The car is warm. He makes sure of it. He fiddles with the heater. He always wants the car to be ready and warm for her. When he picks her up from work. She likes it, she told him once.
He hears her door open and turns to find her leaning in, legs first, then her beautiful body, her face hidden by her long brown hair. She looks tired today. Her clothes are proper, she always makes sure of that. On her way in and her way out she is impeccable, no difference discernible. But he knows her. By now he knows her, and he knows it’s been a tough day.
The engine stirs and they drive away. She doesn’t like to linger, always waits for a red light or stop sign a few blocks away before leaning over and kissing him. Today it is a soft kiss, filled with cautious love. There are few words spoken as she gazes out the side window and him the front. Home is not too far from where she was today. Less than thirty minutes, though those minutes are long when she won’t fill them.
He has the idea to stop at a bar on the way home, have a little drink and talk before slipping into the customary early bed time in preparation of the long days ahead. It seems they always have long days ahead, long days behind. He wonders if there’ll ever be a day when going to bed won’t matter as much. When rest won’t be more important than delightful surprises. They arrive home late, too late for dinner, she says, so they pick at leftovers while they watch something huddled around their computer at the kitchen table. She pulls at a piece of chicken, pours a little salt on it, and chews it quietly. She used to do this with him. He knows that too.
She takes a shower as he turns the lights off and readies the home for bed. He locks the doors, even though they don’t have to anymore, not in the part of time they moved to. A force of habit, just like switching all the lights on before turning them off. He needs to see the clear space, the clean, ready space before he can shut the door of their small bedroom and take off his clothes. He catches a glimpse of her just then, as he perches on the edge of the bed and folds one leg on top of the other to pull at the cuff of his worn jeans. She looks at herself in the mirror. He is transfixed. The mirror is steamy but for her reflection. She turns herself, contorts her body easefully. Her stomach pulls in and out, showing her ribs and her hips at different angles, highlighting here the flatness, there the strength, of this body part she’s tried to love so many times. He can picture the roundness, the soft skin between her bellybutton and her hips. In his imagination her rests his head there forever, with her hand gently weighed on his cheek.
Their eyes catch each other in the mirror as the fog lifts. She quickly closes the door. She doesn’t like to be seen like that. In such small spaces it is difficult to keep the illusion going. She doesn’t often need her privacy but when she does it is with ferocious urgency. She closes the door quickly. Too quickly. She makes a joke, an excuse to hide behind what she was doing. He laughs to make her feel better for lying. They lie for each other, lie for their love.
She’s in her usual underwear and t-shirt when she slides into bed next to him. She’s shy tonight, kissing him softly where she usually does this time of night. She lingers a little longer, her lips a little more open than usual. Cautiously, he slides his hands against her arms. She presses hers against his face, her fingers brushing against his beard. They look at each other for a moment. Neither wants to make the decision. To do it, or not. To make the effort, the investment, the first move.
She tries to remember how she was with the others. Before him. Before the comfort and the terrifying assurance that the person would be there the next morning. And the next. And the next. She tries to channel who she was when she believed in the characters she played. When she could feel sexy, free, detached from her body. Now it was tied to her like a rope. She felt everything when she didn’t want to, and nothing at all the rest of the time. She wants to turn it on for him. The mechanics that used to attract men like moths to a flame. She was the brightest flame. Now she was cold. Always cold.
He waits longer than usual today. It's been two weeks since the night of the fight, when he took her kiss as an invitation, but her hesitancy as rejection. They were two trucks on opposite sides of the highway. A head on collision breaking all the windows and leaving the bed a rubble of dusty metal and rubber. Not the good kind of rubber.
She walks out with a somber look on her face. He braces for another story, another long exhale of other people’s problems fallen on her delicately laid shoulders. He is surprised by a smile. She comes close to him immediately, takes hold of his face and brings hers close, looking past his eyes. There is hope in her gaze. Joy, expectation, her eyes hung on his, like a hand on the edge of a rock, feet dangling in the air below. He holds her there, smiling nervously. She thanks him, and they drive away.
