One Last Dance
Oneshot for 6-17, Lock Down. English translation of Letzte Rechnung.
The knock at the door and the voice of a security guard coming from behind makes her aware that the evening is over.
She slides from the examination bed, her naked body gleaming in the cold neon light that shines from outside through the window.
Silently, she collects her clothes.
He watches her, and suddenly remembers how she would get up in the morning to the sound of the alarm, putting on her gown and slowly walking into the bathroom. She has always been an early bird.
Her hand reaches for the papers.
She lets them slip into her purse, even before she puts on her shoes.
He has signed them only maybe an hour ago, and that's why she's here.
Everything she does she does quickly, routinely.
She swiftly arranges her hair, pulls on her coat, and then reaching for the bag, where she has stored the documents like some long-sought and finally found treasure.
Now, with everything said and done, she is in a hurry.
He wonders whether she has a therapist. He would probably tell her to leave everything behind: a poisonous environment, the unrequited love to a mentor, and, most of all, a husband who has committed a murder.
The same therapist would have encouraged her to 'let it all out'.
He would have encouraged her to verbalize her anger in order to understand her fears, her frustration, her short-comings.
It hurts to hear those words from her, hurts to have them tossed into his face, and yet, he's glad that she told him.
I'm a mess.
He loved this mess.
Each and every fiber of it.
For a while, she struggles with the straps of her shoes.
He waits for her to look at him.
To talk to him.
Only at the door she turns around.
She keeps silent.
Doesn't smile.
Her eyes are reddened, and he wonders whether she feels pity or remorse.
It seems like she is defined by only either of them.
She closes the door behind her, almost without a sound.
He knows he should get up now but doesn't have the strength to do it, once again.
It's the story of his life, he thinks, smiling ruefully into the dark.
All of the sudden, the room feels as cold and sterile as it actually is.
The leatherette under his bare skin feels just as unpleasant as the hospital blanket that covers his legs and waist.
The chill is even more intense now without her warm body next to him.
He decides to lie there for another moment and keeps staring at the ceiling.
He wants to cling to the idea that there was, finally, something like an emotional connection in their last goodbye.
It almost seems as if she told him what she enjoyed the most in their relationship.
He remembers the dancing lessons she made him take before the wedding.
The way he held her, she fondly remembers, and Chase can't help but be amused by her words.
He had trouble learning the steps, adjusting to the archaic rhythm of the waltz.
He is not, admittedly, a very gifted dancer, and he has stepped on her toes more than once, a mishap which she commented with a disapproving yet lenient click of her tongue or a breathless laugh.
He doesn't know whether she actually is as insecure as she pretends to be.
Whether she really is messed up enough to only love what is broken and needs fixing.
She cannot fix, doesn't want to fix; she just wants to feel needed, and anything that is helpless enough catches her eye, awakens some sort of maternal instinct that makes her overflow with compassion.
Helplessness.
He has felt helpless at the very moment when she locked the door.
With sudden clarity, he realizes that it was all it took to make her sleep with him one last time.
She offers sex as some consolation prize that comes dangerously close to sympathy.
The last thing he wants is pity.
She gave him what she believes is good enough for him.
A reward for the fact that he signed the papers; that he, once again, did what she wanted.
There is no sacrifice in it for her.
It is nothing more than a well-meant gesture, born out of pity and regret.
It is her way of saying what she misses.
Dancing.
Being held.
He has done nothing else for three years, without ever wanting to admit that she deprived him as soon as she had sensed the whiff of obligation.
But oh, he knew. He knows now that he knew.
What he doesn't know is if she can allow emotional proximity as much as physical intimacy, because he has never seen it in her.
They had breakfast, lunch and dinner together, worked side by side, fell asleep next to each other.
But he does not remember one single occasion when she would take his hand, just like that.
He no longer knows whether she has turned to him out of the blue and hugged him except in their bedroom.
He would gladly cherish all those little things that they have shared with each other, but if he's honest with himself, there's not much to remember.
Suddenly he wonders why it has happened all over again.
Revelations in a cold room while outside the police was frantically searching for a missing baby.
He now knows that she did not love him, couldn't love him like he wanted her to, and is it really all her fault?
Does it make him less responsible?
Maybe he wanted her to be someone she never was.
What did she see in him?
He had pondered the thought for weeks, and still can't find an answer.
A partner, sufficient enough to learn the wedding waltz, but unable to dance a Tango.
He pulls the blanket closer to his chest because he starts to shiver.
Locked in a sterile room; locked in her embrace as she pulls him into her apartment; locked in the storeroom, at the sleep laboratory.
It has never been as cold as it feels right now.
Even though he is aware that she will not return, he had shared the one thing with her that made them connect in the first and perhaps only place.
For one more time, he feels like a puppet who keeps dancing her waltz, entangled in the threads, unable to stop until she drops the handle.
She could have lied.
Could have told him that the death of the dictator had destroyed her confidence in their love.
A lie, surely, but less hurtful.
She could have told him that he put their marriage at stake by playing God.
Stop lying to yourself, he thinks.
Because to be honest, he realizes that the truth is better for both of them.
What he does not understand is the fact that she entered a relationship with him despite her doubts.
Did you ever love me?
I don't know.
It hurts because he has never been certain about her feelings for him, and only when confronted, she finally provides him with an honest answer.
Compassion (pity, he thinks) has turned brutal truth into unexpected vulnerability but no matter how she says it, it's a slap in the face.
He cannot bring himself to analyze what he feels for her right now, in this moment, because he is afraid of the result.
So what exactly were we?
A picture-perfect marriage, the perfect couple.
Outwardly, everything was shiny.
Perfect to the outside world, but full of fears and doubts behind a polished facade.
Out behind closed blinds, the lights go out and the night lights dimly glow through the glass wall.
He clutches the blanket and pulls it up around his shoulders.
He smells the detergent and the typical smell of the clinic.
Sterile, almost.
And then he realizes what had been different.
Her smile, her melancholy, her tenderness.
The sadness in her face, her honesty, the sheer vulnerability.
She can be generous now when she could not in their marriage.
Because it's over.
From now on, it is only a formality.
It is only a matter of time.
A lost commitment that will resolve itself.
The one and final thing she gave to a dying man was her love because it was bound to end.
The last thing she gave to him is a tender hint of what could have been.
His fingers drill into the covers and he closes his eyes, inhaling and exhaling deeply, trying to lie perfectly still until his breath becomes even again.
And he thinks that maybe today, maybe she had feelings for him, because she would lose him.
She is a mess.
A mess that he finally comes to understand.
He only wishes he had understood before she locked that door.
Fin