Night and Day
Night and Day:
Mia and Lisa leave after dinner. Mia, taciturn, mentioning something about an exam she’d forgotten. Quick hugs and goodbyes are exchanged before the pair’s hasty departure back to school.
The house seemingly shushes quiet once the front door clicks behind them.
The night is quiet too, blissfully uneventful, for Jim. He loves the quiet. The absence of sound. The older he gets, the more he appreciates the clean beauty, the purity of silence…
His new neighborhood is wonderfully quiet, save for the occasional trundle of a passing semi-truck from the highway nearby, and the chirping crickets.
Gazing from the bathroom window, into the misty night, Jim can spot a singular star hanging meekly in the gusty, dark sky. Lowering his eyes, he recognizes the patterned light of the city. He knows and hates the city. He knows that everything is in motion. But here, in this house, it’s quiet as outer space.
Jim opens a drawer and picks out a bottle, twists the lid open, and shakes out and eats a handful of white pills. The pills’ bitter taste is replaced by mint as Jim brushes his teeth and tenses up, suddenly worrying for a second that his teeth are missing and that his electric toothbrush is tickling bare gums, empty tooth sockets.
Jim spits out the foamy white toothpaste into the sink. It swirls like a raging sea, twirls and spins into the drain. But he sees no blood or lost teeth. This calms him. Yawning his mouth into the mirror, he sees his bleached white choppers are still intact, and his serenity is restored.
He blinks, then finds himself under the weight of blankets. The silk sheets kiss feathery to his skin, and he worms in the bed, tosses his head back, and rests his hard skull into the foam memory pillow. Then he drifts off, warmly, into the undercurrents of a deep black watery sleep.
There’s a roaring crowd in his ears, a white noise that fades as he wakes. He figures it was another football dream that’s gladly been forgotten…
Jim rises, lifts his heavy bones and tight limbs, pushes out of bed.
It’s cold in the morning. The heating in the house must be on the fritz. He gazes out the bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows and sees the sky is the color of cream. A touch of white frost sits on a cluster of reddish leaves hanging from a nearby oak tree.
Jim is first to wake, as usual. He trudges into the bathroom and sees himself, naked, in the mirror over the sink. He looks so old, he thinks. His face is a cold web of creased skin. There are white hairs growing on his chest. There are even white hairs on his balls. And his penis, once so virile, hangs limp and lifeless, like a dead bird.
He’s old, and he’s battered. Gazing at his numerous scars from surgeries, he sees the scars running deep, like ski tracks in fresh snow.
Mechanically he brushes his teeth, shaves, washes his face. Steam surrounds his hulking body in the shower. Holding soap, he doesn’t remember stepping in the shower, but the massage jets and the rain shower, the hot water blasting and cascading at and over his skin feel soothing. The liquid heat loosens his tight, old man muscles.
He doesn’t remember toweling off. But he’s dry, naked, and limping into the bedroom. He then thinks he hears the distant sound of a ukulele. The ukulele being played in horrendous, tone-deaf fashion, more slapped than played, but the sound soon disappears.
He grimaces and bends and steps into his typical designer label, business casual attire, which today is a white open-collared button-down dress shirt, stiffly creased black slacks, blue wool socks, and light brown leather wingtips that gleam, hint of wealth. He looks himself over in the closet’s mirror, smooths his shirt, nods somberly…
His wife is curled into a ball of sleep. The tip of her head, a tangle of flocculent blond locks jut out from underneath the covers. He considers kissing her goodbye, but his knee seizes up with a sharp sting. He lumbers back to the bathroom, where he again hears the ukulele, this time louder, and sounding even worse.
Jim pulls open the drawer under the sink, where he’s started a pharmacy, and he picks out one of the many pill bottles, screws open the lid and shakes out three little white circles and tosses them into his mouth.
He chews the bitter medicine and again laments his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His face, once so young, vigorous and alive, appears so sullen, his skin loose, droopy, dripping like candle wax.
There are dark halfmoon semicircles under his eyes. He sees the lines in his forehead deeper and thicker than he can ever remember. Crow’s feet are forming at the edges of his eyeballs. Even in the soft lighting of the early morning, he’s repulsed by his aged appearance.
He’s only 46. “It’s not that old. I shouldn’t look like this,” he mumbles to himself over the din of the terrible fucking ukulele. If he ever finds the asshole playing that ukulele, he might throw him through a wall…
Ack. 46. He’s 46. And at only 46, he’s retired. At only 46, his knees crack and pop and sting, and the nerves in his joints shoot lightning. At only 46, he forgets names more than he used to. He’s only 46. Dammit, 46. But he feels far older.
The horrid ukulele music stops. Thank God. Jim gathers himself. He has an urge to smash the mirror. But then the pills power and flow beautifully into his bloodstream. There’s a second of calm. Merciful calm.
He moves. But then his head throbs and beats, curdles his blood. He hangs his head to the black granite countertop, over the deep brass sink, with its matching horse head water taps.
He twists on the faucet, splashes ice-cold water on his face. He then looks up to the mirror, and it appears that he’s thrown battery acid on his face. His face is disfigured, skin hanging yellow, red and raw from his cheeks and jawbones. He sees the skin of his palms has been eviscerated. He can see through the broken skin of his hands, down to the heavy gray bone.
The air evacuates his lungs. Hairs on the back of his neck stir. He wants to cry out but is choked by air. His mouth feels stuffed with cotton. He closes his eyes, tenses up his muscles, and once more he hears a faint plucking of the ukulele.
Opening his eyes, his old man face has returned. It’s back to its usual old man ugliness. Gray is striping the sides of his head. His temples are near totally gray.
The ukulele growing louder in his ears, he twitches, grabs his electric razor and cuts his sideburns super-short to rid at least a portion of his visibly gray temples. Then he dusts off his head and face, washes the salt and pepper hair particles down the sink…
He’s off to start his day. Trudging, moving slowly, like he’s walking in sand. The fucking ukulele still ringing in his ears.
Groggily, he lumbers through the bedroom and into the slanted hallway. The color of the hallway appears puke pink. He remembers it being blue, sea-blue. He spots the houseplant and flowers his wife had placed on an antique armoire in the hallway.
Yesterday the flowers and plant were fresh, yellow and green. Already, now, they’re withered and dead, a mess of twisted brown coils.
Jim limps down the stairs, trudges to the kitchen. The kitchen is still white. A bright white. An almost iridescent color, so shiny it hurts his eyes. The walls glint and sparkle like diamonds, and Jim squints his eyelids defensively.
A dull, metallic drone from the kitchen’s appliances creates a collective hum, and its resonant buzz is awakening. Then the aroma of freshly made coffee meets, tickles at his nostrils. The familiar matutinal fragrance uplifts and works to tug Jim from out of his tunnel of sleep.
Jim finds his breakfast has been made for him and sits into a stool beside the kitchen island and eats his typical quick breakfast- a bowl of sliced fruit, lightly buttered slices of toast, a granola bar, a tall glass of whole milk and a steaming cup of instant coffee that’s strong, bitter and black.
As he eats, the ukulele finally ceases. “Next motherfucker in a hula skirt,” he mumbles…
On his phone, he peruses the news headlines, then looks at the markets, the DJI, Nasdaq, and checks on his portfolio, or what’s left of it, a pittance…
