Last Call at The Thirsty Pelican

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

Last Call at the Thirsty Pelican

By Royce F. Houton

Copyright 2025 Royce F. Houton

2016

I probably should have learned my lesson after the second or third or even the seventh time she didn't come home until well after 2 a. m.

The last time, on Tuesday, the sun was about to crest over the hills and barren trees and into the late winter sky and I had begun heating up water to do a pour-over cup of coffee before showering and heading to my downtown office when Siobhan Weeks pulled into the driveway.

She slid the key softly into the lock and turned it in slow, deliberate increments so that the tumblers would make minimal noise, before she turned the handle -- again, in minuscule gradations -- and inched the door open, hoping the hinges would not creak.

Siobhan had removed her stilettos on the porch and held them in one hand as she tiptoed inside, her feet sheathed in yesterday's pantyhose, now featuring a prominent run in the front of the right calf, hoping that she might pull this one off; that she could make it to the sofa, lie down, pull a throw blanket over her; that she could pretend to have fallen asleep there during the night. That way, she might mitigate my scorn over this sunrise walk of shame into the house we've shared for half of our 24 years of marriage.

"I'm making coffee," I blurted out suddenly and loudly, shattering the natural, early quiet of dawn before mankind's machines filled it with noise. She shrieked and one of her shoes clattered onto the hardwood floor. "Want a cup?"

"JesusChrist!" she gasped, her face pallid, her mouth agape, her breathing quickened and her eyes wide and wild, shifting nervously in every direction like those of a trapped animal. "Don't scare me like that!"

"Or maybe you'd prefer something from the liquor cabinet? A little 'hair of the dog'? Or even keep the buzz going? You look jumpy. Might even calm your nerves."

"We... I... I was...," she babbled before I cut her off.

"No. No. Don't further humiliate yourself and insult my intelligence in the process. We both know there's no good or decent reason to be creeping into our home at sun-up with your shoes in your hand and your lipstick and makeup smeared all over your face like a Jackson Pollock painting," I said as I approached her with my arms folded. "Better for both of us to leave this lie untold."

As I spoke, Siobhan's countenance morphed from startlement and fear into indignance. I suspect it's because she knew I wasn't guessing, I was stating fact as cold and hard as last night's stale booze on her breath or the cigarette smoke permeating her clothes and hair, not to mention the too-huge-to-be-accidental thigh-high run in her pantyhose.

Her upper lip curled. "Fuck you, Kirk," she sneered in an icy voice -- a more articulate reply having eluded her -- just before she stooped over to snatch up the high heel she had dropped.

I shrugged. "Hard pass. No sloppy seconds."

She stood and fixed me in a baleful, wordless stare. Further exasperated by the cavalier tone of my response, she turned and stomped flat-footed up the 16 steps that led to the three upstairs bedrooms, including the one we had shared for more than two decades until several months ago. For the past six months, she had migrated into the bedroom that had been Meghan's until last summer when she landed her first job after college graduation and moved to Atlanta.

I wish she had used the guest bathroom. I didn't want her washing off her infidelity in the same shower I would use to get ready for work, but why rock the boat this far along? I'd just spray the shower basin with the foaming disinfectant cleaner we keep by the toilet and rinse it thoroughly before I use it.

This is Thursday, the last Thursday in February. On Monday, Siobhan had made a comparatively early night of it (1:30 a. m.). She had straggled home at 4 on Tuesday morning. As of 8 o'clock Wednesday morning when I left for work, she was passed out on the downstairs sofa, still in the dress she had worn to work 24 hours earlier. And now, I had just confronted her as she tried to sneak into our home in the thin, gray predawn light after another long night of partying and sport-fucking with some ne'er-do-well. It's not what I signed on for when I pledged myself to her "for better or for worse" almost 24 years earlier. With her actions, she had trampled our sacred contract.

I hoped for Siobhan's sake she would spend Thursday recovering and resting. She would need it for Friday.

▼ ▼ ▼

The Thirsty Pelican doesn't necessarily evoke the mental image of a sports bar, but Big Carly Butcher liked the name. It's an homage to his childhood along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain near and the constant excitement that New Orleans represented. If ever there was a real community bar for sports fans, this is it. It was almost the size of a good-sized barn but built in the style of a massive log cabin with four wood-burning stone fireplaces facing the cavernous dining area. Besides sports playing on televisions all over the place pretty much almost 'round-the-clock, it was famous for smoked pork ribs good enough to fight a war over. All over Birmingham and a significant part of north central Alabama, it was simply known as the Pelican. Here in the Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook, we considered it our own.

I've been a Thirsty Pelican regular since I was college age, approaching thirty years now. I long ago earned my own over-sized beer stein with my name engraved on it. It was among the hundreds that hung on large hooks sprouting from the massive oak rafters that supported the Pelican's pitched ceiling. But there were senior patrons who had been around almost since Carlisle Butcher Sr., a stocky Marine who lost his left eye in the Korean War, opened the Pelican in 1974. It was a "sports bar" before such a thing was the universal concept it is today, imitated by Buffalo Wild Wings and other chains.

On the wall high over the liquor shelves behind the huge U-shaped bar in the center of the 13,000-square-foot restaurant floor is a large, autographed black-and-white photo of Paul W. "Bear" Bryant with a spotlight conspicuously trained on it. Just beneath it, in a glassed-in case, is one of the iconic houndstooth hats Bryant wore in his years leading the University of Alabama's famed Crimson Tide football team to six national championships. The Bear, an occasional patron when he was in Birmingham, personally gave it to Carly. The moment was immortalized by a Birmingham News sports photographer, and the original photo and the caption that appeared beneath it were framed and also prominently displayed.

On another wall, less conspicuous, is an amateurish oil painting of Ralph "Shug" Jordan, who was Bryant's counterpart at cross-state rival Auburn University. In another glass case, just beneath the painting, was a football that Jordan and the 1975 War Eagles football team had signed. It was Jordan's last season as coach.

