Diane Payne

Simple

He knows he shouldn’t do it, but that doesn’t stop him. He draws a line on a bottle of gin to keep track of how much his lover is drinking, assuming she’ll drink too much to notice the lines, and he’s too far removed to notice the lines she has already drawn in bed, rolling over, staying on her side.

“I only had one,” she says before bed.

“Oh, that’s your favorite line,” he hisses.

Beneath her pillowcase, she finds a piece of paper with one line: You are out of line. She writes him a note with one line: You have crossed the line, a note he finds crumpled in his shirt pocket. All day they think of the origins of the word line, all the times they’ve heard the word used, and both remember the line drawn on the gin bottle, a first for both, something to be added to the life line: His will say: March 14, 2006: Draw line on gin bottle. Hers will say: March 15, 2006: Found line drawn on gin bottle.

March 20, he opens the cupboard and finds the notebook paper rolled up inside the otherwise empty gin bottle: It’s not like I’ve been snorting lines all day long.

She’ll never let him forget those months. At first, it was somewhat of an experiment for both of them. Pour some here, sprinkle some there. Snort, lick, pant.

After awhile, they grew irritable from rarely sleeping, from rarely having money, and she made it clear she’d never live with an addict.

Such strong words for such a pleasurable experience.

But she meant it.

It’s been years since he’s snorted a line. He looks inside the bottle, wondering if she sprinkled some on the bottom, just to test him. If only he could be so lucky. All that’s left is the smell of gin.

He knows this may not change things, but he goes to the pound and adopts a dog. “He’s a little bit of everything. Long line of ancestors. Most of them have probably ended up here also,” the woman says before releasing him.

The dog jumps into the truck and sticks his head out the window, as if he’s been riding there for years. “Nothing can be this simple,” he says, surprised he feels remotely hopeful. “You’ll keep us in line,” he says, petting the dog.

Oddly enough, Diane enjoys a cold beer but lives in a dry town with her teenaged daughter, who has no use for beer, and several dogs and cats who also don’t mind the absence of beer. She is the author of the novel Burning Tulips, and has been published in hundreds of literary magazines. You can find more about Diane here.