Pacifier

Their argu­ment is fuelled by heat and humid­ity. It is fierce. The air con­di­tion­ing packed in before lunch and now, even though it’s almost evening, the atmosphere’s sticky and heavy and hot.

The bald man is sit­ting on the bed, shirt unbut­toned down to his navel. He has dark patches under his arms.

He says to his wife, who’s stand­ing next to the open win­dow, he says, ‘No.’ And she says, for what feels like the thou­sandth time, ‘Why not? You -’ she says, ‘It’s always about you. Always about what you want.’

He says, ‘Bah! But you know it’s a stu­pid idea. Fuck­ing stu­pid, as fuck­ing stu­pid as you. Never work. Waste of time. Waste of money.’

And when she’s sick of say­ing please, sick of his refusal to see sense, to see where his wife’s com­ing from, she tells him that he can go to hell.

The heat and humid­ity fuel their anger.

The man, dry-mouthed, bald, sweat­ing and uncom­fort­able, reminds her of her past. The time she did fuck­ing this, the time she did fuck­ing that, for­got this, let him down that way.

She responds by remind­ing him.

‘Remem­ber? Not so per­fect your­self, eh!’

And then some­thing changes. In an instant. He sees her breast – it’s the way she’s stand­ing – instead of a hid­den shadow, he sees shape, skin, a nip­ple. And she can feel, some­how, the change in him.

Star­ing, her jaw set and lips pressed together, she hitches up her dress.

And for a moment there is silence.

Nik Per­ring is a writer and work­shop leader from the UK. His short sto­ries have been pub­lished widely in places includ­ing Smoke­long Quar­terly, 3 :AM and Dog­matika and he’s the author of a children’s book. Nik blogs here (http://nikperring.blogspot.com) and his website’s here (www.nperring.com).

© 2009, Metazen. All rights reserved. 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 6:29 pm