The Lazy Husband

A short story

The leather recliner in which Joe Hall sat squeaked as he shifted position, shattering the icy silence that separated him and Zoe. 

“I’m going to clean the kitchen,” Zoe said without a smidgen of hope that Joe would respond with, “I’ll help you.”

“K.”

Joe dropped Sports Illustrated to the floor, turned on the television, which broadcast the last station he had watched, ESPN, and shifted to an even more reclined, comfortable position. He slid the television remote into the wooden caddy on the side table but changed his mind at the last moment because he didn’t know how long he’d linger on this station. 

“Or maybe I should cook dinner.”

“Sure.” Joe glanced at his watch. The filler between games—retrospectives on great moments in basketball—bored him. He wondered what event was next, but finding out required flipping over twenty channels to the program list. Joe sighed. 

I’ll wait.

Zoe sighed back. “We’ll do Uber Eats for dinner instead.”

“Good idea.”

“Would you like me to bring dinner to your chair when it arrives?” An aria of sarcasm rang between her words. 

“Would you? That would be awesome.”

Zoe supposed she should be happy that Joe strung more than two words together, but the fury inside was too explosive to contain. “I wish we’d never won the lottery, babe. I wish we’d never become millionaires. I liked our old life much better because at least you did things and didn’t sit in that chair all day, only moving from it to the bed when it’s time to sleep.”

“I go to the toilet, too.” Joe turned his head partway to Zoe, who was standing to his left, just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m conserving my energy.”

“For what? What are you conserving it for?”

The basketball game began, tall men blurring from courtside to courtside, the crowd cheering, the sportscaster talking rapid-fire. 

Joe turned his head fully back to the television.

“Do you want to at least order dinner using the app on your phone? I’m sure that’s not too difficult,” Zoe said.

“No. You can choose.”

“Don’t be so lazy.” 

“I’m saving up my energy.”

Zoe shook her head. “I swear I’d rather still be working at the bowling alley.”

“You can.”

“And I’d rather you still go to the office every day instead of sitting like a blob on a chair.”

“It’s the most comfortable I’ve ever sat in.” The E-Z Life leather recliner was Joe’s first purchase after winning two-point-two million dollars in the Maine Lottery. The second purchase was the ninety-eight-inch LG television. They had moved the living room cabinet with their china and good silverware to the basement to make space for it. 

“You haven’t budged for one hundred days,” Zoe said. Her hands turned white as she balled them into fists. “You’re going to have a heart attack from inactivity if you don't work out.” Two months ago, Zoe thought his laziness was a phase, something that happened to many lottery winners who found they no longer had to work jobs they hated—and Zoe knew Joe despised being an insurance company actuary—but she now recognized this was Joe’s permanent state. Her words about a heart attack were not rhetoric. While annoyed by Joe’s inactivity, his declining health terrified her. His body was undoubtedly already deteriorating, and he was not saving energy. It was the opposite. 

“I’m conserving energy.”

“If I hear you say that one more time, I’m going to take the rest of the lottery money, fly to Paris, find a gigolo, and spend it all on sex, clothing, and jewelry.”

Joe turned his head slightly again. “Maybe you should conserve energy, too.”

“You’re a—”

A blaring two-tone alarm interrupted their conversation and a red banner flashing “Emergency Alert” across the bottom of the screen stole their attention.

Joe raised his left eyebrow. His heart raced and his blood surged as if ignited by nitroglycerin. 

A somber-faced news anchor replaced the basketball game. “A previously-unknown asteroid the size of Wyoming is heading toward Earth and will impact us in thirty hours. There’s no stopping it. The asteroid will annihilate all human life,” she said before removing her glasses and drying her eyes with her shirt sleeve.

An enormous shadow crossed Bridgton, erasing the daylight. 

Joe jumped out of the chair without pressing the lift button and ran to the window.

Zoe’s jaw dropped.

He stared at the sky for a second, then dashed out of the house. 

Minutes later, the television station switched from a parade of scientists, preachers, and government officials to a remote camera on a helicopter.

“Folks, something’s happening,” the anchor reported as a man racing up Mount Katahdin with a boulder the size of a cement truck fastened with thick rope to his back appeared on the TV. 

The camera zoomed in on the man’s face, a portrait of vigor and determination. 

Zoe pressed her nose to the television screen. 

Joe!

The silent anchors stared into their monitors. 

As he ascended, the man on the mountain occasionally raised his middle finger to the asteroid, which grew larger in the sky every second. Red, silver, and blue light sparked around it. 

He scooted around tall trees, leaped over fast-moving streams, and scrambled up the rock, propelled by an invisible jet engine. 

Joe reached Mount Katahdin’s five-thousand-two-hundred-sixty-nine-foot summit in less than ten minutes. He stretched his arms behind him, snapped the rope securing the boulder to his back, and spun one-hundred-eighty degrees around to catch the boulder before it tumbled down the mountain. Joe then held the boulder over his head, coiled his arms, and hurled it into the sky.

Two seconds later, a sonic boom cracked as the boulder broke the sound barrier. The boulder continued to accelerate for another three minutes until it impacted the asteroid, changing the monstrous rock’s trajectory and saving Earth.

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If you enjoyed The Lazy Husband, I think you’ll like my 100-word story, The Blanket War.