hello-and-goodbye

[[This is the completed story I originally posted as "Part Une". It's finished, and cleaned up, but I would appreciate any advice. Thanks, all!]]


The tension in the car looms unbearably. It presses me back against the seat, absolutely defeated. The steering wheel glides smoothly through my hands, and when we reach a red light I fiddle with the radio knob to avoid his gaze. I feel it anyway, though, confused and resentful. I know I’m being unfair, but I just can’t bring myself to stop. He blows out a gusty sigh.

“Look, are you mad or something?” I keep my eyes on the road, cowardice masquerading as responsibility. I don’t know how to answer this question. Mad? Not really, not in the angered sense. Maybe I’m being driven mad. But how do I explain it at all? What do I say to explain that lying next to him on the couch for hours while he snores in my ear and I watch a movie, isolated and alone, is not a satisfying way to spend an afternoon anymore? What words can I say to make him understand that a brief hello-and-goodbye kiss keeps failing, every time, to make me feel cherished? How do I say any of this without the inevitable and predictable argument, where nothing at all ever gets solved? And most of all, how do I say that I hate that the exact same thing happened yesterday, and the day before, and will be happening, just like this, tomorrow?

“No, I’m fine,” I finally reply, turning my head so he won’t see my eyes. I won’t have my feelings betrayed by tears.
I pull up to the bowling alley and he hesitates, hand on the door, uncertain and wondering what it is that he’s supposed to day next. Then he opens the door, kisses me quickly, and says, “Call you later,” his mind already moving on. He slams the door and I drive away.

There’s a dull ache inside of me that grows more and more insistent, but I can’t quite tell where it is located. Pulling onto the interstate, I roll down the window and the chill autumn wind blows my hair crazily around my face. The car accelerates, reaching seventy miles per hour, eighty, faster, faster. The wind whips through the car, creating a quiet roar that turns the radio advertisements into a babble of voices, sounds only, the words indistinguishable. This is the part of the drive that I love, the part that I live for. The stinging, biting wind dries my tears before they can fall, and I am consumed by the mindless hum of the tires against the asphalt. I wish I could carry on like this, just driving, forever, but too quickly my exit looms.
I turn off the highway and this pain quickly grows, yet still elusive. What hurts? I can’t seem to find it. I think I can rule out my feet as the source of the pain, and my legs. It’s not in my hands, no, nor my arms. In fact, now that I concentrate, my body feels remarkably normal. It must be something else. Maybe it’s my soul hurting, can that happen? Or it’s my heart, my mind, or some combination thereof.
I reach my building with its neatly labeled parking slot. Wearily I drag my not-hurting body up the stairs to my apartment. Then I pop a double dose of the painkillers my doctor gives me and I lay, face down, on my bed. I’m too spent even to take off my dirty shoes, too achey even to hold them off the bedspread. I lay for what feels like days, years, waiting for the miracle cure to soothe my aches and pains.
When I feel brave enough, I slowly raise my head and peek out with just one eye. My mouth feels stuffed full of cotton. I try to swallow but my swollen tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. And yet, somehow I feel better than I have all day.

Out in the living room I hear a rustling and an impatient and insistent chirp. Tweet flutters around her cage, demanding attention, fresh water, and a pristine spread of newspaper to befoul. I stagger around, catering to her spoiled demands, and as I flop down in front of her disapproving stare, I feel a smile spreading across my face. I realize that I haven’t always felt this ghostly.
The thought shocks me into active thought, but it is not that much of a surprise, really. I know what is missing from my life, but I’m trying to ignore it. My best efforts, however, haven’t been doing the trick. I know this because I dream about it nearly every night. Sometimes I even dream of it during my afternoon naps, or when I accidentally doze off at work. I do my best to control my waking hours, but there it is, night after night, in my dreams.
I stare into Tweet’s cage. Temporarily pacified, she’s devouring her seed at an alarming rate. I shake my head, trying to clear it, and sit back in my chair. Through my haze, I finally realize what I really need. I need to talk to Jake. He always knows what I should do. I run to the phone.

“Is it snowing there, you poor thing?” Damn caller ID. I never get the first word anymore.

