9F – Best Before

Everyone else had gone home, but he wasn’t quite done yet. He didn’t want to think that the evening was over, all out of potential. There were a few stragglers in the bar, just winding up as everyone else was heading home. Hospitality types. He didn’t share their stamina. Maybe if he didn’t have a meeting first thing he could’ve made a night of it. He leaned over and pointed his way to a small bottle of sake. The waitress dumped it unceremoniously on the bar top with a glass and watched as he make his way upstairs.He dropped into the couch, sipped his drink, toyed with the glass, watched, waited. Three girls sat at the other end of the room. One of them might have been looking at him, but he wasn’t sure. His drink was running low. He looked up for an excuse to stay longer, but the girl wasn’t giving him anything back. Maybe he’d creeped her out. Ah well. Things were complicated enough already. Besides, school night and all that.

He picked up the bottle and started turning it over in the dim red light, watching reflections warp across its surface, reading all the fine print he could comprehend. For best before date, see back of label. He turned the bottle around. 26.06.07. Three months gone. Obviously not the top shelf stuff. For a moment he wondered if he should keep drinking. Then again, there was a vast philosophical difference between “best before” and “use by” dates. He looked at the mostly empty bottle for a minute before throwing down the remainder. Then he walked past the girls, down the stairs and out on to the street.

*****

It all started with the alarm.

He’d meant to set it twenty minutes early, trick himself into waking up. Somehow it had gone the other way. Then his jacket was missing. It took four laps of the apartment to turn it up, tucked into the corner of the couch. Out in the hallway, things weren’t much better. The lift clinked shut moments before he rounded the corridor, forcing him down four flights of stairs and on to the street, just in time to see his bus pulling away.

He looked around for a cab, stuck his arm out with a desperate wave. Eighteen minutes later he was moving again.

He sunk back into the taxi as it pulled away. The remnants of last night’s sake weren’t helping his state of mind, but he felt slightly responsible for the slightly queasy feeling, and so ignored them completely. The cab began to slow for a light, the driver oblivious to his silent pleas. Don’t. Don’t stop. It’s only just gone orange. You’ll make that, easy. Come on. He shut his eyes and tried to will the cab around the corner. At the last minute, the driver seemed to agree with him, and the cab lunged forwards through the light.

He heard the crack and felt the force of the impact simultaneously. The small hatch got the worst of it, and the driver was already out, yelling, pointing at the cabbie, the lights, and back at the cabbie. Traffic had already started veering around the two cars. They would want witnesses. He stepped away from the cab, slowly at first and then breaking into a run.

Nineteen and a half minutes later he was at the foyer, in just enough time to watch another lift door close in front of him. He stopped and breathed. 22. Too many flights of stairs to run up. He’d have to wait. He checked the numbers.

Not for long.

The lift opened, and his client stepped briskly out into the foyer.

He fell into step with him almost immediately, ignoring the cold shock of the missed meeting and all its ugly implications. The client shook his hand without breaking stride, waving away his repeated apologies. Not that it did much good. He had a plane to catch. Didn’t want to be late. Understandable. He saw him to a cab and watched as another opportunity rolled off into the traffic.

He needed to get back to work.

His mobile rang. His hand went for his pocket out of instinct, but the phone was in his briefcase. Leaning on a concrete siding and balancing the case precariously on one knee he thumbed the latches open, mentally counting the phone rings. He grabbed the phone and flipped it open just in time to hear the caller hang up.

He dropped the phone back into the case and shut his eyes for a second. The phone settled comfortably in a nest of unpaid bills. Then he began to walk.

The afternoon was a write-off. He had several files to clear, but no matter where he started, it would seem some vital piece of information was missing that would start a new search somewhere else. An email popped onto his screen, enquiring about the whereabouts of his documentation that has been promised half an hour ago. Like a chain reaction, more requests appeared on the screen, chiming merrily even as he felt his veins contract in protest. He waded through the records, pecked madly at the keyboard, barely making a dent, barely noticing the time until he completed the last file.

Until 8:30.

Half an hour after their reservation.

He ran for the restaurant. Three or four blocks away, he could make that.

She was already there, hunched over a small table out the front, toying with her food. She looked upset. He ran in and sat down, taking a minute to compose himself, trying to apologise around awkward gulps of air.

She stopped him with a look. A weighty, serious look. He inhaled and braced for the impact. Then she spoke.

“I’m late.”

