I haven 't seen my husband , Alcaeous , in three weeks . Al calls almost every day from the hotels , but it isn 't the same as having him home . We only moved into this house a few months ago . It was a huge house . It was too much space to be alone with all the time . I had to get out , and walk around . I had to meet new people . The house was at the edge of the city . There was a park near here with a long , paved trail extending out into the forest like the concrete spine of the river beside it , but the river was far older than these gray squares . When the hosue was too big for me , I often went for walks along the trail . From off the side of the concrete trail , just once , and down a ways against the river , there was a strange concrete marker . It was as narrow as a pipe , but square . It wasn 't shaped like a tombstone , but it 's the first thing that comes to mind when seeing it . It looked like a strange , thin tombstone . Written top to bottom , in plain block letters , was TESCOROW . I didn 't know what it meant , or what it was marking . My husband said it was something to do with some old oil or gas line , warning about their pipes underground . Al was an oil man , and he knew about these things . I wasn 't sure , though . I 'd seen the plates his company put on roads and access ports . There was nothing familiar about the TESCOROW marker . It was too far from the side of the road , and near a river that would be trouble for pipelines . How workmen would ever reach this place , before the trail was cut through the scrub grass and trees , and the before even the suburban sprawl came to push against these woods was a mystery . The marker was older than the trail . The concrete of it was worn and molded with moss in the cracks . I 'd seen bobcats on this trail , and coiled copperheads the size of bike tires . The snakes loved the heat on the concrete . They crawled up from the river to rest upon the artificial stones . I 'd seen dogs off leashes running ahead , gregarious and wild . This wasn 't a place for the oil and gas men and their machines . This was a place the animals held down against the press of the city , and maybe the trail would keep the developers from cutting down all the trees along the river . That we did not know the meaning of the marker in the woods along the river , I loved . Let there be mystery in the world . Let there be shadows in the trees , and shambling mounds of fallen leaves that might be shamble men . Of all the mysteries of the world , the one I liked the least was where my husband went when he flew around the world to tour his pipelines and wells . He called me from hotel lobbies , never hotel rooms . He called me from airports . He rarely called me when he was alone in a room , lonely in the dark . He said he just read reports , watched TV , or slept once he went upstairs . If he got really bored he 'd go to the gym , or the bar to watch sports . He never mentioned the possibility of a woman in his room . Alcaeous was the son of oil barons , shipping magnates , and the topless fashion models that clung to the decks of their beautiful ships . Of course he was cheating on me . Why wouldn 't he be cheating on me ? I had a house in the suburbs big enough to fit three or four large houses inside of it . I could call the company to send a car to take me in to the city whenever I liked to shop at expensive stores . Our children had trust funds to make grandmothers weep . I could drink fine wine alone on the large balcony overlooking the woods at sunset while my husband traveled the world , touring his pipelines and refineries for weeks and weeks . This was the way things worked , even if we never talked about it . Marriage was a contract , like a business arrangement . And , at least when he was home , he was only with me . I saw children on the trail , with paper sailboats leaning out over the water , placing their vessels into the gentle current , and then running along the sides to watch them go . The winner was the one whose ship went the farthest . I raced behind them a while , jogging to keep up with their boats . I wanted to see whose ship would sail the farthest . A fallen tree caught one of them in its branches . The boy whose ship it was , for a moment , thought of crawling out along the log , and releasing his boat . He came to his senses when the log shifted . It was a monster in the shape of a log . I saw it , and he did , too . Its branches were the heads of a small hydra . It opened one of its eyes and looked back at the boy , and at me . I didn 't run . I stopped and stared . It had an ancient eye , and some of its branches were tentacles with tiny mouths on the end . It was camouflaged as a fallen tree , but it was something older than a tree . It looked away from me , closed its single eye , and pulled all its branches together into a single trunk , like an alligator 's tail . It slipped under the water . The black moss along its back made it look like a chunk of river stones . On the phone , Al said that I saw an alligator , nothing more . It must have swum upstream with the warm weather . Farther down the river , hundreds of miles away , the alligators are natives to the water . Perhaps someone had released an alligator there , hoping the creature would swim downstream to its brothers and sisters . I tried to explain about the branching tentacle eyes , heads , and the transformation into stones below the water . My husband surrendered to me . He said , " Maybe you 're right , dear . " I knew he didn 't believe me , and he wasn 't going to fight me about it from a hotel lobby in