The Thirsty Pelican and the Butcher family had adroitly walked the tightrope between the Bama and Auburn fan bases for more than half a century and retained good will among both, something akin to a miracle in Alabama where college football is the state religion. When disputes between the schools' over-zealous and/or overserved fans got too contentious, either Big Carly or his oldest son, Carlisle Butcher Jr. -- paradoxically called Little Carly -- would be on top of it, usually breaking things up before punches were thrown. Nobody gave Big Carly shit because everyone revered him, and because nobody wanted to go home with his own bloody teeth in his pocket. Nobody gives Little Carly shit today because he's every bit as badass as his dad and a damn sight bigger.

Unlike other bars that attempted -- and mostly failed -- to replicate the Butchers' success through the '80s and mid-'90s, the Pelican was more than just good food and a good time. It became -- and remains -- the place community movers and shakers wanted to show up and be seen: movers and shakers like R. Brantley Melton, Jefferson County's most successful and ruthless family law attorney, who met me there for happy hour this Thursday evening.

I had quietly retained Brantley in January after Siobhan's behavior had left me no choice. Her "girls' night out" excuses had long since lost any semblance of credibility, particularly one night when I saw one of the "girls" with whom she was supposedly "out" show up at the Pelican with her husband. She said she hadn't seen or heard from Siobhan in weeks.

I had known Siobhan was cheating and lying about it long before that, though. Our kids and even Siobhan's own mother knew she was lying. She eventually stopped even offering her patently threadbare cover stories.

I would be asleep by the time she would sneak in. Or so she thought. In fact, I had kept meticulous notations of the wee hours she returned every day for weeks. When that much sleeplessness became too great a drain, I hid a motion-activated night-vision webcam aimed at the front door that provided time-stamped documentary proof of her furtive nocturnal comings and goings. When I presented all the the data to Brantley at our initial consultation, he skimmed it for less than three seconds and handed it back to me.

"We'll do a lot more than that," he had said, smiling slyly. "We'll not only find out who she's screwing, we'll know exact times, dates, places... what kind of car the guy drives, where he works, whether it's missionary or doggie and what kind of cigarettes he smokes," Brantley said. "That's what a judge pays attention to, gets the cheater to the bargaining table, puts us in charge and pays for my vacation house up on the Elk River."

So it was that I dipped into my savings account -- to which I had terminated Siobhan's access -- and wrote a $10,000 retainer check to Melton & Melton LLP to get things going. Brantley used a chunk of it to hire Steve "Skeeter" Neaton, Alabama's preeminent cheating-spouse private eye. Within two weeks, Skeeter had assembled a thick and damning dossier on Siobhan and Gary Mack Billings, a lean-as-a-rail, hung-like-a-Clydesdale loading dock worker at a big-box retailing chain's regional distribution hub in Bessemer. He was twelve years her junior and had drifted from one minimum-wage unskilled labor job to another since he dropped out of high school at the age of 17, never having advanced beyond sophomore year.

Most nights, according to Skeeter's documentation, Siobhan and Gary Mack would meet up at a cheap Mexican food joint in suburban Vestavia Hills. Sometimes, they'd go more upscale and start date night at Applebee's in Mountain Brook -- a brazen move since it's not a mile from our house. They'd run up a considerable food and liquor tab that she would invariably pay in cash to avoid a credit card trail and because Gary Mack was broke and on the verge of jail. He was hopelessly in arrears on support payments to the woman he impregnated in 2008 when she was just 15. Only a hasty and brief marriage to her got him off the hook for a statutory rape conviction. Now 24, the woman works overnights at a 7-Eleven, lives with their 8-year-old son in a trailer park 20 miles south of Birmingham where, with the help of food stamps, Medicaid and welfare, she struggles to parent the boy by herself while not falling more than a month behind on essential bills like rent and electricity.

After eating and drinking their fill, Siobhan and Gary Mack would retire to the Rebel Roost Motor Court near the Birmingham-Shuttleworth International Airport on a frontage road alongside Interstate 20. Their check-in time was usually around 10, and they were partial to unit 108, a small, sad, fleabag cottage at one end of a line of 16 small, sad fleabag cottages that may have been trendy when they opened during the Eisenhower administration.

Perhaps they hoped that by being at the easternmost terminus of the complex, their noisy copulation would go unnoticed by other guests -- mostly vagrants or hookers who rented by the hour to service their clients. Their grunts and growls sometimes got so loud that when the ancient window air conditioning unit wasn't laboring and drowning them out, Skeeter Neaton was able to make decent audio recordings of it all using a parabolic microphone from a distance of 60 feet -- far enough away that any judge would reject defense claims that it constituted an invasion of privacy and was thus inadmissible. It would be devastating when paired with time-stamped video and still photos of the two entering and leaving their literal love shack.

Siobhan and Gary Mack would rut and grind like minks before adjourning at times ranging from 3 a. m. to 5 o'clock to pursue their daytime lives. Say what you will about this deadbeat baby-daddy, but with stamina like his, Gary Mack might consider his own OnlyFans page or a side hustle as a gigolo if the loading dock falls through.

The most overwhelming "smoking gun" evidence came on one extraordinarily balmy moonlit night (temperature in the upper 60s) just six days ago when the they hopped a fence into a city park hours after it had closed to visitors, sneaked onto a soccer field with a blanket, got buck naked except for their shoes and put in nearly an hour of al fresco suck-and-fuck. Skeeter was able to deftly follow them on foot at a safe distance and shoot some disturbingly detailed images of the two, clearly identifiable in the silvery light of full moon through Skeeter's telescopic lens. In a couple of shots, Gary Mack performs cunnilingus: in one frame, shot in profile, Siobhan lay on her back with his head concealed between her raised and splayed thighs, her hands on the back of his head, seemingly pressing it into her cooch; the other is the classic soixante-neuf alignment with Gary Mack on his back and Siobhan positioned inversely, belly down, atop him, her head away from the camera and his face nuzzled between the twin hemispheres of her distinctive, shapely ass. It was a position she had never, not in more than a quarter of a century as lovers and then spouses, explored with me.

"So will Siobhan see all this when she gets served at her office tomorrow?" I asked Brantley as I flipped through the three-ring binder of photos, receipts, transcripts, a thumb drive containing video and audio recordings and Skeeter's written narratives and diagrams. I was apprehensive about viewing them here, even though we had chosen a corner booth well away from the light weeknight crowd.

