More, and Again

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, is a field. I'll meet you there.

Jelaluddin Rumi

Autumn leaves swirled in the road behind the rush of Kate's car as she passed stately homes, stone walls and nearly naked trees on her way to the cafe. He was supposed to be behind her, following in his own vehicle to the place well chosen and far enough away but as she glanced into her rearview, he was nowhere to be seen. Had she lost him? Had he changed his mind and hopped on the nearest exit to the freeway?

As she pulled into the lot of the tavern she could see him further down the road and her mild indifference took over where her panic had left off. He pulled in and parked next to her, A smile breaking across his somewhat wooden visage. Neither of them certain the tempest between them was about to subside or consume.

As the rotund waitress set their drinks before them, Kate couldn't help but notice the dark circles under his deeply set brown eyes. She leaned across the table and took his hand into hers.

It was evident in his face that he'd not slept a wink the night before and she wondered why he did this to himself. What was he trying so hard to keep together something so broken?

"You really should have a drink David, a beer perhaps?" Kate chided him.

"I don't like to drink and drive" He replied in manner so comic that it belied his truest urges.

His truest urges. Kate had long felt that David was a crumbling man. Perhaps, too--she was a crumbling woman. Both feebly held together by the worldly props that seemed to define their being in the private corners of their other lives.

Before Kate could finish her first glass of wine, she was ordering another. They came here today to decide the Fate, once and for all.....of...they, them.

Two lovers in a clandestine pas de deux deciding their hardly original ending over club sandwiches and wine in dirty glasses.

David placed the plastic hotel key on the table between them and gave Kate a good hard stare. More.....and another, and another.

There could be no end. Not now.

David shoved Kate against the cardboard thin wall and took her. Somewhere in a hotel off the freeway, in the middle of a howling city, in the middle of a dusty room.....they crumbled.

Together. 

More,.....and another.

CJ Ellis