Michael
# 104 – Twenty-five Years of Phlegm
Standard# 103 – Lovers With Cups and The Fool In The Moonlight
StandardBruce’s muscles were tensed and his breathing was erratic. Liza knew that he was awake, but she was willing to pretend. She didn’t know what to say anyway. Her mind raced. It was getting late and they had work tomorrow. She pushed the bad thoughts from her head and forced herself to relax. Bruce relaxed too after a while, and then he was asleep.
She rubbed his chest. Her thoughts turned from the past to the future. She was surprised to find that she could see it, some of it, anyway. For Liza, picturing the future had always been like picturing the time before she was born. There was just nothing there. She sometimes wondered if this was a sign that she wasn’t going to be around for long.
They were living in one of the old three-story row houses not far from campus. It was early summer. Liza and Bruce were sitting at a table on a small patio that was enclosed by a high brick wall. They each had a cup of iced tea. Fluffy white clouds and towering buildings watched from the sky. Bruce was on one side of the table typing on his laptop. Liza sat across from him drawing…a comic strip? No, it looked like a graphic novel. One of the panels showed a young boy in a jester hat standing at a bus stop. He was wearing a backpack, but a full moon lit the scene. It was night.
Pots clanged somewhere inside the house followed by faint cursing. Michael. Future Liza grinned as she slid the paper across the table toward Bruce. She started on another sheet. When she looked up a minute later, Bruce was smiling at her. He was holding the drawing. Liza smiled back. He added it to the bottom of a small stack of pages that sat next to his laptop.
That was all. When she woke up the next morning, she wasn’t sure if it was a dream or a thought or something else entirely.
# 102 – Sigh
StandardBruce recognized the note for the blow off that it was, but walked around campus for another two hours looking for Liza. It wasn’t until she didn’t answer his phone calls that he gave up and went home. She got like this sometimes. He thought he understood. It was like him living at the underpass, only she came home at night.
Something was different this time, maybe because he knew that the last place she’d been was his office. He had a sick feeling. It wasn’t lost on him that he’d come close to taking off on her not long ago. Bruce lay in bed thinking and listening. Michael was coughing up a lung across the hall, so he didn’t hear her when she came home.
He pretended to be asleep when she slid into bed next to him a while later. It was almost midnight. Liza was still for a couple of minutes, then sighed and moved closer. She wrapped her arm around his waist and laid her head on his chest. Her hair exuded the smell of cigarettes the way Michael’s pores exuded the smell of alcohol. Bruce sighed and covered her hand with his.
# 98 – The Intoxicated Sweet Spot
StandardMichael’s hands stopped shaking when the bottle was half empty. He knew that if he continued to drink, they would eventually start again. For now at least, he was in that intoxicated sweet spot. He opened the window and relit an old Swisher. Liza told him that she didn’t mind if he smoked inside once in a while. He normally refrained in the bedroom, but he didn’t feel like running into anyone downstairs. The block was still quiet. The girl was gone. Someone was in the shower. Liza. She had a habit of whispering to herself in there. It was a little unnerving, actually. Michael was annoyed with Bruce, more so after he heard him leave a few minutes ago, but his head was drowning in thoughts he had forced away for a long time.
—
Liza was sitting on the couch fighting sleep when he got back. Bruce grabbed the rest of the fastnachts from the kitchen and deposited them on an end table in the living room along with a six-pack of Guinness. Liza could see that he was sweating. She opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but changed her mind. If he wanted to tell her, he would. She would just obsess about it in the meantime. He bent down and kissed her on the lips, then stared at her. His face was a few inches from hers. It was a little unnerving. It wasn’t an angry stare or a happy one. It seemed so neutral on the surface, but it made her feel so sick.
—
Bruce made several trips to the kitchen to get napkins, then plates, then a bottle opener. He ate three fastnachts, and took his time with each one. When he finished, he pretended to be absorbed in the movie that was on TV. Liza kept watching him. He acted like he didn’t notice. After one fastnacht and half a beer, Liza fell asleep with her head in his lap. He played with her hair while he flicked through the channels. Bruce wasn’t sure if he’d made the right decision. When he was at the underpass, the thought of not coming back made him feel sick. Now he felt an uneasiness that he couldn’t identify. Bruce pulled the cap off of another beer and drained it in three gulps. He leaned down and whispered in Liza’s ear before shifting back and falling asleep himself.