"No," he said, taking another sip of his Old Fashioned. "She gets a copy of the complaint I filed in Jefferson Circuit Court this afternoon. She'll be served at her office in the morning. Normally, it takes a while for the shock, humiliation and rage to wear off before they realize they need to lawyer up. Her attorney will call me and that's when they get a look at the mountain of stuff we have on her and we demand either a settlement conference or a trial date."

I nodded. I was long since done with Siobhan after more than a heartbreaking year of wanton cuckoldry from her, but the cache of depraved, pornographic information on the table before me soured my stomach. I dreaded the prospect of taking it to trial. The frown on my face telegraphed as much to Brantley.

"I wouldn't worry about a trial. She'd be a fool to take this before a judge. Unless she hires some numb nuts fresh out of law school, he'll make that clear to her. But then, an attorney has to do as the client instructs unless it's unethical or illegal. If her reckless behavior is any indication, well... maybe she is a fool." Brantley shrugged. "We'll see."

I closed the binder, put it back inside an oversized manila envelope stamped "CONFIDENTIAL" and handed it back to Brantley.

"That's your copy," he told me. "I have the originals."

I shook my head. "Just the same, I'm going to let you hold onto this for now. I don't want to see it or think about it, so I'd rather not have it around. And I damn sure don't want my kids to stumble across it."

Brantley nodded. "I'll keep it locked in my safe."

"Good," I said, then grinned as I turned toward him. "And since the drinks and loaded nachos are on me, is this is a social occasion between friends or are you still sticking me for $38 dollars every six minutes?"

"Thirty-seven fifty," he said with a jovial smirk. "But who's counting?"

He rose and clapped me on the back as he tucked the manila envelope into his well-worn leather attaché.

"I'll let you know how it goes but you may feel the shock wave before I do tomorrow morning. If she tries to contact you, remember to keep your distance and say nothing more than to have her lawyer call me."

"Will do, R. B."

The five-minute drive to a still-empty home was the saddest and emptiest of the hundreds of drives I'd made from the Pelican.

▼ ▼ ▼

There's no doubt in my mind that Siobhan Delaney Weeks knew that I knew about the adultery she was committing with impunity, almost flaunting it to me for months. It didn't prepare her for being served with divorce papers.

The process server Brantley had hired ambushed her, as planned, on Friday morning at the front entrance of Quigley & Associates, the accounting firm where she had worked as a senior human resources manager for nearly 15 years. Brantley told me she didn't take it well, initially shrieking obscenities at the server and flinging the petition, in its official pale blue binding, back toward him. After a brief tantrum, she collected the document, leaned against the office building wall in downtown Birmingham and began sobbing in front of coworkers filing inside to begin their day.

I was surprised that neither I nor Brantley heard directly from her quickly on Friday, or at least during business hours. I felt sure, given the account of her reaction over being served, that she would play the victim and vent her anger on one or both of us either by phone or in person. I had alerted the security desk in the lobby of our building to be on the lookout for her and to immediately usher her back out if she arrived. I was even more surprised, later in the day, that she still hadn't contacted me when she returned home to find that I'd had a locksmith change locks and re-key all the doors to the house as soon as she had departed for work.

She did notify our kids. Meghan called first, from the sidewalk outside her office in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.

"Well, you finally did it, huh?" she said in a joyless monotone.

"Had to, Butterbean. I can't discuss it. Legal reasons. It risks turning you and Perry into witnesses."

"I've been expecting it. Mom gave you plenty of reason, and I am so pissed at her. Still makes me... so... so sad, though," she said as her voice faltered.

"I understand, Megs. But I want you and Perry both to understand these points: that none of this is your fault; that I love you both more than ever; and, though I can't claim to speak for your mom, I feel sure she does, too. That's the one point of agreement I think we still share."

All I could hear from the other end of the line was sniffling as Megan wept. In my mind's eye, I could see Meghan's sweet crying-face with the protruding lower lip that consistently turned my heart into mush since she was a toddler. Now my heart broke anew, knowing she was 150 miles away and I wasn't there to comfort her.

"You are and always will be at the center of my world, Butterbean. That never changes," I said, realizing it was not only lame but redundant as well.

"I know Dad, I know," she said. "It's just... I can't talk right now. I gotta go."

And with that, the call disconnected.

Perry reached out via text message from Tuscaloosa, where he was a second-semester sophomore at Alabama. He's not big on phone calls.

Sad to hear the news, he wrote. I understand. Trying to anyway. Will take time to sort it all out.

I texted back a sad face and broken heart emoji.

We'll talk later, I added. Can't say much. Legal reasons. But you and Megs should know that I love you more than anything and that never changes. K?

His reply: K.

And that was that.

It was well after the close of business when Brantley called.

"She's lawyered up. Eston Gershon. He's had a good career, mostly criminal defense work. He's a past president of the Jefferson County Bar. I was surprised he took her case. Never known him to practice family law and he turns 75 next year. He's been transitioning clients to other partners in his firm for a while now and wasn't taking new clients," he said

"Eston's a friend of Siobhan's parents," I said. "Probably more of a personal favor to Estelle, her mom."

"Makes sense. Gershon called me just now and said Siobhan's mostly pissed about being locked out of the house. He wants to set up a meeting tomorrow."

I groaned. "What's your advice, Brantley?"

"They're going to try to keep her living there, but we're in possession and we don't want cohabitation complicating things so we should only agree to a prescribed, supervised time soon for her to remove essential articles -- clothing, medicines, toiletries and the like. It'll take a while to settle on a larger division of contents. I think they'll get a little less demanding once we get to discovery and they see Skeeter's dossier," he said.

"So we're doing this tomorrow? On a Saturday? What time and where?"

"My office, I'll meet him at 11," he said. "Just Eston and me. I don't want you there."

"Thank God. Let me know how it goes."

▼ ▼ ▼

Funny thing about filing for divorce: just the mere act of doing it makes much of the reason you did it in the first place go away.

A month has passed since Siobhan was served. She seemed to have cleaned up her act. She took a week of leave from her job and moved in with her parents in Monroeville for a few days until she leased a small apartment somewhere in Birmingham. She ended her fuck sessions with Gary Mack Billings, something that would have been disrupted anyway when the judge overseeing his protracted non-support case jailed him two weeks ago.

