My soul is embedded in the hot braille surface of a motherboard, my flesh perforated by soldered connections. So much of our lives are ruled by diamond and sand, the silicate of unrealized promise. A diamond on the finger means forever, I will be with her forever, until my body fails. And sand rules our lives in so many ways as to be unnoticeable. The champagne flutes we click together after we are officially recognized as two beings now become one, the sand, soda ash, and limestone fired at high temperatures to become the mirrors we use to confirm our existence, and perhaps most pervasive of all, the silica contained in a PCB, a printed circuit board, sandwich of copper and fiberglass that brings the outside world into our bodies via the interface of screen and retina. I have walked on a beach in Hawaii wondering if the smooth sand under my naked feet would eventually make its way into a PCB, my feet one with circuitry printed in the near future, my eyes looking upon a billion miniature diamonds that would find their way to Taiwan, only to come back to me as a beautiful thirteen-hundred dollar sliver, smeared with dabs of late-night flesh, closed quickly when my wife walks into my office.

***

My wife is obsessed with Reddit. I would say addicted. I work from home, as does she. What we do isn’t important. Call it programming. We move characters around on a screen eight hours a day. I make eighty thousand a year. She makes ninety-two. Her slightly larger salary is due to her master’s degree in software engineering. I kind of snuck in under the garage door with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. We live comfortably in a 3 BR 2 BA 1,600 square foot home in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle. We are both in our early thirties. My life is everything I have ever wanted, everything I have ever dreamed of, everything my parents ever dreamed of for me. And I hate it.

***

My wife and I are struggling. I don’t mean financially, obviously. I mean emotionally, relationship-wise, trust-wise. When she isn’t working, she is on Reddit. She works in the kitchen, her MacBook Pro on the dining room table. I’ve told her seventeen different times I’d buy her a nice work desk, something made of real wood, not the MDF garbage, but she says No, insists she likes working on the dining room table. We get along amicably because we don’t argue about little details. I cook, she takes care of the house. We both take care of the dog. We like our living situation. But we are two strangers sharing the same square footage. It wasn’t always like this, not in the beginning, the initial crush of marriage, two young people living in the same space together, excited at playing grown-up.

***

Sometimes we do not see each other for several hours. My office is in the basement. I am on a lot of conference calls throughout the day, so my office is well-situated, away from any noise. She likes listening to the radio while working, I don’t. When I’m not on calls or working on a project, I have my weight set, a nice Gold’s Gym bench press. The basement is massive, my desk taking up very little space, so I do lunges, step-up exercises, calf raises, squats. It’s really like my own little world down here. I also have a nice two-cushion 84” wide chocolate-colored sofa, real leather, which cost $8,300 new. When she comes down, her steps are a warning. If I get bored with a program I’ve been working on, I’ll have a work tab open and another tab – silenced, of course – opened on Pornhub. She has Reddit, I have Pornhub. I mean I’m a guy. I have a two-tab pornography system. When she does come down, I have just enough time to close the second tab. If there is a heaviness in my groin from some 2min 47sec video, I’ll unzip and shoot in a matter of seconds, draining pearl into a cluster of tissues at the bottom of the waste paper basket hidden in the knee space of my work desk. I keep a pair of shoelaces in my desk drawer. Sometimes I’ll loosen my Taclites, remove one of the tight coils from the drawer, cinch it around my scrotum, thread it between my buttocks, and pull on the string with my left hand as hard as possible until I come, my semen like a motherboard, encoded with information, actions, commands. I have a full bathroom in the basement, with shower. If I need to clean up, I can do it in my bathroom, but usually a few Kleenexes will do before I push myself back into my boxers and zip up, all evidence safely tucked and forgotten. One moment I’m a psychotic person I don’t recognize, then I come and I’m a normal human being again.