They wake up late the next morning, and though he has work to do he offers to drive her to work. He feels generous, a swell of love for her grown overnight. They climb into the car, and drive slowly, the pitter patter of their conversation seemingly marking a new friendship, a comfort returned that he hadn’t felt leaving in the first place. Now that it was back, he had the feeling of waking from a dream, thinking back on a time that went by right under his nose though very distantly, barely graspable. He can almost pretend it never happened, but it’s embedded in his skin, how much of a stranger she feels like sometimes.
She bends over to organize her bag, and he notices her dress untied at the top. She’s wearing his favorite dress. She looks perfect in it. She looks like she doesn’t have disparate body parts, just one package that makes so much sense you almost miss it, but then it catches your eye and won’t let go. She feels his hand on her back, guiding her to stay in her position. She rises slowly, and turns, feeling his fingers finding the zipper. She hasn’t felt his fingers in a while. Hasn’t registered his attentions. Now she closes her eyes, places her hands on her lap. She needs a touch, his touch. She needs it so badly she can’t say it. Not having it is more bearable than hoping for it, asking, and being disappointed. In the instant she wishes for more, the fingers vanish. She turns and sees him leaning on the door on the driver’s side. She knows he loves this dress. She knows she’ll never wear it again after today. But the moment is nice, a cloud of desire separating them from the harsh reflection of the perfect blue sky.
He’s there hours later, when she comes out in a pair of slacks and a white t-shirt. He is confused. He comes outside to open the door, though she has asked him to always stay in the car. He takes her bag from her but she holds on to it, pulls it near her chest. He relents gently. She asks that he get in first. He’s had too much of a day to be patient with her quirks. She takes his hand, she can always sense when it’s her turn to be kind, to care more about him than herself. That’s why they’ve been together this long. They don’t know everything, but they know when to be kind. The rest is a mystery, a guessing game of signals and misinterpretations that feed a conversation they both never want to see interrupted. When the music stops, what’s left to hear?
They are lonely together.
She hangs her head to the side. He looks over and sees the faint outline of her nipple, the small ripple in the shirt where her breasts hang, unassuming. He stops on his side, stands between the opening of the door and the car, and looks at her. Something happened today.
She slides in after him, composing herself. If she could she’d tell him she was tired, tell him she couldn’t live the life they had built anymore, couldn’t fulfill her end of the bargain. But they had worked so hard to get there, both of them. Their whole lives had been built for this, for the pursuit of personal success. She couldn’t give up now. Even though she felt empty, rootless, she couldn’t give up the only thing that was expected of her. She bit down on her lip, though she knew he’d recognize her nervousness right away. She kept her head toward the window, unable to let go of the flesh between her teeth. It was too much for her, the dress, the fingers all over it, the rip that disguised as an oops, the falling for old
tricks. They had agreed it wasn’t cheating but today it felt dirty, felt like some accumulation of grease and dust thickened the air between them. Even though she had showered, the secrets clung to her skin. All the things she said were fine, etched onto her to reflect the intensity the words didn’t do justice to.
They got home and cooked dinner together, a feeling of friendship overriding the forests of doubt that grew around them more and more. She was there for him, as he was for her, yet the bargain seemed heavy to bear, the reward out of reach, ungraspable before it was too late. She had been told to enjoy her youth, bank on it. So she did. But this monetization of her age seemed to make her older faster, seemed to make living another day more complicated and less hopeful. Seemed to give everyone but her great pleasure. That’s what it was. In this world, where people she trusted told her to enjoy her youth, she was not the one who benefitted from embracing it. It was the others, the olds, the lived, who reaped the benefits of a young woman sharing her fruits. He enjoyed them too, the man who came to pick her up, the man who understood but only insofar as it didn’t affect his enjoyment too. Of her youth. It was a complicated web she was in, one that she thought would give her a sense of belonging, but only isolated her further in a world that she never truly belonged to, but was told to take as her own.
