If the world were ending, part one, chapter three

If the world were ending

Part One

Chapter Three

by Sarah Bishop

[Editor’s note: the following chapter is the same events of chapter one, only from the perspective of the character, Sarah.]

The screen of her phone dimmed out, unused; it was the lack of light that caught her attention. Although she had less than 10% of battery life left, Sarah kept clicking her home button, as if, in the last twenty seconds that she hadn’t checked, someone had called, a call had been lost. She instead switched to surveying Alex, willing herself to stop checking for a last word from distant family – if only, she thought perversely, to save the battery for that same call.

The utilities had been off for nearly a day now, although the house was comfortable enough. Still, the effect was of pent-up air, a dryness and a moisture at once which lounged rudely, a fat and loud uncle-of-a-friend’s-neighbor that had overstayed his welcome. The uncle sprawled out in his kitchen chair, leaning on the back two legs in that way which divides one’s interest: on the one hand, you want him to fall back and goose egg that bald spot above the multitude of skin rolls rising from his neck, to learn a lesson, watch his bewildered eyes as the bump settles around the last strands of his greasy hair and you have to assure him that no, no we don’t have ice; on the other, not only do you scold yourself for such a cold heart, but that might break the chair legs.

Or perhaps, if the air wasn’t such an uncle, it was wool – wool, if wool were a gas element. And so Sarah breathed this wool in deeply, sighing it out in woolen ripples as she watched Alex delicately take down the wine glasses. She noticed how his hand lingered, passing over the white wine glasses and going for the larger crystal – a detail that, even in the apocalypse, of course he wouldn’t ignore. She held back a snort at his propriety; neither of them were wine connoisseurs at yet he would do his damnedest, at every opportunity, to go by the books. It was red wine glasses for red wine, as it should be.

“Tell me when,” he said, in that gentlemanly – no, timid – way he had. The warm wine soaked into the woolen air, staining deep red, urgent and old. Sarah was thirsty, but warm wine, she knew, would be liquid sand on her tongue.

She looked up to Alex’s face, unsure of her answer and reluctant to give him one when he still couldn’t demand it from her. Was that too much? He was always so busy opening car doors and offering his jacket that he never… What did she want, the Brawny man? Should he use an axe to cut down his answers? It didn’t have to be one or the other. She wanted the… directness? The machismo? Not quite, there still had to remain an element of… Poor men, she realized, if they ever try to be what a woman wants.

He repeated his question.

Alex still had a firm grip on her eyes, an event seldom repeated and always with consequences. Sarah was in it, for about a second, less for the eye contact and more to observe the folds of color around his iris, the pin-prick freckles. What a fine time it would be to notice something striking about his eyes, if she hadn’t already eagerly uncovered their surprises. Familiarized them. She hunted out the clump of amber in his left eye like the index card her mother wrote her cookie recipe on, even though Sarah could make them by memory since she was twelve.

“When,” she started, thinking of words to follow but finding none in her lexicon that were satisfactory. ‘When’ wore the wool uncomfortably, finding it awfully wet.

It was not the right occasion to unveil certain monosyllabic turns of phrase; ‘how’ and ‘then’ would remain in the back of her closet, still in their plastic wrappings. What was it that he wanted to know, again? She caught the momentary frustration as it swept over his face (for just a second; to be openly frustrated at her would be too impetuous) and knew, with certain gaining pride, that he thought that’s all she had to say. What a clever accident! Sarah decided that talking after it would only ruin the effect, and damn if she wasn’t in a stingy mood.

She looked down at base of her wine glass, as her embarrassment caught up with her, ashamed of the unnecessary torture she had a knack at whipping against his back. Why did she have to be the one to answer first? She looked to the window, chewing the inside of her cheek, wondering dully why orange. Why orange? And why, with orange skies, could she still feel obligated to The Wait of Alex Starr when they’d outwaited time?

“You shouldn’t look out there. It will just upset you,” he said, disguising his tenderness among patronization.

