truth

"I love her, I swear I love her God, honest. Please don’t let anything happen to her please, I’ll be better I promise. I’ll believe, I’ll do anything you want me to, I draw up another Crusade in your honor, anything just let this one pass over us."

He had so many doubts that he had to flood them with a torrent of prayers for lack of a better plan. Then breathed in and out, and tried to remember that three months is not a long time and like Peter said: "There are plenty of lays in the sea."

David swallowed hard. He did not know what was going to happen next and did not really want to speculate. What ever it was, it could not have been any worse than what he fell witness to seven minutes prior. Patrice sat by him with a blank look in her eyes; there was never much fire in them, but now the embers that once burned had died too.

"Did it hurt?"

"No. Well yes, but’I really can’t feel anything right now."

"I’m sorry"

"For what?"

"Isn’t that what I am supposed to say?"

"Are you apologizing for your condom? Because I’m sure if he wanted to express his feelings he would have." Patrice tried to make a joke and miserably failed. Humor was never her strong suit, neither was grace under pressure.

"You want to go home?"

"What else are we going to do?"

"Hungry?"

"No."

"Well then."

They got up, leaving the small puddle of blood farther and farther behind them. The unwrapped wire lay there motionless, but it said more than either of them had their entire lives, and they knew it.

David and Patrice got in the car and he started driving as if focused on something that would arrive very soon if he would just keep on going straight.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"What?" asked David as if startled by the inquiry.
"Why-did-you stop?"

"No reason."

"Go" Patrice wanted that phrase to let out all her aggression; unfortunately it just skimmed the surface.

"All right."

"Now you do," Patrice said with a voice that sounded like she had lockjaw.
As they drove up to her apartment complex, David tried to say something profound, but all that came to mind was "If you love something and let it go, it will come back to you if you truly deserve it."

"Two things David," Patrice spoke quickly, trying to stifle her laugh "Never say anything to me again in regards to this incident, ever. Secondly, never say anything that has more than twelve syllables in it, ever."

"Good to know." David responded.

Patrice got out of the car, snatched her bag from the back seat, and walked home insolent.

The moment she closed the door she sprinted upstairs, hugged her stuffed chiffon gold and blue fish and started snuggling with it on her white bed.

"You’re my only friend, you’re my only friend," she repeated ceaselessly, but the words never lost meaning. If anything it rang more and more true.
David sat in his car with a guilty feeling of relief. It seemed to him that he got away with something both physically and emotionally, and no one could say otherwise.

He drove off and as he turned the corner he could see the sun setting. For a moment the rare Seattle sunlight seemed to be crying for him, David wondered if the reason Seattle was so gray all the time was because the sun could not bear to witness all the hardship.

"The rain can just wash things off but…" Then David remembered what Patrice told him about the syllables and cut his thought short. It seemed like he was talking directly to her even though he was just crawling along the road in his beat up Mustang.

"Well this is very fitting," he mumbled to himself, proudly.

Without even knowing it, he had taken the stance that there is a blind death that comes with virtue. Not ignoring something so it would just curl up and die in the nether regions of his mind wasn’t David’s strong suit.

When he got home, David put his head on the bed breathed a sigh of relief, it was like he had not exhaled for the entire day, and all the oxygen had welled up inside him like a blocked up garden hose.

"How was your day?"

"Perfect, mom, absolutely perfect."

David closed his eyes and remembered with a distinct pleasure how comfortable he had been just a few months ago. He had been a bit skinnier while Patrice a bit thicker in her hips and butt. The scar on his right hand was bit more visible and he had recurring sinuses but aside from that there was nothing wrong. Nothing wrong was the best he could ever hope for, and definitely the best he ever got. Unfortunately in a matter of seconds the whole whimsical wonderland went to hell.

At that moment David’s memory stopped functioning, it reminded him of the Mustang he drove, and then it reminded him of nothing.