Waving Not Drowning

They set up a skype date so they could discuss their next move. With the time change and opposite schedules getting an actual conversation happening was more convoluted than string theory. So ridiculously complicated. By the time Alistair is home from work Zara is fast asleep. On days when Z is up at the crack of dawn, it's 3 am Al's time but he's either a few glasses into his wine and poring over a script or exhausted and too stressed to sleep. God forbid he's entertaining company.  It took a while but Z knows nothing good comes from late night-early morning texting or phone calls. If he's up and sees her online he can call her, thank you very much. The last thing she needs is to skype him and see some other woman tangled up in his sheets over his shoulder. Sheets she bought and broke in with him on Easter weekend last spring. What a difference four months makes. His contract got picked up and the work is pouring in. It's biblical in scope. Work begets work beg...

It's called the playroom. Mike has no idea why, it's not like there's any playing going on down here nowadays. Mike's mom is burying herself in stuff. Since dad died she's flat out refused to deal with the reams of paper and magazines, decades of dad's old journals, mail order catalogues, piles of tools, stacks of books and three full sets of outdated encyclopedias. At some point, she went on a christmas decoration buying binge, so there are random rubbermaid bins spilling over with garland, plastic reindeer, wooden creches,  half cracked blown glass ornaments and fibreoptic glow in the dark mini wreaths. It's beyond Mike's scope. He knows she needs help, a professional organizer or something, he's seen some shows on tv. They bring in someone to help you get everything sorted and cleared out. Then inevitably, the poor person ends up buried alive in the same junk months later. It's all so depressing. Mike's first drumkit, which she and dad bou...

Jennifer lies. She lies like a rug, like a third grade student with stained purple fingers and blue tinged teeth who claims she did not eat that blueberry pie. That deep dish, warm from the oven, baked fresh for Mother's bridge night pie. Yet Jennifer's not in the third grade. She is a grown woman, married to a grown man, mother to an eight year old son, minder of one dog, three fish and a hamster. She is high functioning, relatively happy, decidedly well off and in above average health. Her hobbies include yoga and pilates, the occasional spin class, a monthly book club and improv comedy on Tuesday evenings with 11 other women. She has a BA, a Master's Degree and could have been a lawyer but she chooses to stay at home with her son instead. And she lies. As well as being an upper middle class overly educated mother, wife and social butterfly, Jennifer has a secret. She hides this from everyone. Her family, her friends. It gives her an air of mystery, untouchable-ness. She ...

He was at her door. Oh god that was quick. Gimme ten, she texted. He had been down the road, three blocks  away. She hadn't showered, it was that kind of day. Four in the afternoon and she was rolling around in lulus. It had been months since they'd seen each other, let alone spoken. They'd been intimate in ways well beyond lovers and friends. It was easy, always had been, perhaps because they both knew the limitations. Unavailable to each other in ways they couldn't shift, they created a new world just for them. Months grew into years, and their new world succumbed to old world ways, the cyclical pattern of lust, love, despair, and death until it eventually flamed out. Now here he was at her door and she could feel the atmosphere shift. Barometer rising. Resurrection. The smell of him, the way his hand feels in hers, how their bodies interlock in embrace. That moment. All it takes is a moment and she's back in the rabbit hole, somersaulting, cartwheeling through, s...

Perspective is a choice. It doesn't matter how many times she tells herself this, how many affirmations she tapes to the wall next to the bathroom sink, her sense of perspective left the building long ago. She's been in the weeds for months. A dark, black hole of despair curdled with anger and deep, bewildering sadness. A slow processor. Jessie's friends are tired and wary. Let it go, move on, you're better off. Breathe. As if. Suddenly single with 2 small kids after thirteen years as Someone's Person rocked her sense of self, shattering her foundation. Pat didn't love her. He was playing at marriage with kids. He felt nothing but disappointment. Jess could fill tomes dedicated to disappointment, entire libraries. Risperdal took the edge off but she couldn't be high and keep it together for the girls. Grandparents, daycare, long runs on the seawall, primal screams in old growth forest, these consume her. She is too late. She missed her chance. Moments of sel...

I should probably go. He gently unbinds his limbs from hers, elevates himself up and over to the side of the bed. Her fingers trace the length of his spine. She imagines her hand leaving an imprint visible only when their bodies interlock. A secret branding. His fingers come to rest in the crease where her hip portrudes like a handle. Grab on. He gives a quick squeeze, no more than a pulse, then starts to dress. She can tell by the set of his shoulders, the turn of his head that he's already gone. They are unaccustomed to being seen, known, revealed. She draws herself up to match his height, drapes herself across his body from behind, clasping her hands over his heart. For a moment they fuse into each other's skin, their breath aligned, tempted to begin again. Her head falls into the curve of his neck. The air changes between them. I have to go. What transpires in that ephemeral communion between two lovers, what causes the incremental shift of tectonic plates to slide out of b...

Every five minutes Robin pops off the couch, dumping the sleeping cat from her lap and opens her apartment door, pads sock footed down the hall and wrestles with the lock on the main door to the old three story Victorian. Somehow the landlord managed to install the deadbolt backwards and upside down. After seven years Robin still struggles with unlocking it on the first try. It's a blistering cold spring day, minus fourteen with windchill. Sliding her hand through the double doors to root around in the oversized mailbox, she was mining for gold, some magic money in the form of a forgotten insurance claim or belated birthday cheque. One last payout. It's been three weeks since her last cheque and all her bills were past due.Who knew 6 months of EI would evaporate so quickly? It seems like yesterday Phil called her into his office. Apparently Robin's presence was making the rest of the office uncomfortable. It would be best for everyone involved if she left, no hard feelings,...