HE WENT

He went to the gym, to the store, to the other woman’s home, to his own. He set up shop in the kitchen, made a sandwich, halved it. “You just went to the gym,” his wife said. “Why are you eating again?” He scowled smilingly. “Fill the hole,” he said. He went to the sofa to watch TV. His wife balanced out the other end. “This is like a calendar,” he said. He didn’t wait for his wife to ask why. “It’s how we know another day has passed,” he said. The TV rolled through news he knew he needn’t register. Commercials deployed a series of lively fools. The weatherman had piercing blue eyes. His wife reached across the couch to arouse him but he was spent. He had prepaid. He thought of his office, all the people there he hated, all the people who pretended not to hate him. He thought of the one spot in the hallway just outside the bathrooms where his immediate boss liked to stop and confab. He hated his boss and his boss was one of the rare honest ones who didn’t pretend not to hate him. He had to get to work early the next morning to have a meeting about something. He couldn’t for the life of him remember who was supposed to be running the meeting. It was him, he realized. He dug in his ear for wax. He scratched an itch on the inside of his thigh where the other woman had been. His wife called him by his name. He responded in kind. Each understood the other was attacking. He went to bed, his wife followed fast behind him, reached across again, her motive the same, and this time he pantomimed, joyful but not, fascinated but never, guileful only insofar as it brought on sleep. He could not do so: sleep. No one deserved their name. The weatherman had piercing blue eyes but what were they piercing? It was him, he realized. He let gravity take him downstairs for a glass of whiskey and a bowl of chips. “Fill the hole” measured the hole. He went to the cemetery. The first tombstone was his. He climbed back into the accepting earth.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas