“When you grow old and desperate, call me,” she wrote.
He pulled the note from the book she had left it in—The Art of Whacking Moles, some strange memoir from a Nebraskan farmer she had bought him years ago. He had made a snide remark when he first received it and laid it upon the kitchen table. Bound in black, there it still sat like a coffin.
He had asked her to leave without any fuss, any violence, any memory, knowing he would grow weak in the knees whenever she cast her eyes over him. At least he had tossed every picture of her in a box under his bed; even a glance at them would have sent him bolting back for her, scars and all.
Old and desperate—hell, he wasn’t old yet. He stared across his kitchen, to the flowery plates piled near the sink, to the dust clinging to the top cabinets, to the grime in the grout between the tiles on the floor—to the living room where its ceiling fan squeaked every rotation and the couch’s disheveled pillows needed reorganizing—as they always had, even in her presence.
He thought of the bedroom, of the closet now empty of half its organs, the sheets still ripe with her particles, and the carpet that surely needed cleaning by now—specks clotted the deepest fibers, dry and brittle after all these years.
His job paid enough to live and save, offering retirement plans and insurance. He kept the monthly bills in check. His wallet, padded, could soften any unexpected fall. He kept the car running. He even smashed the ice that clung to the apartments’ shared steps each winter. His family respected him. Friends kept in touch, talking mostly of their jobs, as did he.
Hell, old didn’t begin to cover it.
He had reached that coveted status of Shangri-La where he could reap what he had sowed. Years of mild exercise kept him in better shape than most, though nothing extraordinary. His face stayed fresh under layers of sunscreen.
These tools would allow for a fine harvest. Admiration, loyalty, tenderness: they would come to him in droves so large he would need to store them. The sacks of romance he would need to keep within his still-standing silo. He never had the mind to fool around, and now the world—his generation of it, at least—followed suit. He stood deep in the age of settling, hands on his hips with a blood-laden stare.
And where was the one who was meant to watch him lose and gain? She sat upon a note placed within a memory. By now she had surely travelled back to her mother’s house in tears to dress the bleeding wound in her back.
He had cursed her mediocrity, assured himself of his greatness, and now stood among the drying fields of his life. He found the air bitter as everything decayed. From what he thought would have been spring to summer, now came summer to fall. He would never again bloom, nor would she. What beauty could have dried to dust as their stalks wilted together.
