Kamyn Asher
THE BATHROOM DOOR swings open, bringing with it a wave of incomprehensible voices, breaking glass, and distant sirens, which blare at a distinctly different cadence and pitch than back home; Mieka’s heart beats, adrenaline pulses through her body: she’s alive. Alive. The last time she felt this alive she was close to death.
Mieka can’t stop replaying the scene from minutes before, marveling at the ease in which the mundane task of buying an overpriced, mediocre prepackaged convenience store sandwich could turn into the opening scene from Pulp Fiction. She’d been frozen to the spot, not out of fear, but out of astonishment. If it hadn’t been for the cashier, whose hospitality grew exponentially when faced with the imminent possibility of death, she’d still be out in the fray of an Italian robbery. Instead, she’d stumbled behind the lanky and surly newly post-pubescent, into the sterile yet grungy men’s restroom, where Oliver was still hunched over the toilet in one of the two stalls.
Now she and Oliver stand, legs jig sawed on top of the toilet seat, facing each other. Sweat dribbles down Oliver’s legs, repulsive as it pinballs through the wiry hairs. Despite the years and her well-practiced denial, she hasn’t been able to overcome her distaste for the sheer amount of body hair that covers Oliver. His salmon Vineyard Vines shorts clash with the red metal bathroom stall and she wishes he’d worn khakis.
She compresses to the side, peering underneath the door as brown scuffed boots come into view. She is disappointed. They’re underwhelming as robber’s footwear goes, nondescript – could belong to anyone, like to the man who moments ago had suggested she take the chicken wraps over the tuna.
She presses a finger to her lips. But Oliver hasn’t moved, except for his fingers, which massage his temples as though he’s deep in one of his spiritual contemplations.
OLIVER SHOULDN’T have had so much to drink last night because then they wouldn’t have had to pull over so he could vomit. But there was something unconscionable about leaving a bottle of Amarone half drunk. Chunks of last night’s pasta bolognese Jackson Pollock the toilet bowl between their feet: there was no time to flush before the robber’s entrance and now the smell of regurgitated remains threaten a repeat offense.
Despite the circumstance, he still can’t stop thinking about the waitress from the restaurant, the way her blouse billowed around her chest and her lips simpered when he tried to pronounce cacio e pepe. She’d reminded him of Shannon, from the trendy cafe near the office, the way her lips folded around cappuccino as she repeated his order.
When the shoes stop outside the stall door time slows down so much that Oliver can actually feel the individual molecules of oxygen coalesce in his nasal passage, an invisible barrier congesting the flow of air, which makes him reassess if he is still a little drunk.
His leg, twisted at an odd position to keep perched, cramps. He’s not as fit as he used to be, although no one ever called him fit, even in his prime. He’s always had a soft spot for late night popcorn chicken – late night because Mieka never approved of eating anything that could be made in under 5 minutes, so he’s been forced to hide his pleasure between 1am and 3am. He’d appreciated her dedication to cooking from scratch when they’d started dating, but the years had bled the novelty from home cooked meals and more than ever he just wanted to microwave mac n’ cheese and eat it from the cardboard tray without dirtying one dish.
He can feel heat from Mieka’s legs, even though she holds herself at a strange angle to avoid touching him. The absence of physical contact in their marriage now may be a matter of life and death. He tries to move his leg, slide his foot around in the small space, anything to keep the seizing pins and needles from taking over while also maintaining the unspoken boundary between them.
WHEN SHE catches his eye he smiles – flirtatiously. Anger fiddles with her heart; she can’t believe he’s waited until now to turn that smile on her. That smile that he’s turned on every young woman he encounters. The waitress at dinner last night. The bagger with side bangs back home at the CO-OP. That smile he has refused her since – It’s the smile he gives when he knows he has nothing to lose.
Yet the anger fills her body with an arousal that finds purchase in parts of her she forgot were hers. Her lips quiver. Her pelvic floor contracts. Her ribs spread. And when she finds Oliver’s face again, she is tempted to bite her lip for him.
She feels larger than she has in years, only now she’s confined, forced to stand here taught and waiting with the fraying ends of time warping around her. It’s too silent. A robbery should be loud, a dance of chaos and grace, a moment of heroics set against a dynamic soundtrack.
