She looked at the strikingly white porcelain as the water poured over her
head. Even over the rush of noise of running water, she could hear him banging
around in the kitchen. She heard the clink of a bottle being dropped heavily on
wood, she heard him throw cubes of ice into a tumbler. She had to imagine him
downing the Scotch; she couldn’t hear that.
Even then, she couldn’t remember him.
Goosebumps erupted on her body but she ignored them and lathered her
hair.
She didn’t love him. He deserved it: he loved her, shared with her and
gave to her. He thought he understood her but she didn’t understand her; how
could he?
As she stepped out the shower she heard a door slam shut.
She walked out the bathroom and looked around the empty living space.
The bottle of Scotch and nearby tumbler
gleamed on the kitchen counter in the soft recess lights.
Entering the bedroom, she saw that his suit was strewn on the bed. On the
nightstand was a piece of cake on a paper plate. She stared at the scene, puzzled,
only remembering the wedding after a few seconds.
She bundled up his suit haphazardly, her towel dropping softly to the
floor. She snatched the cake off the nightstand, squashed it into the bundle of
fabric in her arms and rushed into the kitchen, bending over double and shoving
it violently into the trash under the sink.
As she straightened up, she savagely wiped the tears on her cheeks.
She stood there for some time: naked, shuddering, droplets of water
falling from the kinks on her head. She picked up the bottle of Scotch slowly,
uncapped it and took a long swig. The sweet bitterness burned her throat and
she drank again.
Back in the bedroom, she fell onto the bed. Her head pounded and she had
too many overflowing thoughts and no medium of expression.
She retrieved the small container of marijuana in one of her drawers and
returned to the bed with her legs folded beneath her. She stuffed the green
flakes into her small pipe, lit and took a long and calming pull.
She did it again, many times, until her head felt light and her body
buzzed with high.
The headache was gone but now her mind – cloudy – seemed to taunt her
with her situation.
He had been with her from the time she was a foreigner in someone else’s
country. He had molded her like soft clay, not to his whims, but in the
direction of hers. He knew her best and she wanted to escape him worst. The
familiarity was stifling; it wasn’t a comfort. He was everywhere in her life as
if he demanded the space, he took up her time and efforts in ways that begged
so much sacrifice.
She bent her head down to her ankles and tried to sob. Her hand brushed
between her legs and the sensation rattled her body. She lay back slowly,
rubbing her feet up and down the soft duvet as she continued to palm herself.
Her dark body was one with the darkness inside of her, and with the
darkness of the bedroom. She couldn’t see what she was doing to herself. She
could only feel.
Her calves tingled and cramped as she slowly rubbed her hidden clitoris,
feeling the warmth in her become wet.
She inhaled so deeply that her chest cracked. She haphazardly searched
through the dark for the vibrator in her nightstand; she felt for the switch
and heard the faint buzz. She licked the tip and put it on her nipple.
“Fuck…” she moaned into the empty darkness as the vibration seeped through
the rest of her body, the buzz palpable.
Before she could part her lips with her fingertips, the bedroom door
swung open. Light from outside flooded onto her pulsating body. She raised her
hand to shield her eyes. She could see his silhouette in the doorframe but
could not make out his expression. She heard him laugh sardonically.
“You gotta be fucking kidding.”
“Jesus,” she said exasperatedly, pulling the duvet over her naked body as
he turned on the light.
“Really?” he commented, looking at her hands clutching the duvet over her
chest. His breaths were short, eyes wide and he was on the verge of screaming. “Like
I haven’t fucking seen it all?”
He advanced on her and savagely pulled the duvet. She catapulted forward,
her hands still clinging to the downy white. They struggled for some time until
he snatched it from her and threw it to the floor.
“Stop it!” she cried as he pushed her back on the bed and put his hand on
her pussy.
“Why are you hiding?” he asked through clenched teeth, his fingers
pushing into her hard.
“Fucking stop it!” she screamed while kicking him off and pulling her
legs to her body, back straight against the headboard.
“How much is too much?” he asked. “For weeks you shut me out, you cancel
at the drop of a hat, you never want to have sex – how much do you expect me to
fucking take?” He searched her face but she kept her eyes fixed on his chin.
“And the wedding… the fuck were you thinking? Huh? What came over you in
the church? Who the fuck were you? In front of eighty fucking guests? In a
fucking church?”
She felt a current through her body. She expected that his failure to
confront her when she first arrived at the apartment meant that he would comfortably
ignore what had happened earlier; the way he comfortably ignored everything else.
And she would have let him the way she always did.
But this was the reckoning moment. He was firing his shots right at her,
calling her out on the cruel darkness that lived inside.
“Say something.”
She shrugged and he made an aggravated sound and punched the mattress
hard. He got to his feet and spat, “Fuck you, then. Fuck your mind-games and
fuck you.”
He picked up the duvet and threw it on the bed, switched off the light
and slammed the bedroom door shut.
She let out a hard breath and clutched her heart. The darkness was
blinding against her eyes, it pressed in overwhelmingly and felt barren. She
could feel the beating organ inside her as it graphically pounded. She could
feel the pump of blood through it and the rush of life coursing through its
core. Pumping life in the dark.
She shifted on the bed and the sudden buzz of the vibrator frightened her
and she let out a small cry.
She felt for it on the mattress and turned it off. A chuckle escaped her
lips and then tears sprang to her eyes.
She tried to push back the thoughts in her head. Was he still in the
apartment? She listened keenly to the deadness and decided he had left.
You can’t run forever, a voice
inside lulled.
Couldn’t she? She could so easily detach from moments and herself, as if
she had tied her emotions to a helium balloon and let it float away forever.
Why couldn’t she do that with love?
This isn’t love, another voice
taunted.
She pulled herself off the mattress, turned on the lamp on her nightstand
and rolled a joint. As she pulled, she could hear the sizzle of buds burning.
She looked over at the nightstand and noticed a clump of whiteness stuck to the
top.
Bewildered, she poked her fingers through it and realised it was icing
from the wedding cake. She put her finger in her mouth and the sweetness
mingled with her smoke-tinged saliva.
It tasted like shit.
Just like everything else in her life tasted like shit. Whether it was
the way she had to interact with waiters or smile encouragingly at tourists as
they waved annoyingly or entertain his friends even though she hated every one
of them more than the last or go to work and entertain her new boss, the
grandest dick that ever was, or pretend to be excited every time she saw a baby
in a stroller, even if it looked like a swaddled beet with lips, or wear heels
to dinner when she really wanted to stay in, watch TV and binge eat a bag of
Doritos; everything lately tasted like shit.
Suddenly, there was a jolt in her stomach. She felt a push on her throat
and ran to the bathroom, letting the vomit out into the toilet bowl. For a
minute, she violently spat up her insides, moaning and gagging with no
restraint.
After she rinsed her mouth and face, she stood up straight and looked
into the mirror at herself intently. Her dark eyes were watery and red.
She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. That didn’t taste
like shit. It tasted like steak.
