<p class="theend"/>THE END <p><a href="out-line.html">PLAY AGAIN</a></p> </p>
"Talk," she says, in the manner of a curseword. "There's been quite enough talk between us. Or perhaps, not enough talk. Certainly not the right kind of conversation, anyway." She grabs her hat from a pile of winter wear deep inside the closet, puts it on with violent embarrassement. "God, it almost worked, you know? Once again you've got me putting off my exit. No. No more." She picks up a duffel bag and holds on to it like a life preserver.\n\n[[NEXT|beginning]]\n[[THE END]]
She doesn't turn around. Daylight gives her a headache these days, everything a challenge. She doesn't look at him. Without any such gesture of acknowledgment, she says, "I needed you and you weren't there for me."\n\n[[NEXT|iwasthere]]\n[[THE END]]
She stands in the hallway, wearing an oversized coat in the summer heat, flanked by duffel bags, sunken eyes jumping from shelf to shelf, scanning the familiar space for anything she might be forgetting to take with her. "I'm going now," she says. "I'm really leaving this time."\n\n[[NEXT|dontleave]]\n[[THE END]]
"Ok," he says. "Help me find it. If I've been sabotaging our relationship lately… Help me." He stops himself, hearing his words bounce through the narrow space. "Here's what happened, from my angle. Every day this past year, I would sit at work and tell myself, when I come home, I'm going to be honest and supportive and <i>real</i> with her, and I'm going to be the best boyfriend in the goddamn world. She's going through a lot right now and I'm going to carry all that weight for her somehow. I have to do it and I <i>want</i> to do it; to <i>not</i> do it would hurt me more. Then I'd walk in and some nonsense detail of the evening would demand all my attention: a bill in the mail, a towel on the floor, the weather outside or the alignment of the stars in space. My grand strategy would dissolve in the acid of minutiae. I'd fail myself in this way every single day, and I'd fail you. Ah, look: I named myself as the first party there--another opportunity to screw up goes unmissed. Here I am, admitting my faults like that's what's going to stop you. As if honesty is what's lacking between us. I know: you need my support, my attention, my lifeforce, it would seem. How do I give you those now without encouraging the only thing I don't want you to do--leave me." When he is done, behind him the door opens. Light illuminates the living room. He can see so much detail there.\n\n[[NEXT|sick]]\n[[THE END]]
He has no answer, doesn't know what to say next. Something brilliant, something insightful and surprising--it must be completely unexpected, yet her eyes should light up with recognition as soon as she hears it; she should be made to understand, to see and fully grasp the consequences of his mindblowing point. He must say something effortlessly true. Just that. "Stay," he says. "Please."\n\n[[NEXT|groan]]\n[[THE END]]
She puts down the duffel bags, hates to notice that it feels better not to be holding them. "Alright. Cards on the table, then. You were weak. It's a form of weakness, isn't it? This attentiveness. Looking away when I gave myself the shots. Giving me "privacy" when I got sick in the bathroom. Nodding blankly at the options I was given, "Oh, it's entirely up to you, whatever you want to do." You put it all on <i>me</i>. That was easy. Whether it was, in the end, better for <i>me</i> or not, it made it easier for <i>you</i>. And I didn't think all this ladies-choice business felt like freedom--it was more like you were cutting me off, waving solemnly to the iceberg as I floated away on it." He is silent now, and she is silent. A quiet interlude. A moment without time.\n\n[[NEXT|loveyou]]\n[[THE END]]
Out Line
He wants to speak out immediately, throw reason after reason at her, wants to overwhelm and saturate her with specific, demonstrative examples proving her categorically wrong. This is his instinct, and luckily, in this instance, he knows to fight it. Instead he allows himself a moment of thought: what is the thing he can say that will make her stay? "My only obsession was with you," he says. "After we got the news, I didn't run away, did I. It was still the early days for us, and I had to decide: is it kind of weird to get super attached to her right now? Maybe she'd prefer solitude? I hated thinking that--I didn't want to have to reason my way through it. I felt what I felt. You and I belonged together. It was <i>you</i> I was obsessed with." She stands, she is unmoving, quiet, listening. She is still there, in their hallway. That's all he could have hoped to achieve.\n\n[[NEXT|obsessionlove]]\n[[THE END]]
"All true," he says. "I could argue that it's more complicated than that--maybe I had my own reasons and fears. I was weak. I <i>am weak</i>." He rubs his eyes. "So many weird memories and experiences have made me sensitive to all this… medical stuff. Scratch that, please ignore that I said "weird." Suffering, pain, human bodies. Ok: events in my childhood have made me how I am, which is--weak. I'm clumsy. I love you, and maybe I don't deserve you. But I love you." And he does.\n\n[[NEXT|walkoutdoor]]\n[[THE END]]
"I was there," he says, a hurt quiver in his voice. "You just never noticed me. You rolled yourself up in your pain, built a shelter out of it. Inches thick. You never saw me standing right outside. I was there." He sounds as if he is stomping on the wall-to-wall carpet with his words. "I was <i>there</i>."\n\n[[NEXT|trophy]]\n[[THE END]]
