Photo by James Garcia on Unsplash
The morning light slid through the blinds, igniting their kitchen table’s wood grain in a circle, where their cat lounged. No point in scooting him off; he never left anyway. But this morning he didn’t even purr, as he usually did during breakfast. The room was so quiet she could hear the clock, echoing against the walls as if in an old Bergman movie. A passion for old movies was something she and her husband had shared. Once.
He’d always been gregarious over breakfast. Often, she watched him scan his laptop, eagerly awaiting their favorite cinema’s new calendar listing, which popped up irregularly on their website. They showed classics for five bucks each Monday night, a mandatory date for them both, until the last few weeks when he began going to bed early, painfully early.
Before, they always chatted about the pros and cons of each film, as sweet butter melted into the crevasses in her toasted muffin. They chuckled for the millionth time over Jack Lemmon in full drag, a rose in his teeth, while he danced the tango in Some Like it Hot, or Charlie Chaplin, as a hungry miner, elegantly eating his shoe in The Gold Rush.
“Do we really need to see Rebel Without a Cause for the 10th time?” she’d smile, knowing the answer.
“The film’s been cleaned up, so the car race will…” was his usual plea to revisit classics on the big screen. He’d look up from his computer, meeting her eyes. “It will really blow your hair back now,” an expression that always made her laugh. He’d pause for an answer, which she’d give, by kissing the top of his bald head to signify her willingness to go.
For least a month he’d been silent, occasionally petting their cat, but rarely addressing her. Things had been iffy in bed, even more iffy than usual. Her libido was always more intense, more dramatic than his, it’s true. But now, his hands felt lackluster on her breasts, as if he were dreaming of something else, not another woman, but something boring, like answering his email. His previously full lips had gradually moved in on themselves, becoming as thin as Errol Flynn’s pencil mustache in the Adventures of Robin Hood, and despite all, every bit as alluring.
Now, she thought with a start, I’ll follow him and find out.
As usual, he closed the kitchen door behind him in the morning light. But he didn’t slip into his rumpled sedan to go to work. Rather, he hurried round the block, his signature cap almost leaping from his head. He never runs, she thought, ever, and this titillated her. For a moment she forgot her annoyance and shared his excitement. He ran up the steps of a cottage-style home with a touch of gingerbread decorating its front porch and a gliding sofa swing inside it. It was the kind of classic loveseat a young couple sat on, singing, Going Courting, Going Courting, in an old timey movie, while mom brought out a big pitcher of lemonade. She watched from behind a large rhododendron bush, its fat buds ready to spring into action.
She was close enough to see him stretch his arms overhead in preparation for what was to come. He reached into his grey messenger’s bag and pulled out a small black book. What? It was the sort of book that didn’t exist anymore, as if from a 50’s flick, used to look up old flames; though she knew it was more likely a collection of sonnets for the class he was teaching. Poetry books are always small, right?
She studied him from the comfort of the giant bush, bent over the book in the porch swing. Her relief mingled with just a touch of jealousy for this sacred time that was his, alone. Then he looked down at the little black book in his palm and flipped it open. A spark ran through her. It was a phone she’d never seen before, so light its cover almost tore off. She’d watched villains use them in movies, before ditching them into the nearest garbage pail, so they couldn’t be traced. Am I that nosey? she thought, I’d never check his phone! But she might.
She couldn’t hear what he was saying, so edged closer, the morning dew soaking through her fleece slippers. Couldn’t someone inside the house hear him? But it looked all sealed up, soundless, shutters closed, though the mock colonial light was turned on. Was it automatic? Meant to warn intruders like her husband away?
If Marilyn Monroe was cuddling up to him on the porch swing, she might have screamed. But this looked more urgent. He was seriously arguing now, his voice rising, which wasn’t his style any more than running was. The swing moved back and forth as he spoke, in opposition to its old-fashioned appearance, more as if it was going to war. She could see him clearly, in profile, his lips pushed forward, in the focused look he used when anticipating an intense scene, like when Janet Leigh pulled back the shower curtain in Psycho. Or in calmer times, too, when he used them to mimic their cat, the two of them purring together in their usual spot of sunlight on the kitchen table.
What had been angry curiosity, drained down into her wet feet: Was he in danger? Edging closer to the porch, she used the full power of her ears, straining to hear him. “No, Susan, no, I won’t take the treatment.” Susan was his sister, a hideous woman who only wore black, but they were close. “No, I won’t tell her, I want to savor what we have.”
Wait. He’d gone off script, switched characters again, from possible adulterer to a sick, perhaps dying, husband. Her mouth hung open, so she closed it, unable to do much else. She could almost feel her arms reaching out, wrapping round him. They often snuggled that way after a moving film, like Dark Victory when Bette Davis goes blind, while digging in her flower garden, before she dies. But she froze instead, unable to enter the next scene. There was no cut, nor camera shift to move their story forward.
She was near him now, but well hidden behind the thick light pole. He paused too, as the sky brightened into full daylight. The light above her answered back by blinking off. Her husband turned, as if stung by its electricity, and spotted her instantly, standing on the grass in her wet slippers.
Is this a film Noir or Classic Romance? she wondered, when his handsome lips turned down, his familiar face wrinkled.
In her noir version, she was no longer herself in her jeans and wet slippers, nor a babe, puffing a cigarette, holding a gun. Instead, she allowed her legs to move closer to him, effectively cracking the case as Bogart’s gum shoe in the Maltese Falcon.
Her husband needed her.
Suddenly he sprung off his swing, running toward her with open arms. Because, ill or not, that’s what happens at the end a satisfying film. Though neither of them knew the ending of theirs, the camera pulled back into a wide shot, framing them, standing together by the lamppost.
She looked into his pained eyes and hit pause. Grief left her paralyzed.
Amy Cotler is a chef and writer. Her short pieces appeared in various publications, including Hinterlands, Guesthouse and Bright Flash. Before turning to creative writing, Cotler worked as food writer, cooking teacher, cookbook author and farm to table activist. Currently, she lives in Mexico. Visit her at amycotler.com.