emptymouthpiece

Dry Fire

Part One

He sits down on his side of the bed. The tired old springs give way and sag, forcing him to plant his feet so he doesn’t slide right off. The sound of those old springs reminds him of all the times she mentioned how old and uncomfortable their bed was becoming. Months of that, hell, maybe a whole year of it, near every time there was an opening to bring it up.

Life is a funny thing, not funny ha ha, but surely funny odd. Every time she talked about the mattress it was, “old, and uncomfortable.” What better words could be used to describe their marriage. It wasn’t about the mattress at all, well, certainly not all of it. How obvious did she need to be? How fucking stupid did he have to be not to see it coming?

Thirty-three years of it, after the first ten and the fights over money and who wanted to be or do what run dry, you figure you’re in it for life. That’s not to just up and drain all the love and hope right out of the conversation, but come on, get real, if you’ve gone the first ten rounds without a knockout, you figure on another ten. Most people have kids, and that either becomes an easy excuse for why people stray or come together. Either way everyone has learned the dance of it all, when to feint, when to jab, when to break off to your corner and when to get back at it when the bell dings.

Kids never happened for them, thank fucking god. The closest they ever came was a miscarriage that haunted the both of them long and hard enough so that he went and got the snip. Rufus, a golden retriever just as dumb as he was big. That dog was as close as they ever got in that department and just like the real thing, he was favored by one parent and favored the other. That dumb, funny, dog lived for thirteen years and having to put him down haunted him enough that when the time came for a replacement pet he ducked out and left her in the category of women/wives who buy exotic birds.

A lot of that second decade was all about not really being there. There was the job, well jobs, they both had a few along the way, nothing close to what you’d call a career, nothing you would have a business card printed up for. Hobbies to fill the down time, pastimes to kill the sense that nearly everything you liked to do the other person didn’t, and vice versa. Still though, if there was a time to duck out, to sneak off, to taste that forbidden fruit. He never felt the need. She never brought up any worries or issues in that department either.

Thirty-three years. The third decade of it all. Man, o man, if there were kids, they’re either living in the basement or the attic or out and on their own, unless you fucked like rabbits and bred accordingly, or got started damn late. That third decade, you’re playing the lotto in more ways than one. Someone is most likely going to get sick along the way, and not the kind of sick that means a trip to the drug store for cough syrup and lemon lime soda.

Fucking doctors, they say the chronic part of chronic illness the same way a teenager says designer when they talk about jeans. You can watch the dollar signs light up in their eyes. Lotto forbidding, someone is gonna get sick and someone is gonna have to play that first round of really evaluating what “until death do us part” means.

Really though, luck and lotto numbers aside. The third decade. The stuff no one knows back in the batting eyes and fucking up days. Someone is gonna get fat, someone is gonna get ugly, or worse, uglier. Someone is gonna decide that indoor clothes are now outdoor clothes. Someone is gonna have hair sprout in all the wrong places. Someone is gonna genuinely forget an important date or an anniversary. Someone is gonna eat the same thing for breakfast for the fifth consecutive month in a row and someone else is gonna notice that unsettling fact. Someone is gonna look at the yellow headed Q-tips that never quite land in the trash can in the bathroom and it won’t be funny anymore or something to argue about, it will be something you stare at until you consider what if any poisons can be poured into a persons morning coffee undetected. No not really, but…well…kind of…

Thirty-three years later. There are no winners or losers, there are no victims, only willing participants. What you find, what he found or thought he found anyway, is that its still love. Not the giddy, dumb, butter flies bullshit you had as kids, but love all the same. Not what you found out in the wild at first but something you built with time and blood, something sewn together with skin and sinew and all the shit you had and lost together.

At least that was how he rationalized it all until yesterday when he came home early from another endless day at his soul sucking job only to find her with Barry, their neighbor.