They used to write each other letters. Mostly I love you written in as many different words as possible. Poems, the most beautiful poems, never to be published, only records of the truth that lied beneath the layers of complication that weighed down the simple spell of conditional love. She remembered it fondly, her leaving for work knowing he’d come home to her words and feel the kiss she couldn’t give to him until after her shift. Back then it was simpler. The dirt wasn’t so obvious. The dirt was on the money, on the finger tips that could be washed quickly and forgotten. Now they both were covered, fingerprints all over their skin, clothes, walls. The fingertips that kept them alive in the world, kept them connected to a reality of sheep, of constant problems who’s temporary resolutions justified a drink or a donut or a moment--minutes, hours, days--of Happiness. When he dropped her off they said, see you in twelve hours, or fourteen, or seven. They both counted the hours until they could be together again, knowing that was the only refuge the rest was for. Everything they did was for those hours, when they felt tired enough and rich enough to allow a for silence, for the presence of breath, a beating heart in another’s chest, the softness of his short hair on her cheek, her thigh in his hand, the blissful union that came after pushing, after running the race they had been bred to perpetuate.
The next morning coffee waited for her at work. She had already drunk one, in the car on the way. She was taking a long sip when he helped fix her belt on the way out of the car. He had slipped his fingers between her lower back and the waistband of a skirt she’d bought months ago, the day she had gotten this job and thought it was the best thing that could happen to them. She had gone home to him with the solution. All they needed to do was one year. One year of work, and then they could do whatever they wanted. This was her prime. This was when she needed to capitalize on what the universe had given her. If she did, she could then relax, knowing she had done her duty to the world. He had hesitated, but, not wanting to seem controlling, supported her idea. She seemed so sure of it, so happy to do it. Then had started the cycle; the car pick ups, the exuberant dinners full of anecdotes, the dimming of her light, the increasing occurrence of eyes cast down, dinners barely touched, bodies slowly grinding to a halt. Her hair even, thick with fluidity, now dulled, afraid of what would happen if it attracted any more attention.
If they followed their plan, they had fifteen months left. Fifteen months. It seemed like a lot and nothing at all. They were in their early thirties, and had bonded over their late bloomers label. They were ready to enter the next chapter of their lives financially independent, and thought they were prepared to accept the cost of emancipation from the rat race. Now the foundations were shaking. Little sand accumulated on bedside tables. A film of greasy dust stuck to the fingers as they swept the counter,
cleaning it but not really. She hated that sensation. When she opened the fridge door, or inadvertently touched the top of the microwave reaching for something on the top shelf, her arm would come back sticky, her hand oily with liquids that could have been there forever, growing, languishing, alive with filth. One day, she thought, one day I’ll clean everything, start over. She just needed a day off. She needed a day off from her day off, so she’d have time to not think, time to just scrub something else than her own body.
He heard her cry in the shower, and though everything in him told him to go to her, to hold her in his arms like he used to before she felt suffocated by it, he stayed in place. Sitting at the counter, he tried to focus on his report. This report he’d been trying to finish all week and that was now due tomorrow so he finally had to finish it. They had made love just now. She had come in with an iron determination to be with him, to ignite the flame that hadn’t disappeared but lay dormant until the plan was accomplished. She had sat next to him and delicately unbuttoned her blouse. The white blouse she liked to wear when she wanted to look relaxed but well cared for. It was loose, open at her collarbone, light enough to float on her but hug the outline of her sinuous body. One at a time she undid the buttons, a little smile curving on her lips, and he turned and placed his hand gently on her breast. The right one, slightly larger and a little crooked. The nipple pointing lower than the other perky one. It was his favorite. She gasped inaudibly, her throat becoming a little dryer in an instant. She had climbed on top of him, held him tightly close to her, as if he had threatened to leave and she needed to physically restrain him. They had stayed like that for a moment, in between love and fear, held there on the verge of something, teetering so that it could still go either way. He moved his hand onto her bum, squeezed gently, firmly. She pulled back and then dove into his mouth.
