As the patter of raindrops danced around the smooth pitch of
the main road in the yellow streetlights and gathered in little poodles like
afterthoughts, she sat quietly on the softness of her bed and yawned. She wanted
to lean against the wall and cry, but it was too cold, like a piece of cruel
slate staring blank and icy in the dark. It was well past midnight. No sound
but those occasional whooshes of cars could be heard over the sound of rain. Even
the neighborhood dogs were quiet, it seemed that they had stopped copulating
for the day. The windows were all closed. But she could see the night in
ruptured flashes.
Her lover never knew how she had awaken from her sleepless languor
and fled, how she had moved away from her side of the bed and fled, how she had
stood naked beside the closed bedroom window and fled. He slept peacefully
oblivious of those irregular rhythms of pulsations or rain drops lying so close
by that it would have hurt had he been awake. He just slept on. Her body moved
around the small apartment like a noiseless phantom that was haunted by itself.
Sometimes she stood before the mirror and dressed. Sometimes she stood before
the mirror and undressed. Sometimes she watched muted telebrand commercials on
T.V. sometimes she opened that unfinished book to read by the faint yellow
streetlight. If too restless, she would eat chips alone on the sofa, curling
her cold toes beneath her broad, overweight buttocks. Sometimes she would even
bring out the half finished bottle of vodka and sip it neat. It kept her warm
and dizzy. Yet, had it been a film, one could actually see those minute Goosebumps
along the curve of her fleshy naked back.
But mornings never bear traces of nights.
Every morning found her fast asleep beside her lover, blissful
and happy at the beauty of conjugality. She was just a furry little cat in a blanket—
warm, cozy and cute. Yellow lights no longer clung to her hair. The rain no
longer pattered with her breath. The mirror lay under a thin coat of dust. The
unfinished book stood in full closure of the shelf. The T.V. stood in a vanity
of disuse. The vodka bottle stood at it was, on the lowermost rung of the
kitchen closet. Even the sofa never bore any signs of her body heat, or the
little hole that she dug up for herself every night and sank into.
Even if it had been a film, one could never actually see her
every dawn, moving away from the mirror. Or putting the unnamable pain of a
book back into the propriety of order. Or switching off the T.V. Or throwing
away the empty box of chips. Or putting in the vodka bottle behind tons of other
stuff in the closet. Or puffing the cushions right and smoothening out the
usual sofa nest.
No need of overemphasizing the subtexts. There was no reason
for it not to be a comedy anyway.
