The Day Before
Like every morning Doug awoke that Tuesday to the incessant beeping of his alarm. His body robotically responded. His right arm reached behind him, his fingers finding the off-switch. Silence. His legs spun off the bed, his feet finding the ground. He stood. He stretched. He walked quietly out of the room so as not to wake his wife.
Like his morning routine, their marriage had become robotic. In her sleep she could decipher the sound of his alarm from hers; which would wake her only forty-five minutes later.
Doug too could have slept until six, but had come to savor, crave, indeed depend on his mornings of silence. So much so that he had his routine down to exactly forty-five minutes. Getting him out the door as her alarm would begin to beep.
While the coffee brewed he showered and shaved. Thirty-six minutes. The morning news on a low but audible volume, he sips orange juice in between spoonfuls of corn flakes. Twenty minutes. He brushes his teeth while selecting his clothes. Spit, rinse, dress, comb hair. Five minutes. Dishes in sink; coffee in thermos. Grab wallet. Grab keys. BeepâÂ?¦beepâÂ?¦beep. She stirs. Beep. He’s out the door.
It’s not that Doug is sick of his wife or unhappy in his marriage. Just simply tired. Out of things to say. And unlike his wife, he’d rather not speak to simply fill the silence. Talking about nothing is more annoying than awkward silence. To him. To her, it was instigation. Desire, need, yearning, pleading for his give and not his take. Desperately trying to connect herself to him, again. Doug, oblivious to her subtext, hated the prattle and only seemed to listen.
Out the elevator, he walks in the light of the still dawning sun. The crisp morning air as refreshing as his cold morning showers. His favorite time of day. The world a baby, new, fresh, possibilities galore. He climbed the steps of his complex’s parking garage. Level 3. Level 4. His car starts effortlessly. News on the radio, a sip of coffee, buckle, reverse, drive.
Driving down the ramps of the garage, Doug listens to the latest news briefings. Level one. The heavy metal gate stands open. Doug curses. “When are they going to fix this?” He proceeds to the opening. And as the gate closes on his car, crushing it and him, Doug sees the small red sedan that had passed before him and he understood.
The gate had indeed been fixed. Sometime between his return home the night before, and his departure that morning. The driver of the small, red sedan had used his card to open the gate. And as the sign warned. There was not sufficient time for more than one car to pass.
Had Doug known that morning was his last, that the night before was his last he would haveâÂ?¦ His wife tried not to ask these questions. Frankly, she didn’t know the answers. She’d like to think he would have cooked dinner with her like they used to. Made love to her like they used to. Woken with her, on purpose, intentionally to be with her. But it had been so many years between then and now. The memories seemed to belong to another.
She now visits his grave. Sitting in the silence he so craved. While he, in the air below her, above her, around her lusts for her words and his words together.
