sam

The fact that Sam was dead was no excuse for him leaving the toilet seat up.  At least that’s what Audrey told him many times a day.  He tried, he really did, but she would only ever see what she wanted to see.

         “If you can put it up, you can put it down” she would say.  But he didn’t put it up; that was the problem.  He tried to tell her but when he would open his mouth, expecting to hear words in the form of, “It’s you that lifts it up, every afternoon twice and once in the evening we go through this,” he would instead hear something very different, more along the lines of,  “I’m sorry dear, I’ll try to be more careful.”  For part of the reason she would only see what she wanted to see was because he could only say what she wanted him to say.  This proved to be problematic in any argument type situation.

“While we are talking about this, let’s mention perhaps the garbage?  Could you not take it out even once this week?  I really don’t see why I must be the one to always carry it to the curb.”  Sam did, but apparently “When I try to pick up the bag it goes straight through my hand” comes out more in the way of “I’m sorry dear, I’ll try to be more helpful.”

If Sam was aware of time he would say things had been going on like this for a month and 4 days, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t.  The days that had once flown by in the moments he wanted to savour yet drug in the times he wanted to forget just didn’t.  They didn’t fly, they didn’t drag, they didn’t exist, but really neither did he and for this reason, he felt more connected to time than ever. 

This particular day, for the sake of us who do follow the clock, was a Wednesday.  Before the daily toilet seat argument, Sam had been enjoying the afternoon in his old office.  He had taken to studying the titles of the books lately, rather than reading the stories themselves.  This was because they intrigued him, but also because he had spent much time, if you could call it that, trying to pick up his favorite copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis to no avail.  Although time was something he wasn’t capable of wasting, he still found it rather creepy to watch things going through his hand.  If he actually took the effort he spent studying titles to look at himself a bit, he would notice that this translucent annoyance wasn’t confined to the action of picking up a book.  Right now, for instance, his hand was resting on the middle C to the D an octave up on his old baby grand, and yet the white of the ivory and the sharp black ebony where not concealed, they were merely dimmed slightly by the essence of the shape which veiled them. He knew that from the few chance glances he took at his hand but a conscious effort not to retain that knowledge was made, and usually successful.  The other fact an observer of the piano resting hand would notice was the still silence. The piano refused to resonate at his touch; like time, her music eluded him.  The covered keys rested parallel to their naked counterparts and waited at attention for a stroke that would satisfy their yearning to depress.