by Brian Hodge
"Walter." She nudged him. Firmly enough. She counted off five more of his regularly-spaced, undisturbed breaths. Intake. Outflow. The neutral expression on his sleeping face was so serene she wanted to rearrange it with a razor, make the look garish and unhappy, like a mutilated clown face.
"Fine," she said to herself, as closure.
She kicked out of bed, gearing up to do the bathroom thing. As she passed the hall mirror she avoided the sight of herself.
Two hours later Walter had not stirred, nor shifted position. JJ had to lean close to ascertain he was breathing at all, and for the first time that day she felt ill and frightened. This was not funny. This was like being told your best friend is considering suicide.
She shook him. Cajoled and demanded. Walter did not move, except as she moved him.
"Fine. Fine. I give! I don't have time for this crap. I don't care what I did. You're being an asshole, and I have a real walloper of a headache, thank you, and I have a full day to deal with, so I am out of here. Goodbye."
She stalked out. He did not react. He gave her no satisfaction.
"Fine." She closed the bathroom door and got on with her errands.
By dinnertime Walter still had not budged.
Bags in hand, JJ had pushed open her front door and discovered the living room smelled the same as it had when she'd locked up, hours ear-her. It was an actual scent of sameness, the olfactory presence of air undisturbed since her last passage through it.
That had struck her as odd, until she remembered Walter. And there he slept on. She didn't try so hard to wake him up this time.
Spitefully, she prepared dinner–for one and pounded down three goblets of very good Beaujolais while cooking. She left most of the food untouched, but by the time the alcohol was in mid-metabolic burn she felt quite randy and forgiving.
It had become an amusing little game, a divertissement.
Topless, stockings and skirt still on, nipples stroking his shins, she went down on him. He stayed erect until she finished him off. The meter of his breathing did not alter. She got mad, a match head flaring aflame, and spat his own semen onto his bare chest. Then she stomped off to pour another glass of wine, to rinse her mouth, and watch TV, to rinse her mind.
She fell asleep on the sofa, always a refuge of comfort for her. She forgot about Walter until morning.
One of the things that separated them, these days, was talk. Not communication–yammering. It was Walter's habit to begin deluging her the moment she opened her eyes, and Walter did not converse so much as lecture.
Twelve topics, all waiting in ambush for her, JJ, before she even got the sleepy seeds out of her eyes, while the coffeepot was still yards distant.
No, not communication. JJ had learned there was safety in pretend sleep. Perhaps if she was the one who faked it, she might observe some truth about Walter otherwise obscured.
JJ woke up with this thought hot in her mind. Her semiconscious occasionally provided tidbits of insight just like this. She made an effort to hold the thought in focus, to transport this intellectual cargo from the fuzzworld of half-sleep to the stuffy comfort of the sofa, in the real, the right now.
No yammering.
JJ had been able to hold her thought because, upon waking, Walter had not been there, unloading as usual.
It was pleasant, this silence.
She sat up on the sofa, her clothing wretched from the night's twists and turns and the humidity of her own body. Alone. On the sofa. She padded to the bedroom to see if Walter was…
JJ had thought that if bogus sleep might provide a fly-on-the-wall insight regarding Walter, then perhaps Walter had figured this out himself and was making her pay, big time. Walter forever needed to prove how he could go harder, longer, faster, better. If Walter thought JJ was playing him, he'd play back, double-force, and show her good. If Walter was …
… yeah. He was.
But he had not twitched a muscle, flicked a finger, blinked or changed position for more than twenty-four hours. No bathroom runs. No food. No prints on his water glass. A quarter-inch of water had evaporated since yesterday.
Yesterday, thought JJ, a knuckle between her teeth. He's still breathing, but he hasn't moved since yesterday.
If he was still breathing. She checked. In. Out. Slow.
She knew she should hurry to the living room, phone an ambulance, help him out of whatever he was in. He did not seem to be in any sort of distress, and this stayed her. If she did summon paramedics and EMTs, they might revive Walter on the spot, and god, would he be pissed when she told her story.
