Ill Intentions

Tony's mind wandered. He thought of all the things he usually thought of in bed when Chloe was thinking about their relationship and was about utter the words he feared. A penny for your thoughts, Tony? Did she know he hated this? That it was one of the few habits she had that honestly bothered him? Perhaps if she said something different. What's on your mind, sweetie? Anything troubling you, dear? Want to hear what I'm actually thinking about for once without making you guess, honeybunch? Ugh.

A book without pages. A rod without moments. Time in derision. Paupers and flagrent ties of nod. Spinal crouching. Diabetic seamlessness. Mine myself. In penance do I wander through mirrors. Engulfed by lessons. Singed by no one. By becomes without. Without was by becomes shudder. By and without are no longer.

Pause.

Tony was a good man. Well, a good man with some faults, but still a good man. He occasionally looked at people he knew with ill intentions. He plodded down the alleyway examining empty soda and beer cans and exhausted cigarettes. One was still smoking. He briefly considered picking it up off the wet pavement and finishing it. He stopped, staring.

At home Chloe wondered where Tony had gotten himself off to. Yes, sure, he tended to be late but this was unusual even for Tony. She considered thowing his things out into the street and letting the traffic claim them. Too much effort. Chloe decided to cross her legs and become angrier and angrier, staring at the dim television set.

Tony's occasional lapses of control, his ill thoughts of others, stemmed from his limited capacity for forgiveness. He rarely acted on these hostile feelings, though. Maybe, unconsciously, this made him drop the keys to his car somewhere in the alley on his way to Chloe's apartment. Maybe the argument they had about his job and Tony potentially returning to school for a Master's degree two months ago subconsiously grated on him. Maybe he intentionally postponed getting Chloe a gift for her birthday until she was already waiting for him to pick her up for a dinner he wasn't sure she wanted to have, during which she would turn thirty. Maybe.

The scary thing was that even now, six years later, he still had the urge to call her Kate from time to time, and he hated himself for it. THe scary thing was that he knew when he met Chloe that the only thing attracting him to her was her physical similarities to Kate. The scary thing was that he knew, he hated himself for it, but that didn't seem to change anything.

Had he called it wouldn't have made any difference. Chloe left a note on the table: "Leave the keys. Take your things. Don't come back." The horn blew a second time. Karen's car downstairs. Chloe walked to the door and took one last look at the note she had left for Tony. She thought of him unlocking the door to her apartment and finding it. Would he beg her to forgive him? His eyes. She remembered how they shone when she first met him...of all places!...in line at the DMV. Chloe walked into the kitchen, picked up the note, stuffed it into her purse and locked the apartment door behind her as he went downstairs to meet Karen, counting the number of steps as she did so.