy.”

“Well, what is your idea of happy then?”

She shrugged. “More or less what I got now.”

“You don’t love him. Terry, I mean.”

“I care about him. That’s something. I want him to be happy. He wants me to be happy. We eat dinner together, we watch our favorite Netflix shows every night snuggled up. It’s comfortable. I feel like I wake up and walk across steady ground every morning on the way to make breakfast.”

“How suburban of you.”

She pulled her hand back. “You don’t have to get nasty.”

“Isn’t there the slightest chance you could come away with me, and we could be happy?” He could hear himself begging now. He felt weak, disgusting.

“Sure, but for how long, George. Really? How long?”

He couldn’t answer her. He tried to lie but he couldn’t. Not about that. It wasn’t in him. The last flame was flickering now.

“I’m going with or without you,” he said at long last.

She looked at him. It was the saddest look anyone had ever given him that he could recall. “I can’t stop you. The least I can do is not help you hurt other people. I can’t build my joy on someone else’s misery. Nobody can. I hope you learn that. I really do.”

She got up and took her purse.

“Maggie,” he said. But she was already out the door.

He was alone again. For a while he just stared at the closed door, waiting for her to come back. “Fine,” George said after a time. He picked up the cup and hurled it across the room. It shattered against the wall, shards of glass spraying everywhere. He took three big gulps from the bottle and then, after a big belch, collapsed onto the bed.

When he woke up, the sun was rising. His head felt as big as a melon. George managed to fight the urge to vomit and packed the whiskey bottle into his bag. He had a handful of fingers left in there and it was a crime to waste a good drink.

The lobby was empty when he dropped his key off. He left 20 bucks to cover the cup but figured they’d charge him an outrageous fee anyway.

He went out to his SUV and threw his bag in the back of the vehicle. It wasn’t until he came around to the driver’s side he saw the small sheet of yellow notepad paper held in place by the windshield wipers. Gently he plucked it from beneath the wiper and unfolded it. JUST COME HOME PLEASE, it cried in painfully familiar curves and angles.

He stretched the paper out, ready to tear it up and sacrifice it to the wind. He stopped. Who would that cruelty serve, really? He’d just feel bad about it later. He put the note in the passenger seat and pulled onto the road, heading in the direction of the interstate.

He turned on Styx again and drummed his fingers on the wheel. He figured if he drove all day could make it down to Evansville and sleep there for the night. Maybe be in California in four days or so. Work would call later, leave voicemails, texts. Ask why he wasn’t answering emails. He smiled imagining the look on his boss’ face when he realized that George had snuck out of his cell before they could put him beneath the guillotine.

He came to the intersection. A few cars lined up behind him. All he had to do was turn left and there was the interstate. Then all that would be separating him from all he had been and what he could be was a few thousand miles of asphalt.

The light blinked yellow. He looked to the right, over at the passenger seat. The note screamed at him in capital letters, begging. He looked above the note, through the passenger-side window, in the direction of Hannah and home and everything he had ever known.

The light flashed green. He tried to lift his foot off the brake. But it was heavy. Heavy as an anvil locked inside a safe.

All he had to do –

Behind him, someone honked their car horn. Then someone else’s car horn went off. George lifted his foot off the brake.

He turned.

– Javy Gwaltney