Draft 2, room 212. Another version.
Draft 2, room 212. Another version.
There were text messages arriving every other minute. He was sitting at the breakfast table, his face absorbed by what ever he was reading, a hint of danger perhaps, crossing his mind, making him smile at her too, so happy that he was, to be able to juggle it all so expertly: the incoming messages, the ongoing conversations, the affair, and his wife… The chimes were insistent and happening almost back to back. Their frenetic pace was intrusive and he realised that. He kissed his wife on the forehead and went into the living room where he got comfortable on the sofa. He laughed out loud a few times.
How do you want your eggs? She shouted from the kitchen. “Any way you want” he answered.
He was a professor and it was part of his job to communicate with his students. He had complained about it to her for good measure, “ all these WhatsApp groups!” but really, it didn’t look that strenuous. His students were young. They were mostly women too, in their early twenties..
He had become good looking with age. Years had done wonders to him and he was probably at his peek. He’d been nerdy as a young man, couldn’t believe his luck when he married his wife, couldn’t believe his luck when, years down the line, he started noticing a certain…interest? From the younger generation.
She hadn’t been so lucky. The years had suddenly accumulated and cluttered inadvertently into her present. They showed in her appearance in chaotic unpredictable ways, when in him, they created a certain harmony if not mystery.
That’s if you were conventional, for chaos had a dangerous beauty too. But in many ways, they were, conventional. Or at least they identified as such.
It is not clear whether or not they had grown apart for good of if it was a phase. She was going through some physical changes- she’d always been going through physical changes, but these officially signified a sort of pause, if not temporary social downgrade if you were not careful, or if you hadn’t re connected with girlfriends you’d long been estranged from.
There was first and foremost the emptiness she felt now that the kids were gone, the hurt when her husband laughed with others about things she didn’t know about. The way he quickly ran to another room when the chimes called. The way he yawned whenever she needed to talk to him. She was becoming invisible. There were long weeks if not months without any news from the kids. And the big wholes in their budget that she couldn’t explain. She should have looked for a job. She was going to.
It was existential in essence. ( what isn’t?). Outside, The world was changing. You were asked to pick sides and to show loyalty even when entities changed or reversed. It was all upside down at times.
She knew he had affairs. How far did they go? What was the exact definition of betrayal? He always came home after all. Until when? It was the fragility of it all that was hardest to stomach.
He swore he had never betrayed her, he swore never to betray her ,he told her eye to eye that there had never been such opportunities in his life anyways: that he wished there had been, but…
One day though.
One day though, he made a mistake. He sent his wife a text asking if perhaps she wanted to have sex that following week end. Oh? She thought, how daring and out of character: they usually never asked each other about such things, they just went for it.
She was thinking of several ways to answer, when another chime came in that read: I’ll tell the wife I have work.
He swore it was as a joke: hadn’t they talked about role playing? Didn’t she find it spicy?
No they hadn’t.
Of course they had, and if they hadn’t, they should have, for he meant to bring it up as something they could do but she was such a downer.
In any case. Resentment started to build up. Her rage and anger were disproportionate. After all, she could have had affairs too. She could have left. Was she the problem?
Perhaps it was hormonal. He suggested it, without wanting to discuss it further.
She decided to go on the pill. The hormonal replacement therapy pill.
And so on that morning with him smiling away at his phone while he walked nonchalantly back into the kitchen, and as he grabbed her hand to kiss, and as he sat down reading fiery sex texts from someone else, he noticed she was holding a pill between her thumb and index. That pill looked like the vitamin D he took every morning, and so he bit into it and swallowed it ravenously, licking her finger on the way. Her female hormone pill.
From that moment on, every morning, next to his plate, she carefully placed the pill, and every morning, for months and months, he took it.
The first symptoms started to show after a couple of weeks.
She should have stopped it right away, of course she should have, and that’s a question that the judge asked. But one thing led to another… “Was it revenge?” he asked too, with a somber voice.