Retrograde by Kat Hausler

Author:Kat Hausler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Meerkat Press
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

JOACHIM

Joachim slogs through the day, struggling to come up with catchy puns for a supermarket chain’s winter campaign. What’s the matter with him? He used to enjoy his work. Sure, some of the customers can be a pain in the ass, and the rush deadlines are exhausting, but when it came down to the fundamental work, it was something he really liked doing. Until recently, he had no trouble working twelve hours at a stretch when he had to. Now, the last couple hours of each day are unbearable. All he can think about is clocking out and going home.

Home to Helena, he reminds himself. But is he really that eager to see her? When she’s on his mind all day, it isn’t exactly her he’s thinking of. Rather, he’s worrying about their past, and wondering what their future will look like. They aren’t quite happy thoughts.

He is happy that she’s there. It’s nice to come home to someone you love, someone you know is happy to see you. But that’s another guilty thought—is she happy to see him, or to see anyone at all? He can’t make himself feel good about what he’s doing to her anymore. It’s gone on too long. And if he can’t tell by looking at her, his own symptoms should make it obvious: he’s sleeping poorly, distracted from his work, his mind constantly moving in the same obsessive circles. He’s begun to have absurd terrors, like some neighbor coming over and telling her she didn’t used to live with him, or her parents calling the police because she hasn’t been in touch. Even the happiness he feels in her presence has something of this terror in it.

Then again, maybe he’s looking at it all the wrong way. It’s not Helena but this bizarre situation that’s wearing him out. The little trips to her apartment or office before and after work, the constant vigilance to make sure he doesn’t let something slip. It’s enough to do anybody in.

Dragging himself to the kitchen as if his body were a dead weight he has to carry, he tries to tell himself that things will be better soon. Wasn’t Helena good for him the first time around? Got him to quit smoking, eat healthy, finally finish decorating his apartment, find a full-time job. But even as he tells himself these things, he knows that the weary anxiety he feels now is familiar, a fact he learned by heart during those months of fighting that wore them both to the bone.

He closes the door behind him, relieved to find the room empty. He puts a cup under the espresso machine and presses the button without bothering to switch on the lights. It got so bad at a certain point that he’d go on arguing with her in his sleep, holding grudges for weeks about fights they’d never really had. Sometimes, the very gnashing of his teeth would wake him.

She, on the other hand, slept more than ever toward the end.

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