Apples

Winner of our 2014 "First Line Fiction" short story contest. Learn about the competition, meet the judges, and read the other winning stories here.

Judge: James Gordon Bennett
His notes: Like life, Apples is nasty, brutish, and short. It’s also wickedly funny. Read it and weep.

I originally tried using Andrei Codrescu’s line: “I get kidnapped all the time.” I forced its content, though, and then scrapped it. James Bennett’s line felt more restrictive, but it offered the writer immediate tension and shape. I wanted to use that to pole-vault in an unexpected and, hopefully, humorous direction, away from the cross bar where an audience might fix its eyes. But this story is about what most stories are about—relationships. I wonder how so many couples cooperatively balance their changing bodies and wants. I wonder how many relationships alcohol has ruined. I wonder about Adam and Eve and how sex worked for them after being cast out of the garden—if they talked about it, if they had competing desires. But I didn’t mean for this to be a biblical story; it’s a story about relationships today. Mostly, I wonder what readers think—who they sympathize with, if they think Eva and Adam are going to make it. Because when I read this story, I first laugh at Adam’s situation, but then I worry that I’m on the gurney. I know there are other ways to read this; and I’m eager to see it a different way. 

—Sam Nelson

—

Strapped flat on his back on the gurney, Adam felt as if he’d been inserted into a kiln when his wife suddenly appeared between his splayed feet (his left shoe and sock were mysteriously missing).  

Adam’s black pants were hanging over the door of the oven, which was turned up to four hundred degrees, and his wrists were tied to the underbars of the gurney. His wife wore black leather and held a short whip that she dangled over him like a feather before snapping it back. Adam was alarmed at how much the whip and her hair looked alike. She leaned over and hissed at him. He could not stop sweating. 

“Apples,” he said. 

“What?”

“Apples. Apples. Apples.”

His wife, Eva, lowered the whip and sighed.  

“Already?” she asked. “We just got started. It took me an hour to get this ready.”

“I’m uncomfortable with this. It feels like too much this time.”

Adam’s head was near the oven, and he could feel the bars of heat running waves over his thin hair. He wanted a drink. 

“It’s supposed to be too much. It’s not like I’m going to kill you. Just hurt you for pleasure.”   

Eva lifted the whip again.

“Apples.” 

She dropped the whip and slumped into a kitchen chair. 

“I should whip you for being a wimp. This was all your idea, anyway,” she said. “You said you thought it would help things.” 

Adam had to crook his neck to see his wife over his feet. When he did that, he could feel the heat of the oven on the back of his head. It made him drowsy and thirsty.  

“Could you turn off the oven? Then maybe untie me. We can make drinks and talk it out.”

“It’s not even noon, Adam.”  

Eva stood up. She was tall with dark, curly hair that snaked across her shoulders. She looked beautiful and normal in tight, dark leather. Adam thought she looked good in anything she wore.  

Eva leaned over Adam and removed the pants from the oven door and threw them over his crotch but left the oven open and on. Adam sighed and felt the moisture in his mouth suck into the dry vacuum of his throat.  

She walked to the refrigerator, pulled a cheap bottle of gin from on top, and began to make two drinks.  

“You know it’s normal for couples to have sex less as they get older,” Adam said. The pants were warm on his crotch. He was still sweating.  

“I don’t want normal. If you wanted normal, you shouldn’t have married me.”

“It’s just that if we keep pushing it, trying to make sex crazier, then what’s next?  How far does it go? There must be something else we can try.”

“Does it matter what else if you’re not going to really try it?” she asked.  

“That’s not fair.” 

Eva squeezed lemon juice into her glass and dropped the lemon in. She stirred the drink with her fingernail then put her finger in her mouth to taste. The drink looked cool to Adam.  Gin was the most refreshing liquor.  

Eva left the second glass full on the counter.  She sat back down in the kitchen chair with her drink and crossed her legs. Adam could see the beads of condensation on the glass and wanted to trade them for his sweat. He wanted to tie his wife up and take her drink and then try this conversation again. He wanted to switch positions. He wanted to lecture her on the benefits of normal couple activities, and how it’s OK when things get boring as long as you have each other. But then he knew that wasn’t why she married him five years ago. People change quickly. The oven was still hot, though, and he couldn’t finish thinking about what he would say. All his thoughts moved to the gin on ice. 

“I’ll have an affair,” she said and sipped. 

“No, you won’t.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Could you please untie me? I can’t talk to you like this. I can hardly see you.”

“Doesn’t feel good, does it? Someone else in control. Men ask for it, but they actually can’t stand it.”

“Is that what this is about?” Adam crooked his neck, then felt like he would pass out, so he lay back down to listen.    

“You always pretend like you’re so go-with-the-flow, but the truth is you hate to give up control. Like a lot of men.”

“So you want me to be impotent?”

“Marriages are supposed to be cooperative, but you’re sinking and bringing us both down with you. You don’t lean on me or let me help us. And I’m bored. You drink too much. You do things your way. I have no control here, and if I let you steer this ship by yourself we’ll just be another alcoholic couple who sit around watching television and never fucking. I’m not interested in that. I didn’t sign up for this.”

“We’re getting older.”

“I’m not interested in that either.”

She took a gulp from her drink. The ice clinked against her teeth. Adam couldn’t think about anything else besides the gin. If he could be untied and have a drink they could talk this through. He’d give up control, anything, just to sit with her in clothes and drink and talk like a normal couple. 

“Right now, you’d rather have a drink than fuck me,” Eva said. She pressed the side of the glass against her cheek. 

Adam said nothing. He remained supine on the gurney staring up. A thin rope of web lined a corner of the ceiling, and the air vent was full of dust. He should clean it later, he thought. He tilted his head toward the refrigerator. There was still a quarter of a handle of gin left and his drink on the counter.  

Eva finished her drink and stood up. She put her hand on her side and pushed her hip out, so all her curves went in and out and all the way up. It was her shape that Adam loved most. What was wrong with occasional sex and television? Why couldn’t she see it his way and leave it at that?

“Maybe I’ll have an affair,” she said. She picked up the other drink and then walked over to Adam and placed the glass on his stomach, covering his belly button. He could feel the ice melt inside the glass and the cool ring of condensation pool in a rim on his belly. The thirst made him sweat more. He licked his lips. 

“You’re sick,” she said. She marched towards the front door and grabbed a long coat from the rack and pulled it over her leather dress. 

“Apples,” Adam said.

 She grabbed her keys and walked out of the house. She could wear anything and look good, he thought.  The oven was still on and open.  

Adam wished he had never said the safe word. He wished his belly button could drink. He wished he knew all of this would happen this way, but even then, he wasn’t sure what he could do about it. He jostled against the gurney and the bondage. The glass fell and broke on the floor.    

He continued to struggle against the straps as he heard the car start and then reverse down the driveway, the wheels churning up puddles from last night’s rain. He felt the heat on his head. He could wait for his wife to come back, or he could struggle. He kept trying to break loose from the gurney, even though he couldn’t.

Sam Nelson is a freelance writer and teacher in New Orleans. He studied writing at the University of Pittsburgh and now writes both fiction and non-fiction stories for local publications and magazines.