He thought about this as he waited for what he hoped she would usually do...dart into the flower store and pick something up for the week.
And then she was there.
Sometimes when you see something it is startling...a skidding shooting star in a midnight black coal night...a fire in the woods...a terrifyingly close lightning strike. It felt something like that.
How are you he said, approaching her from behind. She stood up, straightened actually, and took a second to turn around. When she did, he did feel like her eyes widened versus narrowing...a flat-smile struggled to keep its shape.
Uhm...hey. I'm good. And...her hands whirled a little until they found each other and clenched them together, like in comfort. I've been waiting, I guess...you know, since Christmas. You didn't call me.
He let out a little abbreviated laugh. Call? Christ, you ruined my Christmas and definitely started off my year on a shitty note. What would I call about? To see if you could ruin my birthday too? He said it with a bit of a smile, but he also knew that he wanted her to feel something...what? Guilt? He didn't really know.
She breathed in, a big deep right-before-I-swim-to the bottom of the pool-breath...I didn't know what to tell you. I just figured we might..well that maybe we'd be in a neutral place and then I could explain things.
He couldn't read her at this moment. Her guard was way up on high.
Were you waiting here for me? she asked
I was in the neighborhood.
In the neighborhood?
Yeah.
He looked around at the fresh cut flowers, stems still so green, petals in full bloom.
Am I like these things? he asked her.
A flower?
No. An amusement.
An amusement...I'm not sure what you're asking.
He waved his hand across the length of the room. Everything in here is dying. They are at their most perfect point in time, their most perfect colors...their most perfect attraction. I wonder when it was that I was cut and started dying and left my perfect attraction from you.
She had her hand balled up and now brought it to her face. He wasn't frustrated so much as he just wanted to know...
I don't think you...she started...pulled her hand down...I don't think WE are dying. In a way, I don't think we have even started.
I feel like I'm decaying..I've ceased to bring to you whatever it is I brought before.
And I don't think you've even started.
Really? he asked. I sometimes wonder if you even remember things.
I remember things. I just don't share them well.
I remember you told me that I would always come back...and I guess me being here is proof. But you're here too. I guess I'm just wondering if I'm on the downhill side now...no longer where I tried to be.
She turned her head slightly. Like a question had been posed. And it had been posed.
Then what if I told you I thought you were just at the foot of things...that you hadn't even started.
He stared. Then I would say that I am definitely an amusement to you. I'd say I'm definitely disposable.
Why would you say that?
Because that is how you make me feel...and there is no recollection in you of anything that I've tried, or said, or traveled, or communicated, or texted or struggled to fill into a thimble just so you would take even the tiniest of drinks.
He could smell the flowers, an overwhelming fresh and potent flavor. Her being in the midst of them only heightened the effect.
I'm not trying to make you feel like that...it's not what I'm trying to do.
It's the effect.
You're not a flower. You're not an amusement.
What am I then?
She stood there, looking at him.
You are undefined.
I'll take that.
He put a hand under her chin and held it there briefly. He walked past her, out into an afternoon that was darkening in a winter, the sky spitting snow and the flakes just gray enough to feel like ash.
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