Her really lame story.
JJ caught a breath. She had thought of phoning an ambulance from the living room when there was a telephone less than two feet away, on the nightstand, on Walter's side of the bed. If she had called from the living room, there was less risk of waking Walter up.
Less risk. Her mind's ear hated the sound of that.
"Walter …?" She spoke loudly, definitely. Walter remained still, unstirring.
There. No risk at all.
JJ pulled the bedroom door shut for the rest of the day.
Danielle Dax thundered, singing of ashes and betrayal. The TV was on, sound off. Pots steamed in the kitchen. It was five o'clock and all the activity was JJ's. For her.
If Walter had been up and at 'em, he would have killed the TV to save power–an exhaustible resource, he'd remind her–and asked JJ can we please turn this down in a tone engineered to convey several tracks of information, to wit:
Walter does not rock and roll.
Walter only listens to compositionally superior music.
Walter did not sanction this performance.
Walter plays music at a reasonable and consistent volume.
All of which messed together to make JJ seem either frivolous, silly, or insane. The real reason Walter disliked music playing when there was more than one person in the room was because it drowned him out, and he resented being upstaged.
JJ had once made a game of timing Walter, to see how fast he'd make for the volume knob on the TV or stereo once she'd powered it up. It was not a game from which she could derive any pleasure or lesson, let alone a win.
She did not have that problem this evening. Her problem was trying to recall what she and Walter had been up to the last time Walter had been upright.
Oh, god. Memory wasn't that bad. The night of the party at Burke's.
After a silent ride home, Walter had chugged a lot of aspirin and seltzer, then bumped around the house with a vaguely pinched look on his face indicating that the fount of his evening's irritation was most likely named JJ. She retreated to a hot bath and bedded down first. When he slid in next to her–she was still wide awake, hoping he would nudge her–he was fully pajamaed. He turned his back on her.
JJ knew how it felt to lose an erection.
She also knew that Walter was no monster. Did he deserve the pain she returned him? Wasn't she being just a tot harsh?
She surveyed his form, still but for the breathing, steadily in and out. What if he was suffering right now, deep in the hell of some coma? Some interior agony lacking external symptoms? She fiddles, he burns, and who was to know?
She merely felt–irrationally, maybe; so sue–that Walter judged everything she did. Disapproval was his life. And now that that onus was gone, or, at least, suspended, she felt a peculiar freedom, a sense of her own life regained.
That night, she began by confession. She gave voice to the inner words. All things bothersome about their relationship, especially his Obsession with commitment and obligation. To Walter, life was one big contract to be dragged and flayed from one litigious lawyer's desk to another. Death by nitpicking. JJ found herself saying things that would never have come up, had Walter been half of the exchange. Things like:
"Goddammit, Walter, if you want a guarantee, buy a stereo and sign a limited warranty!"
After an hour or so of cleansing talk, with tears, she got physical–shaking, cajoli
ng, scooting him around on their bed. She edged him nearer to the right side so she would have more room when she lay down next to him.
JJ gradually tired of the silent treatment.
It had gone from an amusing little game, yesterday, to absurd, tonight, to violent, five minutes ago. She had become emboldened, rather than afraid.
First she slapped his face, the Imp of the Perverse flooding her with strength and aiming her swing. The first blow to fall was no accident. Accident, Jesus Christ, wasn't she being forgiving to herself?
She hit him once for each transgression, real, imagined or feared. She balanced the scales of pain given and pain received. But had Walter hurt her this badly, to the point where the only response was the extreme of violence?
JJ was not a violent woman.
She saw she had split his lip and raised dots of blood. The sight of it made her feel like a Nazi torturer, and she wept as she told him over and over that she was sorry. For the first time, she suffered the queasy inkling that he was lost to her forever, beyond apology or forgiveness. She needed him to understand that she wasn't like this, a vengeful and shrieking harpy, flailing and hateful. For the first time in a long while, she suffered the need to tell Walter that she loved him.
