It's a cold day. November is always cold. It's always the same. Year in, year out. The same. He fell in love in December and that's when the ice began to melt and he felt that, on the water it became, he could sail somewhere new. Become someone else.
November represents everything he hates. If he could, he would cut it out entirely. August, October and then straight to December and January. If he had his way, he would sleep through November. Animals sleep for months at a time. Is he really any more than one of them? Why should different standards apply?
He strolls aimlessly through the crowd, suddenly aware at how gray the world around him has been painted. Large, brash, clumsy brushstrokes in a tone devoid of colour. The sidewalk is gray. People's faces. Trees, cars, restaurants. There is no beauty left. You cannot find beauty in a grayscale.
The people passing through him, they don't know it. They live in Technicolor existences and they smile, and they laugh, and they sing. They don't notice him. They don't want a large turpentine stain to blot their oil paintings.
They're on the same routes, though. Separate paths, but they're parallel – they lead to the same place. Everyone's going to the same place, he thinks bitterly, compressing a leaf into the ground with his toe. It upsets him, but it's true – and that makes it better. Truth is important. He breathes truth. They know this, yet they do not feed him with his oxygen and so his lungs are continually gasping. Poisoned by lies. Toxicities.
One day, someone might realise and join his march. Yeah, one day – but one day is an infinitely expansive stretch of time. He can't build a life on one days. This is why he does not live – this is why he is content with existence. One day. One day.
One day at a time; that's what they all kept telling him. Take it one day at a time, and we'll get there. We'll get there, we promise. You can move on, we promise. We promise, we promise, we promise. He soon learnt that 'we promise' is as fictitious as 'one day'.
He is suddenly aware that he is cold. Freezing cold. The wind bites and encircles him and he realises that it is snowing. Not picture perfect Christmas card cotton wool, but harsh, gray sleet. The world painted on Christmas cards isn't real. It's not there. There is nowhere so beautiful – so idyllic – so forgiving. He has learnt this, but that won't retract the pain.
"Chandler!" A woman's voice calls out to him from a shop front to his left. He does not dare to turn around. Like this, blind, he can imagine that it is her. If he looks, his eyes will tell him what his mind refuses to.
It's not her.
"Chandler!" The cry is insistent, welcoming.
It's not her.
He turns.
It's not her. Yeah – it never is.
-
SEVEN YEARS AGO:
-
"Phone me as soon as you get there!" he reminds her, handing her the suitcase he just packed for her (a romantic gesture, although he knows that she'll repack the second his back is turned; it's a tradition, of sorts).
"I will," she replies wearily. They have been through this conversation at least five times in the last hour.
"Look after our little guy for me," he insists, patting her stomach protectively.
"I will," she reiterates.
"Don't fall in love with any hot British guys!"
"I will."
He glares at her. "I won't! I won't! I said I won't! Now would you stop worrying, please, sweetie? It was cute at first, but you're starting to get on my nerves!" He sniffs, offended, and she rolls her eyes. "Look, you'll see me and Benjamin again in a couple days!"
"Benjamin? I knew it! You are seeing a hot British guy, aren't you?"
She cocks an eyebrow. "Benjamin as in our son!"
He counts on his fingers – "Charlie... Marcus... I don't remember a Benjamin..."
"Benjamin as in our unborn son..."
"Since when is our unborn son called Benjamin?" He folds his arms, knowing before they begin that she will win the fight, but desiring of the beautiful dance that will ensue. If he's honest with himself (and he rarely is), he is only employing tactics to delay her departure.
He doesn't want her to go. Something's wrong.
"Since I decided last night?"
"I am not having a son called Benjamin!"
"What's wrong with Benjamin?"
"I once married a guy called Benjamin..." He lowers his voice. "Messy divorce."
"When was this?"
"Uh... Kindergarten..."
"We'll discuss thatwhen I get home!"
If you get home, he mentally corrects her. If. It's not a certainty. Nothing's a certainty in this world – but that doesn't ease the gnawing inside of him. He doesn't mention it to her – he knows that it will be dismissed as easily as any other unfounded fear, but it's still there. It's still eating away at him. Something's wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
"And Benjamin?" he asks, his voice a tone too low, his heart a beat too fast.
"Benjamin is not open for negotiation. He's my son!"
"And what am I? The guy next door?"
"Do you want a pregnant lady to hit you?"
"That's never stopped you before..."
She feigns anger and even he, who wakes up next to that face every morning, is surprised by the beauty that flashes through it. Lightning in his dark sky.
"Now, you make sure our little guy gets there okay, yeah?"
"And what about me?"
"Unless you plan to give birth five months early on the plane, it's going to be pretty hard for him to get there without you... anyway, you're just my baby machine. Once we've had enough, I want a divorce!"
"Oh, and four isn't enough for you?"
"I was hoping for an even number."
"And four is... what?"
"When I say an even number, I mean an even ten."
"You are kidding me, right? Do I look like I could fit six more of those things inside me?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
Amid the idle conversation, the empty words, he is struck by a sudden desire to grab her, to hold her, to rock her in his arms and to ask her – no, tell her – never to leave him. Not to get on that plane.
But he doesn't. No, he doesn't. It's a decision he'll regret for as long as he can know – with every fibre of the tapestry into which his life has been woven.
Instead, he settles for a fleeting kiss. Quick. Easy. No explanations. No side effects, except the guilt that it will heap onto his already hunched and aching back. It's okay, he tells himself. You can get tablets for that. You can get tablets for anything. Nothing's incurable. Nothing except a broken heart.
"Phone me as soon as you get there," he tells her, resting an arm on the door frame for support.
"You'll get my call the second I arrive, I swear," she replies. A quick kiss on the cheek, a wave, and she's gone.
He never gets the call.
She never arrives.