My wife has been trying to tell me something by dropping Tylenol capsules into my whiskey bottle for three months now.  The sad thing is that I’m fatally allergic to whatever aceto-whichamacallit is in Tylenol.  The other sad thing is that I’m aware that she’s secretly trying to kill me.  Marjorie and I live in a suburb outside of Detroit, west side, Dearborn.  I work at a local university as a game theorist and teach courses on probability and statistics.  A game theorist does what all people do, except that he’s much more aware of it.  A game theorist decides what the best possible move will be in a given situation, as though it were a game.  For example, if I were trying to save my wife from a kidnapper, which I would never do, I would try to decide what the best possible moves would be to get her back most safely.  In this situation, despite what most people would expect to do, I would never let her, or anyone’s, own mother actually talk with the kidnapper because mothers tend towards hysterics in those types of situations.  My mother, however, would be a much better choice because she barely knows my wife, and therefore would have a calmer head to reason with.

          So I am a game theorist, and as a career, I try to figure out the best way to salvage people from large natural disasters.  Probability shows that it is not always best to send in help right away due to a person’s natural drive toward survival and resourcefulness.  It is more economical, that is, it is cheaper, to send in help after the poor souls have managed to do a bit of the work themselves.  In most cases, I advise government committees to save their money, and not do anything.  They like this, and so I stay employed, for—let us be honest—all educational establishments, such as my university, have ties to political figures.

          In any case, this is what happened, and I am only marginally sorry for it.  One cold June morning, since we have those in the bitter “Murder capital of the world,” as it’s been termed, Marjorie and I sat down to breakfast.  Well, I sat down to breakfast.  Marjorie is hardly intimate any more, and drinks her coffee as the toaster is finishing her toast, and eats her toast as she’s refilling her coffee.  So, I sat, and she remarked on something or other, and I said, “yes,” though I hadn’t heard her, and she left for work.  I really only work at work for about 3 hours a day.  I teach one or two classes a day, and the rest of the time, I play probability with various scenarios as I get drunk.

          After Marjorie had left, the kitchen, though it had lacked intimacy before, now became immensely frigid.  I had calculated the most efficient use of heating and air in the first part of the decade and had presented a lauded paper on the subject at Columbia University.  My wife, however, did not laud our application of the science in our own home, as my theory mostly consisted of simply not using the heating and cooling system. 

          To warm myself, I moved to the living room, sat at the couch to work, and poured myself a glass of whiskey, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders like a cape or a shawl.  I started to calculate the patterns of birds that have been studied so often, and tried to use game theory to figure out how a hunter could use probability to shoot the most birds in an hour’s time. After about an hour of jotting notes on my notepad, I went outside to the back porch to take a break.  Shooing my dog Lucky away from my green spittoon, I packed a cheek full of chew and watched the birds make their complex flights around the forest behind my house.  But as I fingered out the Tylenol tablet from my glass with my fingernail, I couldn’t stop thinking about my wife and what she must be up to.  She was a marketing manager for a fairly successful building materials manufacturer.  She wore suits and walked briskly as I often shuffled about our home with stubble.  We had two kids, twins, off and married, girls.  I was jealous of my wife because she was very successful and I putted around playing games with life.  There was one time when a pack of hippies who never moved from the 70’s to the 80’s, stood outside one of our conferences on The Dialectics of Game Theory: Deconstructing Financial Aid from Governments and Charities with signs, screaming things like “Down with Game Theory,” “Game Theory Equals Capitalist Hogwash,” and, my favorite “Death to Games.”  Protesters always sound illogical because of their emotional baggage.  One thing game theory always teaches is “down with emotional baggage.”  A person can die from emotional baggage.  Nevertheless, as I was saying, I couldn’t stop thinking about Marjorie one this particularly cold June morning, so I put on pants, kept the blanket, and headed to her office to see if we could get lunch.

          As I drove up to her office, my Oldsmobile sputtered to a halt next to her moderately outdated Jaguar.  I stepped inside and spoke with the receptionist, a grey haired older woman who was reading a magazine or a clothing catalog, I couldn’t tell which.  Women’s magazines have so many clothing advertisements these days.  I partially blame Reaganomics.  The receptionist told me to wait by the fake palm and that my wife would be right with me.  I stood to spite her, and then rushed up to Marjorie, clutching my blanket, as she came to the foyer.

          “Gene.”

          “Marjorie, I was wondering if we might catch lunch.  Can you get away?  I’ll make it worth your while.”

