Used to, it was enough just laying there, listening to her breathe and basking in the warmth of her youth. But not anymore. She didn’t smell the same. Her hair seemed drier, and her breathing coarser, a slight wheeze at the back of her throat or from somewhere deep in her chest.
David rolled onto his side to watch her. The lava lamp on the beside table painted her face in deep, violet red. You can tell. Just looking at her, the wear and tear just happens. She used to take such good care of herself. That’s how they’d met. They used the same skin creme. He wasn’t too girly to take care of himself. Stave off the rot as much as possible, and he liked to think she appreciated it, but really he didn’t care. He was with her for her youth. And being honest about that fact didn’t make it any better.
And now she was starting to rot. Just like everybody else. Right below the leftmost corner of her lip was a small tear. Maybe they’d been kissing too hard, or maybe she chews it when she’s nervous, but the wear’s starting to show.
Nothing ever creeps up on you. The 3am realization that he was only with her for her for her youth wasn’t some brilliant epiphany struck from nervous static insomnia lightning. He’d always known. You know yourself. You’re born with a complete soul and you know every inch.
David had violent urges. Obsessive ideations of violence were what a therapist would’ve called them. So it’s not like one night, not sleeping, hating his girlfriend’s constant flirtation with Father Time, he decided, all of a sudden, imbued with evil, tempted by demons, that he was going to kill someone young, a child, take their youth from them.
The indians have stories about Wendigos. Lady Bathory, etc.
David’s known himself for years, and he’s just been waiting all this time for the right time. The question is, what are you waiting for?
He threw his arm over her with a half-hearted hug and kissed her on the temple, out of routine and not love, you can be sure, and got out of bed.
The city is best at night. You can’t see the decay, and everyone’s faces are obscured in the yellowed half-light pooled beneath every other street lamp. Night was best for a cab , cause cabbies were the worst.
All of them. Face it. They’re not who they want to be. What are they waiting for? Ridden hard, put up wet, the most of them, and the rest, the young ones, were working on the same agenda. Gaunt. Ugly. Torn. At least you mostly saw only the back’s of their heads, unless they insisted on trying to make eye contact through the rear view while talking. David had actually seen one with no eyes in his sockets, and he could swear his sockets were dusty!
The cabby flipped the dome light when he’d gotten David home, but David looked down at his money while he counted out the fare, and then handed it to the cabby while looking distractedly out the window.
Your life is about patterns. This is the place where David gets out of the cab, goes inside, and stares at his face for two hours before going to work. Put on some lotion and some face creme. Check for thin spots, possible tears. Sometimes if you noticed them early enough, that and some collagen would keep things alright. Then he’d get ready for work, walk downstairs, stop for a second at the school on his way, and then walk to the bus stop. And this is what he did.
David’s life was pretty simple: He hated death. It’s not that he feared dying. No. We are all dying, all the time, and it’s not that he loved life, though he did. David just hated death, and mostly he resented the world for seeping him in it. His life was pretty simple.
Every morning he’d stop at the school to watch the children play. The playground was encircled by a fence of black iron bars he’d grasp with both hands and lean his face against, like a prisoner, and he’d watch the little angels shriek and dash madly around the yard in innocent games, untainted by the world. Not like the yard monitor, who he’d watched decay for two years. If he loitered near the playground for too long she’d drift his way. Usually he’d wave and good morning before she got too close, and shuffle down the street to catch his bus at the corner, but some days, he was so enthralled he’d not notice her approach until she was nearly on him, and he’d be forced to talk to her. Her sunken eyes weren’t so bad, but her left cheek had rotted clean away. It was unbearable watching her masticate good morning or how was he today.
There were no smiling children on the way to the bus stop. He kept his eyes down for the walk to the bus. The neighborhood homeless man, curled up in the doorway of a failed coffee shop, and had entombed himself in old clothes, a curdled stench, and the city’s own foul funk. Bad weather and worse nutrition had eaten away most of his face, manged, with patches of beard clinging to remaining bits of skin.
The bus ride offered no retreat, either. Usually he only had to look at the driver, and only for as long as it took to communicate the payment of the bus fare. He definitely never looked around the bus. And it wasn’t that most bus people are poor. They had no sense of self-worth, and maybe that was why they were poor, but the way they kept themselves up was horrible. Watching age eat away at all those faces, day after day, it was unbearable, so mostly he just kept his eyes down, and he never had to look them in their hollowing, sunken eyes. The only real exception was Robert, a contractor, who was missing a large part of the back of his skull. He had this silly way of combing his remaining hair over the hole to hide his brain. Mucousy brain fluid would get in his hair, leaving a big greasy mark. That greasy clot of hair always caught his attention for some reason. Usually, though, Robert wore a hat, so it wasn’t so bad. If he could read the paper he did, or tried to, so he never had to stare at Robert or any of the other passengers.
At work his chair greeted him every morning with a scratching squeak as he sat down. He didn’t drink coffee. That stuff corrodes your throat from the inside out. The yellowed plastic of his monitor belied the fluorescent lights attempt to paint everything in a sanitary white glow. So, he sat there mostly, waiting for his girlfriend, Michelle to call.
Michelle called most days around three. “He giving you any hell?” Not today, thank God. David hadn’t even seen his manager. Not only had his manger mastered typical managerial duties of obstruction, ignorance, and annoyance, but twenty years of smoking left him without lips, gums, and stained, rotting teeth that brushed every word with a foul, rotten odor, a lifetime’s worth of coffee breath. Meetings were hell on David. He really couldn’t stand the nasty bastard.
“Nah. Haven’t even seen him today. We still on for tonight?” Every Tuesday, they hung out at the club with her friends. “Well, I’ve actually got some errands to run, so I’ll just meet you there.”
