July 12, 2005
sisters
Memo lay still, studying the shadows on the ceiling, on the wall, in the corner of the room. She traced their familiar angles from the light switch near the door to the corner of the frame of the painting, diagonally up the wall to just past the place where the plant hook was mounted in the ceiling above the center of the window. She studied the way the parallel streaks from the blinds intersected the shadow of the fire escape railing across the striped spines of their books on the shelves. In the city, shadows don't move, don't change. Her breathing was shallow and she struggled not to think, not to wish, not to struggle. She just wanted to sleep.
It used to be she hated sleep, she fought it hard, capitulating only when she had no alternative. She had hated sleep and sleep had pursued her relentlessly. The tables had turned, when had that happened, she wondered, when did I begin to long for sleep, for the darkness and oblivion of it, for it's velvet caress, when did sleep begin to tease her, to slip out of her reach, to taunt her from the shadows? Now she loved sleep and could not find it.
Beside her the Professor snored lightly, then twitched and turned, pushing at her with his back. Her arm was uncomfortable and she raised it over her head and tucked her hand between the pillows.
Tonight, while he was touching her, while his hands were moving across her, as his thumb was tracing the contours of her ear, it happened that a very loud car, or a truck, without a muffler, had gone ripping up the avenue, splitting the darkness with its noise and mayhem. "Damn machines," he swore low, "fools and their machines." And his thumb, which had paused, continued on its way, up around over behind beneath along...
Machines.
The word was swirling inside her head, machines, machines, machines; as his hands continued their pattern. And it occurred to Memo that his attentions had become a pattern, a catechism almost, and she detached herself from the sensations to observe his technique, and it frightened her. It frightened her because she could predict his every move, the target, the timing, the intensity of his touch. It was all she could do not to weep. His pattern was the fixed pattern of the weekday commuter, established, immutable. "He is a machine, he has become a machine, and if he is a machine, then what am I?" She understood this consciously for the first time that night and she hated the knowledge, not for what she lost in understanding it, but for what she gained. She hated that she had been so grateful for this.
And she did not stop him, and she tried to find something in it for herself, she tried to find something in herself to share with him, but she knew there was nothing, and she could not pretend otherwise to herself. She saw the guitar player's eyes when she closed her own.
Afterwards, as she studied the shadows on the ceiling -- the crisp ones from the closest street light and the fuzzy ones from those farther away, the crisp ones dense and black and the others gray and hazy, as the cold wetness beneath her slowly spread and faded, she made a treaty with the darkest of the shadows. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out when she said one word. "Sisters."
She remembered thinking, "I'm going to need some boxes for the books," as she dropped off to sleep at last.
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posted by matthew at 06:24 PM