That was a laugh. “And if I want to be upset?” she asked, intending to draw his attention to the space between them – just a table, really. It was the perfect moment for a meaningful look, but she couldn’t muster up the chutzpah. Her throat tightened and she kept her eyes on the orange.

“I’d say you’re a glutton for punishment.” Was that his idea of comfort? “But really, what good does it do to make yourself so sad, especially now.”

Sarah remembered, maybe two years ago, when he’d taken her to a holiday party for his firm. She spent most of the night reminding herself about her posture and keeping relatively quiet after inadvertently prompting a debate on gun control with one careless joke about Alex’s boss’s presidential candidate of choice. Alex’s apology came in the form of three rounds in a pub near her apartment afterward. By the time he walked her up the stairs, she was back to her boisterous (if not drunk) self, and he paused – and she caught her breath, quieted her laughter – he was leaning in (she was so sure he was leaning in) – she gulped, smiling (his cologne had worn off through the night, yet here she was, privy to its ghost) – he hovered – he hovered still… Goodnight, he’d said.

Sarah had rolled her eyes to stop the idea of crying, she’d scoffed a weary, disappointed little scoff, and caught his reaction to her own. Since then, she realized how much rolling her eyes at Alex hurt his feelings, as if each time she rolled back the days to that same moment, and so now, at the idea of not being sad, she closed her eyes to prevent herself from rolling them. She forced her lungs to retract lest they allow another scoff. She donned a customer appreciation smile (the one for the customers that never tip well and invariably have at least three complaints per course), and looked back to Alex.

“Is this better?” His reaction was to drink. “I guess not,” she admitted, and for a lack of dialogue, returned to the orange.

If only it was purple, she thought, or an eerie blue. If only she could be drug in by her own volition, unable to fly elsewhere, and zapped, finally ending it. Like Alex, except that he was a never-ending death, or then maybe that meant he was a never-beginning life. Was she being unfair? She could be elsewhere, she knew, but she chose to be drug in. Every time.

“I just don’t think we should spend the rest of tonight upset,” he said, startling her. “It seems like a pointless emotion to feel right now.”

“It’s only pointless if you have another emotion you could be feeling,” she replied, cautious as a child attempting gymnastics on the playground.

“And this is the only one you have?”

She tried to accuse him with her eyes, however that was done, a stressor felt by leaning closer to the table. “Should I feel anything else?” Not dramatic enough, maybe. He might not catch on. He went back to his wine, and, with desperate hysteria, Sarah laughed. She hadn’t touched her warm glass yet, so she swept it up and chugged back, playing catch-up. When she set it down, she knew to expect his wilted-lipped disapproval.

There it was. “Now, I can’t drink either?” she spat, sick of the silence, of the sodden wool, of the unwanted uncle now snoring at the pacing of their conflict. That’s what she wanted: conflict. To conflict, to collide, tug and swivel and lock. She was itching for it.

“No, I didn’t say that,” he was using his mediation tone.

“Then what?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” he said, as though the last half of his sentence came as a sad surprise to even him. Nothing. Nothing. He supposed. Not a single damned thing; nothing.

Sarah leaned farther over the table, entrenched, as his eyes wandered to… probably nothing, if she had to guess. Would it matter? How could it, could nothing matter? Can it matter by not being – it – it, what? It, nothing. They were on the precipice of nothing, just separated by the damned blinds, a sturdy wall, but it turns out they’d been on that precipice for a while, and here she demanded that he make something of nothing just because she believed that nothing was not nothing. That it couldn’t be, she wouldn’t let nothing be nothing. But here was the truth: nothing is nothing. It is not designated a type of nothing or a shade of nothing, it is simply only and ever nothing… and therefore, she was forced to conclude, he did not suppose nothing. He had supposed a very, very certain thing.

“You have nothing to say?”

She thought she was louder than she turned out to be. He didn’t seem to notice it. Her words were next to – dare she think it – nothing to him. Her lower lip wobbled, she caught it in her teeth; she signed. “Of course you don’t. Never changes.”

