In the morning we both awoke and refused to leave the bed for a while, not for any reason I couldn’t repeat in mixed company, but because our bones creaked and our brains were not ready for the world. When we finally did begin our day, me rolling right, her rolling left, the two of us found our way into clothes, in poor spirits, and went off to our respective jobs. She oversaw a fleet of couriers. I edited guide-books. We both despised our jobs and, as a result, ourselves. At lunch our moods came up a little. Hers was the result of bad news. One of the directors of her company had passed away. There would be no work on Thursday or Friday. Mine was the result of her improved spirit. If that is co-dependency, so be it. The glow of this poor man’s death was still on her when she arrived home in the evening, and we crowded each other under a red blanket and listened to a radio serial. An enterprising young man had inherited his strange old uncle’s castle. Noises crept from walls and from under doors. An unearthly light hovered just outside the window. We knew that sooner or later we’d have to get up and get food. I proposed a jar of olives and a heel of bread. Yes, she smiled. On the radio, the young man had opened a closet to find a hole in the wall from which emanated a not-quite-human voice. The whole thing was a comforting fright.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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