Other People's Weddings by Noah Hawley

Author:Noah Hawley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

23

I stay in the bathroom until he leaves, ignoring him when he knocks, when he asks if I’m okay. I sit on the edge of the bathtub and listen as the front door opens and closes and then the house is empty and I listen to the sound of nothing, of the refrigerator motor clicking on in the kitchen, the distant sound of traffic. I stand up and put my clothes on. As I pull my shirt over my head, there’s a knock on the bathroom window. I jump, let out a little yell, turn. He’s standing at the window.

“Sorry,” he says. “I just needed to make sure you were okay. I went to my car, but … I wouldn’t sleep tonight if I didn’t know.”

I nod. He’s dragged over a garbage can to stand on. I think about the neighbors, of Mrs. Davidson down the street calling the cops.

“You think I’m insane, don’t you?” I say.

He shakes his head.

“You’re just doing the best you can,” he says. “I know how you feel. I mean, look at me. I go to strangers’ weddings and cry at car commercials. I can’t leave a building if there’s a woman inside in any kind of trouble.”

I won’t look him in the eye.

“I’ve been teaching myself not to want,” I tell him. “I lay on my back and imagine I’m made of rubber, metal.”

“Sometimes I sit in the dark and listen to all her old answering machine messages,” he tells me. “‘Hi, honey. I’ll be home around eight.’ ‘Hi, sweetie. I’ll be home around nine. I have to work late. I love you.’ I sit there and imagine she’s coming home any minute.”

“I go to weddings and take pictures of married people, and sometimes I just wanna scream at them, tell them how stupid they are, how naive.”

“If I see a dalmatian on the street, I have to find someplace to sit down, catch my breath.”

I reach out and touch his face, thinking how cruel it will feel when he breaks my heart.

“You should come in,” I say. “Before someone calls the cops.”

He pulls himself up and over the ledge, loses his balance, falls onto the floor.

“I meant through the door,” I say.

He lays there on the floor, a tangle of limbs, and I kneel next to him.

“Are you okay?” I ask him.

He reaches up, puts his hand on the back of my neck, pulls me down and then we’re kissing and it feels like one of those underwater kisses where oxygen is passing through. The kiss of life.

“I’m scared,” I tell him, when we separate.

“Then you’re doing it right,” he says.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.