          “Gene, I can’t.  We have an office luncheon.  We have to discuss the launch of a new product: Crack Resistant Glass.”

          “Oh,” I said, “Well, I could sit in… probability might come in handy figuring out a market like that.”

          “No Gene.  It wouldn’t be professional, besides, are you wearing slippers?”

          “No, no, no, these are new.  They’re designed to look like slippers, for comfort.  I paid forty-eight dollars for these.”  They were slippers.

          “All right.  Well, I’ll see you when I get home.  I’ll bring Chinese take-out.”  I was surprised and excited at this prospect.  We hadn’t eaten dinner together in over a month.  She kept coming home later from work, and in the evenings, I was either drunk or working out proofs concerning earthquake scenarios in India.

          “Okay,” I muttered, turning back for the car.  But, turning back, I said, “Can I get a kiss?”

          “Not in front of my co-workers,” she whispered, “that’s gross.”  And I walked out.

As I was in the driveway, miserably trying to start the car, I saw Marjorie, arm in arm with a tall, blonde man wearing a foreign looking business suit.  He opened the door for her, which I realized in that moment, that I never do.  And she was smiling, something she hardly ever did.  And it was difficult for me.  I was silent as Adam was silent when Eve took the bite of the forbidden fruit.  Adam’s sin, the first sin, has flowed through men for generations, and now it had gotten to me.  And now I couldn’t talk with my wife.  I was no longer in the garden.

          I got into my car quickly and pulled out ahead of them, so that there wouldn’t be a second awkward goodbye with my wife, and I headed back for the house.  When I got home, I moped.  I drank and moped, and did very little probability.  I watched the news for large natural disasters and there were none, which meant no phone calls anytime soon.  So I lay down on the couch for a nap.  I dreamed a strange dream where I was wearing a business suit with a really sharp blue ties.  I wanted to show Marjorie, but when I found her, she was frowning at my tie.  She mentioned something unclear, but seemed to say that she hated me in blue ties, and that I looked gross.  So, I took off the tie and ran into the woods and hid under a pile of leaves.  My dog found me and I kept trying to shoo her away, saying, “Go find mommy, go on,” over and over again.  Finally, some commandos found me underneath the leaves and I beat them up with ninja moves that I only had in my dreams.  I woke up feeling shaky, as though I had too much sugar in my system, or too little.  I hadn’t really eaten anything; all I had had was coffee and whiskey.  Marjorie was coming in the door, and a car was pulling out of the driveway.  She didn’t have any dinner.

 

          “Sorry.  Robert and I got dinner.  We had to finish talking about the project launch.  I’ll fix you some macaroni.”

          I mumbled some kind of assent and then lay back down while I told her about my dream.

          “That’s ridiculous, Gene.  Commandos?”

          “Yeah,” I said, “big ones.”

 

I ate macaroni quietly by the computer and wrote an e-mail to the department chair saying that I felt sick and wouldn’t be in the next day.  After Marjorie left for work the next day, I sat on the couch in my robe calculating a game theory about adultery.  I decided on an idea that statistically could not fail in the case of adultery and then left the house to find my wife.  I parked and took a taxi to her office and walked around the back of the building looking in through the bushes.  She wasn’t at her desk, so I sneaked over to the break room window.  I saw her laughing and drinking coffee with Robert.  He touched her back and they left the room.  I stood there wide-eyed and lost.  I had enough.  I knew what I would do.  I tried to step down from a ledge where I was spying from and found my robe had gotten caught on a holly bush.  I ripped it free and ran around through the woods to my car.

          I was driving home thinking how to do it and then headed for Lake Michigan.  I parked by the bank there and waited for the anglers to leave for the day.  I went and got a sandwich and smoked in the car until it got very late.  I was trembling.  I put the car in gear and gave it enough gas to get it rolling into the lake.  I had left the car door open so that I could roll out, but my robe got stuck again, and I went into the lake with the car.  Four feet of water.  I stepped out of the car, shaken and soaked but not hurt.  I headed back toward the road and started walking toward a motel.  A week, I thought, give it a week.

The motel was great, quiet and comfortable.  I was free to do anything I wanted, so after getting out of my wet clothes and a warm shower, I went to sleep.  I woke up the next morning and bought supplies with my credit card, more clothes from Wal-Mart and whiskey from the local liquor store.  I started drinking early and phoned the local paper, pretending to be university staff, with an obituary I had always wanted.  “In lieu of flowers, please send telegrams to the wife with condolences.  The gravesite may be decorated by printings of fractals.”  I had always wanted fractals on my grave instead of flowers.  I waited a week.  I watched the local news mention the death of a local university professor on the swivel television in the motel.  “Body still missing, the man was hijacked and killed near Lake Michigan.  The hijackers drove the car into the lake to make the incident look like a suicide.”  It didn’t make sense, but at least the news was out.  At least Marjorie was satisfied.

