An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke Page A

called Anne Marie to ask her to drive over a spare key.
    Anne Marie answered the phone. It was Wednesday afternoon, four o’clock or thereabouts. She smokes a cigarette in the morning, another before dinner, and a third last thing at night, and she must have just smoked one, because her voice came at me like a distant train, a lovely, throaty rumble bearing down on me through the receiver, and it made me happy and hopeful just hearing her say, “Hello?”
    “Hey, Anne Marie, honey,” I said, “it’s me, Sam.”
    “Sam,” she said, “are you having an affair?”
    That question stabbed me and changed my mood immediately. Oh, happiness can turn to despair so quickly it’s a miracle we don’t pull a muscle or wrench a neck with the suddenness. I was about to say, No, of course not, don’t even think it , when it occurred to me that by not ever telling Anne Marie what I’d done to the Emily Dickinson House or Thomas Coleman and his parents, I was having an affair of sorts, an affair with all the betrayal and the guilt if not the woman and the sex. Yes, I was in bad shape, my mind a clogged drain, and so it’s possible that I didn’t respond to Anne Marie for a few seconds or even half a minute, and finally she cried out, “You are having an affair, you are, it’s true!”
    “It is,” I said, and this was more bumbling on my part. I meant my response as a question, but maybe it sounded otherwise, like a statement, a confession, because Anne Marie started crying harder.
    “No, no,” I said, snapping to a little. “Of course I’m not having an affair. Why would you think that?”
    “Well, for one,” she said, “you went out of town on business.”
    “Yes,” I said, “that’s true, I did. I told you that. You knew that.”
    “Sam,” she said, in that righteous, cocksure tone we use when we’ve known someone too well for too long, “I thought about it while you were gone. You’ve not once been out of town on business in your life.”
    This wasn’t true, exactly. My first year at Pioneer Packaging, I was sent to do a product demonstration, and the thing I was sent to demonstrate was that unbreakable mayonnaise jar. I demonstrated the hell out of it and wouldn’t rest until I’d dropped it from places low and high, bounced it off concrete and blacktop. Before I knew it, I’d taken up the better part of the day, and the potential clients were a little tired around the eyes and they didn’t buy the product, either. From then on the higher-ups at Pioneer Packaging always sent other people out into the world to meet clients and attend conventions, while I stayed around the plant. So as with the adultery, Anne Marie was wrong in letter but right in spirit, and the more I thought about it, the more this true story of mine sounded like a lie. But still I persisted.
    “But it’s true, it’s true,” I said, and started telling her about the sausage casing I’d designed, how it preserved the integrity of the meat in a way that no other casing ever had, but Anne Marie interrupted and said, “You’re lying. I don’t believe you.”
    “Anne Marie,” I said, “honey, you’ve got it all wrong. All of this is just a big mistake. I love you so much.”
    “You just shut up,” she said. “He told me you’d say that.”
    “Wait,” I said. “Who did? Who said I’d say what?”
    “The man whose wife you’re sleeping with. He told me that you’d say it was all a big mistake. That’s the other reason I know you’re having an affair. Because he told me so.”
    “Who is this guy?” I said, grateful that I had another lying man to focus on. “What’s his name?”
    “I’m not going to dignify that with a response. You know who he is.”
    “I don’t, I don’t,” I said. “What’s his name? Please tell me. Please .”
    And maybe I sounded sincere; I mean, I was sincere, but maybe I actually sounded that way, too. You can never tell how you sound over the phone, that evil piece of machinery,