‘or Ardor’
by Matt Hale
Joe leaned forward on the futon—for some reason, there was a futon in Joe’s room sitting about where his mattress should have been (this did not, in the moment, strike Joe as odd)—with his elbows resting on his knees and his chin in his hands. He was watching a TV (an old 24-inch CRT—which, come to think of it, wan’t normally there either) but he had no idea what was playing. From the laugh-track, he figured it was an old sitcom, but as he stared ever deeper into the dancing, multicolored pixels, they refused to form into anything resembling a solid picture. The trick wasn’t working.
He lifted his chin and stretched his arms up over his head like a sleepy four-year-old. He leaned back and then, gradually, to the left until his head was resting on Ellie’s shoulder (Ellie was apparently now sitting next to him).
“I really don’t understand how you can watch this stuff. You’re an intelligent woman.”
“C’mon, Joe. It’s TV.”
Joe pondered this briefly.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Listen, I know you find my plebeian tastes beneath me but there are times when I’m tired and lazy and I just wanna…watch TV.”
“But this…It’s so boring. No. More than that. It’s so profoundly unfunny that it seems as if the laugh-track is actually mocking the characters.”
“Joe…”
“Like,” he was getting into this train of thought, now, “the show itself could almost be a failed post-modern commentary on our expectations, as a culture, that we can solve all of our problems quickly and in a way that will result in no changes to our daily lives whatsoever.”
He smiled up at the side of her face, expecting her to join in on the riff.
“Shh…” she said, instead. “I’m watching this.”
He sighed, disappointed. They sat in silence. Soon, though, Joe stirred again.
“Come on, let’s just go to bed.”
“Joe. It’s 9:15.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I do. Okay?”
A beat.
“Alright,” and he stared up at the ceiling for a while.
“Ellie?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you mind if I fall asleep in your lap?”
She smiled a little.
“No, Joe. I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her neck and then slid his face slowly down her body until he came to rest in her lap.
Ellie shot him a look and chuckled.
“You…That really doesn’t look like a very comfortable position.”
She wasn’t wrong. He was mostly in a sitting posture—both feet flat on the floor, his knees pointed outwards—but his spine was bent sideways and his left arm was crushed under his torso, so that he could lay his head in her lap.
“I feel great.” He smiled dreamily.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you worry about me.”
“Okay.”
“I’m happy.”
“Whatever you say,” and she rested a hand gently on the side of his head.
Joe closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and breathed out reluctantly. He felt Ellie’s fingers move slowly through his hair.
“You know…” she said, after a gentle sigh, “You’re the one that’s leaving. Really.”
Joe opened his eyes and shot a look up at Ellie’s face. Then he gazed back out toward the TV.
“I know.”
“I never actually left you. That’s not what happened.”
Joe nodded his head.
“And now you won’t answer the phone? I’m sorry if you’re mad at me—”
Joe shook his head.
“I’m not mad at you,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Well, then…I mean, what’s going on?”
“If you’d just get over this neo-luddite thing you’ve got going, we could write to each other again.”
“Oh. It’s my fault, then.”
“Your Aunt has a computer, doesn’t she? Would it violate some code or something to log in to your freaking gmail account?”
“Don’t change the subject. From what I’ve heard, you’ve developed some pretty funny ideas yourself.”
“I can see how you’d think that. To be perfectly honest, some days they make total sense and other days I don’t know what in god’s name is wrong with me.”
“Well. Don’t you think you should stop and think about what you’re doing, then?”
“Ehhhh…”
“Joe…”
“Ellie, you should just stab me in the eye.”
“Joe. This is how human beings talk.”
“But…”
“Damn it, you’re changing the subject again. I’m not gonna let this bullshit hijack the conversation.”
“Okay.”
“Alright?”
“Fine.”
“Okay. Now, Joe. First of all, I get the irony. Sure. Me giving out psychological advice. It’s hilarious. Granted. On the other hand, I have some perspective that, you know, Daniel or whoever else has been pestering you doesn’t have. So, I want you to listen, okay? I really think those days. When you’re not making any sense to yourself? That’s your rational side peeking through, and you need to grasp onto that and hold tight. Really.”