the middle of Brazil when he had a woman waiting upstairs . There is still a mystery in the world , but my husband is no longer supposed to be one of them . When we were young , he was a young widower with soulful eyes , and I thought he was fascinating and mysterious - a vast interior country to be discovered and tended to like a garden . Now , I 'm nearly fifty . My children are grown . I wonder what happened to the sense of mystery in my husband , who is distant to me even as he is unknown . I wonder what happened to the sense of mystery I held over him like an Oracle 's incense . When he comes home , I would take him for a walk along this trail , and we would see if we could find the mysterious creature again . I wanted bring paper sailboats of my own . I wanted to make him place one in the water next to mine , where the boys placed theirs . We could search for the transforming creature again with paper ships like children . I felt it in the house when he was home . There was a low television hum , somewhere , or the sound of the weight machines clanking against each other . He was older than me , and he still went to the weight room every day . He still ran three miles before he had coffee in the morning . When he went hunting with younger men from his company , they were often surprised at his vigor . I was , too . I leaned into him at night , and it was like leaning into a tree trunk . I wondered at the roots of him , digging into me , and how gentle he was that I should come out unbruised beneath such strength . When he was a young man , his first family died in a car accident . It was his fault . He was drunk . He did twelve months of probation for it , and spent a lot of time in alcoholics anonymous , but it didn 't stick . He didn 't keep any pictures of his first family out in the house . There 's a box of them somewhere in the attic . I 've never walked in on him up there , with the pictures spread out before him of his lost wife . It 's like her pictures might as well be her ashes in a mausoleum . He should at least talk about it more , even if it 's the past . It should come up in conversation with him , sometimes , if he feels anything . Another day along the river , I see horse riders in the woods on the other side of the river from the trail . They 're riding slowly through the thick underbrush . They are dressed like cowboys , with chaps and spurs . They don 't have pistols , but they seem to be carrying bottles of Gatorade in the holsters . One of the men was whistling something , but he was gone and out of earshot before I could pick out the tune . I should ask my husband for horses . His mother kept horses when he was young . I didn 't see the monster in the water that day , but I did see someone had pushed a rotten tree over to cross the river on foot , along the rotten wood . It didn 't look safe . I thought about doing it , just to see what was on the other side of the river , but whatever I expected I 'd find was not enough of a temptation to lead me over the blackened bark and branches . I could see the kids with their sailboats running over , laughing at each other . Then , I had a thought : what else would the monster eat . I studied the bridge carefully . I threw a rock at it , and watched it for signs of motion . There were no squirrels , here , and no sounds of people playing . Bicyclists flew past , paying me no attention at all . The stones did nothing . I touched the log bridge with my hand . If it was the monster , it did not move . I looked up and down the river . One of the cowboys was visible , through the packed trees . He was drinking Gatorade and resting a moment . The way he sat on the saddle , and the way the horse stood , and the angle of it , I realized it could be a trick . The horse 's head could be stuffed and lifeless . The cowboy , riding in a saddle just a little too high on the animal 's back , could be a centaur in disguise , with false legs hanging off the sides of his own back . He saw me looking at him . He smiled . He took the brim of his hat and bowed a little , like a gentleman . When the horse took up again , I looked closely at the animal 's face . It seemed stiff , like the neck was moving a little wrong . The neck wasn 't in balance with the rest of the animal . So , there are still centaurs in the world , out past the trees , where there are neither roads nor travelers to bother them , anymore . With the invention of the automobile , I imagine it became easy to be a wild creature . People didn 't really go into the trees except at state parks anymore . These must be outriders , disguising themselves to watch for intrusions into their secret territories . I didn 't tell my husband about it , because he would call it a silly whim , and then , when pressed , he would agree with me . He is a very agreeable man , my husband . He does not want to fight with anyone . " Yeah , I will , " he said . " Thanks for the heads up . " He took off then , waving at me , indifferent . The farther away he got , the more I wondered if I was going crazy , or if he thought I was going crazy . I spent too much time alone , with my husband away . I should join a book club , or a church , or a church book club . I should take classes . Rich wives were supposed to take classes . I walked along the path , searching for signs and portents and strange things . The only weird thing was , I was there for over an hour , walking along the path , and I never saw the jogging man , again . He had either kept on into the woods , down to the end of the trail deep in the woods , or he had been intercepted along the