Conveniently, Siobhan had begun regularly attending church since her brazen faithlessness made its way to litigation. She joined her congregation's divorce support group. Maybe she saw the light. Maybe she was following the advice of Eston Gershon, who, through the discovery process, had seen the blistering evidence Skeeter Neaton had assembled. But what's certain is that for her to have any shot at leniency from the judge handling the matter, she would need to demonstrate that she had made at least a nominal effort toward decency.

As for me, I was lying low and staying clean.

Even if I had the inclination to go out and get laid despite my long stay in dry dock, Brantley Melton warned me not to get caught hooking up or anything that looked like it until the divorce was final. He said it was almost a certainty that Gershon had a gumshoe tracking me in hopes of catching me in some trespass or another.

I had been monogamous since Siobhan and I began dating 27 years earlier as students at the University of Alabama. Brantley said he couldn't remember a divorce case with a more convincing contrast between the fidelity of one spouse and such a reckless betrayal by the other. I stood to benefit from keeping it that way.

So I was staying home, reading books or watching basketball or Netflix most nights except for an occasional evening or weekend afternoon spent at the Thirsty Pelican with my usual beer-drinking, hot wings-eating, sports-obsessed buddies. Some of those times at the Pelican were spent at watch parties the local Bama alumni chapter would hold to watch Crimson Tide football or, less regularly, basketball and baseball games. Often, there were almost as many women as men -- something the guys found mildly annoying because most of the ladies didn't know a free throw from a first down from a double play.

Megs came home for a visit once, staying with me in her old room but finding the memories in the house too thick and depressing to hang around for more than one overnight.

Indeed, the house felt barren and haunted since Siobhan, per the agreement Brantley Melton and Eston Gershon had reached the Saturday after she was served, had removed many of the possessions that we stipulated were hers. That included several paintings, the dining room furniture, two of the beds and a grand piano that had been her grandmother's. We agreed that she would keep the better of our two vehicles, a three-year-old Jeep Wagoneer, and I keep the eight-year-old Chevy Blazer. It didn't seem like a fight worth fighting and Brantley said it didn't hurt for the judge to see I wasn't being reasonably magnanimous.

Perry made a few weekend day trips from Tuscaloosa and back. He didn't have the heart to sleep in what had been his bedroom in happier times.

Until the legal process played out, this would be my dry-as-cardboard life. And, given the constant trauma and anger and heartbreak of recent years, I was just fine with that. I slept a lot better for it.

The only potential wrinkle was a Bama alumni group gathering in mid-April at the Thirsty Pelican where the president of the chapter, a former Chi Omega sorority belle named Darlice Dunton, had taken it upon herself to invite one of her friends who was not a Bama alumnus and, thinking she was helping me rebound, seated her next to me. She told neither of us about her matchmaking.

Darlice introduced me to Sarah Zanone during the happy hour gathering before Alabama's baseball game at Kentucky started at 6:30. Neither Miss Zanone nor I were comfortable with this unannounced and unbidden pairing. We sat together, perfectly pleasant but stiff and on guard. Both of us excused ourselves after the seventh inning.

"Good to meet you, Miss Zanone," I said as we stepped outside, zipping my windbreaker against an unseasonably brisk spring night. "Sorry it was all sort of... forced, unexpected and formal feeling tonight."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sure Darlice meant well," she said with a shrug.

"Exactly. I hope this won't keep you away from Tide Club gatherings, though," I said.

"Maybe if I'm invited back," she said. "I usually root for Bama, but I didn't go there."

"Really? Where?"

"Y'all might not invite me back if I tell you," she said sheepishly.

"Only if it's Auburn," I said with a teasing grin.

"No, not Auburn," she said. "North Alabama. Go Lions."

"That's fine. We're a welcoming group," I said. "Join us in football season maybe? That's when it's really rocking. Deal?"

I saw Sarah smile for the first time that entire evening. "Deal."

I extended my hand, she extended hers, and we shook on it.

"OK, Sarah. See you somewhere down the line," I said as she walked to her car and I walked the other direction toward mine.

▼ ▼ ▼

Did U kiss her?

Darlice's text arrived while I was still driving home from the Tide Club gathering at the Thirsty Pelican, before the baseball game was over. I saw it after I unlocked my darkened, two-story, four-bedroom home whose eerie quiet and sparse furnishings still unnerved me. The days of coming home to a lamp glowing and a TV playing somewhere in the house were years gone now.

No. Didn't even exchange phone numbers or IG or FB tags, I replied. We shook hands if that improves your night.

Emotionally, I don't think Darlice ever matured beyond her junior year at Bama when she was her sorority's rush chair. She had grown up steeped in the small-town gossip of Sylacauga, Alabama. For almost 10 years since her graduation from law school at Samford here in Birmingham, she had been a working attorney -- ironically specializing in family law, I'm told -- at a regional personal injury firm known for its kitschy late-night local TV ads. But to her, every day was a mixer with one of the bigger fraternities on University Boulevard back in Tuscaloosa. She had to know all the details about everybody's romances and, even better, their break-ups. I sensed that she got more out of that than pursuing her own courtships, and she was an attractive young woman. She was not a malignant soul by any means, but she was a congenital gossip, meddler and busybody.

But she's so cuuuute! Thot u'd like her. She followed it with a pouting face emoji.

I rolled my eyes but, betraying my better judgment, replied. I appc the sentiment. Know u mean well. Still early in a really shitty divorce & u more than most know the last thing I need now to get caught dating. Maybe have Sarah back in football season or next year? OK?

Darlice shot back a smiley face along with a thumbs-up and the exchange was over. Mercifully.

It was almost 10:30 and I was bone tired, but I felt both clammy and sticky. That wasn't uncommon after a night at the Pelican during a Bama watch party. While baseball crowds are sparse, especially compared to football watch parties that cram people in cheek-to-jowl, this was a big group for a season-defining baseball game at Kentucky that would impact seeding for the Southeastern Conference tournament in just a couple of weeks in Hoover. On top of that, Little Carly seemed hell-bent on turning the place into a sauna, maybe overreacting to the chilly snap and cranking up the heat. I hated crawling in bed with my pits reeking, my face feeling oily and my junk all sweaty, so I turned on the shower and waited for the water to reach something approaching warm.

