The neighborhood was dark and still when he arrived back at the little walk-up apartment, made his way up the stairs, fumbled in the dark for his keys, went in, and crept as quietly as he could toward their bedroom in the back. His wife would have gone to sleep long ago.
He pushed open the bedroom door and saw his wife standing on the other side, glaring back at him in the dark. She snapped on the lights, thrust her head at him, and marched forward, forcing him to back up through their small sitting room until all but his head was pulled back into the hallway. There she stood with her legs splayed in a broad stance as if she were defending the apartment from him. "Where have you been?" she brayed. "What did you need to do that could not be done under the sun?"
He felt so heavy that just standing up took effort. "Can we please go to bed?"
"Go to bed? Go to BED?" she squealed. "Have you been drinking?" She nipped his chest sharply, then sniffed his breath, and then his mane.
Her ears drooped. "You've been with another mare," she said, unbelieving.
"Yes," he said dully. "I was with another mare, and I spent all our money on her."
He saw the familiar look of concentration on her face that meant she was trying to puzzle out something confusing, as if possibly he had said something entirely different and she had misheard him. He wondered why he had just used the truth to tell such a cruel lie, and why he had pretended to himself that his wife could fall asleep before he had returned. He almost had the answer in his grasp when she slapped him.
"You thought you could come back here in the middle of the night, stinking of one of those legion whores, and get away with it?" She thrust her nose against him, pushing his head back. "You think I'm STUPID, Amadi?"
He didn't look away, or give ground. He just gazed back at her with fondness and sorrow.
She snorted furiously. Then she wheeled around and kicked with her rear legs, smashing into fragments the pot of an ostrich fern that stood against the sitting-room wall just inches to his right. He was too tired to flinch.
She trod in a half-circle to face him again, breathing heavily. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sat heavily on the floor, blinking. "Twenty years, Amadi. Twenty years. You only had to go one more week. Couldn't you have had the decency to wait until you shipped out, like all the other soldiers?"
It would be better for her to think that he no longer loved her. That, he realized, was why he had misled her. Amadi knew in his gut that he would never come back from the war. Every day the news reported new victories; but if it were true, they would never have called up an old stallion like himself. He had seen the truth in the eyes of the doctors at the enlistment center, as they pretended he was in perfect health. It would be better for her to find another stallion now, while there were still some left.
But she looked so sad. He wanted to lick the tears from her cheek the way mothers did to their foals. He would probably get a swift kick if he tried.
"I had to," he said. A shy, sad smile crept onto his face, as though he had given her a present she did not like.
Realization slowly dawned on her. "You did it," she said. "You stupid zebra, you went ahead and did it."
"Yes."
Now she really cried, and she reared up and beat his chest with her hooves. Just the flats, but hard enough to hurt. "You IDIOT! What if they'd caught you?"
"I know."
"You didn't even TELL me! I wouldn't even know what had happened to you! You thoughtless little colt!"
"I know."
She stopped hitting him and sighed. "All our money, Amadi. You said we were going to leave this horrible place, buy a house with a yard and plant cherry trees."
"If you'd been there. If you'd been there. You'd have sold the silver, the books, the furniture, just to buy her one more minute."
"What about ME? What about me, here, alone while you are off at the war? What will I do?"
He could have told her that she would get all of his legion pay, or that the money had been barely enough to buy the cherry trees let alone a house, or that planning for the future now was a cruel joke. All these things were true. Instead, he said, "She was the same age Zuwena would have been."
They stood facing each other for a full minute, breathing heavily.
"You're a good zebra," she finally said, and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she swatted his chest again, hard. "But an idiot. Now shut up and come to bed."
They pulled back the covers and crawled into bed. She snuggled up against him and put one foreleg over his neck. "Maybe you'll finally be able to get some sleep," she said.
"Maybe."
Over her shoulder, he could see the clock on the nightstand. Nearly two o'clock. The cashier's schedule had had timeslots up through three in the morning.
As she gradually relaxed and dozed off, he felt the beat of her heart and listened to her breathing, regular and unhurried as the ticking of a clock or the waves lapping on the shore of some vast, imperturbable sea, and he could almost imagine that he could hold her like that and keep her safe, forever.