Together They

He bent down and tucked the sheets beneath the mattress. She threw a t-shirt over her head and grabbed the other side. They looked at the bed. He put the rest of his clothes on and then his shoes.

After he left she smoothed the wrinkles out of the bed-sheets with her palms. She stood in the slits of light coming through the blinds, staring at the top of the bed, the middle, the bottom, the carpet under her feet. Yesterday she’d painted her toenails. She wiggled them, then stopped.

She changed her underwear, arranged the pillows on the couch, washed the dishes everyone had left neatly piled beside the sink, snapped off the yellow gloves, opened and closed the refrigerator, got a glass of water, thought about looking out the window but didn’t and then receded into the bathroom.

***

He watched her from his car. He thought he might go back and scoop her into his arms, he thought, but he only thought it for a moment and then shook his head and cranked the keys. The sun was creeping up behind him and he sped away from it. His foot pressed harder and the car grappled with the pavement. Apartments, restaurants, a high school, a gas station and parking his car beside the car wash and shutting himself in the phone booth.

He pressed his back hard into the glass and stared, unblinking. Change, cold buttons, shrill ringing piercing eardrums. The answering machine. He smashed the receiver against the booth. Smashed his fists against the phone, heard change rattle and dull knock of knuckles against metal. Bleeding hands, red face and hard eyes. She’d forgotten everything. He hadn’t called her for years. That bitch, he thought. That whore! He tore his bruised body with screams until he couldn’t. His hands ripped his hair, bloodied and squeezed his temples. Curled in the corner he sobbed. Tears gushed down his face into his open mouth. Every muscle tense, chest heaving, he choked on spit and tears.

***

She wiped a hand through the steam clinging to the mirror. She watched her hands brush her hair and pick up the lotion. Some mascara, lipstick, a clip in her hair. She watched the eyes in her reflection.

Remember when you’d lay in bed with me and neither of us wanted to get up? Remember whispering into my neck? Remember the touching and murmuring and touching and kissing and touching and sleeping? We woke up when everything was blue and I made us chocolate milk and got the syrup on the counter and my fingers and you grabbed my hand and smeared it on my stomach and I punched your shoulder and you laughed. I don’t remember any of it.

She leaned harder into the mirror.

***

She stood behind the cash register. There were a few couples eating and a man reading a newspaper in the corner.
“No, I had a great time last night," her friend said.
“I was gonna make the sauce myself, but I didn’t get to it.”
“The pasta sauce was fine,” She looked at the man reading the newspaper. He was looking at them.
“I don’t know about the sauce.”
“Listen, the sauce was fine,” she said. “Did you know Mitch’s friend? What was his name?”
“No, I don’t know him,” She shrugged. She saw the man looking at her. His fingernails were trimmed and his neck was wide. He smiled at her. She looked at the curve of his mouth and looked at her hands.
“I didn’t know him either. That was nice he brought extra boxes of pasta just in case. Sam thought that was considerate of him.”
“Sure, it was,” she said. She took the water pitcher and threw away the newspaper the man had left.

***

The pain is in his guts. He reads a newspaper and the back of a cereal box. He goes to work and he comes back from work and he showers and goes to sleep. As he’s going to sleep he sees her naked back in front of him on the bed like last night. He smells her lotion. He tries to look away, but he stares and stares, and his eyes water a little. He sees every inch of her skin and her hair doesn’t look like hers did, or is it how he remembers it looked.

“You’re an ass hole!”
“Fuck you! Get out of my apartment, you bitch! You whore!”
“I’m fucking going, you fuck! Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Then get the hell out of here!”

He watches her breathing. Her breasts sloping towards the bed, resting on the comforter. The freckles on her hands are brown like the freckles on her shoulder’s and around her nipples. He feels himself inside her again and then shakes his head until he can’t feel it anymore. Her eyes staring at his chest, closing, chest, arms, closing. He shakes his head.

***

“I don’t love you anymore.”
“But, why?”
She turned her back to him and crossed her arms, “I just don’t love you anymore.” She examined her face in the mirror, “listen, I’ve gotta go.”
He stood in the middle of the room, naked, with the condom still on, and his face contorted like his wide hands. “I don’t understand…I feel like you never loved me. Will you please talk to me, for Christ’s sake?”

She’d slipped her dress gracefully over her head, and left without looking at him. Her stomach rolled over inside, burning itself, filling her erect but she knew it was so heavy and so low and so dirty and her face was like stone and her eyes didn’t move. But her body revolted, trying to thrust her back through the door to explain everything and fall into his arms again, but instead she left herself behind with him and drove away.

She stopped organizing her clothes and collapsed on the ground and held her head. She looked at the mirror. It was nice he’d brought extra pasta. She looked at the mirror watching her lips mouth the words, trying to feel it inside her where she couldn’t feel.

“I can help you do the dishes,” he’d said and picked up the scrub-brush.
“No, I’ll do them tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
You’d crossed the room and said, “I’m reading this book. Do you read much?” and picked the book up and handed it out to him. He’d reached his hand out and touched your hand with his big fingers when he took it from you. “Yeah, I read a lot actually,” he’d said and then you wanted him to sit next to you so you smiled and he sat down.

***

He saw her legs under the sheets. They were warm and the sheets followed the lines of her legs. They hung, cradling cool shadows. He could smell the pie and thick sauce and the burn of the heater.

He lay in the bed and she lay on another pillow. Her hip felt full in his hand. He wanted to reach inside of her. He pulled her toward him and saw her roll over like in a hospital bed. But her cheeks were so soft, and her skin sloped so willingly over her collarbone. But why did her hands have to be on his arms, and her eyes fixed on his hair and the soft of her feet sat on the sheets so he could so he could so he could. But still he felt her, and it filled his head, thinking of her smiling in that yellow dress. The sweat on his forehead soaked between her breasts. When he came he fell onto her and his throat got tight and his temples were tight and he wanted only to sleep until he couldn’t recognize his own hands. He heard her spit his hair out of her mouth.

His heater clicked near the empty bed.

“I just don’t feel you anymore,” he’d said to her and took his fingers out of her.
She lay half naked on the bed. She looked at him and he’d looked at her like she wasn’t naked. Her mouth had closed. He’d picked the paper up and walked into another room.

He punched the other pillow. He punched himself in the stomach and stared at the ceiling, but he put his shoes on.

***

He got in his car and put the keys in the ignition and didn’t take his hand off them.

She held the pasta boxes to her chest and fell asleep.