A beat.
“It sounds so simple when you say it.”
And they were still. Joe stared back upward, alternately switching his focus between Ellie’s chin and nostrils and the random shapes he found in the cottage cheese texture of the stucco ceiling. He contracted his iris and he was able to hold focus on Ellie’s protruding left cornea so totally that whenever she blinked, it was as if the room went dark. After a minute or so, though, he had to close his eyes.
He opened them again and found that his head was pointed toward the floor. In his peripheral vision, he caught his old manual typewriter. It was sitting right near Ellie’s left foot. There was a blank piece of paper in it, poised, ready to go.
Joe turned over, onto his belly, and scooted himself forward so that his chest was resting in Ellie’s lap and his fingers could just reach the typewriter’s keys. He typed:
He almost screamed at her, “Stop being so nice to me!” She should be furious. She should walk away in disgust. He deserved her contempt for expecting her sympathy in response to his bullshit when she’s seen the real thing; when she’s known the terror of feeling it wake and stir inside her. He resented her kindness and patience and then felt guilty for presuming to instruct her on the use of her own indignation.
His hands hovered over the typewriter for a moment longer—his fingers were always eager to keep going once they’d gotten started. He nodded to himself and took his hands away.
He scooted back to his previous position, looking up at Ellie.
“I need to pee,” he said.
“Mm.”
“I don’t want to move, though.”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Yeah, but it’ll never be the same.”
“Aw…” Ellie let out a small, conciliatory chuckle.
Joe sighed. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
Slowly, reluctantly, he sat up.
“I’ll be back.” He kissed Ellie lightly on the cheek.
“Mm-hmm.”
He started to say something else but realized he had no idea what it was he was preparing to say so he stood and headed down the hall.
He closed the bathroom door behind him and turned on the light. He flipped up the toilet seat but then froze there. He didn’t have to pee at all. As far as he could remember, he had not meant to lie to Ellie. He could not recall wanting to be alone and trying to come up with an excuse, but now that seemed to be just what he had done.
He sank down onto the cold bathroom floor, rested his back against the tub, and pulled his bent knees up to his chest. He felt a strange, foreign anger welling up against the skin of his forehead and along his jaw. He did not conceive of this anger as his. He felt its symptoms, but he could not locate its source in his mind or his heart. His face was hot. He imagined that if he were to stand and look in the mirror he would be quite red.
He felt his right arm suddenly swing fiercely out from the side of his body and punch the wall. It was confusing, because he had at no point decided to do that (it wasn’t the kind of thing he did), but it felt good. He was glad when he found himself doing it a second time. He was pleased when he spotted the hole he had left in the plaster.
He was disappointed, however, when he looked down at his fist and found that it was not visibly injured in any way. He, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, had dearly wished that it would be swollen and bleeding and purple. It was just his normal hand, though, and he hated it.
He reached over to the toilet and flushed. He stood and headed out the door.
He walked back into the living room where he found Ellie, still on the futon, half-drifting and half-engrossed in whatever was on the TV—but it was a kind of mock-engrossed, Joe thought, like she wished it were more distracting than it was but maybe the act of concentrating on it would make it work better.
“I…” Joe, again, realized that he had no idea what it was that he wanted to say.
“Hmm?” Ellie, it seemed to Joe, had barely registered his return.
He shrugged. He sat down on the floor and rested his head gently against her knee. He looked down at the floor.
She placed a hand casually on the top of his head and he gripped her ankle with his right hand. He felt a tear on his cheek. Both of his eyes radiated a painful heat with a source somewhere deep in the middle of his skull. He had no words of his own, so he borrowed some:
“‘“Tuzenbakh, not knowing what to say: ‘I have not had coffee today. Tell them to make me some.’ Quickly walks away.” “Very funny!” said Ada, and locked herself up in her room.’”
Canned laughter from the TV informed them that something was very, very funny indeed.
<END>
