KYTiva wanted this one finished. You speak, I obey...
Skiamachy
He only thinks of her during the evening news.
While disinterested America regurgitates the fluctuating menu of wrongs that is Israeli-Palestinian relations, he remembers a face. His wife, in a fit of societal indifference, sides with Palestine. There is much to dislike about a woman who sails against the tide of civility as an excuse to debate inferiors. He used to like defiance in a woman. And brown hair. And quick hands.
The other moved on, moved away, moved beyond. Either tired of waiting or never waiting at all. Waiting infers expectancy and neither harbored a talent for hope. Distance makes it no easier to gauge intent. And the shiny ring grows looser by the day.
They think he's not eating. In truth, something internal has shriveled, decaying from within where bone meets flesh and movement rubs everything raw.
It might be his soul, a capsized vessel rotting on the shore of too late.
His loneliness married this one. They had wed covertly because, she says, it was spontaneity stomping on traditional values. The gown that had walked toward him hadn't been white but a faded teal, the crayon color of collected tears. Like a guilty inmate, he'd been strapped into the chair, not so much stubbornly resisting as sluggishly resigned. His 'I do' had sounded like the first squirt of a lethal injection.
Having traveled two thousand miles, a casual version of patented running with a slip of paper to authorize it, the least he could do was fulfill his role.
There should have been theatrical thunder to fit the occasion.
He's all mood now, she's fond of complaining. Dour, the description that replaces playboy on his tombstone. She buys her way out of depression's drapery but he likes the cut of that cloth. Never mind the bullet holes.
The news anchor spews polite anxiety on rising prices and falling markets. Anarchy on his wallet, but not as dire as her fingerprints on his credit cards. New money and fresh snobbery came from her side of the family.
That his side no longer exists is the birth of his own fortune.
It had been a similar broadcast that informed him of his father's passing, a man who'd tricked the recession into financial redemption but died in his own newly decorated boardroom. On his way back up, the orphaned son muses over a meal too healthy to stomach. Death rides a caloric train wreck but only the devoted dare speed up the pace. He's known for neither zeal nor perseverance.
Lack of dedication, the pestilence of negotiation.
Because he couldn't commit, the other wandered. And he retaliated by suctioning onto the next female in line, a girl full of endearing idiosyncrasies that stimulated some cobwebbed part of him freshly withered after his partner's departure.
The connection was convenient for the performance he would soon perfect.
Everything's fine... life goes on... no big deal...
Upon inspection, the blonde's quirks are found to be forced, a round peg snubbing the round hole because square is hip again. His bride only plays at rebellion to stir dinner party conversation.
"The man who'd jumped from his office building's roof has been identified..."
The sliver of Tony's brain not occupied with dissecting scabs hears only part of the story. They share a first name. That should mean something. But suicide requires courage and he's too old to shop for that accessory.
"And now the latest on stalled Middle East peace talks..."
And he thinks of the other because the stock footage of desert sands reminds him of a time she'd hated him, loved him and despised him anew. Some cycles are worth revisiting, but the address was lost on the journey to their brand of nowhere. The negotiation table has disintegrated in the scorch of one last arson.
To an impassive world he declares an intention to disembark. Exit the wife, exit the lie. Enter the brown hair, enter the quick hands.
There is nothing to bargain with, no concessions to offer.
Stepping outside of an average day in a fake life, he resolves to see if the table, however burned, still stands.