way . My husband flew in late at night . I heard his key on the lock downstairs . I heard him entering his security code . I felt his weight in the bed , beside me , and his huge hands on my arm . I leaned into him , wide awake but afraid to speak . What should I say to the man whom I was feigning to sleep against while sniffing for old perfume . I wondered if there was ever a way to keep him here , forever : my husband , in my bed . He smiled . He took a long sip of his coffee . " It is as if the oil will never end . There is so much of it . As soon as it starts to run down , it becomes cost effective to burn sand to melt the oil out of it . Soon , I imagine we 'll be recycling oil from polluted lakes , curing them even as we continue our pillaging . The pipes are fine . Better than fine . I should retire . " It wasn 't unusual for him to carry a gun . It isn 't a shocking thing to say between us . We were wealthy beyond many people 's wildest dreams , in an industry that attracted trouble in dangerous parts of the world , and there were always risks associated with that . Kidnappers . Thieves . Protestors and activists that go too far . I do not carry a gun , but he does . He carries it everywhere it 's legal . It 's a normal thing for us , and without it he would feel like he had no wallet or watch . He 'd feel a little naked without it concealed in his belt . We walked to the trail . It was a nice day . The sun was bright . The wind was gentle and cool . We walked to the trail , and I peered over the edge constantly , holding my husband 's hand , searching for signs of the unknown things of the world . I showed my husband the strange marker , TESCOROW . Nothing else was on the trail but grass and breeze and joggers and dogs . We didn 't even see a snake or a bobcat . Perhaps the trail dogs had chased them all back deeper into the woods . And home again in the sort of comfortable silence that comes from thirty years of marriage . We did not need to tell each other what we were doing in the house . He wandered into the kitchen to make paella . I wandered into the bedroom to shower and put on a house dress and water plants . While he was cooking , his cellphone rang more . He wandered into the backyard to answer it , because he still believed his signal was stronger in the yard , even though it wasn 't any stronger anywhere . He had a good cellphone . It had a good connection anywhere in the world . Our house was made for a man with a cellphone . A late lunch on the balcony , I lit candles . I smiled and sipped white wine . The paella was like eating a tidepool . All the lost sea creatures trapped in the drawn away tide , boiled in the sun with rice the color of sand . " It doesn 't bother you to cry a little about the television and the news and all the people that died in that Tsunami you didn 't know . You never cry about someone close to your heart . Tell me about your wife . You never cry about her . You never even visit her tombstone , or the kids ' tombstones . You never cry about them . You never choke up in conversation to hide it . You never even seem to hurt . " " Tears are nothing . " he said . He was holding a bottle of whiskey like he was shooting himself in the mouth with it . I 'm his wife . I 'm supposed to know his moods . I don 't . Did he lose workers he knew ? Accidents happen on oil lines . Did people die and I didn 't hear about it ? Did I time my question badly . " I paid for this house . I worked hard for it . For you . " He sat down in a chair . He wasn 't shouting . He was talking to himself , falling softer . If it was his house , why wasn 't he ever here for any length of time ? His house was just another hotel , with another woman inside of it to comfort him . It was his house . It was in his name . I didn 't want it . I never wanted big houses , fancy cars , a business spread out all over the world like a hydra . I just didn 't want to be alone all the time . I wanted to grow closer together , not stagnate like this . I walked down to the trail , then . TESCOROW was still there , a marker without meaning , in the woods beside a river . The log bridge was there , now , beside the marker . It had migrated to the marker . It did nothing . I heard the sound of horseman riding at a gentle clip along the trail across the river . One of them slowed and smiled at me . His saddle was so high up the horse 's back , I knew . He was a centaur , I knew . He was going to carry me over the river , and away from the house and the oil company and the whole , boring mess I had made with my husband . I 'd live in the woods with him , eating wild roots and hunted game . He would have a penis so large it would make me scream like being destroyed . It would be more brutal than anything my husband had ever done to me . I 'd be tied to a tree , and hung there , with my arms braced with ropes , and some bench or bar to take the huge weight of the beast . I 'd be unable to walk . I 'd be broken like a horse . When he was done with me , he 'd feed me to the river . My husband would find my body , and maybe then he 'd cry for my sake . Maybe he 'd feel something about someone he says that he loves . The centaur smiled , and picked his way across the rocky water . The river was deeper than I expected , going all the way up to the knees on the fake body that draped below the saddle . He looked so friendly , with such a broad , wide smile . Maybe we 'd only be good friends . Maybe he 'd let me ride him like a horse , and he could take me to the top of the mountains where the eagles still flew wild . He didn 't leave the water to hold his