The Articular Bleed

Gerald's thumbs were bleeding. The doctor called it 'articular bleeding,' a fancy way of saying the joints in his thumbs were slowly self-destructing from twenty years of corporate espionage. He stood in the produce aisle of Whole Foods, staring at organic spinach, wondering when exactly his life had become a parody of itself.

He was supposed to be spying on his wife's phone — she'd been distant lately, coming home late from her gallery job with vague stories about 'installations' and 'artists.' The PI firm he worked for had taught him everything about surveillance: how to clone a SIM card in under three minutes, how to plant GPS trackers without leaving prints, how to read someone's emails without triggering the alarms.

What they hadn't taught him was how to unsee things.

He picked up the spinach. Five dollars. For leaves. His father, a proper welder, would have laughed himself into an aneurysm. Gerald placed it in his basket anyway, because that's what you did when you were forty-two and suspected your wife of having an affair with someone who understood art, someone who didn't have bleeding thumbs and a drawer full of burner phones.

The PI work was supposed to be temporary. Just until he saved enough for law school. Then his first divorce happened. Then the second one. Now he was the guy people hired to follow their spouses, the human equivalent of a rash.

His phone buzzed. A text from his wife: 'Dinner with the girls tonight. Don't wait up.' Gerald felt that familiar tightening in his chest, the one he'd been feeling for months. He could track her phone. He knew he should. It was practically his job description at this point.

Instead, he stood in the checkout line behind a woman with a crying toddler and considered the absolute absurdity of spending his Saturday night stalking the woman he'd promised to love until death. His thumbs throbbed.

At home, he made himself a spinach salad, ate it standing over the sink, and washed it down with the remainder of a bottle of whiskey that cost three times what the spinach had. He sat on the couch and stared at his phone, willing himself to just call her, just ask her what was wrong.

But spies don't ask. Spies watch. Spies wait. Spies gather evidence and present it in neatly organized PDFs.

Gerald spread his hand against the wall, palm flat, feeling the cool plaster against his sweating skin. Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he'd plant the tracker under her car bumper. Tomorrow he'd clone her phone.

Tonight, he'd sit in the dark and wait for his wife to come home, pretending he didn't know exactly where she was the entire time.