He looked at the clock to check
the time. 17:51.
The damn clock.
Two fucking thousand rupees for that chrome plated piece of shit.
Just another thing you made me
waste money on, he thought to himself. He didn’t say this out loud
though. He knew it would upset her.
The crystal glass lay empty in
front of him on the table, but he didn’t pour himself another drink. He hated
rushing his drinks, it always gave him a bad hangover the next day.
And I really don’t need the
hangover at work tomorrow, he thought. Lots to do.
He looked at her long, wavy
brown hair that followed the curve of her breasts as it made its way down to
her waist, and he felt a strange sense of arousal. He smiled, slightly
embarrassed.
Don’t even think about it, he
thought. She’s not in the mood, and it’s just plain wrong to force
yourself on her.
Plain wrong.
***
She walked in the front door,
smiling brightly with the bag of groceries she’d bought from the market yard
down the road, to find him sitting with his face buried in his hands, crying
his eyes out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“What happened?”
He didn’t say anything
immediately. He just looked up, eyes blood red from crying for hours, tears
streaming down his face, stared at her for a few seconds and then screamed, “I
hate you, you bitch.”
***
He looked up at the clock (the
damned clock, he thought) again. 18:00.
He leaned forward and picked up
the bottle of rum from the table, poured out an almost accurately measured
drink and placed the bottle back. He’d left just enough in the bottle for one
last drink.
He would’ve poured one out for
his wife too, but she didn’t drink anymore. She’d stopped drinking for a while
now, for no specific reason. If anyone asked her why, she’d say “I just can’t
handle my drink anymore, and he doesn’t like it,” nodding
towards her husband, who’d just laugh, shrug and give her a kiss on her cheek.
So he sat and sipped from his
glass alone, wishing he had better company than his wife who didn’t drink
anymore.
***
“I saw you with him.”
“With who?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know
shit, you know just who the fuck I’m talking about.”
“I swear I don’t know…”
But he saw her eyes dart
quickly away from his gaze and then back. He heard the faint quiver in her
voice as her last word trailed off into nothingness. He felt the heat rise as
her face flushed with guilt.
“You swear?”
“I…”
Her voice cracked and she stood
dumbfounded.
He stood up.
“I saw you two. I saw you get
into the car with him. I watched as you two drove away. I followed you. I saw
you park in that asshole’s apartment cellar, right in the corner. Perfect spot,
eh? I watched him kiss you. I watched him take your shirt off, and I watched
you remove his jeans. I watched him fuck you, you slut. I watched him fuck you
like the whore you really are.”
She was crying now. Tears fell
from her eyes quicker than the bags of groceries that fell from her hand to the
floor. A packet of chips fell on top of the box of Hershey’s kisses that she’d
bought for the next-door-neighbour’s kid.
He took a step forward, and the
packet of chips burst underneath his shoe.
***
The damned clock said it was
18:35.
He took one last drag from his
cigarette, and then stubbed it against the leg of the table. Flicking the butt
across the room, he stood up and walked towards the front door.
Before he could he open the
door, he turned around and surveyed the room.
His wife was still at the
table.
He couldn’t just leave her
alone like that. She wouldn’t like that at all.
He went back to the table and
sat down. He poured himself the last of the rum, neatly put the bottle cap back
on it and placed the empty bottle between him and his wife on the table.
“Cheers,” he said to himself,
and sipped at his glass, slowly, so that he could spend as much time with her
as possible.
He didn’t want to leave her
while she was still that upset. He couldn’t.
He smiled at her.
***
He slapped her hard.
He slapped her in a way he had
only slapped his younger brother once as a kid, when he had found the little
fucker stealing the money he had been saving for over a year to buy that
leather jacket he had wanted for so long.
She was bleeding from her lip,
but he didn’t see it.
She didn’t scream or yell in
pain. She just sobbed through her now slowly swelling lower lip, mumbling words
that sounded like “sorry” and “I didn’t mean to hurt you” and “I was going to
end it”.
He didn’t hear any of that
however.
He picked her up from the floor
and steadied her. And then slapped her again.
This time, she did scream.
***
At 19:00 on the damned clock,
he drained the remainder of his drink.
Standing up from the table, he
picked up his glass and washed it in the kitchen sink.
He put it back in the showcase
in the living room, but not before wiping it dry. He knew his wife hated it
when he didn’t dry the crystal out first.
He went to the table, kissed
his wife’s cold cheeks and said, “I’ll see you soon, bitch.”
******
He pulled his jacket on, and
shut the door behind him.
It was cold out, but the rum,
along with his jacket, one that his wife had bought him for Christmas last
year, kept him nice and warm.
He found the neighbour’s kid
playing with his remote controlled car in front of their house, as he always
did.
He smiled at the boy, and
pulled out the packet of Hershey’s Kisses from his jacket.
The boy’s face lit up
immediately.
He wiped the still fresh blood
of the packet on to the back of his jeans, and gave the chocolates to the boy.
He ruffled his hair, smiled at
him, and walked down the road, until the boy couldn’t see him anymore.