***

I usually go up to the first floor around noon. We keep a pretty regular schedule. I’ll make sandwiches, or a salad, or whatever she wants. Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife. But what does love really mean? Does it mean something other than familiarity? A person you have grown accustomed to seeing every day, which is a way of not seeing? If so, I have forgotten what it is. I go up and she is there, at the dining room table, smiling, with Maggie, our dachshund, curled near her feet. When Maggie sees me, her tail sweeps the floor, but she doesn’t bother to get up. I look into my wife’s eyes as she quickly clicks a tab closed with her index finger, and I know she is closing her Reddit tab… perhaps she has a two-tab security system, as well? All couples have their secrets. There is a certain excitement in knowing you have a private self no one else is privy to. It’s necessary for one’s sanity. I make our sandwiches and we eat together, facing each other, sitting on chairs centered on either side of the table, her MacBook unmolested. We exchange pleasantries, ask each other about our day. Four more hours, she says, or is it me who says it, and it is all very comfortable and familiar and sickening. She does nothing that surprises me. Is this how my parents were when they were newly married? Is this how they are now?

***

I wasn’t a programmer when I met my wife, and she wasn’t a software developer. We were very young, both with mall jobs. I had just earned my bachelor’s degree and she had just received hers. We were both enjoying the freedom of not having to think about school, she was joyfully lounging in the sliver of time between her bachelor’s and her master’s. She completed her MA after we got married. But before all that, she was just a girl at the mall. I was shy, and had never been with a girl before, a virgin. She did not laugh, did not think it unusual. I worked for a chain that placed eyeglass lenses in frames in one hour, she worked at a pet shop called Paws & Claws. I’d go in on my lunch break, pretending to look at dogs behind glass, gently tapping at black noses, when it was really her I was looking at, sneaking glances when I thought she wasn’t looking. Eventually she caught on to me, we said hello, and here we are. Her father immediately took a liking to me. You don’t plan on moving from Seattle, do you? No sir, I said. Oh, good, good. We want our daughter close. And so it began, as all things do, innocently enough. We went on long drives, went to ice cream parlors, jewelry stores, florists, and movies, our canolaed fingers threaded together in a large overpriced bag of popcorn. Things tapered off after the first year or two, movies watched at home, jewelry an unnecessary afterthought. I saw this crazy thing on Reddit, they want to open a new methadone clinic downtown, doesn’t that sound like a really bad idea? Isn’t there already a methadone clinic downtown? I don’t know, my wife says – I don’t think so.

I wake at 4:45 every morning, with or without alarm. I have trained my body to wake a few minutes before the alarm. I have an intense dread of loud noises. I gently get out of bed so as not to wake my wife, slip on a pair of pants, a T-shirt, and my Birkenstocks, relieve myself, pluck a few Kleenex from the box in the bathroom, push them into my right front pocket, then retrieve the leash curled on a small table next to my nightstand. Maggie is waiting for me, buffing my pantleg with her nose, her excitement obvious. I clip the leash onto her collar, caressing her soft bible-leather ears between my fingers. Who’s a good girl, who’s a good girl? She is one of the few beings on this planet I truly love.

***

We’re out the door by 5am. The street is dark, illuminated only by the LED streetlight on the corner, four houses down, the light so faint it’s more of a suggestion, Maggie hovering eight inches off the ground, Withers height. It is perpetually 6pm in Seattle, whether it is morning, evening, or afternoon. I like the darkness, it suits me. Maggie trots forward into the Now, pulling me with her. Sometimes I’ll unzip and pull my penis from my boxers. I let it hang, pulsing against my T-shirt, getting harder with each stride. Occasionally a jogger passes. If it’s a man, I pay him no mind, but if the jogger is a woman, I look directly into her eyes, in the dark, searching her face for shock or recognition, willing her to look at me. I’ve never been reported. While Maggie squats against civility I duck into an alley, hovering behind someone’s garage, and masturbate until I come onto the dirt, or in the grass, wiping with the Kleenex I stuffed into my pocket. How many rhododendrons have I fed with my milk? How many women have avoided male on female violence simply by the act of a male masturbating? Masturbation is an act of kindness, not violence. Everyone has it wrong.

