Meet Me In The Hallway

Bad Trip

We are stuck.

We have been staring at each other for so long that Harry's entourage seems genuinely puzzled.

The golden gleam of the plates on the elevator doors has shined twice. The apparatus has already had to be recalled. And yet, other than Harry turning around to actually look at me and not the image of me in the mirror, we have not moved. I would assume that we had not even blinked if that was physically possible.

The inertia of the moment is stifling, and the man in the ball cap with Harry has apparently had enough of the tension. he is vaguely familiar, but I can't be bothered to redirect my attention to place him. He leans into Harry's ear, and I expect him to move his eyes off me. I want him to break eye contact. But the fact that I can't stand the thought of him not looking at me anymore explains a lot about that saying.

Maybe he will get on the elevator and we will go another 3 years without looking at each other. Maybe we will go whole lifetimes.

Our life, the time we spent together, has flashed behind my eyes in the ensuing three minutes and I'm struck by the fact that we are in a corridor together, our beginning, middle, and end. Always in some liminal space, our home together the cool dis-personal space of a hotel room. A place no one is meant to stay.

We were fools to believe we were anything more than temporary.

But, once I believed it with my whole heart.

I think he did too.

I'm rooting now for him to turn to his plaid wearing friend and walk onto the elevator doors that I see the slide of the doors again.

He does not, his mouth moves. I watch it, his lips are hard to miss, but I cannot make out the words.

I'm aware in my peripheral vision that his people, god he has his own people now, I've missed a lot, are getting onto the elevator. But Harry is still frozen looking at me. I think he is wearing black, Which is par for the course, but I'm pretty sure his shirt is pink. I'm still looking at him, and I'm breathing now, and I'm charmed by his choice of color. I remember painting his nails that color when we were making up after the first time he broke my heart.

Not the last.

The elevator doors are closing, swallowing our audience, when I hear the brave one speak.

"Five minutes, H."

That makes me close my eyes. There was always some unfairly short time limit on us. 2 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 8 hours, 5 minutes. He always had to be somewhere. I was always waiting.

"Melody." His voice let's me know that he is moving, like the Doppler effect, and I wonder if I'm about to get hit by the train. I guess so. He only ever called me Melody if it was a serious discussion, of the heart wrenching variety, or in the bedroom when he was taking me apart before he'd remake me.

My full name on his lips was yin and yang.

I opened my eyes and he was a comfortable distance, my bubble respected, so I knew this was an uncomfortable distance for Harry.

I watched his moment of indecision before he gave into his own nature and opened his long arms. I always teased him about his spider arms, one of his one hundred nicknames came from it, but even now the wrap of them, nearly double time, around me saw my eyes falling shut and my mouth dropping.

He smelled different.

It upset me. I knew that I had changed perfumes since we had been one and that I must smell different, but the fact that he did, made it seem to me that more has passed than just years.