After the Fall by Dianne Willems 

“Let’s have intercourse.”

 “…excuse me?”

 She trailed her fingers over the wooden table. Bought at some drift store a million years ago, for a buck and a half. He still liked it – a memory.

“Listen”, she said, “let’s face it. The marriage is dead. There’s nothing for us to do anymore. Except intercourse.”

He shifted his weight, unable to halt the oncoming erection in his pants. Damn it.

“Since when do we call it intercourse?”

She started to grin. “I don’t know…”, she answered coyly. “Clinical term. Think of it as a business arrangement. We were always incredibly good at sex. Right?”

The erection between his legs was undeniable, which made it hard to answer. For some reason he thought of their first time. He’d been a virgin. Too afraid to tell her beforehand, when she’d found out afterwards she’d told him she was glad. She didn’t like the thought of him having been with anyone else.

He hadn’t cared as much. He lived in the now, he had her now – but to her the past mattered.

She leaned back, folding her arms. “So let’s do it. There’s nothing to lose, and it’ll be fun.”

“So fun.”

She looked at him. “Well?” A touch of irritation had crept into her voice.

He ignored it. “It would be, sure. Definitely. But…” He glanced at her from under his eyebrows. “I’m not really in the mood.” He laughed, to lighten his comment, holding up his hands in defense. “I kind of want to, but I’m also tired and very hungry.”

She shrugged. “Fine. It was just an idea.” She touched the table with her left hand, feeling it under her palm, her eyes following the movement. She looked sexy as hell right then.

But he didn’t want to succumb to the temptation of sex, the easiness of it. Physical closeness would not bridge the space that was between them, even though it would feel like it would.

“Do you want to talk about the lawyer?”

Bitter lines appeared in her face. “You mean the fact that he was bald?”

“No.”

“He was so bald you could do your makeup using the reflection of his scalp. Highly disturbing.”

His erection was dwindling. He felt his stomach, empty and wanting.  “Let’s eat.”

She looked up. “I ain’t cooking.”

“Me neither! Jeeze. Let’s order something.”

“All right. What?”

He let out a breath. “Thai food? Chinese? Any other Asian inspired cuisine that is nothing like actual Asian food?”

“Always a fan.”

“Or a couple of burgers?”

“With twister fries!” She sat up straighter, big grin on her face. It highlighted the network of wrinkles that was always there, but he somehow never noticed. “I need twister fries.”

He thought of her face as it had been at the beginning, and wondered when it had first started to change. It hadn’t been a moment. It was one long flowing action. Constant change. He shook the thought away – you live in the now, remember.

“Fine, burgers and fries.” He took out his phone. “Let’s see…”

“Ooh, do you know what I want?” She looked mischievous now, a child proposing something naughty. “Ben and Jerry’s.”

He lifted an eyebrow. They remained silent, but he thought she knew what he was thinking of. There had been a time when he’d been sure – when they would look at each other and could at least guess each other’s thoughts. Now, he felt like he couldn’t even guess her thoughts as she was yelling them at him. 

He went back to his phone and placed the order.

“Thirty minutes.”

They fell silent again, she stroking the table with her opened left hand.

“You’re really in the mood, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Stroking the table like that.”

A half-grin appeared on her face. “Just checking the surface, is it sturdy enough to have intercourse on this.”

He smiled. It couldn’t be denied that she was funny.

“Hope you’ll be well fed soon”, she continued in a teasing sort of voice. “With the burgers.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ll need your energy.”

He grinned at her. “Sure. I see.”

She tapped her fingers on the table. “Hope those clothes you’re wearing aren’t new.”

“You know these clothes.”

“Blech, duh, just let me… Ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna rip ‘em off after dinner.”

“Yes, well, in that case, that’d be a shame.” He couldn’t help but laugh.

“Exactly.”

They gazed at each other, the table between them.

“I have one”, he said.

“Go on.”

He looked at her, mouth opening, but he remained silent. He tried to force upon himself some sort of feeling, as he looked at the woman he had been with half his life.

“Well?!”

“Uh… Hope you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

“I’ll need the energy”, she finished bluntly. “I already sort of used that one.”

“I was gonna say ‘Because this night you won’t.”

“Oh, that’s an okay one.”

I know, he thought. Condescending. No, that wasn’t it, not exactly. Controlling.

When they had just met, already there had been a distance between them. But he had figured it was a distance that was between all people: we aren’t mind-readers. We cannot ever know what really goes on inside someone else. But as the years passed, the distance had grown. A space had formed between them, a stretch of wildlands, at first narrow enough to look out over and see her, but gradually growing too big to cross. A mountain of space.

He sighed. “Want to watch something while we eat?”, he asked.

“Sure. Some crappy movie.”

“Jurassic Park.”

“Not crappy. You’re in the right neighborhood, though.”

“Alien.”

“Yes!”, slamming her fist on the table. “Let’s watch Alien! That’s been ages.”

He got up to turn on the television. “Got it.”

She stood up too and walked to the couch. She sat down, wrapping herself in a blanket.

 He remembered her, in the first weeks of their relationship, on this couch. Spreading herself out on it, wanting him – or planting herself down in a fight. Sleeping on it, especially in the final months of pregnancy… He could see her now. Big belly, bloated face, complaining about pimples and constipation. They went to see the Alien movies as they came out, two through four, at the movie theater close to their apartment. She’d grabbed his arm at the scary parts.

“Beer?”

“Please.”

As he took two beers from the refrigerator, his erection came back. They would watch the movie, argue a bit, and eat. They would never have sex. They hadn’t had sex in ages. The ice cream would stay in the freezer until it was passed its expiration date, and then he would probably eat in all in one go after another bad day, or another fight.

 Although he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember their last fight. It had all ceased to register in him. He could remember her yelling – but he couldn’t remember yelling back.

He handed her the beer.

“I got one”, she said as he started the movie.

“Shoot.”

“You’re on top of my to do-list.”

“Lame.”

She sighed. “Yeah, all right. Ooh, space ship.”

He turned to her, holding up his beer, about to toast, but the salutation stuck in his throat. Thoughts that sometimes nibbled at him came again. Who is this? What is this? Is this a person, a human being – or nothing but a sack of blood, and bones and goo?

Is there a brain? Cells that send electricity to each other in a mindless frantic pointless rhythm until the organism died, or is there a mind? An individual, with thoughts, and hopes, and interests. Ideas, both new and hers alone, as well as copied from others. But made hers.

As he regarded her, the distance between them felt insurmountable. She seemed to glide away from him, slowly at first, then with gathering speed, across a vast ocean, until she was so far away he couldn’t see her anymore, couldn’t feel her.

 And as he stood at one side of that mountain of space, she stood at the other, and every time he found it somewhere in him to start the climb, she would walk further from the summit. So even if, with time, and great effort, he reached the summit and could hope to meet her there, she would be at the bottom, just as far away from him as when he had started his climb.

“Cheers”, he said.

“Cheers”, she replied.

An ocean of space.

He didn’t take a sip of his beer, but stared at the bottle in his hands. A sadness so devastating took hold of him, it prevented him from moving for a second. But he didn’t want to feel it. He didn’t want to experience it anymore.

“Let’s have intercourse.”

She looked at him, a hesitant smile breaking on her lips, as waves on sand.

Dianne Willems

Image: Gold wedding rings laying one on top of the other from Pixabay.com