I started following my wife, like a stalker, sitting outside our house, watching Robert drop by with flowers of all things.  Didn’t he read my obituary?  I waited two more days and then stopped by Marjorie’s office again on a Wednesday morning.  I crept out from the bushes to Robert’s car, crouching low in my newly purchased black hooded sweatshirt.  I looked under the car with wire cutters, snipped at a few important looking things, and waited until the office left for the day.  I watched eagerly as Robert got in his car and drove off.  I returned the next day and Robert’s car was back.  I had only cut some wires for lights or something.  This time I went back to his car and whacked the underside of the engine with a hammer, making sure no one was around.  I tore at the engine with everything I had, with all my love and hate, with desperation.  I watched oil drip like blood from the engine’s underside and, satisfied, I crept away again.  Not chancing another trip to the office, I watched the news and read the papers.  Robert’s car had wrecked on the interstate, killing him and another driver almost instantly.  Detectives said that the car was tampered with and that, by the look of the crash, Robert had been speeding.  Marjorie, which I hadn’t planned for, was with him.  She was in the hospital at St. Jude’s in the city with a broken leg and a fractured collarbone.  My ceremony had been delayed because they hadn’t been able to find a body and was scheduled, perfectly, two days after Robert’s funeral.  Marjorie, whom I constantly watched, attended both, and I showed up at the second.

          I watched Marjorie cry at my own funeral and it was touching.  It had worked out perfectly and I knew that she was mine again.  I stood at a far distance near the woods and watched her lay a fractal print on my grave marker, which I later read.  It said:

 

Here lies Gene Alabaster Finke

A man who calculated life and afterlife…

b. 1946 d. 1988

I cried at my own funeral.  I had lost everything and was about to regain it.  I had stripped away everything from myself and my wife for a greater good, a good that I had calculated and created.  I stood there in the cold waiting for my wife to leave.  She was the last person at the site and I watched her shoulders shake from the cold and from her complete devastation.  A natural disaster so to speak.  She’d lost everything.  Her safe husband and a charming lover.  I found out later, she’d lost her job as well since Robert had been the only person in the office keeping her there.  As she rolled in a wheelchair with one foot propped up in a cast away from my grave, I walked up to her and all was silent.  She looked and stopped.  She turned her head a little to the side, sighed at me, and began crying anew.  I walked up, grabbed her cold hand, and pulled her into my robe.  We were warm there in that moment.  It was good and I had made it.

          She didn’t say anything, and I said, “I’m alive,” which was evident, but all that I could say.  We went away together to the car and drove talking back to the house.  I would not tell her everything I had done.  We talked as if nothing had happened like old times, because the situation was too great to put to words.  We laughed and I held her hand over the console, and she smiled a lot.  I could not tell her the truth though.  We went home and made love, then sat on the couch drinking a bottle of wine.

          The wine weakened my senses, and I forgot what I had told myself.  I told her what I’d done and explained to her that I loved her and that I had done everything, taken everything, to win her back.  I knew that without a lover, and without me, she’d need something, and that something would be me again.  She was intoxicated and held her wine glass too close to her face.  She looked at me strangely through the convex shape of the glass and then smiled and curled into me. 

“I was never with Robert,” she said.  “He drove me home and flirted with me, but I didn’t want him.”

“What?” I asked, though I had heard.  “But you tried to kill me, with Tylenol tablets.  You know I’m allergic.”

“You’re not allergic to Tylenol, you’re allergic to penicillin.  And I read somewhere that Tylenol dropped in liquor drinks helps with hangovers.  You always complained.”

“I don’t believe…”

“But you’re here now,” she said, “and I’m happy again.”

 

The thing about game theory is that there are so many variables in life.  When calculating a scenario, one has to think of every possible outcome and then choose the best one.  Granted, my profession isn’t usually considered a moral one, but it chooses the greatest good.  I chose and won my wife’s heart.  We’d both lost our jobs, but were able to live on the insurance money from my death for a while.  We moved south, where it was warmer and got new jobs.  And I was never the same.  After those days in the June of 1988, I started adding emotion as a variable to every equation I ran and taught others to do the same.