“Not yet. What are you up to? Don’t tell me if its boring.” Just hearing his voice makes me smile, sets my world a little more in order. I suppose that’s part of the deal, best friends are always that way.

“Oh, you know. I’m doing everything I always do,” he pauses, stretching the silence for several nerve-racking seconds. I wander to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. A big one. When he speaks again, his voice has a more serious edge. “How are you feeling, lovely?”

“Its amazing how you can mother my from five states away, you know.” Suddenly my smile seems plastered on. “Seriously, I’m fine.”

“Seriously. What did the doctor say?” I can hear him cracking his knuckles, an endearingly annoying habit that I somehow picked up during our years together.

“Um. Well. She says…she says she still doesn’t know what’s going on,” My voice keeps getting higher and higher. I fumble for the little bottle of pills, but the lid keeps sticking. “But she says that its not anything like cancer, or, like, and STD or anything. So maybe its just my imagination, I don’t really hurt.” My laugh sounds weak, even to me. “She’s given me some pain stuff for now, until more tests Friday. Tests, tests, tests!” Silence on the other end. I know he doesn’t like this news.
“You haven’t told her about your problems with that shit, have you?” Disapproval radiates from the receiver, absolutely icy. Oh honey, if you only knew. I hold the phone away from my head, stare at it for a moment, then return it to my ear.
“Well, no, not exactly. Then she wouldn’t have given them to me, would she? Then I’d still be hurting. Anyways, I’m doing real good. She gave me thirty of them, and that was four days ago. I still have twenty-five.” No need to mention the fact that I count them several times a day, lining them up one by one, tempting myself. Seeing how far this superman façade can really go. That would just sound too weird. “You don’t want to talk about my guts all night, do you?” I try to make it into a joke.

“Only if you need to, Peanut.” He says it so softly. The old nickname makes me catch my breath, but I try not to let on.

“Well, I don’t want to. I called you about things that are much more serious, and much more fun. Guy problems.” Such things always distract him. I count on it.

“Shoot, killer. What’s wrong this time? Need a stick to beat them off with?”

“No, crazy. David asked me to marry him and I said yes. The diamond is huge, you should see it. But I keep thinking of Lance.” At least, what he can bring me. Another silence. “I think I should call him. Its wrong though, isn’t it? What do you think I should do?”

“You silly woman. You know what I say you should do.” I do know what he thinks. Strangely, my serious, studious Jake always advocates me having fun, not getting tied down and committed. He’s never been a big fan of David. Which seems a little strange, as David thinks that Jake is such a wonderful friend to me. “Just make sure you take off that huge rock beforehand.”
After this conversation, I sit for a moment, my head in my hands. Then I blindly reach for the phone again, dialing a number I promise myself that I will forget, just after this one last time.

* * *
They’re all so pretty there, lined up one by one, end to end. Snaking along, disjointed but still united as one whole. Each little white pill is reflected perfectly against the dark wood of the kitchen table. I count every one, poking them a little, nudging them
into formation. I twirl the stem of my wine glass with my other hand. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. Tweet bobs her head in time to the counting. Twenty-two…twenty-two? Now that can’t be right. It should be twenty-five. I recount. But no, I’m not too befuddled to miscount, not yet.
This slip angers me. I sweep my perfect line together into a cluttered, messy pile, and then into the bottle. Gulping at my wine, it takes me a long moment to realize I’m trying to drain an empty glass. I hold it at eye level, gazing at the warped image, my distorted living room.
I wander from room to room, looking at my possessions with this new perspective. Smooth expanses of white wall curve around me in a protective cocoon. The floor rises up in front of me as if I’m walking uphill. In the bathroom, the sink tap, magnified, jumps out at me, while the toilet shrinks to near invisibility. But everywhere I look, even through my wineglass vision, the clocks jump out at me, demanding my attention. They tell me exactly how long it’s been since I’ve called Lance, and precisely how many minutes he’s not been here.
Time is one of my passions. Punctuality consumes me. Every clock in the house clicks over at exactly the same moment. Such precision usually pleases me, puts me at peace, but now every passing minute shows me how much of my life has been spent, irrevocable, irretrievable. The glowing numbers on the clock ridicule me, waste my time with their mocking faces. I lower my glass to glower back at them. Another minute passes with an audible click. Furiously, I throw down the glass and yell – no, scream – at the nearest clock. “I know! I know! Can’t you leave me alone?”
A rhythmic knocking at the door saves me from further insanity. He’s here.

