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They had lain towels on the bed to protect the sheets before they fell, boneless and flushed, like a pair of crisscrossed crimson ribbons. The two of them arced, aching, and their bodies howled, threaded through their needled bodies. Skin, groaning and growling, laid bruised and harassed over the looped yarn of the bleached and stiff towels. They dropped themselves like berries from branches, like fruit crushed underneath feet, like stained fingers, and the towels soon submitted to the sheets.
And then their minds would flash to Tuesday, laundry day, Christ where did my coins go day. And they were moping and glowering behind the rows of washing machines in the gyrating mess of mechanical wiring. Sam sighed. He would have to ask for quarters in change when he went down to the 24 hour convenience store next door to the apartment. Buying her ice cream again. And he stared into the coin slot, empty handed, but still staring, and saw her eyes there, peering impossibly back at him all green and golden, and he couldn't help but wonder why she would be mixing and drowning in the colors of the cyclical wash when she was really right behind him.
She had eaten the chocolate peanut butter ice cream in satisfaction.
And suddenly it was Saturday night again, towel over precious sheets night, screw the condoms we’ll manage night. And she was lying on the towels, licking her sticky fingers clean, when he told her that he had seen her in the wash. She should have laughed, but she didn't.
Instead, she looked at him with those eyes - impossibly green and golden - and said:
I have something I need to tell you.
And then it was Wednesday, unemployment soap opera day, hotdamn daytime television was boring day. And sometime between cigarettes and coffee and cigarettes and tea, and he was sitting on the blazing, bullet-holed couch staring blankly at the agonizingly blue sky. He had not wanted to know about the Saturday she'd spoke of. He had not wanted to be sitting out of a window suddenly thinking how ironic it was to dirty both the sheets and the utterly useless towels.
And then it was Monday, it’s too fucking early to be going back to work, fucking bitch day. And she was perched, like a crow on a telephone line, at the very edge of the bed, ribs gleaming and spine baring, smoking her third of morning cigarette. Sam, only on his second, moved forward and stubbed the burning ash against the plane of her smooth shoulder blade, not maliciously, but affectionately. Desperately.
And then it was Tuesday again, and laundry day. She offered to take the sheets down. Sam consented, stayed behind on the naked mattress, his first cigarette and she had gone to look at the wash.
And it was Saturday. And he said: Darling.
She brushed him with her fingertips, edged his collarbone.
Darling.
And he said: Don't.
Don't what?
Don't fucking call me that. Like some 20s movie star.
Like.
Someone you're just going to leave anyway.
She reached to bring him inside.
He was mad he still had the energy to let her.
Don't. I'm talking.
Please.
Stop.
Please don't stop.
And she said: That's silly, darling.
Darling.
When. What she really meant was.
I already have anyway.
Sweetheart.
But really. Pumping and dirty and damp.
Bitter.
Beautiful, sputtering. mad.
X.
It's Friday now, coffee and vodka day, boys' night out, playboy bunny and jerk off strip club day. And he's inching, fingers like spiders spinning treacherous webs, up the soft inner thigh of a woman who had eye-sockets but not eyes, nostrils but no nose, teeth but no mouth. Up the fishnet, and caught in the vomit of his own premature morning after.
She is back at the apartment, folding towels. The girls' plans fell through.
He whispers, raspy, melting. Drunk: Come on, darling. She won't be home for a while.
Darling.
She leaves the towels in a tower on the kitchen table and wanders into the bedroom. She takes an extra painkiller for her head and lies down, waiting for him.
And he bursts in, pants sagging, pubic hair showing, limbs all in a mess, and knocks over the fragile tower of ribbons and washing machines and ice creams and delusions and blue skies and cigarette burns and darlings. Fucking darlings.
And heart strings looping back and forth through the eyes of their souls.
She is curled up, the bottle of Advil fallen out of her hand. One runaway towel lays stained on the bedroom floor.
X.
It's Sunday now, hangover cathedral and then a cigarette day, Christ I fucking sinned so lay the fuck off day. And he's walking, sober and stubbly, with his eyes bulging out and rimmed with red, almost as if he had been crying, but really because he had been smoking furiously, three packets a day, with no ashtray to catch the pieces. Of burned paper or broken heart. They were going to be each other's support system. Gonna' get those patches and everything. They'd sworn it together. Over chocolate peanut butter and a frog-shaped ashtray.
And now he sat, morbid flowers suddenly cast over the thinned ridges of his face, behind the veils of wooden panels.
Emotionlessly: Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
Behind the panel:
Cough.
X.
And now it's Saturday, fuck until you gotta pee and then fuck some more day, fuck Sam, I'm gonna break day. And she's smoking, blackened and charred, watching the tendrils curl and filter through cherry wood cutouts of salvation. She exhaled, watching the smoke shoot out like ballistics and stubbed the rest over Jesus' forehead.
Uncaring: Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
X.
I have something I need to tell you. She had said.
While fucking.
I. Silence.
Darling.
Inhale. Yeah.
Exhale.
Darling.
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