For the longest time, I just stood under the shower head, letting it cascade from my scalp off my shoulders, down my dad paunch and my back and along my legs. I found it soothing and reassuring. But eventually, it was time to lather up and get clean, and I used the hand-held nozzle with a variety of settings (from gentle to pulsating to a tight stream that felt like it could strip bark off a tree) to extricate the suds from all the hard-to-reach crevices. I choose a focused pulsating jet for my scalp, neck and shoulders, the narrow, powerful stream for my ass crack and gentle for everything else. But this night, I neglected to reset it to gentle and felt the pulsating jets of water (something like 10 blasts per second) against the tip of my manhood.

At first, I flinched and pulled away, but it occurred to me that what I had felt wasn't half bad.

Hmmm, let's see what this is all about.

I returned the warm, fast blasts to the shank of my tumescent member and found the sensation arousing. As the point of the water's focus moved to the emerging head of my penis, the sensation got much more intense. In seconds, I went from half-drooping to semi-turgid to a carbon-steel blue-veiner. I shuddered at the sensation and moved the nozzle away for a minute lest I have my first wide-awake, hands-free ejaculation in years.

I realized my hips were reflexively thrust forward as they were in better times when Siobhan would share the shower with me and I would bury my hardness from behind in her snug vagina (both Perry and Megs were Caesarian deliveries).

"Wow, that's insane," I said aloud, looking at my bobbing boner, a clear, viscous stringer of pre-ejaculate drooling from its tip. All of which raised the prospect of making a conscious decision about whether to persist with the aquatic stimulation and my approaching climax or continue my monastic existence.

"Eh. I'm overdue to lose a load," I muttered.

I redirected the nozzle to the length of my dick, training the pulsating stream back and forth from the tip to its root, producing a fuller, deeper sensation, bringing me closer to my breaking point. I felt my scrotum tighten and the tingling just above it that signaled the safety was off and I was about to fire. I groaned louder than I would have imagined as the first bolt of semen burst forth. When my eyes opened, I saw ropes of thick, white jizz spring from my straining erection onto the gray tile wall, one after another, and begin trickling downward.

Quickly, I had to turn the nozzle away, unable to withstand the pulsating water against my suddenly hypersensitive glans. I stood there for maybe a minute as the last of my essence oozed from my slowly deflating cock, joining the warm water swirling around the drain.

My legs suddenly shaky, I sat on the ledge built at one side of the shower. I marveled at the nozzle, connected to its metallic hose, still in my right hand and the water from it beating a rapid rhythm against the opposite wall.

"Where have you been, my friend?"

I turned off the water, toweled off, pulled on a pair of sleep shorts, collapsed into bed and slept more soundly than I had since this whole Siobhan thing began. Here was a creative and clean way to take the edge off the celibacy that Brantley Melton had cautioned me to observe until this divorce was in the books.

▼ ▼ ▼

I made a pretty good living as the Alabama mortgage loans supervisor for Anchor, a bank with a significant footprint in the Deep South. A total of 87 mortgage loan department managers of moderate- to large-sized banks and 22 branch managers for smaller banks sprinkled across Alabama reported directly to me.

It had been comparable to the salary Siobhan drew from her top human resources position at a major CPA firm that was a significant player the accounting profession across the southeastern United States. It included several Fortune 500 companies, wealthy individuals and local governments among its clients. While Siobhan's greater compensation had once bothered me, it was working to my advantage in the divorce negotiations, Brantley Melton informed me.

"What it means is that you're not likely to owe her any personal support, though they're trying to make a case for it. But the way the math works out, we're actually in a position to have her pay you some nominal support," he said.

That was the final sticking point in settlement negotiations between Siobhan and me with Brantley Melton and Eston Gershon acting as intermediaries.

"Why are they moving so fast? I thought she'd drag it out," I asked R. B., who leaned back in his leather office chair, his bifocals riding low on his patrician nose and his long, elegant fingers clasped together over his modest paunch. We had filed in March. This was mid-June.

"They saw what Skeeter got. They want this finished and put under seal as soon as possible," he said. "They're terrified of this going to trial, becoming public record, ruining her reputation and killing her career in HR."

"Essentially, you're getting everything you want. I tried to get you the house, but the most they'd do is either sell it and cut the proceeds fifty/fifty or for one spouse to buy out the other for half of fair market value," he said. "I knew we weren't likely to get a judge to give you the house outright, but you hired me because you wanted the meanest bastard around, so..."

"I don't want that house. Feels cursed. Everywhere I look, happy memories crash and burn into the present. It makes me sad, makes my skin crawl. If she wants to buy me out, fine. Give her through next weekend to put up a 25 percent down payment and a month after that to close. Otherwise, I'm hiring a Realtor on Monday," I said.

R. B. nodded.

"So what do you want to do on the support issue? Asking for support from you for her was a total stretch but it's Eston's feeble way of trying to play offense. An experienced divorce lawyer would have known better. I think what they really want is just for you to disclaim any entitlement to monthly support from her, they'll drop their preposterous request, they'll sign this deal and we'll be done," he said.

"Do it. Where and when do I sign?"

"Let me call Eston this afternoon. I think we can have a final separation agreement printed and ready for both parties to sign no later than the day after tomorrow. Once that's done, you're a free man," he said.

"You mean after the decree is final, right?"

"No. The only thing you wouldn't be able to do until the divorce is final is remarry. You'll be free to chart your own course without any new claims or interference from her. You can freely date if you feel like it."

"I'm confused."

"Well, there's a clause in the working tentative agreement that you've both already initialed that gives you each social independence from the other," he said, flipping through pages on the working draft that was sitting on his desk. "Right here on page three: section nine, paragraph B."

He handed it to me and I scanned it. Sure enough: "Both parties relinquish all claims of and obligations to marital fidelity upon the other." Paragraph A -- the final sticking point I just agreed go -- established that neither of us would have financial responsibility to or control over the other from that point forward.

I handed it back to him. "I forgot it's in there, but I'm good with it. She's spent the past two years making a mockery of those 'obligations' anyway."

