All the Time in the World

I upturn my phone from the table and unlock it, flipping to the most recent text exchange with Josh. He’s just said he’s leaving early from work and that I’ll be seeing him soon. No new updates since that message from an hour ago, so I figure he’s already left. Outside, I can hear children hooting and laughing. Young voices receding from earshot followed by more coming along. School’s let out, and if Josh is on his way, it won’t be long before he’s back. By then I hope the procession of children have all finished their catcalling and horseplay, settling in for the night in their respective homes. Josh doesn’t like children, and he’s already in a bad mood. Having to wait for a rowdy line of them to march across our sidewalk before he can pull in won’t exactly help.

On the table is a smudged sheet of paper fastened to a clipboard. My hands are also smudged and greasy from the use of a cheap charcoal stick. The subject of my drawing is . . . nothing that can be made out at the moment. A Rorschach flunky that’s been tossed in a whirlpool and spat back onto the page. Smears and angry slants crosshatched and swirling chaotically.

Since I took the day off, I’ve elected to put charcoal to paper and see what I can come up with. The exercise was meant to be cathartic. I’d hoped it might help to tease out whatever demons were plaguing me, so I could stare them down and put them to rest. There was still time to make something of it, but thus far I’d failed to materialize any real or discernible image onto the page.

Josh always kept the radio too loud in the car, and often I could hear it playing before he drove up. Now, as his car turns in from the street, the undercarriage lightly bumping and scraping against our uneven driveway, the tunes blare, loud enough that I can make out the oldies.

I stand to greet Josh as he enters, but he lets out a long sigh and shakes his head.

One look at him and I’m thinking he could use his own day off. But I know how he’s likely to respond to that:

“I need more hours at work, not less.”

“It’s not a big deal, I’m fine.”

“I’ll get over it. I just need a drink.”

It’s not the healthiest way to deal with your feelings, but Josh is still standing there, and I can tell I’m not what he wants right now.

When I open the fridge and the bottles contained in the door clink and jostle. I grab the single black bottle among them to match his black mood. With the cap removed, I bring it over, slurping spilled over beer from my finger. The bottle makes a sound against a fingernail when I nudge his hand with it. He snatches it up, eyes distant, and takes a sip.

“So,” I say, hands in front of me and fidgeting. “Did today not go so great?”

For the first time he looks up at me. As he takes me in, tension fades out of his face and those dark eyes of his creep over my frame. I’m not dressed as warmly as I could be. I don’t much appreciate the way he’s checking me out. It’s like he wants to turn me around and give me a hard slap on the rump. Pass. I take a step back.

He tips up the bottle and glugs thirstily and one eye continues to ogle me. He stamps the bottle on the floor and rises to his feet. “Not a great day. But it can get better,” he says.

I cross my arms, staring him down. “You’ve hardly said a word to me. You don’t just get to . . .”

Before I can protest, he latches on to me and pulls me in for a kiss, forceful and beer-tinged. My hands are up, ready to shove him away, but he doesn’t seem prepared to take no for an answer. I consider rejecting him, denying him outright, but I worry how that would play out and where we’d end up, his reaction, so I relent as he presses harder into me, letting my hands settle on his shoulders.

The night was all about him. No foreplay at any point, just clothes coming off like they’d caught fire and getting to business in no time at all. Before I can catch my breath, he’s inside of me, grunting dispassionately.

When he’s done, he rolls away, breathing deeply and impressed with the work he put in. I lay there, used, hands crossed over my bare chest, and I can feel him already starting to leak out of me. My clit throbs although he hasn’t laid a finger on it. I actually take that as a relief for once.

“Did you like it?” he asks.

I turn over to my side, giving him my back. “It was fine.”

“Holy shit,” he says, splatting a hand to his forehead.

We order Chinese food when we can bring ourselves to get out of bed and neither of us talk about our feelings as we watch similarly dysfunctional couples on whatever program while slurping noodles pinched awkwardly between chopsticks. The rest of the night goes by as one big blur.

The next day I return to work, feeling less recharged than I’d hoped to. Possibly worse off than when I requested the sick day.

Back home, he’s standing in front of the table where I’d done the ineffable charcoal drawing.

“Hey,” he says over his shoulder. “I’m really sorry I got carried away last night. Can I make it up to you?”