I cut Lance out of my life nearly six months ago when David gave me this ring. Or at least I decided I should. He’s like my pills. I know I shouldn’t, I say I won’t, but then I do.
I found Lance about the same time I met David. I ‘found’ him because we’d been friends, or friends-of-friends, rather, in a time so long ago it feels like a different life. In many ways it is. We danced around each other with this insane chemistry, flirting incessantly, unwilling or perhaps unable to act. Then Lance disappeared one day, thrown in jail again, or maybe forced into another round of rehab. I thought he was lost to me forever. But exactly one day after I met David, I found him again. I’ve been trying since then, unsuccessfully, to stop sleeping with him.
I don’t know what it is about him. He’s not going anywhere, not doing anything, really. He’s not smart, and he doesn’t understand the words I use. He doesn’t return phone calls, keep promises, or show up on time. He’ll never be anything like David.
Maybe I do know what it is about him after all.
The stereo in his car is ridiculous, vibrating my seat hard enough to scramble my brains. During a lull in the throbbing bass line, I gather my shreds of courage and my depleted wits.

“I’m not doing that shit tonight.” I spit it out feebly, not even convincing myself.

“Yeah you are.” He knows me so well he doesn’t even glance at me, just keeps staring at the road.

“Yeah…I know.” I think I mutter it too quietly for him to hear, laden with defeat. But he turns and grins at me, hazily, knowingly. He reaches in his coat pocket and tosses me the half empty bag of white powder.

I pick up the little packet reverently, my mouth watering. I had promised not to. To myself, to David, to God. Whatever that meant, right? Because I can always forgive myself, David never needs to know, and I can always ignore eternal damnation, at least for the next few minutes. My hands move on their own accord. At least that’s what I tell myself as I carefully rummage in the glove box for the mirror and the razor blade that are always there. I chop and align the lines so neatly, one by one. Their magnificent whiteness is reflected against itself. I lick my lips and hold the mirror for Lance, autopiloting for him as he does his lines so we don’t careen too far out of control. Then I go, and the world goes from shit to much, much better. The back of my head blows off – KABOOM! – and all my worries leak out the back of my head, trickle down my neck, and drip to the floor.
It is here that I’m finally alive, awake, aware. Not at Scott’s house, where we arrive and find a few people in the basement nursing their various addictions. Not in the spare bedroom, where Lance and I have brief and completely unsatisfying hello-and-goodbye sex. Not sitting, trying to find something to say to people I don’t want to have anything in common with. No, it’s not this, but the car ride that I’ve been dreaming about, longing for, fading away without. I’m up, I’m down, here there, all ways, right ways, wrong ways, and I don’t care about anything. My mind touches briefly on the shiny, smooth, oh-so-cold ring safely nestled in the drawer among socks and underwear. My thousand dollar throwaway. So quickly, though, my mind bounces away, unfocused and searching, seeking, but never finding.
The night is finally ending, and Lance has to nearly drag me into the car. My body is just so heavy, not painful, just heavy, and I don’t want to move. The sky is brightening already, preparing for another day that I’m not ready to face. I look over at Lance, not really caring about him, but focusing on the steering wheel. If I can just grab it from him, twist it, yank hard enough, we’ll spin off the road into sweet oblivion, be driving into the dawn forever. But my arms are just too heavy.
We pull up in front of my apartment building and I get out without a word. At the foot of my stairs I trip, fall, and land in the grass. I look to Lance for help, but he’s already long gone, with not even a glance back. I don’t really want his help anyway.
I lay in the grass, gazing up at the purple sky. There are still stars there, fading away, fading so slowly. I wonder if they object to fading like this. I reach into my purse, yank the cap off my bottle of pills, and pop a double dose. I sit back, wondering how I’m going to be able to say good-bye to the waning night, and hello to the approaching dawn.