In a Year...

 

 

Die for Me

 

"Do you love me?" he asked her, his eyebrows crawling towards each other in consternation.

"Of course I do," she answered immediately. She tried to project her love through her skin so he could see it.

"I’d die for you," he said. His brown eyes were solemn, and he kissed her forehead gently.

They met. Everything passed so quickly. That was the way she was. Everything happened quickly, always. Emotions rarely developed, but appeared. She loved him. Almost immediately, she loved him. It took him a little more time than it did her to realize those emotions, but still, he quickly fell in love with her.

Time passed so quickly. Fast, fast, fast. Before they knew it, they were living together. A studio apartment with late rent and a large kitchen. They were eating ramen noodles and instant mashed potatoes, neither one of them with a job. She was ashamed at not working, he was ashamed at not studying. She wanted to be able to take care of herself. He wanted to improve his mind.

"Do you love me?" she asked one day while they were lying on their futon mattress which lay on the floor. Her head was on his shoulder, and they had Christmas tree lights twinkling above them.

"Yes," he answered, "but you’re killing me."

He sang along to CD’s. He sang along to them and wasted precious time he could be studying. He curled himself around her and hated himself for wasting precious time he could be studying.

He slept and hated himself for wasting precious time he could be studying. "I’d die for you," he said to her, looking into her eyes like a child, his thick lashes curling as much as the hair on his chest.

"But would you live for me?" she countered.

"That’s too hard," he answered grinning, his eyes not following the jovial movement of his mouth.

He lay with her. All he wanted to do was lay and be with her. "You’re killing me," he whispered to her sleeping form.

Time passed and passed. Finally, they both had jobs, though not doing what they had wanted to. She, a waitress at a scummy diner next door to their apartment building; he, a cashier at a gas station. He had wanted a job with more customer interaction, so he could be challenged with questions and be forced to study. She had wanted a job that wasn’t distasteful to her careful upbringing. Her mother had been a waitress and had never wanted the same for her children. Her mother had felt that it would be beneath them.

They had money to pay rent and move into a larger apartment. He had a room to go to study. She was kept at bay in the living room. A "Do Not Disturb," sign hung on the closed door to the room where the computer was kept. He liked to study at the computer desk. She stared at the images on the television screen, trying to keep her mind occupied. She tried reading a book and listening to music. She tried not being lonely.

He sat behind the closed door, blankly staring at an open book at the computer desk his mother had bought him with money illegally obtained. He damned her for being on the other side of the distracting him with her presence.

"You’re killing me," he said to her, angrily, while she washed dishes from a dinner of ramen noodles and instant mashed potatoes. Even though they could now afford real food, they had no transportation to go to a real grocery store. They relied on freeze dried and dehydrated. Anything boxed that could be obtained at the nearby drugstore.

She looked at him, tears welling up in her eyes. Looked at him dumbly, and continued washing the dishes. There were so few. He stood in the kitchen door way, laughed at her, shook his head, and walked away.

"I’m going to get a gun and blow out my fucking brains," he told her at night, while holding her in their cramped bed.

She turned away from him and silently cried herself to sleep while he chuckled to himself quietly.

"I love you so much," he said. "It’s making me sick how much I love you."

"Don’t say that," she said. She had heard him say the same thing often.

"I don’t think we should live together anymore," he said.

His reddish brown hair needed a trim she thought. "I love you," she replied. His goatee could use some grooming too.

"This is it," he said calmly, nearly an hour after they made love. "I’m done. You’re killing me. We’re through. I can’t be with you anymore. All I want to do when I’m with you is hold you and it’s killing me. You’re rotting my brain. You’re like sugar on teeth."

"Would you die for me?" his voice whispered in her mind, as she lay in the bathtub of quickly darkening pink water.

 

 

Copywrite 2002 Trudy Smock