And he does. To an extent. It turns out he’s booked a reservation to one of our favorite restaurants. Not the favorite restaurant. Things are tight right now because that’s how I know it’s always been for him, but we enjoy ourselves, and while neither of us has talked about what’s put us in a bad way, we have good conversation nonetheless.

We take an Uber home and we burst in, giggling and trying not to fall all over each other. We hadn’t considered leaving the light on, and I trip, Josh stumbles, and we find ourselves catching each other in an embrace. His lips meet mine, much more tender this time. I want to kiss him, but I’m not patient enough for anything tender. We end up in the bedroom mere seconds later.

I’m drunk and we do things I’m not comfortable with, and things Josh knows I’m not comfortable with. And I don’t enjoy it. Any of it.

Had I known this would only be the start, I wouldn’t have let him do those things, boyfriend or not. My imbibed judgment caused my guard to drop, and in the nights following that up, Josh pushed for more of the same. We’d already ventured into that territory, and now that he’d had a taste, he craved it with a greedy, almost childlike insistence.

Then one night, laying in bed together, he pulled me in for a kiss. When I released, he pressed his lips against mine once more. After I pulled away a second time, I told him I wasn’t comfortable with what we were doing. I just couldn’t take it anymore. He became angry, saying the mood was killed and took off, slamming the door behind him. I was well asleep by the time he came back.

Disturbed from sleep by the impetuous way he enters the room, I turn away from his side the second he sits on the bed, all the scents of a vice-laden night wafting over, and Josh not caring to so much as splash his face or brush his teeth at this late hour.

His shoes come off and thump on the floor. I grab hold of my pillow and clamp my head between my elbows to smother the noise. After a minute of not feeling the weight shifting from the other side of the bed, I crack open one eye. He lets out a sigh with his back to me. Still feeling sorry for himself, no doubt. That makes one of us.

The truth is, I’m not happy here anymore, and it’s not hard to notice the cracks spreading throughout the life we’ve built. Could I ever just break away, begin from anew? No. No, of course not. I’m bound to Josh, and in some way I think he knows this. He owns me. He’s my entire world. Without him, I’d be nothing.

He almost woke once, gone for good. We were angry with each other, he was ready to do something stupid, the two of us raising our voices as our anger escalated. Josh threw his hands up in the air with his face glowing red and obscenities on his tongue. In an instant, a square of reality parted away beside him, the opening to a doorway he either chose to ignore or couldn’t see, glimmering scintillant white. All he had to do was step through and it would close, sealing me behind forever.

Only I wouldn’t be here. I knew with startling clarity that the moment it closed I’d be lost to the dark. I’d be no more real than a dream never repeated and never remembered. If I wanted to live, to be, I had to keep him here.

I turn to him and he’s just the same, bedside, hunched over, and wallowing in his self pity. My hand goes to his back. “You can’t leave me, Josh,” I drawl.

He looks over his shoulder, but I can’t make out his expression or mood. After a time, he says, “I know.”

The bed creaks when he stands and as if he teleported there in an instant, the bathroom light clicks on and shines into the room. Josh doesn’t turn on the sink. In fact I don’t hear a thing.

From the bed to the doorway, I sway on over and peer inside with squinted eyes. I find him bent over the basin, arms stretched to support his weight as he leans in for a look in the mirror.

“Something isn’t right,” he says.

I know exactly what it is. It’s his reflection. Only it’s not the Josh he knows. It’s the Josh I’ve cobbled together from memory fragments, impressions, and, apparently failed intuition. His wide eyes stare into the face of a stranger.

I’m no longer tired or slouching in the door. I reach past him and pull the handle on the sink so water issues freely. Half-shoving him out of the way, and with two hands, I form a cup under the stream and hurl water at the glass. It streams down, distorting the image.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” I say. “Your drunk is all. What’s even different?”

“Just handsomer,” he says, watching the water continue to slick off the glass.

“How so?” I ask. I can adjust this world at my will. I’ll keep altering his face until he recognizes what he sees or accepts his appearance. Every day I’m getting closer to making this world just a little more real for him. I can fix it in time, before it all goes to shit. I can’t give up.

He shocks me when he grabs me by the wrists. He clutches them in his grip like manacles, cutting off the flow of blood.

“You need to do better,” he says.

“What?” I say, soft as a mouse.

“Do better.”

I think back to what he’s pushed me to engage in and can’t believe he’s trying to make these kinds of demands.