***

Late morning, three hours after having showered and dressed, my first break, I pour cereal into a bowl for my wife and myself, always her first. Sometimes I’ll blend a smoothie, whatever she is in the mood for. On weekends I’ll make pancakes, but never on a weekday, it’s too much of a time commitment. I look into my wife’s eyes as she is sitting across the table from me, and smile at her, wondering what she would think if she knew I occasionally walked the dog with my penis hanging out of my pants as female joggers blurred by me, unsuspecting. A man’s proper place in the world is achieved by violence, and when she smiles back, I forget I am an animal, that my brain and my feet are connected by neural pathways, bone, fiberglass, and solder.

***

I take the stairs two steps at a time because my wife bought kiwi from the supermarket yesterday, and I am excited to make a kiwi cucumber salad for lunch. It’s the little things that keep us together. My wife’s MacBook is warm, open, on a Reddit community page discussing ________, but she is not at the table. I call her name. Maggie, curled on her fleece dog bed near the Sub-Zero, lifts her head at the sound of my voice, as if my wife’s name were a subpoena. There is no answer. I check the garage, then open the door in the kitchen that leads to the backyard. I look from one end of the backyard to the other. She is nowhere. Did she walk to a friend’s house for a visit? But that isn’t like her, to leave and not tell me.

***

The first night was strange. I kept hearing voices, the refrigerator whispering unknown clauses. I gently grabbed her pillow and placed it between my legs, pretending she was next to me. I realized I hadn’t been alone in years, perhaps never. Home, with mother and father, then roommates in college, a brief failure at being single and renting an apartment, returning home, and then meeting my wife. Things moved in the garage of their own accord… was someone bouncing a tennis ball against the epoxy floor? I was too afraid to get out of bed to check.

***

In the morning, I rise, crack the backyard door open for Maggie, and shower. I do not take her for a walk. Walking her now wouldn’t feel right, as if I were celebrating a recent death by attending a funeral wearing a white suit. I eat but taste nothing. In the afternoon, during an interminable conference call, my supervisor babbling at me and three colleagues about a project that must be completed by Friday, I briefly tug at my groin through my pants, uninterested in either the call or my body, and rip the Plantronics from my head once the call is over. I lie on the sofa, staring at the unfinished ceiling of the basement, dark shapes moving among bikes we no longer ride and a Christmas tree folded into a dusty rectangular box.

***

It’s been three days since my wife disappeared. I’m afraid to call the police to report her as a missing person, it would seem too suspicious. Who waits three days? I honestly don’t know how I let the days get away from me, sitting on conference calls as if everything were normal. I enjoyed the first night alone, even if it was a bit strange, like staying at a friend’s house overnight, but I was miserable the second day. I was also afraid of being alone in the house. Maggie was comforting but I needed a human to talk to. I don’t know how to move forward. Do I miss her? Or do I only miss the idea of her? Her car sits ticking in the garage, her emails go unanswered. Her boss has called twice, though her phone is always on silent mode. Bubbles of texts explode like accusations. I’ve turned her iPhone over so I no longer see the screen. Her phone is exactly where she left it, sitting next to her MacBook, which I have closed shut. What if I threw them both away?

***

How long before her father calls the police for a safety check? Our electronic gadgets eventually become ankle bracelets, the traces of what we’ve done permanently etched into their memory. Her mother texted me this morning, something she never does. I’ve yet to open her text. I don’t want her to see READ because I don’t know what to say. I have done nothing wrong. But they would never believe me. How quickly would her father’s love for me turn to hate? Everyone is civil and we all nod yes in agreement but when it comes down to it, nobody trusts anyone. I open the door leading to the backyard once more, just to make sure I’m not crazy. Maggie looks out the door and then looks up at me, as if I have the answers. I don’t. You were always my dog, weren’t you baby, my knees popping like cap guns as I sit on my haunches to massage her bony softball head between my fingers. I don’t know where mama is. I feel wetness bunching in my eyelashes, clouding my vision. Even with Maggie at my side I feel totally alone.

