I'm leaning against a fire hydrant, tacked to the curb like a chimeric concrete-borne cactus, reflecting on the dance of refracted red and blue hues in a glass of ice water. Maybe this is the shock talking, but I'm mostly concerned with who would bring crystal to a car crash. I'm holding a glass of ice water... not a Dixie cup, not a piece of formed plastic... a delicately-crafted, diamond-cut crystal snifter containing a quartet of disintegrating ice cubes.
I can't even recall who handed me the glass, now that I think of it. I just somehow ended up curbside gazing at police lights through brilliant crystal. Who was this catering savior trolling around the site of an accident with stemware suited for dinner parties and wedding receptions? And why hand it to me? I was ostensibly unharmed, cuts and scrapes aside. I was the only individual involved in this collision that wasn't gurney bound and intimate with an oxygen mask. However, I probably look the way Tom Waits on vinyl sounds... and if that doesn't call for a drink, I can't conjure a single fucking sight that does...
Right now, I think the drink is the only thing keeping me from going supernova. Every second I'm transfixed by the transfiguration of light rays is a second I'm not seeing the void behind Jill's eyes as I desperately clung to her hand and pleaded for her to stay with me. It's strange how you suddenly become more comfortable with pleading with a vacancy. When our loved ones are conscious and coherent we find precious little to disclose... but once we see the whites of their eyes we purge our souls like a sorority sister voiding stomach contents.
I take a sip, and the chill coursing down my throat is enough to bring me around for a moment. This scene consists of churning, chaotic waves of humanity: orders soaring over departing sirens, and the agonized cries of one inconsolable creature stranded in the asphalt wasteland. I cannot see him, as he is surrounded by a sea of emergency technicians... as such, I have to presume this is the man who has deprived me of everything that I hold dear in this world. I can't for the life of me understand why he's wailing- and strangely enough I can't force myself to care. There are too many pieces of my future shattered on the pavement in front of me, so conjuring any of my sense of empathy at this point is difficult...
"Sir?"
I'm being addressed... I know this more from the feeling of proximity and the weight of a stare being leveled at me than by registering any auditory stimulus. I feel as though my head is completely submerged in water, and I'm merely reacting to ripples in the liquid.
I make eye contact with the individual before me, but all that I can register is a vacuous blur of muscle and flesh. I note no defining characteristics-- I don't believe I even registered gender of the individual... I'm even approximating where I know instinctively the eyes are housed in the human skull... I lack the capacity to actually seek out it's eyes; I simply know that looking someone dead in the face is the easiest way to feign acknowledgment without audible response.
"Are you all right? Is there anything that I can do for you?"
I've shaken my head synaptically... there are rituals to be adhered to, and in polite society one simply cannot let a question go unanswered: even rhetorical ones, it seems. I'd like to say that the timber of the voice implied genuine concern-- but my mind always seems to imbue any question of my well-being with a tone of condescension or pity. I certainly can't envision breaking with that habit in this state, either...
Right now I feel like a cardboard cutout of myself being moved along a paper facsimile of the world by the hand of an aimless child. I have suffered a complete disconnect from reality... By the time that I've registered the absence of a body before me the individual has long since vacated their previous position, and I'm alone again in the void.
It's strange that the most brutal anguish is often suffered in silence- My tears have long since been spent, and were cast from my eyes in a graveyard quietude... other than the sounds of my retching. I can't imagine that I could have suffered any more in my life than I have in the last 2 hours-- yet, I have simply sat stoically staring through this glass since the ambulance pulled away from the curb and left me here to rot on the pavement. Again, perhaps the shock has kept me from breaking into hysterics, but I can't honestly see how an uncontrolled outbreak of emotion would benefit anyone at this juncture. I'm much more comfortable with being completely speechless when falling to pieces... there's less chance of alerting the general public to one's tenuous grip on sanity.
At the moment my wedding ring feels like a millstone dragging my hand into an inferno... I can still easily envision the first time Jill slid it onto my finger-- that metal band imbued with the blissful burden of care and responsibility, reminding me that I had inexorably bound my fate to hers. However, I can't conjure these images now... It would push me past the threshold of quiet composure that I've fought so diligently to maintain. Still, this irregular looking-glass is providing a kaleidoscopic movie screen where a million memories are tearing at the fabric of my sanity and begging to break through... so how can I possibly dismiss them wholly?