She picked up her fork and mashed it slowly into the salmon.

8F – We Don’t Talk

She exhaled a sharp breath of steam, possibly scalding. With her, it was never really a question of whether or not she was angry. These things were more a matter of degrees, her own personal Richter scale. At stage one, she would just glare a lot. Exhaling sharply was a four. By six it was time to follow emergency procedure and seek shelter. Which usually meant I was either in the den or off to the pub.

In this particular instance I’d awakened her not inconsiderable ire by strolling amiably into the kitchen. She was standing there, fists at her sides, staring into the sink. And I remember thinking to myself, is this really the girl I married? I don’t remember her being quite so round and acid and miserable.

As if to prove my point she turned and glared at me. Nice. Just what you want to see when you walk in and clap eyes on your beloved. She gave me a tiny little hiss and then barked the order.

“Give me the knife.”

I did as I was told. At least I thought I did.

“No, the cheese knife.”

She sat on the “e” sound in “cheese” for so long I didn’t think she was ever going to stop. Of course, I was supposed to deduce the exact knife she was thinking of. How very stupid of me. And let us not forget the enormity of the moment – the selection of the correct implement to cut cheese with is not a trivial matter. I corrected myself and handed her the appropriate knife, in the most co-operative voice I could manage.

“Here you are.”

At least, that’s what I said. Out loud. My own coping mechanism, however, was to complete the sentences properly in my own head. As in, “Here you are, you mean-spirited evil wench”.

Juvenile, I know. Sometimes the biggest victories must be internal ones.

I gave her an innocent, amicable little smile. She just glared back, snatched the knife and began to hack off chunks of cheese with the gusto of a butcher who enjoys his work a little too much. Ah yes. This was going particularly well.  I retreated to the living room, sank into the couch and picked up the paper. I’d just gotten comfortable when she appeared at my elbow.

“I need the grinder from the downstairs.”

I rustled the paper theatrically for a moment. Then I looked up.

“Absolutely.”

Oh, and thanks for waiting for the one moment when I’m finally settled before asking me to get up and move. Clearly this is some form of special exercise designed to improve my circulation, and you are, in fact, desperately concerned with my well being.

Sometimes I can even make myself laugh. On the inside of course.

My quiet acquiescence didn’t seem to be doing me much good. It never does really. So I held up my hands in a feeble attempt to fend off more glares and slumped down the stairs to the storage cupboard. When I returned the table was laid out. We sat down to eat, watching each other across a magnificent array of redundant cutlery.

Dinner was a marvelous show. On the surface, I humbly passed plates, offered peas, procured salt. But inside it was a different world. I was a god. I returned every glare, every marked sigh with an internalised response worthy of a playwright. I was the sole audience to my own opening night show, feasting on a dazzling barrage of unanswered one liners, each more brilliant than the last. And all that crept out onto the surface was the tiniest corner of a smile.

We retired to our separate corners, her to the living room, myself to the den. I sat there for some time, patiently reading the paper, waiting. Waiting for the perfect moment. Some time later, just as I thought I was dozing off myself, I heard the floorboards groan under her step. She was going to bed.

I waited another half hour and then proceeded on a mission of my own.

Creeping out through the near dark of the hallway, I negotiated my way past the floor lamp and the ceramics and to the cupboard. I pulled on my jacket and watched the faintest hint of my breath twist off into the corridor.

I looked through the window and into the darkness. What a perfect night, I thought to myself. What better time to escape this thorny nest and wrap myself in some more inviting arms. I’d met the girl after a show – she was a beautiful thing,  loved the theatre and was similarly married, which seemed to cut down the number of complications somehow. Neither of us had any undue expectations. We’d had to wait several weeks for our stars to align. Pinching myself seemed a little inappropriate, but you get the idea.

Pausing for just a moment in the doorframe, I imagined myself lying next to her, tracing a light finger down her pale back, wrapping my arms around her, feeling my strength return, my spine solidify. I felt inside out. Like the inner me, the mute performer with his unspoken lines was finally getting his chance to walk the boards. And he wanted to yell every stifled line, every unspoken riposte, every last triumphant exclamation of will to this miserable house and the noxious woman that lived within it.

“No need to shout.”

I turned. My wife was standing in the shadow of the corridor. She came forward and whispered softly in my ear.

“I can hear you perfectly.”

I stared at her for a moment.  Then I slowly returned my coat to the back of the cupboard, turned and went to bed without saying a word.

