Just a Perfect Day, part 3

Twenty minutes of a night of precarious suicidals dodging your car, followed by being jettisoned by your friends, quote unquote, the moment the costs of staying with you outweighed the benefits, twenty minutes of such night, sitting in the car’s silence watching streams of rainwater ski down the slope of the windshield, waiting for a tow truck that now seems would probably never show up, was enough for Bob to say the magic words: “FFuck it” he said with two capital F’s and drove the car on the tore remnants of tires to a Safeway parking lot across the street before calling for a cab.

Take a long hot shower Bob, you deserve it, you do. The almost narcotic effects of something as corporeal as standing under a downpour of water warmed up to just the right temperature on something so apparently ethereal as the mind are amazing. He got out of the shower and wrapped a thick towel around him and walked over to the bedroom’s window looking over the street outside just in time to see a car pull up right in front of the complex. The passenger side door opened and Mary, Bob’s aforementioned girlfriend, stepped out into the four thirty a.m. street. The rain had slowed to a drizzle that was only visible as it sped by, slanted, under the yellow street lights. She walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side and bent her head down and through the car window for what seemed like one last goodnight kiss, one last one for the road.

She wouldn’t have done this had she known Bob was watching. She knew her relationship with him was over but she had no intention of being cruel, which is why she had already eliminated the possibility of Bob being home and standing at the bedroom window at that very moment based on the fact that his car did not occupy its usual parking spot, and was nowhere to be seen.

Bob watched this with a calmness that even surprised himself, despite the pang of pain he felt somewhere through his chest. He understood. He had had dim hopes of restoring a pulse in the cardiac arrest of their relationship, but even he knew that describing such hopes as anything more than dim would be naïve optimism. Something inside had seen this coming and had subconsciously prepared itself. Perhaps, had he been more lucid, had he had more insight into his own emotions and thoughts he would have paused to consider whether his aspiration to revive this relationship was anything more than the force of habit. Maybe he would have asked himself whether it would not be better to step aside and stop spending the energy needed to prolong the reverse osmosis of feelings, and instead let the human chemistry take its natural course, even though it would mean it wasn’t meant to be.

However, no need for a pointless, late night fight, he understood that much. So pillow tucked under arm, blanket dragging behind him, Bob journeyed to the living room, where the sofa suddenly turned into a very valuable asset, especially because of its ability to transform to a bed upon the pulling of a strap.