It

She rustles another chew from its wrapper and puts it in her mouth. Martin can hear her saliva as her teeth work into the square of red sugar and her tongue and jaws roll the disintegrating confection around her mouth. The bed is littered with pieces of paper torn from the outer wrapping. She’s doing a sudoku. He’s trying to read, trying not to say anything about her eating habits or the mess she’s making. He’s trying to relax.

Sally has been at home all day and is now like a bored teenager, eating sweets in bed, lying on her stomach, kicking her legs in the air, bent as they are at the knee. Her spine is twisted. It looks uncomfortable, but she holds her position, chewing noisily and concentrating on her puzzle.

“What if this is it, Mart?” she says without looking up from the puzzle, her legs crossing and uncrossing then crossing again in mid-air.

Martin doesn’t know what she means, “if”. As far as he can tell, this is it. There’s nothing before or after. The universe might be infinite, but for each living thing there is only now, with memories of before and hopes for what might come. Memories and hopes book-ended by a beginning and an end.

He hasn’t answered her question. She unwraps another sweet and looks at him.

“You think this is it, don’t you?” she asks.

Martin turns a page in his book and breathes out through his nose. He can feel Sally’s eyes still on him. She’s chewing the latest in the chain of sweets more thoughtfully. She stares at him for a long time, but when he finally looks over at her, she has gone back to concentrating on her puzzle.

He’d like to leave. He’s had enough of being here, the lack of meaning in their relationship. It’s just a groove in the road that they’ve both become stuck in, walking forwards with no chance of diversion. She doesn’t seem to mind. She asks questions like, “What if this is it?” because she doesn’t have a clue. She can’t see beyond the ground a few feet in front of her. She’s never raised her eyes to the horizon to see what other opportunities there might be out there.

He’d like to leave, but he never does. This isn’t a recent thing. Martin has spent most of his time with Sally trying to convince himself that he cared, that she was special to him, that he loved her. The truth is that she drives him mad. She’s the living, breathing equivalent of an antimacassar. Something that sits there on the furniture and you don’t know why.

She’s finished her sweets and put her puzzle and pen on the floor by the bed. She’s lying on her side, facing away from him. He can tell by her breathing that she’s already falling asleep. Martin puts his own book down and turns out the light. He lies in the darkness and waits for morning.

The new day dawns and he realises that he hasn’t slept. He closed his eyes once or twice, but for most of the night he has been staring at the ceiling, staring at nothing in the darkness. His tongue has been pressing against the roof of his mouth, the ridged bit just behind his teeth, probing the skin there that is peeling free because he burnt his mouth on the pizza they had for tea.

Martin realises that he hasn’t moved all night. He could be dead and imagining that he’s still alive, imagining the sensation of peeling skin on the roof of his mouth. He hasn’t even moved his head to see what Sally is doing. He can tell that she isn’t moving. Perhaps, he thinks, they are both dead. Some freak coincidence in the night that stopped their hearts and left them frozen in the positions they lay down in. It could happen. He flexes his fingers, then remembers that this means nothing. When you’re dead you can hallucinate that your illusory body parts still move.

Sally really isn’t moving, though, and Martin finally sits up to look at her. He tries to see if she’s breathing without getting too close and inadvertently inviting a hug. He moves in slow motion and the distance between them across the bed seems immense. He looks up at the window, sees the curtains are pulled back, sees a black crow sitting on the outside sill looking in at him.

He wakes up with a jump. The bedroom is still in darkness. Sally has moved slightly and her breathing is deep. Martin tries to judge where the ceiling is, above him, how far away. His night eyes can’t work it out. He presses the light button on the alarm clock and sees that only twenty minutes have passed. Martin puts one arm behind his head and stares into the darkness.

It’s hot and sticky and he can’t sleep. Martin gets out of bed and Sally stirs.

“What is it?” she says sleepily.

“Too hot,” Martin replies. “Can’t sleep. Going downstairs for a cold drink.”

“Turn the fan on,” Sally says, as she falls back into sleep.

The fan is on her side of the bed, and that’s not the point. Martin goes downstairs and gets a glass of water. He sits on the sofa and holds the glass with both his hands. He stares straight ahead, seeing nothing. The living room curtains are open and the living room is lit by the street lights outside. It’s an insufficient light, but it suits Martin’s needs. He sits and feels shabby and unkempt. He can’t remember the last time he had a haircut. He hasn’t shaved for a couple of days. He’s sitting here, naked, at almost midnight on a Wednesday night, uncertain what has happened to his life.

Martin sits on the sofa for an hour. The street lights go out and he sees the moon. He gets up and walks to the front door, opening it and walking out into the garden. He stands there naked in the moonlight and throws open his arms. He bellows at the sky, at the moon, at the madness that is growing in his head. His body is white in the moonlight, with dark patches at his armpits and his groin. He bellows until the breath has left his body.

Sally opens the bedroom window.

“Martin? What the fuck are you doing?” she asks him.

His arms have dropped to his sides, his shoulders are stooped, bent forward, his neck bent, his head bowed. Lights are coming on in bedroom windows up and down the street.

“Come back inside,” Sally hisses. “People will see you.”

Martin ignores her.

“Shut up woman,” he mutters to himself.

Lights go on and then go off again as people look through their curtains to see what is happening at number 36 and then go back to bed.

Sally bangs the bedroom window shut again, and Martin stands on in the garden. He’s bang in the middle of the lawn. The rose bushes are all in bloom. They look eerie in the moonlight.

This is it. He knows it. This is it and there is no going back.

© J R Hargreaves July 2006