By: Denis Bernicky Wind tears at the plastic tablecloths on the terrace. It is four in the morning. The bar is closed. Jill is a waitress. She is sitting across from me nursing a drink. She is waiting, perhaps not at this moment, but she is waiting. Soon she will get the phone call and he will say that there is someone else by way of an excuse. There won't be anyone else, we both know that, but he will say there is. We have done this before, sitting on the terrace, drinking, smoking, knowing that something has ended and pretending that soon something better will come along. The night air is warm. Somewhere over the water I can hear thunder rolling. Jill sighs and stretches her neck back and to the side. The way the sparse light catches her neck I can see the thin blue trace of her jugular running along the length of her throat. She reaches across the table, takes my hand and twists it so that the palm faces upward. With her index finger she pushes back my shirt cuff that turns up slightly then slips along my arm. There are four precise white scars on my wrist; I lost some of the use of my right hand because of them. Jill looks through me then away at something I cannot see. "Did it hurt?" We never talked about it before they were from a time best forgotten. "Yes." "Why did you do it?" "You know." "Tell me anyway, I need to hear it tonight." "I can't remember. It doesn't seem important anymore." I say and sip my drink. Jill shakes her head slightly. "I couldn't do something like that, especially if it wasn't for anything important." "Nothing is that important." "I suppose...did it hurt a lot?" "Yes." She crinkles her nose. "I couldn't do something like that," she says and lets go of my hand. "Good I couldn't live through it." She rubs the back of her neck rolling her head slowly from side to side then straightens and lights another cigarette. "He didn't believe me." I nod. "He thinks you had an abortion?" She nods and sips her drink again. "And me a Catholic." "That doesn't make much difference these days. Have you talked?" "I don't think he wants to, it gives him a clean path to believe what he wants." She runs her fingers over the scars on my wrist. " They look awful." "That's just the way they look. They aren't as bad as yours." She laughs. "Mine don't show." "Most of the time." She pouts playfully. "When do they show?" "When you talk too much." "That's just babbling." "You mean bleeding." I say. She smiles but does not respond. We finish our drinks and then walk down to the quay to watch the boats come in from the approaching storm. It doesn't seem like it is going to storm, The heavy smell of rain isn't in the air, it usually is before a storm. |