“Let slip the dogs of war.”

He heard it first in a Star Trek movie years ago–he couldn’t remember which one.  Stirring his coffee and decided he couldn’t remember which Shakespeare play the quote was from either.  He knew whenever he thought of that quote now; he thought of his ex-wife.

He thought of her often. When that wriggling little black mass of gooey memory started forward he took the dog out and tossed the ball until they were both exhausted.  He worried because old Fido (his actual name) didn’t want to run and play fetch as often or as long as they used to.  That was a problem because lately that mentioned black mass of destruction was surfacing more often.

He knew why his second marriage was failing.  He married her on a whim.  She was there; he was there, a need met, and he thought he might as well continue meeting that need.  It was fine for the first six or seven months until she decided she was in love.

He dressed appropriately, was even happy on the day of the nuptials but now…

Now his coffee was stale and overcooked and the nice neat-as-a-pin house he lived in had a thin layer of dust dulling the sparkle he remembered.

His second wife couldn’t cook and that was fine, it was just the two of them and he enjoyed cooking.  She enjoyed reading and at first that was fine.  They enjoyed walking downtown to the used bookstore, he would walk away with an edition of Sir Walter Scott he couldn’t believe he had the good luck to find and she would walk away with a bag of paperbacks.

At first it was fun.  She tried everything on him–everything.  He even flipped through her books once but when he came across some descriptive parts of the male anatomy, he thought he’d leave it up to her.

The marriage was about a year old when he found himself wide-awake beside her.  She was softly sleeping while he puzzled about life throughout the night.  What scene had they played out, what plagiarism in bed did they perpetrate?

That’s when the face of his first wife drifted in front of him and he sat bolt upright.  What if he slipped, what if he got so caught up in the current rush of love making but uttered in ecstasy his first wife’s name?

His first wife read Shakespeare and used to quote long segments at a time.  She read and reread the plays.  She looked so lovely during the festivals they attended.  They were young, inexperienced and let slip away the teachings of commitment.

He didn’t mourn her memory but her memory of Shakespeare. The taunts, the jibes, the certain bawdy humor and a sense of a night walk with ghosts and skulls and the best of ill luck. The slap and suck of sweat dimmed quickly in comparison.

He stirred his coffee and watched the dust motes on the windowpane.