***

Every time I come it feels like a crime. I kneel before the sofa, gripping the sofa cushions together with both hands. I squeeze myself between them, wetting the tip of my penis with saliva. I no longer care about the condition of anything. Material things do not matter if you haven’t anyone to share them with. I close my eyes and think of my wife’s back, her hind quarters, the darkness of her hair cascading over a shoulder, obscuring her face. I push violently against the sofa until I come inside the warm crevice created by my body and the soft leather nap. Emptying my liquid hate into the sofa, I am completely desiccated, a shell. I don’t bother cleaning it. I roll onto my side, half naked, peering under the sofa for an answer, but all I see are dust bunnies and dark things gathered in forgotten corners of the room.

***

Maggie has come down, her nose in my ear. I don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor. I pull my boxers and pants up and head up the stairs, two at a time, Maggie behind me. I twist the deadbolt on the back door and step into the backyard. I call my wife’s name, crying, pleading, please come back, please. Men are not meant to live alone, without a woman, it’s unnatural. We planted two Yoshino cherry trees in the backyard shortly after we were married, having no idea their fruit was dangerous to dogs. We planted them for their beauty, a common mistake. But Maggie is fine, stays close. The trees stand pink-white against the moonless darkness. What if she never comes back? I briefly entertain the idea of placing my SIG Sauer P320 in my mouth but Capricorns don’t commit suicide. I shout her name one last time, not caring about the neighbors. When I receive no response, I head inside and turn the back porch light off.

***

Once inside, I open a can of Iams Proactive lamb for Maggie, spoon it into her bowl, grab an IPA from the refrigerator, remove a bottle opener from the drawer, pop it, and then head towards my wife’s bathroom. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror. I open the medicine cabinet and tap two of my wife’s 10mg Klonopin into my hand. I swallow them with my IPA. I head downstairs, leaving the basement door cracked in case Maggie wants to venture down. Loosening Orion’s Belt, I remove all my clothing, calling her name as the constellations explode like milkseed across my face. Spent and completely nude, I open my top desk drawer, take a Phillips-head screwdriver from a small tray, place my anti-static wrist strap on my wrist, and ground myself to the conduit snuggled against the wall, housed fiber cable bringing the world into my basement. I remove the eight retaining screws from the CPU tower and slide the side panel away from the unit.

***

We planted the trees together, broke ground with twin shovels given to us by our parents, her father handing me my new shovel with great pride, may these last a lifetime. I didn’t realize how much I loved him until my father died, how a man doesn’t become a man until after his father dies. When I see our shovels standing in the corner of the garage, wood and metal sentinels, I cry for what I have become and for what I have lost.

***

I am grounded and fully plasticated now, the weight of my flesh no longer a concern. It’s so freeing, to not have to think about a body, about how delicate a body is, how vulnerable, how easily fingers are corkscrewed around a neck that screams destroy me.

***

My name is Anil Malhotra. My wife’s name is Ridhi Malhotra. We have been married eleven years. I am only now realizing I never really knew her, she has disappeared and I don’t know what I have lost because I never bothered to find out, never looked deep enough into her eyes to see my reflection. And did she ever know me, the thoughts I had in my head as I gazed emptily, uncommitted, into her eyes? I travel green neural pathways in search of my wife. I call her name with each step I take. I turn a corner into a darkened area of the system, a faint pulse illuminating a Kemet capacitor. She is very close. I can feel her whirring in the vibrations.

***

This is an excerpt from James Nulick’s new short story collection Lazy Eyes, coming this spring from ExPat Press.