She explodes quietly. "That's it? The magic word?" She takes off her hat, scrunches it, throws it. She wants to pace, wants to jump, but her breathing is already heavy. "<i>If</i> there is something you could do to change my mind, to make me stay with you in this apartment for what comes next… If there's something I'm looking for, then it's a material, profound change to your personality. Not this superficial… niceness. <i>Please.</i> I don't need you to ask for more of me politely, I need you to offer <i>me</i> something. What do you have for <i>me</i>?" She's amused by this cartoonish saleswoman character that is taking control inside her. It says what her nicer self never would, so she lets it run the show. "I have an extremely uncertain future ahead of me--I don't even know how much of it. Maybe tomorrow it's just, goodbye, that's all folks, the end. Every minute counts. Every emotion hits me like a firing squad. My life is at a degree of fragility which requires absolute assurances, fanatical faith in the goodwill and abilities of those I surround myself with, and those I let inside." She feels she has drawn him as good a map as she can. "Well?" she says. He says nothing in response. "I see. Ok then."\n\n[[NEXT|i]]\n[[THE END]]
"You're right," she says. And walks through the door.\n\n[[NEXT|surely]]\n[[THE END]]
He turns around to see an empty block of sunlight, nothing and no one there. The bags are gone, the hat, the coat, she is gone. He has more to say. "I admit defeat! Fine!" he says, closing his eyes to testify to the red-green darkness inside. "I'm bad! Weak. Evil. Self-centered. Yes--but! let's not just stop there. I'm human; I know these things about myself. We all know them. All of us the same, all bad at times, good at times. I want, want, want. Who doesn't want? Maybe I don't balance it out so well, maybe I'm more bad than I am good. I am saying it right now--listen, I'm saying it, it's out, it's free! Does that count? It has to. In any case, I admit it all, but--I still want you back. I have to want you, actively and fully. If I say "go", then it's forever and final, and <i>that</i> I can't do. No. I want you. La la la. That is all. That's the permanent thing, unchanging, my life--you. With me, anything else is unbearable. You." He is beyond shame and taste now, talking the fleshy, raw language of ugly feeling. Surely this will only make her walk out into the sun faster, double-step to her car and drive off without looking back, bury this moment so she doesn't have to recall it later, this childish outburst of his. Surely. He opens his eyes: surely.\n\n[[NEXT|wait0]]\n[[THE END]]
"Stay," he says, a silhouette against the meager light coming from the shaded living room windows. "We can talk about it. Talk about anything you want. I'm sorry. Just… stay." He sounds exhausted, spending the last of his energy. "We can't fix it if we can't talk about it, and we can't talk about it if you just go." She pauses, looks up. Not quite at his eyes, only somewhere in his general direction.\n\n[[NEXT|talkaction]]\n[[THE END]]
He reaches out a hand, steps half a step closer. "Tell me what I did. Can you tell me? We don't have to make this into a big argument. Just say what I did that was so wrong. Let's begin there." The hand hovers. \n\n[[NEXT|neededyou]]\n[[THE END]]
And waits. She steps back into the frame of the door. Inside the hallway, a silhouette against the light again, she puts the bags down, slams the door shut. Her slim figure holding up the newly oversized clothing is fierce, demonic. "What the hell was that?" she says.\n\n[[NEXT|please]]\n[[THE END]]
"If I've ignored you, it was because you were self-obsessed and you saw me as something between a trophy and an anchor," she says. It is a line she has been rehearsing mentally for months, and now it's out, and it won't be unsaid. She picks up the second duffel bag. From here on out, it all unravels slowly, physical movements impeded by the thick fog of her accusal. \n\n[[NEXT|obsessedyou]]\n[[THE END]]
He thinks he hears bags drop on concrete outside. Maybe there are footsteps, maybe a sigh, maybe the rustling of fabric--but he will not let himself imagine too much. He waits, knowing that no further words can do anything good. He has embarrassed himself in an ultimate way, and now, the thing to do is wait. So he waits.\n\n[[NEXT|wait1]]\n[[THE END]]
He waits.\n\n[[NEXT|wait2]]\n[[THE END]]
And waits.\n\n[[NEXT|whatthehell]]\n[[THE END]]
"I…" he says, then stops right away. He has already ruined it with a start like that. "I," he says again, with a perverse touch of glee. "I, I, I!" he laughs. Miraculously, she laughs along. They share the joke, the two of them in complete sync regarding the utter inanity of his final attempt at winning her back on the day she has had it, can't do it anymore, stands there packed up to leave him for good and fight her fight elsewhere. It's a good laugh, a solid twenty seconds of it. Some chortling and wiping of good-natured tears. Bemused shaking of the heads. Then it ends. Gone is the humor of the moment. They look up at each other with clear eyes. Just the sunlight now, the door, him and her. \n\n[[NEXT|Start]]\n[[THE END]]
She knows a response is required now. If she says nothing, she will think herself callous forever, have to live with the aftertaste. And perhaps this is all just a trap of his, this neverending conversation, his favorite battlefield--nevertheless. "Obsession isn't the same thing as love. You're still learning that. Or maybe you're not learning it--maybe you're avoiding that lesson." She takes a step toward the door, a move that has to be made, it's the one kind of progress she can achieve here. Time for one final statement, a parting shot. "I do hope you can find love somehow." \n\n[[NEXT|help]]\n[[THE END]]
Neven Mrgan