Beyond the end

Balance

Steve arrived at the newspaper's office at about 7pm, a plentiful hour in advance of the appointment. He had to give a semblance of order because he hadn't had time. Since Janet dated him, he hadn't even had time to think, considering he had rushed to Kelly's house, from there to San Diego and back with little Sammy.
A mixture of emotions, a tangle that still pulsated as living matter and had kept him hostage all day.
In the background and approaching, the tension for a meeting that could be decisive, just as it could roll everything up. Now that tension had finally gained the center stage. It was advancing. It took space.
He needed to dilute it. He opened a bottle of an unspecified Californian wine. He was not interested in the label, which he did not even observe, but he opened it distracted, looking around and rummaging with his gaze through piles of old copies of the Beat, still on display, notes, flyers, various advertisements. A delirium.
"You'll better give me a move," he said in a low voice as he already poured red wine into a paper cup and sinked his lips with greed.
Janet was as punctual as her habit. She was wrapped in a cream coat that came under her knee, from which came black leather boots with a heel that raised her no little.
Steve still found her very beautiful and made no secret of it.
"You look great."
"Thank you, you're in shape too."
"Yes – Steve smiled – I think I look horrible, I had a very heavy and tiring day; but now we're here, so the fold can only get better."
Again, Steve came to mind that Janet didn't know anything about Sammy but he certainly didn't want to tell her at the time.
Janet took it as another compliment and settled in on the armchair of her former desk "I always found it very comfortable".
"If this chair could speak," Steve said, blinking.
"Let it be silent, playboy," the woman replied, "let's go back to the present. I tried to move on, to reorganize my life, our life. But it doesn't work. My attempt is a continuous failure. I'm not happy. Maddy is not happy. our choice to separate does not seem to me to be a winner at all. I also tried to commit to a new story. But Bruce applied arithmetic calculation to his life as well. No unforeseen events, no surprises. Everything was meticulously calculated. Nothing to do with your total improvisation."
Steve didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or as an offense "you often sent me out of my mind," Janet continued, "but other times you put some panache into our days. A pinch of madness that undermines the balance and makes me feel...how to say, long live."
Steve still drank when he realized he hadn't offered anything to Janet.
"Sorry honey, I didn't ask you if you like some wine."
Honey. He had called her. He was surprised, his pride would never allow it. But obviously it was not pride that suggested the words to him. Janet also dwelt on that word and was tender at it.
"Calici Zalto, I see"
"I get there," smiled Steve, "Without of you, wine has no taste; what's the point of valuing it in a proper glass? A shabby plastic cup is fine."
He couldn't have chosen better words. Janet smiled as she cried, got up and headed to her husband.
"Stevy" and kissed him for a long time "Can we start again?" SHe asked him.
"I just want to get my family back; my wife, my daughter. By the way, where is Maddy?"
"With the babysitter, a middle-aged lady who has been living near our house for a few weeks; the little girl loves her and stays with pleasure"
"We could use Mrs. Poppins often," Steve whispered to her and kissed her again.
Steve's days of solitude were over. Finished. Buried. He wouldn't miss sleeping at the Beat and he already knew that the break with Janet would be a short time. They would have argued. SHe would have scolded him. But he want desperately love her and desperately took her with him. With sweetness. Again and again.
David was cradlening Ethan while Donna was taking a hot shower. He had heard from Steve how things had gone; he remembered that anguish well, he had suffered it when Erin had disappeared from under his eyes.
Stuff you can't breathe anymore imagining tragic scenarios.
However Steve had eclipsed early, he had an important date of which he had not wanted to confess the details for which he hurried to tell about Kelly's phone call, the run to San Diego, the return home with Sammy, the festive return to Taylor's house. In short, he had reassured him.
"What about Brandon and Dylan?"
"Fare away," Steve told him, "If they come back alive there I'll kill."
David felt relaxed and grateful as he cradled Ethan. For the first time he realized the luck that life gave him every day and quietly.
Since the little one had resumed sleep-wake rhythms closer to normal, he had recovered his relationship with Donna, which had been seriously compromised in recent weeks.
Valerie was an open wound. A stain on his soul but he forced himself not to think about it, to let it go. She would have left. He wanted that girl and sometimes it was too hard to scratch in her hardness but David knew her story. He knew where the frantic search for confirmations that Valerie desperately hid behind the jokes and blue eyes came from. The fact is, David couldn't be the answer to her questions. There was a time he would have liked to. He could have.
Donna came out of the shower and took David away from his thoughts. He wore a bathrobe and headed into the bedroom. Silver had put the baby to sleep and was resting it in her crib, in the room adjacent to theirs. Donna had paused on the doorstep, watching father and son with pride.
David saw her. In a bathrobe.
"Donna, are you crying?"
"No, I'm happy. Over the past few months I have focused on what was wrong: Ethan's screams, sleepless nights, your clumsy collaboration, your getaways from home. While I realize that it's all wonderful. I have the man I have always loved by my side, the most beautiful of children who brightens my days with his smiles, I'm fine. Really good. I am happy. I just don't always realize it"
"How long wil it take me to open this untached belt of the bathrobe?"
"A little," Donna smiled.
"Now though I have the keys"
"And you can use them whenever you want," he kissed him.
That night they made love. Ethan knew he was discreet. He seemed to feel that parents needed intimacy, to get closer, even physically. And they did. The disagreements, the misunderstandings, the betrayal, everything seemed to slip away with the drops of sweat that the bodies forcefully pushed out, finding that complicity that they had forgotten for too long.
Balances.