“I don’t have to do anything.” I spit it out and tug my hands free, wringing my wrist. “What the hell?”

“Trisha,” he starts. “I can hardly call you that. You are nothing but a cheap simulacrum, and I’m wasting my time here with you. I can see that now.”

I may have misunderstood what’s going on here.

Does he know?

Can’t be so. Before I can take stock of what’s happening, he jostles past me and heads for the room. I stare from the door, and in a moment, I flick off the light and go to my side, left wondering and waiting for sleep.

The next morning I’ve prepared him his favorite breakfast. Three scrambled eggs, a pair of waffles lightly dusted with powdered sugar over blueberries I had to grab from the store, and three pieces of bacon, crisped a little too much for my taste.

He enters with sleep in his eyes. “I thought I smelt cooking.” He snatches a sliver of bacon and crunches down. In the meantime I’m stirring my own eggs in the pan.

It’s been two nights since his comment about how I need to do better. I’ve stepped up in response, cleaning up after him, being pleasant, complimentary, supporting him in every way I know how. I have some idea of what the real Trisha must have been like from the real world. Submissive, probably scared witless at the thought of displeasing him, beholden to his every whim. Or so it seems. As I said, I make my best guess from incomplete snatches of his life on the other side.

I put my back to him and work on the eggs. They’re almost done. Just a few more minutes, and I’ll transfer them to the plate.

“I almost decided I was ready to leave. You know, go through the door. But I think I might stay after all. Things have been looking pretty good. I don’t know that I can ask much more of you. You really pulled through.”

It feels degrading, like it’s coming from a superior at work who was previously unhappy with my performance. And in the back of mind I still wonder if this facade I’ve created is no mystery to him. But how could he possibly know? Just from his reflection?

“Thank you,” I mumble out. I raise the pan and tilt it over the plate, working the food into position beside my own bacon and waffles.

“But there is one thing,” he says.

He’s still not satisfied. This is getting a little silly. It must be about the sex. Of course it’s about the sex.

I turn to him with my elbow crooked out, gooey spatula still in hand.

“And what’s that?”

“You could give me your powers,” he says. “I want control. Of everything.”

We have a little stare off. He’s smirking, and I’m shocked. I suspected he had this figured out, but it still hits hard.

“I don’t know—“ I start.

“You do,” he says.

Give him my control. I made this world. I breathed life into it, I adjusted it to fit the reality he remembers, and although I am just a creation, something that spontaneously materialized out of nothing within his dream world, I can grant him what I have. He already knows none of this is real. It all comes down to him leaving this place, and then there won’t be anything left. But if he had the ability to do as he pleases, how could he ever grow bored?

I gulp and toss the spatula into the sink.

“Fine,” I say. “But only if you promise to stay with me.”

And he says the one thing I’ve been wanting to here since as long as I can remember.

“Forever.”

I close my eyes, letting out a sigh of relief. I believe him. “Then,” I say, approaching the table. “It’s yours. All yours.”

He raises his hands, turns his palms inward, smiles at me, then slowly places his hands on either side of his plate.

“And what does that leave you with?” I know when he’s trying to suppress a smile, but it blooms to complete fullness despite the effort.

“Nothing. You wanted it. I gave you everything. I’m just another person here where once I was a god. You are the god of this world now. You’re going to love it, Josh. We can be together, and you can make this whatever you want it to be.”

“Trisha, thank you so much.”

He smiles at me like he’s privy to an inside joke that comes at my expense. Like he knows something I don’t, and if he ever decides to reveal it, it promises to be one hell of a whopper.

“You know,” he said. “I’ve really missed Trisha. She hurt me in the end. Bad. Real bad in fact. Put me in the hospital once she got free. The authorities came to her rescue while I lay bleeding on the floor beside her. After she got to me with the knife, she was too weak to do anything else but lie there. Her last bit of energy to break free put me in a coma while she bled out. She might have been able to survive a single day of what I was putting her through if I’d been lucky. And now, of course it’s all over. If I decide to wake up, she won’t be there anymore, and who knows where I’ll be. Fresh from a coma and ready to be put in prison, no doubt. But now I have you again to do with as I please. You may not be the real Trisha, but I’ve pushed you to be more and more like her every day. You’re practically perfect now. And thanks to you, we have all the time in the world.”

“Wait,”

“I can’t,” he says. “It’s been so long already. Now let’s have some real fun, shall we?”