I start to cry.
With each sob that carries me to oblivion, my breathing rasps along the edge of a jagged cliff, just by the edge of insanity.
He rushes to my side, and turns me to face him now as he runs his hands down from my naked shoulders to the cold fingertips that twitch with shock and loss of blood flow. He is now on his knees in front of me, my dress stretched out to cover the holes of his pants, and the worn edges of his sweater.
"Hey baby, hey, no, no, hello, babe..." he speaks lovingly as he strokes my hair away from my tear streaked face. "Look at me."
I look up to him and see that his face has taken a gorgeous glow of pink, his eyes wet and glazed with the silent doldrums of the equator, being rippled by my pebbled presence. I'm trembling with cold, salty tears, smelling only wine, drowning the room with suppressed emotions from long ago. As he watches my quivering lips he sits down next to me and places my head on his shoulder. Look at me... Mar, can you hear me? Marcel look at me...What?
My clouded vision blackens the corners of my sanity, as I realize the contents of the wine bottle hidden by the corner of the couch has ruled against me, and my humiliating spiral down to unconsciousness. This is too stressful. Why is he here? Did he see me play? I can't see his face. He's blurry...No, Mar, don't black out...Come on, Mar... Why is he back?
Why did he let me suffer like this?
//
White. I wake up to white linen sheets. I am wearing a silkened pink robe...Who took my dress? Did I?... Where am I? Oh. Who brought me here?
It's a Sunday. Summer seeps through a familiar window, and through the white curtains that give the sun's light an opaque persona. The air is cool and inviting, and Debussy plays from an old stereo. My head feels like a sunken rock, but I manage to get up and walk around.
He's here.
Sitting on the couch, he turns to me. His eyes have sunken into a purple lining of fatigue, and pink hues color the inside and outer corners of his puffy eyes. He has been crying.
He gets up, wobbly at first. He too has been drinking. He takes a step closer to me, then another.
"I remember where you kept my spare key, in the plant's pot by the door so when I lost mine I'd have an extra...Uh, I didn't look at you as I took off your dress or anything, and I put on that robe because I don't know if you like pink now, but I saw it in the dressing room at the concert hall and I thought, well, I tried to..." and as he keeps rambling on, his hand running along the back of his neck, one foot turned inward, and a chocolate curl trembling in front of his face as if a chill whipped in from the Arctic, I back away from him, in complete awe of my growing fear of the situation.
"What's wrong?" he walks toward me, and I start to run back to the bedroom. He grabs my arm, and turns me around. Still dizzy from the indulgence of the night before, I miraculously break free from his grip and clumsily stumble to the bedroom door, and I shut it as fast as I can. He bangs on the door; once, twice, three times. "What is wrong with you? I tried to help you and you're running away! I haven't seen you in over a year and you're leaving me!" His loud, slurring words only magnify a small piece of what I felt: confusion, disbelief, wonder...
His screams insanity. I can hear the rustle of his hair as his hands run through it and he places his beaten fist on the door with a thunk. "Damnit Marcel..." he stifles a sob.
"Why did you come back, Matthew." my voice is cold, and shivering.
"I just...God," I can hear him slide down the door, plunk on the ground, his voice muffled by his hands. "I don't know. I've been here for a while but it was just now that I noticed how talented you are and how happy you are without me and I thought seeing you again would give me peace but..but," I cannot help but to feel disgusted by this gesture. I'm in a place that is not home, heaving a head on aching shoulders, listening to a man break apart; why do I feel no remorse? Have I shed the last tears of ages past, yesterday? Drunken with sorrow and despair and desperate for answers?
"I'm going home. Right now." Is all I manage to say through a trembling strum of chords. "I don't need this right now."
I get up and open the door, only to see Matthew sitting, knees to his chest, back hunched over, and hair melted onto his face with a spray of the salty ocean now lining his cheeks. My love.
I walk to the door. And I hesitate. With all the dignity that I don't have I turn around slowly and look at the man who left me more than a year ago, now standing, looking miserable.
"You left me. You left me." With fury ripping through my chest, I grip at the doorknob and say with an echo, hall owing through my heart, "You left me."
The white curtains in the bedroom make sounds that ruffle the air quietly, as the wind picks up the missing pieces of the situation, carrying them away, leaving only confusion. I look at him one more time.
He looks at the hole in my heart.
And I walk out.