R. B. was pensive, letting silence hang in his oaky office, its walls filled with shelves bearing leather-bound volumes of federal and state statutes and judicial precedents, their spines embossed in rich greens, blues and burgundy, some with gold-colored lettering. The room had the feel and the smell of a library. "This still eats at you, doesn't it."

"When we made those vows in the First Presbyterian Church in Monroeville in June of 1992, they were supposed to mean something. Hell, Harper Lee herself was in attendance and heard us recite those words," I said, recalling the author of To Kill a Mockingbird who was the most famous resident of Siobhan's hometown. "This is 2016. I haven't so much as patted another woman's ass since Siobhan and I became exclusive in 1990 at Bama, and that's the truth."

"I believe you," R. B. said. "Eston told me the other day, way off the record, that they had you followed hoping they could dirty you up a little and gain some leverage, but... nothing. So Eston says in that grumbly drawl of his, 'Ain't no wondah she snuck aroooound on his ass. Kirk's social life would bore the fuckin' Amish.'"

I couldn't help but smile and nod.

"True, I guess," I said. "The last time I played the field or even asked a girl for a date or had a one-night stand, the first President Bush was in office. And I was a college kid, a damn sight leaner, hornier, more in-shape and less uptight than I am now. I have no idea how that world operates now, especially for dudes my age."

"Well, you can start finding out in less than 48 hours," R. B. said, rising from his chair, signaling the meeting was over. "Sharon will call you when we have something ready for your signature. Come by and sign it in front of Sharon, she'll notarize it and for all practical purposes, this one's in the books."

I thanked him, we shook hands, and I walked to my car feeling a strangely joyless and bit disoriented. Unexpectedly, the guardrails that had kept my life on the straight-and-narrow -- confined, monogamous and comfortably predictable -- were about to be removed. I would have no excuse.

How do you meet women in this day and age? Pick them off some website like a glorified Cheesecake Factory menu? After seeing their mother abase herself with random, licentious sex, were Butterbean and Perry ready to see their father with other women? Would they ever be ready?

For that matter, would I?

▼ ▼ ▼

Never before had I seen Meghan, my precious "Butterbean," in a business suit. But here she was, dressed for success in a conservative, tasteful gray pants suit, a white blouse, pearls, sensible flats, makeup with very modest lipstick and her straight, brown hair pulled into a bun. I barely recognized her when she emerged from her office tower in Buckhead to take her dad to lunch.

"My little Butterbean is a professional woman in the big city," I said.

Her face seemed full of joy, something I hadn't anticipated in light of recent events culminating in the unpleasantness of my divorcing her mom. She hugged me unreservedly.

"You look great, dad. You've lost weight. Single life must be agreeing with you," she said.

I looked down at my chinos, penny loafers and the peach-colored golf shirt I wore trying to spot evidence of the supposed weight loss. Maybe she could see it better from her time-lapse perspective, but I couldn't.

"Well thanks for saying so, Megs. I haven't been working out or dieting. Maybe the stress of life in interesting times?" I said. "So where are you taking the old man for what you called a quick business lunch?"

She chose Bistro 41, a reference to the U. S. Highway 41 onto which it fronts in the trendy northern section of Atlanta and just a five-minute walk away. "Neil is meeting us there."

"Neil?"

"I told you about him."

"You've told me about a lot of boys since high school. Remind me about this one."

"We've gone out quite a few times over the past couple of months. He works for a big law firm right around the corner in that building," Megs said, pointing to a steel and chrome monolith piercing the cloudless Georgia sky like a dagger, gleaming in the merciless noon sun.

"I take it we like Neil? I'm guessing that because we're meeting him for lunch and you're introducing him to your dad, we do like him."

She smiled. It told me everything.

Neil Fulmer was a tall, blond, athletic looking lad, easily mistakable for a football tight end or a power forward on a basketball team. But he had never played organized team sports, contenting himself with a regular lifelong regimen of running, swimming and hard work growing up on his family's peach orchard near Elijay in northeastern Georgia. He had majored in business as an undergrad at Emory University in Atlanta and graduated third in his University of Georgia Law School class where he had edited the Law Review.

Neil was a third-year associate at the Atlanta-based Big Law juggernaut Wilson & Gore in its communications law practice. He had assisted in intellectual property disputes, data privacy and defamation cases before the 11th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and the 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, something rare among attorneys so new in their careers. He was humble and deferential toward me, a practiced listener and clearly eager to make a good impression, a signal to me that he was smitten with my firstborn. Vestiges of his north Georgia drawl were still discernible despite the road he had traveled in both academia and the legal profession.

The issue of my divorce did not arise, much to my relief.

"Impressive guy," I said as I walked Megs back to her office building, not 300 feet from Neil's. "How'd you two meet?"

"The gym," she said. "His firm and my company both offer their full-time employees fully paid memberships in a gym that's in the galleria of the Hyatt catty-corner and connected through a breezeway to our two office buildings. We were waiting for smoothies after a workout and struck up a conversation. We talked for more than an hour and agreed to meet a couple of days later for lunch and hit it off."

I nodded.

"What are you thinking, dad?"

Careful here, I reminded myself. Your relationship credentials are hardly impeccable, Kirk. Don't judge. Don't gush.

"Well, I'm thinking he's making my Butterbean smile again after some bleak times. That makes me smile," I said. Megs grabbed my hand and beamed at me again, appreciating the affirmation. "First impression: yes, we like Neil."

We were back in the plaza near the entryway to the office building in which no one would address my daughter as "Megs" and certainly not as "Butterbean." Inside, she would be "associate Weeks," maybe Meghan to her closest colleagues. I confirmed that I would meet her and Neil for dinner in a few hours and got an Uber to take me to my Holiday Inn a couple of blocks from Megs' apartment in Midtown. I could really use an afternoon nap.

It had been a hot day, as July in Atlanta tends to be, but with the sun now casting long shadows and a breeze blowing gently, I strolled to Meghan's apartment complex where she had stocked a choice of my favorites -- Woodford Reserve bourbon and Stella Artois beer -- waiting for me. I chose Stella and we sat down on the balcony of the third-floor, two-bedroom apartment she shared with a roommate who was vacationing in New York with her boyfriend. Neil wasn't due to pick us up for the drive to Midtown's acclaimed Bon Ton restaurant for another hour, so it was perfect for our first lengthy conversation since the recent, life-changing unpleasantness.