hand out to me , next to the log bridge . I was doomed , and I knew it . But , this was the only way to know anything more about the mysteries of the world . I took his hand . I took my place upon the false saddle , in front of him , where his strong arms held me like a damsel in distress . Across , then , to the other side of the water , and his powerful animal body below me , stronger than a ship . At the other side , I heard my name shouted out , and a man so angry he could kill me . A man , not crying in pain . A man afraid and angry . There 's blood . Someone is screaming . It 's me . I feel no pain . Someone is not screaming . He is trembling . The horse 's back leg is lamed and bloody . The horse won 't move . I think the body is dead . The man on the horse is dying , too . He 's crushed under the weight of the false head . I was deposited just above him , but my leg is twisted underneath the weight of the horse 's body . He 's bleeding all over me . He pulled me from the beast . The blood was not mine . The horse and rider , a bullet passed through the leg , and into the beast . It had bled out . It was still bleeding . The man 's arm was moving weakly , but he was not going to survive with all that blood . My husband fired a bullet through the horse 's brain . Sawdust shot out from it . He fired again , this time through the rider . The whole centaur stilled . He struck me with the gun so hard the world spun away from me , and I could barely think . I don 't know if he meant to strike me , or if he was trying to grab at me with the gun in his hands . It hurt so much . His hands were trembling . Blood and sweat had flooded his skin . He was flush . More alive than I 'd seen him in years . All this time , I thought I was his wife , and I see that I was his possession . He never asked me if I was all right . He never checked if the blood on my clothes was mine . When we got home , we were both bloody . He couldn 't look at me . He stood in the room , looking down at his hands , the gun still in them . I said I was going to take a shower . Before I did , I opened all the liquor cabinets . I placed all the locked up or hidden alcohol that we had in the house on the kitchen table . He stared at all the bottle accumulating where we ate breakfast together when he was in town . The way his face looked , I couldn 't tell if he was ashamed of what he had done or furious with me . He didn 't move . He just trembled , holding his gun . Drink up , " I said . " You might as well . Drink like you would at any of your hotels . Drink like when you are having fun with your friends and your women . Drink like I 'm not even home . " He put the gun down next to the alcohol . He sat in front of all those bottles . " I 'm not an alcoholic , " he said . " I went through all of it , and none of those people were like me . It was a car accident . It was all an accident . It was fate . This was an accident , too . He was trying to kidnap you for ransom . I was protecting you . I want to keep you safe . " In the bathroom , I locked the door , and took a shower to get the blood off me . I thought about leaving , but then I didn 't want to leave . Not until I was sure he was passed out , drunk . He would look for me in the bathroom . I went to the balcony instead , where I could hide under the tablecloth we had left out there . I heard him screaming . I heard him tearing up the house trying to find me , but he couldn 't make it all the way up the stairs as drunk as he was . I waited for it to get quiet in the house . I wanted him to pass out , drunk . When I came down to find him , he was on the couch . The television was on . He was cradling a bottle of ouzo like an infant . There was vomit all over the carpet . I had some sleeping pills with me from the bathroom . I placed them into a full , open bottle of wine . I plugged my thumb over the lip and shook and shook until I thought all the pills might be disintegrated . I poured it onto his open mouth . It spilled all over his face . He gargled and choked and tried to grab for the bottle with his hands , but he couldn 't stand up . He couldn 't roll over . He swallowed some , and choked on it , choking it down . It was red wine , and it got all over his shirt . He was still wearing the bloody clothes from the woods . I guess that 's where everyone got the idea of the centaur blood , and a shirt . I smashed the bottle into the sink , with the other broken bottles . I turned the faucet and left it running , to wash everything away . I wasn 't arrested for it . I wasn 't even a suspect . I said that I had no idea he was planning anything . I said he must have been terrified of going to prison after shooting someone . My children came , and his company men , and they filled my house up for a time , surrounding the couch where Alcaeous had died without ever sitting on it . I was really lonely for a while , but then I got used to it , and my children came to visit sometimes , but they didn 't like coming to the house and nobody wanted to go on the walking trail . I sold the house . I live in a small house by my daughter to be close to my grandchildren . When I moved , I had to pull Megara 's pictures down from the attic , with her children , I arranged them all around me and looked at them . She had bruises on her arms in most of them . Her children always seemed to have marks on their skin , too . There 's one where the boy has a black eye and he 's standing in his father 's shadow , staring at the camera as if it will reach out and bite him . My husband looks red - faced in them all , like he 'd just been drinking .