Chapter Thirty

- In Love, No One Can Hear You Scream -

We couldn’t get at each other fast enough. Her car hadn’t come to a complete stop before I had jumped into the passenger seat and our lips were fused. She raced up the 405 to my apartment. Had her place been even ten feet closer to the airport than mine, we’d have gone there.

The sex was deadly. As a rule, our lovemaking was peppered with at least some conversation. But that night neither of us said a word. In fact, I don’t remember our lips ever parting for anything but to gasp of air and give voice to some primordial noise. We were both much too caught up in each other’s flesh to make intelligible sounds. Fast and furious in the car became deliberate and intense in the bed, building steadily to a hallucinogenic finish that caused her to let out some uncharacteristic sobs. She couldn’t face me afterward. The last time I’d seen her anywhere near this vulnerable was when she broke down in tears in the stairwell at work, and that was long before we started dating. Since then, I had constructed this vision of her as a pillar of strength -- someone who had it all together. As effortlessly as everything else appeared to come to her, I now got the sense that she worked hard to safeguard her emotional underpinning. Something changed the week we spent apart. A wall between us came down and it was unsettling to her. I didn’t bother asking if she was all right. I just held her and kept my mouth shut.

Up till then, we’d maintained some personal space in sleep. That night, as she dozed off she wrapped herself around me and slept with her head pressed to my neck. I fell asleep just as the sun was rising. Most of my night passed counting her breaths and wishing I was a better person, a smarter person, at least a person who knew what to say to her to let her know she was safe with me.

•••

The Skin tingled the next morning, but not like it used to when the eczema was flaring. The Ears and Sinuses were remarkably clear, as if I’d just gotten over a cold. Oxygen flowed freely into the Lungs really for the first time. The Eyes were particularly sensitive to the sunlight and I noticed many new things on the way to the office -- just stupid little things, like an exceptionally green lawn. Overall, I felt -- I don’t know -- awake? It was the kind of awake I’d always imagined people who slept peacefully felt -- bottomless stores of energy. It was a little unnerving, but I liked it. Something had taken hold of me and I got the feeling it wasn’t going to let go any time soon.

•••

We’d become lunchtime regulars at an Italian sandwich shop near the office.

“How’s the happy couple?” The owner would greet us in his thick relocated Brooklyn accent. “The usual today?” We grabbed our favorite window table and held hands till the sandwiches came.

“I was thinking we’d just have a quiet night tonight,” she said. “Do you mind staying at my place?”

“Um, I have to do something after work.”

“What?”

“Just something I’ve been avoiding,” I said evasively.

“Is it going to take all night?” There was a little hurt in her voice.

“Probably.”

“We’ve only had one night since you got back,” she said, adding Displeased to her tone. “What do you have to do that’s so important it can’t wait one more night?”

“Divorce my wife.” My straightforward answer knocked all the wind out of her sails.

“Oh,” she said in a completely different voice. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.” She shook her head and said, “You know, there are a few things you should make a big deal out of.”

“I take it this is one of those things?”

She rolled her eyes and tilted her head in a way that said, “You’re an idiot, but you’re my idiot.”

•••

3b was ready and waiting for me when I rang her bell. She’d sent her Emancipated Minor roommate packing for the night to give us a little privacy. EM could be filled in on the details at a later date.

We’d survived the painful part of splitting up. Our fight was over. The animosity between us was gone and we had no more blows left to give. Collapsed in our respective corners, we faced the business end of getting divorced. There was no property to sell, no investments to haggle over. Our personal items and furniture had already been divvied up. Marriage was an attempt to patch up a failed relationship. Thank god we didn’t have a kid to try to patch up the failed marriage. I can only imagine how much fun Complications would have had with that one. Aside from some photos and the rings, there was really very little evidence of our union at all. The only residue was in our memories.

“Are you happy?” I asked her once the details were ironed out, folded and stacked in the linen closet. She looked a little self-conscious at first, but then the finality of our situation assuaged her fears of speaking openly to me.

“Yes, I am,” she said proudly.

“That’s good.” I meant it. She gave me a long hug goodbye at her door.

“What about you?”

“I’m doing all right.”

“Is she making you happy?” I thought about it, but not too long.

“She is.” There was nothing more to say. Maybe one thing.

“I love you,” she said. Her eyes got dewy. So did mine.

“I love you, too.”

So much love in my life.

•••

The night air had no temperature and the chronic west side traffic failed to produce sound waves in my ears as I walked slowly to my bus stop. For a moment I wondered if 3b had lied about being happy. She could have sensed my happiness and said it just to ease my exit. I wouldn’t put it past her, but I couldn’t worry about that. We’re all allowed a certain amount of energy to put into a given situation. The energy I could dedicate to that relationship was depleted. I had to keep moving forward.

I moved forward right past my bus stop, letting the millions of thoughts competing for attention my brain live their life and sputter out quickly, leaving behind tiny, beautiful thought corpses. Once my head was fairly clear, I called New G-, that is to say, Number 4. I’d have to get used to thinking that. I didn’t bother saying hello when she answered.

“It’s over.”

“Where are you?” There was a clear urgency in her voice. I didn’t know exactly where I was till I found some street signs and read them off to her, along with other landmarks.

“Stay right there.” She hung up the phone before I could say anything.

The time between when she said that and I saw her car is a total blank to me. The brain cells containing that information died and were discarded at an undisclosed location. The relative beauty of those corpses is unknown. It seemed like I had just hung up the phone and she appeared in front of me. The next thing I knew I was riding in her car.

“It was easy -- almost too easy. There was no fighting or name-calling.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Of course,” I said, giving real thought to what had happened. “I feel like I have a huge weight off my shoulder. It’s a strange sensation.”

“What happens next?”

“She has a lawyer friend draw up papers and I sign them.” We sat in silence for a block or two. The Eyes saw buildings pass outside the window, but the Brain never really processed the information. In my mind I was standing in line at a bank, wondering if I’d get the exotic teller with the pillowy lips three windows to the left. 4’s tugging at my wedding ring snapped me back to reality.

“What about this?”

With no fanfare, I slid the ring off my finger and said, “What about it?”

She was dumbstruck. I don’t think she expected I would ever really do it. Frankly, until I actually did it, I wasn’t sure that I ever would, either.

It was just a piece of expensive metal. But it had gone from being something I resisted, to being a big part of my identity, to being something I took for granted, to something I clung to. Unexpectedly, it now meant nothing to me. Finally, I was able to do what I should have done months before: I stuffed it into my pocket -- an unmistakably big statement.

“Aw, shucks,” she said, wiping her eyes. Luckily we had stopped at a red light.

“Are you all right?”

“Nobody’s ever done anything like that for me.”

I was mistaken about the wall coming down the night before. That was only the foundation rocking a bit. Removing that little piece of expensive metal from my finger is what did the damage. I wondered how things would look once the dust settled.

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