The Gravity of Lying
From Heather Fowlers Flash fiction marathon on FB. Story a day for August. All rough/rough drafts so be kind w/ your crit.
Max lay there in bed thinking quite literally of nothing. He just watched her asleep; pushing out small, even puffs of air through pouty lips enjoying her presence. He lightly moved a hand through her hair which caused a smile and small sigh escape from her mouth. The only real thought in his head has no name but its closest relative would be; amazing.
The late afternoon light through the thin sheers gave the room a warm orange light and he studied her sleeping form. The closed eyelids hiding the bright blue beauty that had so often shown him the love and trust she carried deeply within herself for him. It always made him strong and right. He looked that the startling lovely face, with the soft lines around the eyes just beginning to show the edge of wrinkles. He thought she would age very well. He gazed at her amazing mouth; those lips that he had been kissing just small moments ago, one of his favorite features.
He lay there quietly looking at parts of her; seeing all of her.
Suddenly the air in the room is filled with the Rolling Stones song, Beast of Burden.
“Shit.”
And Max scrambled to the phone sitting on the nightstand. He opened it without even checking the number as he didn’t want to wake her.
“Hello.”
“Max?”
“Charlie?” He glanced towards her but she was already in the stages of wakening.
“Are you at the office?”
“Charlie… what.. yes… yeah, I’m at the office what is it.”
“It’s Adrienne Max. I’m going out of my fucking mind. I mean I am literally losing my mind.”
“What? Why? Is she all right; was she in an accident?”
He was sitting up in bed now, against the headboard and he felt her hand gently stoke the back of his next.
“No, no. Nothing like that. I wish that was the case.”
“Charlie. What the hell.”
“No, of course I don’t wish that. I would never wish that.”
Max could hear his breath on the other end of the phone.
“It’s just that she was going shopping today with Rachel, Louisa and Hellaine. She explained this long detailed itinerary to me last night. I mean Christ sakes Max; it took like an hour for her to tell me. Finally I got tired of hearing about it. You know how it is and I told her look, are you going shopping or preparing for the Iditarod.
“Jesus Charlie.”
“I know. I know. I shouldn’t have said that. Stupid.. Stupid… Stupid. We just went over shit like this with Dr. Feldon just last week in our session. Dammit.”
“I still don’t get it. It’s not that big a deal. She’ll get over it.”
“No. You don’t understand. It’s happening again.”
“What is happening again?”
“IT Max.. IT.”
She was fully awake at this point and ran her hands through his hair and got up from the bed. She walked languidly over to the chair by the desk and put his shirt on over her nakedness. He thought how glorious she looked in his shirts. How her perfect little apple bottom swayed behind the material and how later when he put it back on, it would smell of her.
He made a motion with his hand to her like drinking from a glass and she walked over to the place where the mini bar was located.
“What is IT Charlie?”
“She’s doing it again. She’s having another… another one. I can feel it I know it.”
“Christ.”
The voice on the other end of the phone was accelerated now, more frayed.
“I’m not kidding Max. Look, I had a lunch meeting it Beverly Hills today, some hack screenwriter with the next best piece of shit nerd Novel adaptation….”
“Where’d you eat?”
“Does it fucking matter? Jesus. So we’re outside finishing lunch and who walks by? Who do you God Damn mother-fucking thinks walks by?”
“Steven Spielberg.”
“Fuck you. Rachel, Louisa and Hellaine that’s who walk by. They see me and stop naturally and I ask them where Adrienne is. Do you know what they say? Do you want to oh God fucking kill me know what they say?”
“That she’s been taking hostage by Louis Vuitton.”
“GOD DAMN IT MAX. THIS IS SERIOUS.”
“I’m sorry Charlie; I’ll stop. What do they say.”
“They say they don’t know! They say they called her yesterday about shopping today but she told them she had a spa appointment. I’m telling you she’s doing it again. She’s doing it to me again Max. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m going to lose my fucking marbles this time. I can’t do it again. I can’t go through it.. again. I’ll blow my head off Max. I swear to God I’ll blow my fucking brains out. I’ll blow her fucking brains out.”
