“I love you” she said.
What does that mean? Whispered the voice in her ear.
He stood looking at her, blandly, pleasantly.
What did you mean by that? It whispered again.
She searched his face for an answer.
What does he think you mean by that?
She wondered if she was doing this for effect. Maybe by saying it, she might understand what it meant. By his reaction. But where’s the reaction?
In the corner of the room, a small, hard and unripened green orange rolled bead-like across the linoleum-tiled floor; dropping, as it did, from a potted orange plant. Green Oranges. A green orange. It didn’t make much sense, and what was it doing there anyway? Who has an orange tree in their house? She did, apparently. No wonder they were green.
She was getting distracted again. But why was he still standing there, glossy and pleasant, without comment? Maybe she’d said it in her head, and not out loud. She avoided his eyes.
Oh. What now. Her head throbbed slightly and she decided to turn the thermostat down, began pottering.
“I think I’ll make a cup of tea, do you want one?”
Slowly, he shifted his weight and, sighing into the room, responded. It was a bland sort of negative response into which he injected a positive intonation. He’d just had tea. No Thanks.
She did not really want one anymore, somehow. Perhaps she never had, and she backed out by telling him she had probably had too much caffeine today, anyway.
“Herbal Tea?”
“Yes, I suppose I could do…” An excuse to continue pottering had occurred; she obeyed his suggestion.
He asked her what her plans for the day were.
She "hadn’t thought about it."
She’d hoped to spend it with him. Or, at least, her plan for the day seemed, in retrospect, to have been this moment. She had been waiting to see him, but had she said it?
“I might go to visit some friends later,” she lied.
She paused in the silence, squeezing her peppermint tea bag with her fingers, before asking him what his plans were.
“Not sure, yet. Nothing really. Just thought I’d pop in and say hello, as I was about today.”
She felt the room expanding, felt the walls floating off, and decided it was a good idea to catch his eye, and the walls, and smile.
I don’t think you do like him that much. He always looks so blank – how can you penetrate that smile – how can you ever know someone like that? It whispered.
Maybe she had whispered that bit, because his expression changed as if he’d heard her. He had sat down on the sofa, and now he pushed himself over, reaching out an arm for her to join him.
She walked over gladly, with teacup; felt doubt as she settled herself awkwardly into the crook of his arm, placed her cup down on the low table, turned to face him. She kissed him back all the same. He looked in her eyes and pushed back a strand of her hair, his arm still supporting her awkward posture. He could pierce her, but he gave nothing of himself away.
Then he said ‘You’re lovely’. Or was it, ‘I think you’re lovely’, or ‘I love you’, or ‘hey lovely’, or, what?
She could have said:
But why did you not say that earlier, why did you refuse tea, why didn’t you show me that in your face if its true, how did I not know, then- and why did you ask me what my plans were today when I thought we were spending the afternoon together, if I am lovely or loved or whatever it was…
Instead of these words, she pulled herself upright and supported her own back to lean forwards and curl fingers around her cup. She turned back to him, to those direct and piercing eyes which looked straight at her, to those eyes which she couldn’t get past. She smiled reassuringly at them. She wished she could climb into those glassy eyes. He smiled back at her.
She told him that it wasn’t going to work; there was a lot on, things were complicated, confused, there were plans to go away, the place was wrong. He frowned, and then looked deeper into her gaze, which she tried hard to hold.
She realised his eyes were sad. For a moment she could see him, and then he looked away and out of the window, and there found his response. He said ‘right’, in an unbearably blank, pleasant way; and when he said ‘yeah’ a second later she felt both words thud through her.
But is he upset? The voice whispered
or annoyed? or pleased?...
He left, kissing her on the cheek and smiling again. A sad smile? His eyes pierced her, but they were switched off.
Later that evening, she sat in her friend’s kitchenette, listening to the sounds of speech murlurble about her, but not paying attention to the words they made. She made encouraging noises back, and looked out onto the street, at the blinking Christmas lights reflected into the window opposite.
She was water-proof, opaque, glassy; she was solid. Shards sparkled on the linoleum. Flickered in the blinking lights.
She wondered what he had felt outside the window earlier. He must have felt something. And she tried to let the pangs of doubt wash over her.