7F – Waiting Room

He shut his eyes tight and dug his nails into his palms, trying to breathe evenly. When he opened them there was a bright afterimage dancing on the bare walls, the waiting room chairs, the mottled carpet. He wanted to get up and run, and his rational mind was willing to cooperate. Maybe in another few days he’d have his head together, feel more up for it?

No. She’d pulled some strings to get him here in the first place. He was one of the lucky ones. If he left now, that would be on record. Besides, self-medication was becoming impractical, not to mention expensive.

There was a chemical smell in the room, not offensive so much as unsettling, the kind of smell that only exists to overpower something worse.

“Michael… Mayer”.

He stood up, wincing at the pain in his joints. The doctor stood at the door, assessing him, firing off a mental checklist. Male, mid-thirties, dark circles round eyes, some hair loss. He looked textbook. He tried to see the doctor’s face through the mask, the glass shield, tried to make some sort of connection. But all he could see was a pair of eyes – grey, firm and serious. He walked slowly in the room and heard door behind click him.

The doctor sat down in the chair opposite, adjusting his breather, his voice rasping out through the tiny speaker box.

“Well, I think we both know why you’re here.”

Thickened gloves grabbed a rough hold of his right arm, rolled his sleeve and took a small needle of blood, moving with the mechanical regularity of someone who does this kind of thing every day. The doctor turned to drop the sample into the tester.

There was a vial sitting on the desk, only about a metre away, nestled next to some discarded paperwork. Inside was the bluish liquid, salvation in a tiny bottle. He could reach forward, grab it, be out the door in moments. But he’d heard stories. Attempted theft of medicines was all the reason they needed to keep people out of the treatment program. And at the moment, they were looking for all the reasons they could find.

Still, he couldn’t help looking at it.

The doctor returned.

“Positive. No surprises there.”

Maybe not, but the news still kicked hard. He deflated, slumped in the chair. The doctor read him his rights.

“We need to run an assessment of your fitness for the program. This decision is a purely statistical assessment, and in no way reflects a decision on the part of myself. It is based simply on the probability that you will recover after treatment and will be capable of making a significant contribution to the community. The decision is final, and will be recorded for the purpose of all future visits to this or any other facility. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

The processing began. The system trawled through years of records, looking for patterns, trends, indications. He watched, unable to interpret the values and phrases appearing on the screen. Normal function, plus point two of a percent, minus something, elevated… He tried to think of anything that could count against him. Flu shots? Broken bones? The skin cancer he’d had removed when he was seventeen? You were allowed to watch the screen, to make it look like everything was above board, but no one really knew.

The process finished. A prompt appeared, beating lazily on the screen. The computer was waiting for any new data, any information not on the records. The doctor sat and watched the cursor for the longest time, staring, not moving. Then he turned. He took out a small torch and blinked it into the eyes of his patient.

“Are you single?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sexually active?”

He stopped. Surely this wasn’t going to hurt his chances qualifying for the program. This was what they meant by being of service to the community, right? Getting things back to normal as soon as possible? But what if he was some kind of religious nut, some self-appointed moral guardian? No. They would have safeguards. He wouldn’t be allowed to act against policy.

“Yes”

“Have you had sexual relations in the last six months?”

He coughed. His mouth was dry, and the word scratched at his throat.

“Yes”

The doctor paused, reached into a draw and pulled out a framed photo, sealed within a plastic bag.

“Was it with this woman?”

He stopped and stared at the photo. Emily.

“Michael Mayer…. I’m asking you if you were having intercourse with my wife.”

He knew he didn’t need to respond. The doctor turned to the waiting screen, and selected a few options. He saw “Sexually Transmitted Disease”. He saw “Sterile”. He shut his eyes.

“Michael Maher, it is my duty to inform you that our statistical calculation indicates that you are not an appropriate candidate for the program.”

The doctor was staring at him through the glass lens.

“If you wish, you will be assigned cyanide capsules, which may be used in the booths at the rear of this facility. Please be aware that this is an optional treatment. You are not obliged to take the cyanide, and by law, I am unable to recommend to you a course of action. All I can do is tell you is that in your condition death can be an incredibly long, painful process.”

The doctor called the security detail in, but it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t speak out, didn’t demand justice. Moments later he was standing in the booth, surrounded by the chemical smell. He just stood there, staring at the small red capsules, wondering why she had sent him to her husband’s clinic.