“Settle down. Nobody’s blowing anybody’s brains out. “
“I don’t know what to do.”
The voice on the other end of the phone had now become more flattened. Like an airless balloon. Max could almost picture him in some bar downtown, or sitting on some park picnic table far away from anyone with his Bluetooth on and his hands buried in his hair with his head in his bowed down.
She returned then with a drink for him and one for herself. She placed his into his hand, ran her hands through his hair again and kissed him on the forehead. Then she went over to the other side of the bed, crawled in beside him and took a sip from her drink.
“Max?”
“Sorry, sorry. My girl just came into my office with some phone messages. So are you asking me what you should do Charlie; is that what you want.”
“What the hell do you think I just asked you what –should-I –do for?”
“Alright… Alright; I’ll tell you what you should do.”
He took a drink from his glass and looked at her as she looked at him and took a drink from hers.
“You need to stop Charlie. You just need to stop this. I mean it. It’s just crazy. You love her. She loves you. And you need to trust her and stop always coming up with all these damn crazy scenarios and misguided, destructive, completely fabricated accusations of malfeasance. It’s madness Charlie. It’s just madness and you have to just stop it. How would you feel if it was her constantly putting you on the witness stand? Wanting to know where you were at every moment of every day. Asking you all these crazy questions and putting together timelines and average traffic commute times and checking your credit cards with an accountant’s fervor and reading your email and looking through your cell phone while you were in the shower. How would that make you feel Charlie?”
“Well that’s different.”
“Different. How the hell is it different? Good grief man. You’ve been going to your shrink for two years. Two years and you come back full circle to the same issues because she didn’t go shopping with the witches of eastwick? Are you serious?”
“Max she spent an hour giving me a detailed plan like they were going to invade Rodeo Drive.”
“Maybe she remembers this morning she had already made a spa appointment. Maybe another friend calls her and needs her help that precedes some bullshit shopping trip. Maybe she left the witches voicemails and they hadn’t listened to them yet by noon during their American Express flushed shopping tempest. Maybe Charlie, she had a moment of adult uncertainty; you know, the ones we all have when everything we are and will ever be comes under the dark light of inspection. And she just wanted to be alone and went to the beach. Maybe a lot of things could and did occur; none of which are even remotely in the same vicinity of adultery. “
“I don’t know Max. Something just feels wrong.”
“What’s wrong is you.”
That weighed Max down some and as it was coming out of his mouth he hated the taste of it.
“I don’t mean you as a person Charlie; or as a husband and father. I just mean you have to stop all the paranoia. Stop pushing her away with it. This is just like the last time.”
“But I was right the last time.”
“Charlie have you even talked to her; have you asked her where she was today.”
“I don’t know where she’s at. She’s not home.”
“Just talk to her. I’m sure there is a perfect explanation.”
She made a noise then. He thought it might have been a sigh; or maybe something else. When he looked at her she had already risen from the bed and as she passed by his side on the way to the bathroom tickled his foot with her finger.
He waited for some moments. He could hear Charlie breathing into the other end of the phone.
“Charlie.”
“Charlie?”
“I’m going to hire a private detective.”
“What. Have you even been listening to me? You ask me for my help and I tell you what you should do and you want to hire a fucking investigator to invade her life, her privacy? Are you crazy?”
Silence again. Two men breathing on opposite sides of a phone. He heard the toilet flush in the bathroom and heard her start to run the water for the bath. The bath was their little ritual.
“Max I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. Especially at work. You’re a good friend. I’m sorry.
“It’s not a bother. We’ve been friends since grade school. Forever really. You just need to stop this. You need to get it under control.”
“We have been friends that long haven’t we? Longer than before any kind of woman was ever important; right. “
“Long before that Charlie. Long before that.”
He put the phone back on the nightstand and stood up. He looked at his naked body in the mirror. Needed to lose a few pounds, he thought. Getting heavy again.
In the bath he was rubbing her feet as she sat across from him.
“You need to go home after this. He’s very worried and I hate hearing him like that. Talk to him. I don’t care what you tell him or what you do but talk to him. Make him understand everything is going to be alright.
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