It hadn’t lasted too long, but had been effective in reminding them both of the simplicity of the love that had brought them together a few years back at a mutual friend’s cheap lake house outside the city. They had arrived a few hours apart, her after dark, flustered and immediately ready to jump into one of the three bottles of wine she had brought for the weekend trip. She had wowed him with her smoothness, the way she attracted all the eyes onto her, though each for different reasons. It wasn’t one physical trait, or a loudness, or fantabulous stories of a life lived wildly. It was something personal, for each person, something she connected to unwittingly. She listened, pressed her eyes to truly see who she was talking to. He had gone to refill her glass at a certain point, needing to be close to her, and she had smiled and said thank you, launching them into an hour long conversation about something neither of them could remember, though the memory still to this day brought a sheepish smile to both their mouths.
Tonight, after making love on the couch, they had come apart, panting, and sat there holding hands for a while. Not really exchanging many words, merely taking stock of the power they could create together. Still.
He heard her crying in the shower and stayed at the counter eating cereal and tampering with a report he knew he’d finish in fifteen minutes in the morning but wouldn’t give up on just yet. It was what allowed him to not go, to stand his ground and let her be. They both lived in different apartments, her territory the bathroom, his the kitchen. He pretended as though he didn’t hear her. She pretended like he wasn’t there to hear. They needed to pretend sometimes. Even more so after making love, when their love suddenly seemed so easy, yet their relationship continued to be confronted by a reality too harsh to be contained between two bodies. Their two bodies. Big bodies that used to be small. Used to be kissed all over and taken on trips and wrapped in warm towels and gently deposited on patches of sand between two rocks under a shaded tree. Little bodies who had no idea what the world wanted of them, no idea what their limbs continued to reach for, growing in every direction, further and further away from their heart.
On her last day, nobody came to pick her up. She walked down the stairs, looked both sides of the sidewalk, deciding where to go without an exciting destination. There was an emptiness in her stomach, a place where joy should have been. Or perhaps relief, pride. Instead it was just another day, just another woman standing on a staircase deciding where to go.
He looked at the time just as it turned. He’d been looking at it ever since he got to the office early that morning. He wondered if she thought of him. If they should feel happier today, if the sense of accomplishment was dawning on her or if, like him, she was wondering whether it had all been worth it. What was the cost of their freedom? Who had sacrificed more? She was doing things she would have done anyway had she not been with him, he thought. It was just more organized this way, more clear. She was tired, sure. Had lost some friends. An addiction always takes more than the life of the addict. Its incestuous, it spreads as jealousy, contempt, judgement, misplaced feelings of rejection and inferiority. It hadn’t been her intention for the plan to go well, for it to go so well it had bred a bunch of other plans, all with their own traction, their own reward, their own price. Of course, the bank that was paying for those was her, and in this case the resources weren’t unlimited. There was no one to bail out the kind of bank she was. Not even him.
He slumped over. It took everything in him not to grab the keys to the car and rush out the door, to the stoop, whatever stoop she had gone to for her last day. It took everything in him to fight the urge to call, to show up unexpectedly at the grocery store, or go back to the apartment early and wait for her there. She had made it clear she needed to be alone. Had made it abundantly clear she needed a few hours to herself. In reality it was days she needed, perhaps even months, to herself, by herself. She needed to understand what had happened to her. Where all those days had gone and how they transformed into numbers she watched rise on a screen. Like a fax machine, a text message, words full of meaning flying invisibly in the air all around them. Her body slowly, meticulously chipped at, floating in the air, transforming into something else.
She got home and turned everything off. The stove, the air conditioner, the lamps. Even if something wasn’t on, she unplugged it from the wall. She turned everything off, and sat on the floor, back against the wall in the hallway of their small apartment. The one she could tell by smell, the one with their lives smeared all over the walls. The one that welcomed them years ago, lovers dreaming. The one that now held them together, forced them into the love they had promised not to let die.
Her back against the wall. Her legs bent, folded at the knee, feet close to her bottom, protecting the entrances to her soul. She held her ankles at times, leaned her forehead on her knees, held her knees in the palm of her hand to feel them full. Tears came early on, but then nothing. There was heaving and then nothing. Words, tongues, noses, whispers, fingers, feet, thighs, scarves, liquor bottles, second, third and fourth coffees all raced across her skin. The envelope that was supposed to hold her together but was now nothing more than tissue, one giant seam stretched to its limit, a vase meant for flowers filled with beads instead.