“You should have called the landlord,” she said. She helped him wash his hands, the dirt and blood mixed and swirled in the pedestal sink. His cuts stung under her slender, massaging fingers and he was reminded of his mother scrubbing bits of gravel from his skinned elbow. He didn’t mention this.

*

Some nights they would go to the bar. He’d sit in the corner booth drinking vodka tonics while she drank bottled beer and danced. He wasn’t the slightest bit a dancer. The other men in the bar would watch her, eyes tasting from her chest to her open toed shoes. Back at the apartment, they made love. Afterward, he’d read a chapter while she smoked a cigarette. She only smoked when she drank.

*

She was always gone when he got up; the notes she always left, on the fridge, said she was out running. He saw them when he went to get milk for his cold cereal and again when he went for the orange juice for his multivitamin.

*

He owned a sweater that she desperately hated. A girl he dated in college bought it for him while learning abroad in Copenhagen. Every time she saw him in it she was reminded of all the past arms that had embraced him. She tried to destroy it, ignored the washing instructions and hoped it would come out too small or too ripped or too pink.

*

“Where are the good scissors?” he growled.

“What?” she asked. She could barely wrap her head around the sight of him: His collared shirt drenched in sweat with brown and red-orange smears down the front. Never had she seen him so frenzied. He rummaged through drawers, baskets of odds-and-ends while she peppered him with questions he didn’t hear.

“This’ll have to do,” he said. He held up a long, serrated knife that she had only ever used to cut loaves of crusty bread.

*

They both hated grocery shopping, but for different reasons. He hated seeing people they knew and chatting forever about serious topics like the weather or sports teams. She hated the sterile and inhuman environment. She would stop at the bulletin-board, staring at pictures of pets up for adoption and mentioned how much they needed a cat. He hated this part, too.

*

“I am not your maid.”

“I never said you were.”

“How long have those dishes been sitting there? Three days? More? How is it that I’m the only one who sees the sink like that?”

“I see it too.”

“But that’s it, you see it and don’t do anything about it.” She started to cry. “Now what are you doing?”

“Taking out the trash. You say I don’t do anything, well here. Just for you, I’m taking out the trash.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“No, I’m not.” He stormed out of the apartment.

*

He would toss and turn in his sleep, mumbling his side of a conversation. She dozed on the couch watching late night talk shows turn into commercials for absorbent towels or foreign language teaching software. Some nights she’d shamble off to bed, lovingly elbowing him onto his side of the mattress but most nights she’d waken to the warm glow of the television and pains in her back and neck.

*

He was patronizing. If she, say, loaded the wash machine uneven, he’d remove every article of clothing and teach her the correct way through hissing teeth. She started smoking after her morning run, an act which he loved to mention defeated the purpose of trying to be healthy. His anger toward her smoking made her smoke more; she’d chase him from the room just by opening her pack of cigarettes. She loved her new power over him. She began using them during arguments. They’d be coming home from a dinner party or a movie and she’d light one up and he’d fall fuming into silence.

*

He stopped going out to the bar. Lame excuses like, “Oh, I just don’t feel like it,” or, “It’s too noisy,” fell from his lips. That didn’t stop him from drinking. She still went to the bar, though. Dancing was her addiction. Men would buy her drinks that she accepted but only drank half of. She missed him, often finding herself glancing at the corner booth only to see young faces smiling and loudly carrying on. She left the bar feeling lonely, each night, and walked hastily home to find him snoring in bed with an open pint of vodka on the nightstand.

*

Vines had woven themselves through the chain-link fence behind the dumpster and snaking tendrils hung over the dumpster, trying to grasp onto anything. He slammed the lid to the dumpster closed and turned on his heel only to catch a rogue tendril in his eye. Anger tightened in his jaw as he grabbed a group of vines and pulled, his grasp slipping, slicing his fingers and palms on tiny organic razors. The fence banged and rattled with each feeble tug. But he kept pulling, the reddish berries popping and burning his sliced hands. “Scissors,” he said. “I need the good scissors.”

*

She left with a slam that jolted him from his nap, his second screwdriver insisted on taking, on the couch. He slithered off the couch and to the fridge, to mix another drink, when he saw her crudely scrawled note: “Bar be home late.” The empty carton of juice lay on its side like a surrendered king.

*

The glaring florescent lights buzzed as he grabbed a fresh carton of juice and an Entenmann’s raspberry danish twist cake, his dinner.

“What the hell happened to your hands?”

He held up his hands, his piñatas, and laughed. “I don’t heal well.”

***
Matthew A. Nolan is a twenty-five year old living in Western Massachusetts.

Image credit: indiagarcia_photography