Heather Lewis - Notice

And so that’s how I left – knowing exactly what I’d do, just not knowing when.

The next day Beth called me at work. She told me she wanted me to show up fifteen minutes later. I said, sure, that it’d be fine, thinking how this would give me time for an extra drink after work.

She stayed on the line like she had more to say. I had customers waiting, so I said, “Was there something else?”

She said, no, she guessed not. Then we hung up, and I went back to work with my hands shaking a little, and the rest of me limp and asleep and expectant.

When I got to her place that evening, no one was there. No one but her and I was glad. I even imagined she’d realized my discomfort and had done this rescheduling for me. I’d had four drinks in rapid succession, standing at the bar – the corner of it by the door. And now, in her office, I found it easier to sit down. I still couldn’t manage it right off the way I suspected you were supposed to, but at least I didn’t drag it out too long.

Already she seemed quieter than usual and when I sat down I noticed this more. I realized she hadn’t yet said a word or asked me a question and I looked up quickly to see if she was there at all. I was suddenly scared she’d gone lost already. Done this even before me. But the look on her face was so sharp it seemed nearly grim and I felt myself smiling.

She didn’t amuse me. This smile was more of the same kind of fear, just angled different. I began chewing my tongue to try and change the look on my face. “What is it?” I said when this didn’t work either. But I guess she didn’t know how she seemed because she said, “Nothing,” and it sounded convincing.

She didn’t ask me anything about work and I didn’t volunteer anything. I worried maybe I looked drunk or acted it. I didn’t think this possible after only four drinks – well, and those two in the afternoon. If anything, though, I felt like I could’ve used one more. Especially since once she began asking me stuff she went right back to Ingrid.

I didn’t mean to, but I became uncooperative. I could’ve talked to her about the rest of it but not this part. I felt stupid about what I’d said the day before. That I’d let on as much as I had. And then she’d gone and left me by myself with it. Had gone off somewhere, where it bothered her, too, but in another way. Some way I needed to understand but couldn’t yet.

I didn’t know the place safely between us and so what else could I do but stop altogether or at least try to? I hated her vacant but this sharpness was even worse. Its edges cut up all the space between us. Left it stirred around and cloudy. I would’ve gotten back on my feet but I knew what would happen when I did that and I wanted to save it.

“Is she why you stayed?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Not exactly. It’s hard to know where he stopped and she started. What was what. I don’t remember it well.”

This was the sort of stuff I said to her. And the last thing most of all seemed a con, though true at that moment. The rest of the time I remembered what had happened with them, with Ingrid and him. The rest of the time I couldn’t get rid of it. But sitting here with Beth reordered everything and then moved it some more until it didn’t make any sense and was hard to recall.

That’s when the way out, the way back, seemed so necessary and all about Beth. About touching her. But then each and every time, she’d wind up where I’d been – lost and dazed – and then what brought me back was getting hot. Angry, I mean, but the other way too. That other way running underneath and governing everything between us. There all the time, but never acknowledged.

For now at least I could still talk and she could too. She said, “What do you remember?”

“Little things that don’t mean anything.” But this wasn’t true either, so when she asked what things these were, I found myself telling her other things, found myself saying, “She said we’d run off together. I didn’t want to because I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe she would or that we could.

“I saw myself as just the push anyway. I didn’t want to be around her when she realized this. We’d only wind up fighting.”

I didn’t plan to go on, but Beth said, “Tell me what you mean.”

“If we left, she’d find out I wasn’t who she wanted. Who she’d made me into. I mean, how long do you think it’d take?”

Beth didn’t say anything to this and I found I kept talking maybe just to fill the space.

“I didn’t want to end up there so I didn’t believe we were going at all. That she’d ever be able to. I didn’t believe it until I woke up alone in that house.

“But I didn’t have to think about it much. I had to get out fast. I had to get out before he came back. I didn’t think about whether I should’ve done something different. Not until I wound up in that car with those cops, anyway. Until I saw how long his reach was, and that he would bother with me, in a way she never would.”

I stopped here because this last thing put me in a place I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought this way before and so I wanted to grasp it. But stop it, too. Stop it before I said anything else like it.

I glanced at Beth because I hadn’t been keeping an eye on her and had just now noticed it. She was looking right at me. This put me further off base because until then I thought maybe she hadn’t been paying attention. Realizing she was confused me all the more because I’d been both wanting her to and not. Or I’d been wanting her to but at the same time was afraid of it.

I knew how I would’ve felt if she’d gone blank, but I couldn’t make out what this other thing felt like. I only knew it made me want to go somewhere else. And that’s what I did because I wound up standing, though I didn’t go anywhere far. I didn’t even go to the door, but instead to the window and then I knew I was waiting for her.

When she came up behind me I first felt a kind of relief. But then a trembling because it was different to have her behind me and with her arms around my waist. Different enough I turned around to face her so I’d feel less bare, more in command. Or at least I thought I would except I couldn’t find any kind of force anywhere in my being. Instead I fell against her body in a way that would’ve allowed anything.

She seemed to go toward this. I felt her hands under my shirt, on my back for a moment before she put them to a more familiar place on my neck. I was so slack, I felt all this very intently. Felt it so much there was nothing else for a while. And maybe not for her either because her breathing turned from shallow to deep and I could feel her against my chest and then felt her lower, pressing against me until it was my turn to hold her up.

We didn’t stop this time but we didn’t go farther. It stayed the way it was – both obvious and impossible. The kind of thing I could easily keep from putting words to, could keep in someplace I’d think about later or never. This time, though, I wondered how she did it. How she thought about it and where in her mind she kept it.

I got home. Or at least I’d gotten my car parked and was sitting in it. I did this for a space of time I couldn’t measure, but then started the engine again and began driving around. I ached from having nowhere to go. I don’t mean heartache but a soreness in my muscles – a tiredness that was becoming familiar to me and so, maybe to stop it, I drove past her office.

I saw her car still there but no light on. Both wondered and knew what she might be doing, but the work of maintaining these two strands at once just tired me more.

That I found myself at the train station that night would probably surprise no one. But it did surprise me. Afterwards.