She did not need a reciprocal sentiment. The words of love were fragile and transient. She did require, however, evidence that Walter knew she loved him. No words–a nod, an embrace, a quiet mmmm would have done the deed.
Walter lay in state, exactly as before, but for the dots of blood.
JJ cleaned him. She changed the bed clothing around him gingerly, as though tending a terminal invalid. This was one night where the tears would just not cease.
And if she called outsiders, they'd ask her why she waited so long. Love was not an acceptable answer.
"Come back to me," she begged his unmoving form.
His form kept on not moving.
It was as though his spirit and soul had been thieved, leaving the shell. The part of him that loved her was gone, departed. The body that had loved her was still there on the bed, so she tried again.
She successfully coaxed him erect with what she knew of hydraulics. She slid him snugly home with judicious use of almond oil. As she guided him inside her she lied to herself that he was sleeping, that this would be just like doing him sneaky before wake-up call. She worked at it, her pelvis mustering motion enough for both of them. She fell easily into rhythm.
Neither of them orgasmed this time, and JJ fell asleep crying, desperately holding onto the man she loved.
At Burke's party, both of them drank too much. Him, Mudslides, her, Long Island iced teas–heavy on the "long." They both got trapped in one of those edgy conversations about love, marriage and nomenclature.
"POOSSLQ," said a doughboy. He was soft and pudgy, with chipmunk cheeks and a beard of anus bristle. A Buttface. "Person Of Opposite Sex, Same Living Quarters."
"Thank god the Seventies are history," said Walter. His drink was turbid and sludgy. It reminded JJ of an alcohol milkshake.
"How about 'Significant Other," said the Blonde with Too Many Degrees. "Of course, that presumes one could be an insignificant other."
"Or a not-so-significant only," said JJ.
"Here, here," said Walter, raising a toast. "I prefer sperm bitch, myself."
JJ saw he was in one of his moods, teasing, shocking solely for effect. She showed him her middle finger. "And I prefer sex chimp. Cheers."
"That's kind of sexist," said the Blonde with Too Many Degrees, unnecessarily. She could be counted on to answer rhetorical questions, too. She was so darned smart that she rarely maintained a liaison for more than a month…and breakup was always the guy's fault…and the guy was always a lunatic.
"Life partner," said JJ. "That does it for me better than cohabitant, or lover, or boyfriend, or beau."
"Sounds like a life sentence," chimed in Buttface, who hadn't been laid for over a decade. Laid for real, with a woman, that is.
JJ never liked the sour expression Walter pulled whenever she said "life partner." She had said it, just now, to test him. It was a party; there was a chance his defenses were lax. Walter failed the test again.
JJ finished her Long Island iced tea. Walter could be such a pisser.
All eyes had turned to Walter. "Our friends understand the arrangement JJ and I share," he said, all grown up.
"And what sort of arrangement might that be?" said the Blonde with Too Many Degrees. She always talked like that. Buttface was staring at her tits as though he wanted to frame them. In peanut butter.
"None of your business, dear."
It was Walter's standard trap-them-and-kill-them reply. When JJ had first witnessed this tactic, she admired his combat smarts. Right now, it was just a mean party trick. The Blonde looked to JJ to be the sort of chick who thought tossing a drink in an aggressor's face was some sort of elegant social riposte. Walter had timed her coolly–she was down to a shard of ice in her glass. She steamed and pawed around inside her skull for a comeback. Another future victim of staircase wit. JJ did not pity her.
But sometimes, she acknowledged, Walter could be so infuriating. Sometimes, it was easy to wish he'd drop to sleep and just never wake up.
JJ jolted awake with the image of Buttface's wormy-lipped Clutch Cargo mouth flash-fading in her memory. Close enough to nightmare, that.
Walter's status was quo.
JJ's jaw ached from crying. The corners of her eyes felt violated, torn. Tear streaks petrified both cheeks. A muscle tension headache had nested at the base of her skull and squeezed the back of her head like a killer's hand.