How could nothing change? It is not a thing by which change can take place upon. She was making herself dizzy. Sarah moved her wine to her lips, her eyes to the window. That was where nothing truly lied.

The wine was, as expected, too dry to bring relief, but it provided comfort – or warmth – or, could she be tipsy? They hadn’t eaten the entire day. Food was on no one’s mind. Apparently, nothing was on his mind, and here she found herself running the same tiresome track.

“You know what, then? I have something to say,” she said, mimicking a readied teapot. Finally, she caught his attention. “You never say anything.”

“Was that a question?”

“Ever! We’ve known each other for –” she searched for a specific number, realized it moot “–so long, and you never say anything. Not at weddings. Not at parties. Not even when I come over for a movie at –” here, she consciously left out her expletives for his sake “– ten. Not once. Not ever.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re asking me anything,” he said, looking off – God, could she never catch his attention? Was it truly nothing, nothing but something in her mind?

“And now tonight,” she continued, wobbling on that precipice, afraid after all her hoping to finally plunge she would find the nothing she feared, “in this situation, you still can’t say anything.”

“Sarah, what are you looking for me to–”

“Something! Anything! Anything that is more than this,” she cracked, feeling, even among the wool in the room, all too naked. “You honestly have nothing to say to me?”

She paused, dreaming mightily that he was just gathering his words instead of watching the clock to estimate when her tantrum would be over. How is it that he wanted to get off so easily? Why would he let her live in suspense? There wasn’t just nothing between them, except that suspense was the moment of nothing and the promise of something. Unkept promises were worse than having never heard the promise.

“No!” she demanded, slapping the table, nearly sending both their wine glasses to an early (by less than an hour, according to swiftly approaching midnight hour) graves. Still she found him unable to respond. “No, just… look at me,” she pleaded, “and say something. Say something.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he admitted with some trepidation. She tried to smile, feeling eased a bit to know from his tone alone that yes, they were on the same page, tried to smile despite the shocking amount of tears she was holding back.

“Say what you’re feeling,” she said – the obvious. Sarah knew the situation was getting heavy – too weighted for him, maybe. “Even if it is scary,” she added, like a reassurance for a kindergartener on his first day of school.

But there it was, from him: nothing. She felt like someone had replaced her sternum with shards of ice, like she’d stood up too quickly, like she’d been told a child’s drawing was a Picasso and believed it, bought it, and framed it in her foyer. She was crying. “Can’t you just say something?”

“I-” he didn’t provide any more.

“What do you have to lose?” she reasoned, “What is there to be afraid of now?”

“I-” was all he would give.

She wiped her reddening cheeks off and finished her wine for an excuse as to her own color. As if it would provide her pride back, she cleared her throat. “Forget it,” she croaked out, more of a breath than a statement. She returned her gaze to the window, wondering how she could find an excuse to leave, and if she even wanted to, or if she would revel in the familiar lack-of-but-not-nothing thing that they held.

Sarah couldn’t deny that she would rather be rejected – no, suspended – in the room with Alex than find some sort of sturdy ground elsewhere. Her gaze abandoned the orange glow and instead roamed the enviable creases in his lips, the Cupid’s bow, the sturdy bridge of his nose. Was it pointless to cry over him? Did she even want to broach the subject of what held significance anymore? By sheer luck, she felt, her gaze had finally demanded and received his own.

“I love you,” he said, and it sounded to her almost as if he’d been ashamed, but she knew better than to presuppose he would be ashamed of the sentiment (be gone, goblin of low self-esteem), but that it was his timing. It was a relief and a burden: finally, what she wanted. Finally, when it wouldn’t matter anymore.

“I just wanted to say it at the right time.” It was hard for her to tell if the words dropped from his mouth by accident or if he actually pushed them through. “Some good that did.”

The revelation. The beautiful moment. The long-awaited, here, finally and really and concrete. She felt heavier for knowing, now feeling every day she’d aspired to hear those very words. How was it supposed to be? She looked to the orange glow, feeling all that time lost.

“Some good,” she agreed.