"I'm glad you and mom reached a settlement and avoided a trial," she said.

"Siobhan tell you about that?"

"Yes."

"Sorry. Wish I could have said more but... lawyers are a pain in the ass. No knock on Neil intended."

"I was dreading the possibility that this would wind up in court," she said.

"Me too, Butterbean. The best thing about the settlement is that all that stuff I never want to talk about is forever sealed by court order."

"Was it hard to do, dad? I know you were very hurt and angry. Was it difficult to avoid the urge to just... crush her, to go nuclear on mom?"

"No. I very much didn't want that. By the time I reconciled myself to divorce as the only option, the anger had mostly burned itself out. I was mostly sad and tired. I just wanted it over and with as little pain as possible for you and Perry, but also for her and for me. We had 24 years. Most of those were wonderful, and we produced the best two kids ever, so..." I felt myself getting emotional.

"Mom says the agreement freed you both to see other people. She says she's not seeing that guy anymore," Meghan said, a shudder running through her at the mention of him. "Mom says it was a mistake; said she knew it was wrong but just felt like she was getting old and had to push back against it. She said she had to 'assert her womanhood.'"

The last comment, which Meghan delivered using her hands to form air quotes, evoked a look of dismay in both of us. But I just shook my head, then shrugged, thinking what a lazy goddamn excuse that was for wrecking the home we had. "What's done is done. It's gone. It's yesterday. Time to focus on today, to move on. All of us."

"Are you moving on? Are you going to start dating... or whatever people your age do?"

"Maybe it's been all the stress of this awful process. I haven't felt any desire to do that, to start all over again. I was a one-woman guy, as outdated as that sounds."

Megs sighed and looked at me.

"Well, are you just going to be a gross, wrinkly old hermit with hair growing out of his nostrils and ears? Would it be worth wading back into the lake just to see if you still enjoy swimming?" She shrugged. "I don't want you going into a shell."

"I don't have the faintest idea how to even go about it?" I said, a bit dismissively. "I love the Pelican, but I'm not going to be lurking around there -- or any other bar -- hitting on unattached or cheating women every night."

"Hand me your phone," she said. I did. In less than a minute she handed it back to me. "That app in the bottom right corner of your home screen, that's Match. com. You've heard of that, right?"

"Online meat market?"

"Well, not a blatant hook-up thing like Tinder, but yeah, it's an Internet date-finding service. You can try it out for free, but you have to subscribe to get meaningful results out of it. There are others, too, like that one for geezers called OurTime. Just play with it. You can set it for the type of woman you'd be interested in -- age range, height, weight, race or ethnicity, hair and eye color, religion, occupation, hobbies, geographic region, on and on -- and it has algorithms that do the search and present you with a list of women who meet those criteria. You can use the app to contact those who interest you."

I turned my nose up at it, and she saw me.

"I know, it's impersonal and treats people like commodities, but think of it this way: this condenses the years you'd spend cruising bars and clubs into a few seconds, OK? And you're far less likely to get arrested or punched in the nose."

"What if I encounter some gold-digger or a clinger who wants to get engaged after two dates?"

"Yes, there are users on all these apps that lie in their profiles, but that happens in real life, too. You just have to ease out there with your eyes open and be careful and skeptical."

I tapped the app and encountered what looked like the mother of all questionnaires necessary to set up a profile. When I saw it, I shuddered. I didn't have time for this. I didn't drive from Birmingham to my daughter's apartment in Atlanta to play with my iPhone. Fortunately, Neil texted Megs that he was five minutes out, and we headed to the parking lot where he would pick us up.

Being in a huge city made me remember that there's more to life than four walls, a TV and the occasional trip to the Pelican. All around me, people were having fun, engaging in conversation, savoring some outstanding food. Holding hands. Leaning in close, whispering and looking adoringly at each other. It reminded me of what was missing in life, what I once had.

By the time Neil dropped me off at the Holiday Inn after dinner, I realized that my Butterbean had a point. Maybe it's worth at least sticking my toe in the pool, even if I don't dive and swim laps.

▼ ▼ ▼

By the time I met Meghan and Neil for Sunday brunch, I had done a passable job setting up my Match profile but had not submitted it. I would finish up once I got home and had access to my laptop, something more familiar to me than a smartphone. I was still leery about giving an online dating service my credit card number, even though I was a full-fledged free agent under terms of the agreement Siobhan and I had inked a few weeks earlier.

I wanted to ask Megs about the fine points of Match, but then that might imply that I think she uses it. I didn't want to risk putting her on the spot in front of her new boo, whose hand seemed constantly to be holding hers when they were together.

By the time I hugged her, shook Neil's hand and pointed the Blazer west on I-20 back toward Birmingham, there was no doubt that these two were smitten; that even in the midst of the dissolution of her parents' marriage and the disintegration of the household that had nurtured her from the cradle through college, love had taken root with my firstborn and was growing fast.

As for my own romantic prospects, I had given it no thought. Butterbean had helped me start my Match membership profile. Among her recommendations: just stay silent and see what's out there at the start; understand that what I see in the profiles that Match might select for me are often embellished and not what they appear; block women who are too persistent; pay attention to how profiles and direct messages I might receive are written because fractured English is a common flag that the profile is a scam; and if I do ultimately choose to meet any of these potential "matches," initial encounters should be brief and in very public places like a Starbucks or Barnes & Noble.

"Under no circumstances are you to connect with any of these women in a cozy or intimate setting, and absolutely never at her or your residence," Megs implored me. "And even when you meet them in a public place, be alert for anything that feels off get out of there fast."

I avoided putting my photo on the profile, also at Megs' suggestion, while I was a non-paying user because nobody trusts those and it could -- and most likely would -- be misappropriated by some fraudster. I just put a photo of my Alabama Crimson Tide baseball cap where my picture would be.

The search parameters I set looked for women who were either divorced, widowed or never married -- no "separated" or "it's complicated" responses -- within a 25-mile radius of Birmingham. They should be between the ages of 35 and 45. I was not interested in women with small children and I'm certainly not looking to become anyone's baby daddy. I'd consider empty-nested single women with kids who are grown or in college. College-degreed women are preferred. I also expressed a preference for an active lifestyle: running, swimming, hiking, bicycling. "Sofa spuds won't like me," I wrote in the short narrative Match allowed freeloading users. But I allowed that I do enjoy a Netflix night or trip to the cinema now and then.