Goddamn Walter.
She threw up, and took some aspirin with milk. She added an allergy tablet, a brand name she knew would knock her out after fifteen minutes on the sofa.
How long would Walter stay this way? Uncontentious. Not attentive, yet ever there for her. She could see him whenever she pleased. She never had to ask where he was going, what he was up to, what time he'd be home. It was more than most of her friends had.
Odds on, Buttface and the Blonde were sleeping alone, these days.
"Walter. I know things haven't been okay between us, that we settled into kind of a rut. And if this is a coma or something, and you can hear me, then you know about the last couple of days …"
It had actually been four days. More than half a whole week.
"… and I only did it because I still love you, and I'm sorry if I hurt you, or caused this to happen in any way. And if it's just an accident, I'm here for you. I just need to know how to help … okay?"
She had planned on making this little speech just in case Walter was cognizant. Then her plan was to call Cecily for a meal and a movie, a good girls' night out, well-earned. Walter, she could deal with later, because she accepted that he would be waiting for her in the bedroom.
JJ completed her speech successfully. Took a deep breath. Job done. Then she noticed Walter was no longer breathing.
Cecily understood about JJ's rain check. So fortuitous, Cecily had said, since that guy Cleve Madison had called to ask if she was busy even though it was late. Cecily had met Cleve–of all places–at the airport. He'd come on strong and Cecily had been flattered by the scent of musk.
JJ had told Cecily she understood, sure, no prob. What she had thought was: Cleve is calling you late because some other sperm bitch cancelled on him. He'll listen to you yammer on for as long as it takes to get into your pants. He'll use your toothbrush, drink the last diet beer in your fridge, and leave wet towels on your bathroom floor. He'll take up too much of the bed. You'll hate waking up next to him. If he stays the whole night.
JJ hung up the phone. And what if manly, musky Cleve didn't bother to wake up, like Walter? What if he laid in state until he finally … Finally. Finally what?
JJ's father would have said departed. Her mother, called by the good Lord. JJ could never say–you know–and so she settled on the word lost.
She had just lost Walt
er.
As if Walter had not shuffled off the coil but caught a cab; not been deprived of life so much as misplaced. Lost.
Dead, thought JJ, is what Walter is as of today.
Walter is dead. Eternal, not-breathing-ever, doornail dead.
She kept lifting the phone, then cradling it. Who should she call now?
They'd ask, he stopped moving when? He stopped breathing when? And you didn't call until how late? And once officialdom had humiliated her and picked her to pieces, she wouldn't even have Walter any more, animated or not.
After such a chain of heartbreak, she'd be, at best, alone.
In the bedroom, Walter looked exactly as he had earlier, when JJ had decided she was satisfied with him–no complaints, a sure thing, and the sex wasn't that much different…
JJ had become conscious of the cadence of her own breathing. Breathing works just fine until your brain meddles.
There was nothing to be done right away. No panic, no strife. She already knew Walter would patiently await her decision, and keep his mouth shut.
She washed him. It was done with invalids, a procedure called drybathing. Sponge him off, turn him, spread towels, wipe, turn, done.
When she rolled him over she spotted the early dark smudges of dependent lividity marring his shoulder blades, his butt, his heels. She parted his hair. The back of his head was as black as a bad bruise. When she moved him back to his original position she saw that his abdomen now bore a greenish tint and his face was beginning to darken. In the soft bedroom light, it might have been mistaken for a lousy sunlamp tan.
Walter's hair had been lush, thick, no splits, no male pattern baldness and only a thread or two of mild gray. If the myth was to be believed, his hair was still growing.
When she finished, Walter exuded a floral scent. His lips had thickened. She thought this made him look more sensuous; he had always had a mean, small, staple-shaped mouth.
She took a sandwich break. If you work a cleansing change, you must allow it time to stick. When she returned, Walter still smelled pretty, and another miraculous change had occurred.