The thing that kills me about love is that it imbues trivialities with a state of profound significance over time. As an example, the first time I kissed Jill she was chewing a piece of spearmint gum... I believe this was the first time I had enjoyed the bliss of a fully-flavored kiss-- meaning not marred by the savor of sour saliva. From that moment on, the scent of spearmint became some strange passport back to that event for me... the key to some cerebral quantum leap that bridged time and distance to place me in the warmth of that particular embrace.
Funny, but I can't help feeling these thoughts will unravel me eventually... For the rest of my life I'll be replaying the insignificant argument that she and I were engaged in before the fabric of reality folded in on us. As is typical with trivial conversation, I can't really remember what had spurred the argument in the first place. What I can recall is during the course of our argument we fell upon the topic of the amount of profanity that I used in casual conversation. For a reason I was too daft to grasp on the first pass, she had decided to take umbrage with the crass nature of my general lexicon when I was attempting to be comedic.
"I just don't think that the word fuck is necessarily the best way to punctuate a joke, hon."
"Obviously... You're a woman who's never put Tabasco sauce on her scrambled eggs."
"Okay... what exactly does that have to do with your potty mouth? You're blaming it on Tabasco?"
"What I'm saying is that there is a reason they refer to the apex of a joke as a 'punch-line.' It's intended to hammer home the humor... it's a jarring shock to the listener. It's what injects the comedy into a mundane situation or statement. The word fuck, when used in conjunction with a punchline, is an easy additive to utilize to help you reach a fever pitch."
She gave me a quizzical look, which normally meant that she was simply refusing to see the forest for the trees. The woman and I are both infamous for being pigheaded. Perhaps I should say were.
"For instance, 'What about the phrase Hold the pickles? don't you understand...' works as a punchline. However, swap that out with 'What about Hold the fuckin' pickles? don't you understand...' is more exclamatory."
Still refusing to budge an inch, she resolutely set her feet (so to speak) and decided to alter her plan of attack.
"Well, Mr. 25 cent vocabulary... I don't see exactly why it is that a man who just used the word 'conjunction' has to resort to being a potty mouth to get people to laugh."
Undaunted, I plugged on.
"Often because my vocabulary alienates me from the general public... It makes them feel as though I carry an air of superiority because I'm articulate. So, I throw in the profanity as a means to bridge the gap between us... make me more of a commoner."
"So now I'm a commoner?"
"I wasn't directing that statement at you, dearest. Must you be so quick to take offense where none was intended?"
"Says the man who starts an argument over my asking him to filter his language a little."
"I just don't see what exactly spurred this sudden aversion to profanity... It's a little unprecedented."
"I've always had a problem with it, Marcus. I just happened to be more capable of tolerating it in the past."
After a brief surge of frustration shot through my veins, I decided to bite.
"And what's changed?"
A pregnant silence hung in the air between us... Like the smell of stale fish, it could not be ignored. Knowing that silence in response to such a question never bodes well, I attempted to change the subject as quickly as possible. Seeing a quaint Italian eatery to my left, I decided I could inject some levity.
"You know what? I could really go for some Italian food right now..."
Then, throwing on a cliche Italian accent, I added, "Pasta, mama?"
She didn't laugh. Not even a trace of a smile cracked the veneer of the pallid mask she was wearing. Staring into the floorboard, she simply uttered her retort in an empty, toneless fashion.
"You shouldn't act this way if you're going to be someone's father someday..."
Looking back on it now, I certainly didn't process her implication on the first pass. I hardly see how I could have... From the moment we first discussed parenthood a few months into our relationship Jill had unrelentingly denied she had any inclination to be a mother. Even on the eve of our matrimony, with her family insisting that we would shortly provide them a skittering batch of progeny she claimed that she was far too much of a career woman to ever really be a decent maternal figure. Taking this into account, I responded the only way I knew how... with sarcasm.
"I don't plan to be..."
"Well, maybe you should..."
That's when I felt the impact... the world began to revolve on an off axis, like a carousel ride on crank. It's ironic that a car careening down a side street like a man on fire would happen to barrel into the passenger side of our automobile at the exact moment my wife insinuated she was carrying my child.
"It looks like you could use some more water..."
I'm being addressed... I know this more from the feeling of proximity and the weight of a stare being leveled at me than by registering any auditory stimulus. Looking up I see young woman in black tailored slacks, a white dress shirt and green apron hovering above me with a large crystal decanter-- no doubt the cousin of the snifter that I currently had in-hand. I suppose I had made a reservation at the Italian restaurant after all.
As a tear begins to break the barricade of my composure I slowly shake my head in dissent. There are rituals to be adhered to, and in polite society one simply cannot let a question go unanswered...