In the first week, just using the free version, I got a few nibbles. When I tried to peruse their profiles, the bare-bones information Match allows freeloaders to see afforded little insight into who was on the other end of the digital inquiry. Only one had a photo with the profile but, as Meghan had warned me, that could be some thief in Ghana who expropriated the likeness of a Florida swimsuit model.

The house finally sold, and I split the net proceeds with Siobhan. After accepting a full-price offer, I applied my share toward buying a new two-bedroom apartment in a condo development in a renovated 90-year-old building downtown that once housed a large title and home insurance company's home offices before sitting empty for two decades. I opted to keep some of the furniture that was used to stage the condo for sale and augmented it with furnishings I retained from my previous life and a few purchases of my own. The décor was spartan and decidedly masculine.

For the first three months after I got settled, essentially through the late summer and autumn of 2016, I began casually and infrequently using the Match app under the username "RollTideKirk." The results were all over the map and hardly encouraging.

One user who went by "Moira_in_Vestavia" invited me to evening drinks at her place. Blocked. Another had the gall to ask what I did for a living and my annual income. Blocked. And one, with the handle "Hello_its_Saki" asked me if I would like to make $100,000 by using my personal bank account to "hide money from a Senegalese crime gang." I forwarded that to the cops and blocked "Saki."

One user, "DeeDeeFromDeeCee," sent me a private message in which she said she found my profile interesting and asked if I would like to meet for lunch. I suggested coffee instead, and we set up a meeting. Nobody showed up -- at least nobody who would qualify to me as "DeeDee."

Another, known to Match as "Just_Gail," invited me to breakfast at a café downtown and actually showed up. For the better part of an hour, I listened to her whine about her hip replacement surgery complications and the half-dozen or so relationships she had broken off in the past five years because of her suitors' varied and sundry defects ranging from one guy's affinity to weightlifting to another's preoccupation with porn. After that meeting, Just_Gail found me on Instagram and began sending me disturbing photos of herself in various stages of undress, forcing me to block her on Match as well as Instagram and Facebook.

By November, the trauma of the collapse of my marriage and my ex's infidelity no longer dominated my waking hours. The hand-held shower nozzle also lost much of its allure. My fitness for dating became the subject of conversation during lunch the week before Thanksgiving in the office commissary with Ron Casey, one of my closest friends at work and a fellow regular at the Pelican.

"You've been a free man now for half a year, and I've yet to see you out with a woman. Just the other night there was an unattached woman two seats down the bar from us at the Pelican giving you the eye. You didn't so much as notice. What's up, dude?"

I shrugged.

"Are you not interested or are you scared? Not interested, well that's one thing and not much to do about that. But scared can be fixed," Ron said.

"I don't know. Maybe a little of both. It hasn't been a priority, but I wouldn't say I'm not interested. Maybe not fully motivated? And I wouldn't say I'm scared, but I'm definitely not confident of my footing after all this time," I said, filling him in on my weird encounters on Match.

"Why don't you try the paid-subscription service," he said.

"Why, so I could get the same dismal results and pay good money to do it?"

"Look, my business is the digital world," said Ron, whose department also included the bank's online marketing analytics section. "Online businesses like Match only offer the free service as a hook and all you get are the dregs. It's a marketing trick. The quality data -- in this case contacts or profiles or whatever they call them -- are for paying customers. The more you spend, the better the data. They also give you more options to contact women you're interested in and let you drill down on their backgrounds. Try something like a three- or six-month introductory subscription and see if it improves. If not, cancel the subscription. You're only out a few dozen dollars."

I shrugged again. "I don't know."

"Only one way to find out. I hear horror stories like yours and worse, but Jillian and I know of several friends who've married people they met on sites like Match."

I pushed my plate aside, took out my iPhone and texted Megs.

Ron sez I shud upgrade to paid version of Match. What say u, Butterbean? Pros vs. cons?

Ron watched incredulously. "You're asking your daughter?"

I nodded. In seconds she replied. Don't be a pussy. Just do it. She ended with an eye-roll emoji.

So that evening, I went legit into the digital dating world for the first time.

Within a week, I realized that Ron was right.

▼ ▼ ▼

Now that I was a paying member, I had the ability to not only respond to inquiries from members who messaged me but to initiate my own outreaches as well. And there was, as Ron said, a wealth of options that weren't available to me as a freeloader.

I set up a meeting with "Carolyn_35226," a local ZIP code that served several affluent suburbs. "Carolyn" was a widowed, 49-year-old mother of two Alabama grads who also worked in banking. She seemed grounded and modest, not in a hurry for a lasting relationship. We met for cocktails at a bar not far from my office and things were going well until I discovered that she had just been hired into the consumer loans division of my bank. We both had a good laugh over it, found each other likeable, but agreed that an extracurricular relationship with a coworker was too close for comfort and probably violated some rule in the Anchor Bank employee handbook that neither of us had read cover-to-cover.

Next was a Saturday meet-up with "HomewoodHannah," a dental hygienist, for some morning mountain biking. At age 41, she was a fit, gorgeous, willowy woman with crystal-blue eyes, platinum blond hair and an upbeat, perky personality. She grew up in Minnesota, got her dentistry certification at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and loved to be outdoors and active.

It was outdoors -- during a rest midway through our beginners' mountain bike course -- that Hannah, without warning, draped herself on top me and thrust her tongue almost into my esophagus. As we waited to return our rented bikes at the base of the trail, Hannah shoved one hand into my pocket, groped my manhood and suggested I follow her to her apartment. I might have done just that had she not also interjected that she was resetting her Facebook status to "In a relationship." When her car turned left at the main highway, I turned right and drove like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction. When I got home, I found at least a dozen messages on Match from Hannah that escalated from broken heart emojis to a middle finger. Blocked.

I swore off computer dating through the end of the year. The holidays were just ahead and I had no idea how that would work in regard to Perry and Butterbean. Damned if I was going to let some dial-a-date interfere with that.

Next Chapter:

Thirsty Pelican - 2017