Debt

Nelson Shake

He waited on the bed while she freshened up in the bathroom. Some tea candles were lit, low music played, and a drink was on her nightstand. She liked to have all of these things in place to set a mood to walk into, and he knew that. He thought his attention to these details would catch hers, that it would show her from the start how nothing had changed after so much time, that he was not vindictive or still hurt, that they could return to where they had been. But it was different. He knew it and felt it. For his mind drew up former nights when, similarly, he had waited on the bed, and while sipping his wine then, he had pictured her body, her demure attitude that was part performance and part honesty. In those moments, whenever imagining her imminent entrance, he had begun to feel a stir, a rush. But not this time. He could still picture her, and the image was the same, the details just as vivid. However, now he stalled at the thought of that coy playfulness she brought with her and how the sensuous smile reached her eyes and filled them with such vulnerability. And how she had given it to someone else. To what extent it had been a show for him and something true for the man who would always remain faceless and nameless was something he could never know. That gap grew into a chasm no anchor would ever fully plumb, leaving him clawing for some semblance of stability. He looked down at his untouched wine and hated it, despised the candles and music and how they mocked the embarrassing effort he had made to bring things back to this point, as if simple repetition could mitigate the cataclysm. The exhaustion of forgiveness hit him once again, and the misery of reconciliation seemed ready to rend his mind and soul. But then, from that despair, he reencountered the stir, the rush. As it bloomed in his head and drained into his belly, he saw with sinister clarity the future nights, Sunday mornings, and weekend getaways. How salvation made its home within everything he had already done and would continue to do for someone who merited none of it. How every act of kindness and service and love would place her only further in his debt and totalize his claim on her wretched self. He felt his whole body swell with munificence. His heart pounded with the thrill of victory as she tapped on the door and asked if he was ready, to which he greedily said he was more than ever.