HONEYMOONING

She clawed her nails into the small pores of the wall, dragging them along vertically with her eyes shut. She pursed her lips and squeezed her other fist to hold back the words splattered in red in her mind. She wouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t waste her breath. She could hear a muted scream coming from the bathroom where he had locked himself inside in a flurry of fury. It wasn’t her fault she thought to herself. He had driven her to this. Blood was starting to seep from her cuticles now, slowly dripping towards the curve of her fingernail. Keep those eyes shut. Don’t do it. The room contained what she felt would have exploded otherwise. The curtains were drawn and besides the lamp on the bedside table the room was almost pitch black. She couldn’t sleep otherwise. But since all of this had erupted she hadn’t really been able to sleep anyway. When she would finally drift off she would kick him all night whilst having bad dreams.

She heard the bathroom door click, and a figure of rage emerge and enter the room. Without looking sideways she bent down, picked up a hard cover book lying at the end of the bed. She remembered when he had bought this for her. A first edition she had been searching for for the most part of her early 20s. It was maybe the third date. They had spent the afternoon trawling local second hand books playfully, trying to not reveal too much about themselves to each other. She had wanted him to know she was intellectual, had something more going on inside but didn’t want this to sacrifice her sexiness. She would flick her hair, smile and giggle with everything he said—funny or not. Now, however, all that had been put aside. She didn’t care what he saw, what he thought. She turned around in one swift movement and flung the book towards him, hoping it would catch him right above the eye and knock him dead. She missed.

“What the fuck are you doing! WHAT THE FUCK!” He yelled.
“What the fuck are YOU doing! GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT” She replied.
“Your apartment! Fuck you. You’re the one that had to go and ruin everything”.

She pushed past him and kicked the wall, lifting back a small amount of white paint with her force. She didn’t know where she was going but she wasn’t staying. He didn’t even try and follow her. It was a losing battle. This is when he would probably go and lump himself on the bed, bury his head between the pillows and cry like he hadn’t since he was five years old and grazed his knee in the playground. She always thought he was such a fucking pussy. Guys aren’t meant to be that sensitive. That’s why she cheated. He wasn’t strong enough for her, couldn’t hold her up.

She assimilated into the pedestrian traffic on the street below the apartment block. Her pace quickened until she moved into the fast lane of bodies, overtaking those strolling on the left. As she turned the corner there was the old homeless man that sat on a stool playing the same recorder day after day. He wore the same grey marl trousers and a maroon polo shirt, he protruding stomach hanging out over the waistband. It didn’t make sense that he was so fat. At his feet was a cap filled with two five cent coins and a bottle of passionfruit soft drink. She could never work out whether it was a fresh bottle of drink every day that hadn’t been opened or the same one he never drank. Then again she couldn’t work out much about anything anymore. Today she stopped. He stopped playing his two notes on the plastic recorder and looked up at her. He asked her for some spare change which was the normal routine but today she said she had something else for him. She held out her apartment keys and handed them to him.

“Here, I have this nice place around the corner. I’m going away. The yellow apartments just up there—unit 23. You can stay as long as you like”.