Glancing down, she sees Oliver slowly inching his foot closer to hers in a strangely crippled game of footsy. The motion negates any previous opening of her heart. It reminds her of all the ways he’s failed in the simplest of tasks before. She wants to back away; just standing so close to Oliver is more intimate than they’ve been since the final miscarriage and her subsequent spiral, but there is no room in the small prison of their stall and as she returns her gaze to the brown shoes outside the red metal door, she goes to shift her foot, but she isn’t looking, isn’t careful, isn’t practical. And she falls.
OLIVER IS TOO slow or too ambivalent to catch Mieka as she tumbles.
Her hands open and close like a fish freshly pulled from water as her feet slip, one sloshing into the toilet bowl and then she’s all sharp angels on the floor. The brown shoes that have been idling outside the door finally move.
The door jiggles.
Oliver feels foolish quite often, but this is a different type of hopeful foolishness that takes hold as he wills the small metal lock on the door to hold. And it does. Oliver sifts through combinations and permutations of his own story: hero, villain, fool, coward. Each scenario, a series of micro decisions leading to a macro outcome, the sheer volume of choice paralyzing.
A half-hearted, molding ache to protect Mieka bubbles up, unexpected but not entirely unwelcome. He’s tried not to blame Mieka for the sterile routine of their life, so different from the technicolor dreams they’d had, transforming life from impressionist to realist. But this moment feels like a schism in their timeline, the universe giving him a chance to bring her back, to truly save her despite the cruelness of the past.
Then the door is shoved again; this time the lock does not hold.
DISORIENTED, MIEKA almost isn’t quick enough to avoid the unexpected thrust of the door. But she manages to push herself up on a busted elbow and slide back behind it. The brown shoes move inwards as she scrunches up her legs. Pain erupts from a twisted limb.
Oliver makes a disjointed movement, obscured by the now open stall door. From this position she can see slightly more of the robber peeking under the gap, dark trousers tucked into dark socks. Resentful and helpless she watches the back half of Oliver, trying to decipher his familiar movements that have turned foreign.
THE INTRUDER IS too pretty to be a criminal with a halo of curly brown hair overflowing behind a headband, piercing walnut eyes, and a sharp nose. She doesn’t even have the good sense to wear a mask. Their eyes meet and Oliver feels the jolt of arousal preclude any Mieka-related desire. He used to feel the snaking emptiness of shame at the wanting for other women, but now he’s just grateful that he still has capacity to feel. The woman’s eyes dissect him, and it takes a moment before he realizes she’s holding a small handgun. It’s pointed at him of all people.
She won’t use the weapon, thinks Oliver. She’s too pretty – that thought again – as though he can’t harmonize her beauty with the ugliness of the situation she’s responsible for. He used to think there was nothing more beautiful than the sharpness of Mieka’s cheekbones and the quickness of her tongue; until now he hasn’t entertained the fact that he has fallen out of love, which surprises him. While her cheekbones haven’t changed, her tongue has grown softer, fatter, less biting. She’s stopped caring and he is tired, exhausted really, from being the only one caring if she lives or dies: it’s too much to shoulder the worth of her life for the both of them.
The robber steps in closer, the gun pointed at his hips. She utters something in Italian and nods her head in the direction of Mieka, whose feet peek out from underneath the door. She repeats it louder when he doesn’t respond. He raises his hands, the universal sign of surrender. She doesn’t lower her weapon, but her hands slacken minutely around the barrel.
“I’m going to get down,” Oliver says. He wishes he could modulate his voice so that it sounded lusher instead of husky from the stale bathroom air and vomit. She bounces back rigidly as though he’s pulled a weapon. “I’m going to get down,” he repeats, this time trying to mime the motion while keeping his hands in the air. He isn’t quick enough to formulate a plan but there’s a magnetism about this other woman if only he can convince her he isn’t a threat. He could leave the pain of his past on the floor of this bathroom. But that isn’t fair to Mieka. Life isn’t fair.
The robber appears to understand his intention and ever so slightly lowers her weapon. It’s not much, but it’s enough for Oliver. He takes a breath and makes a choice.
She can’t see the robber, but she sees Oliver lift his hands. He speaks. He doesn’t look at her. The tension inside her coils; her moment is coming. As he starts to lower his hands she springs, pushes hard on the open door, throwing her whole body into it, imagining the grotesque robber on the other side of the door crumbling under the impact.
Two things happen: one, there is a very loud pop, and two, Oliver falls.
OLIVER HAS never imagined his own death. He’s imagined Mieka’s – many times. She courted death like an annual visitor and so there had never been any room in their relationship to imagine his own end. If he had contemplated his own death, he would’ve felt most inclined to drown since it was clean and simple and no one would find you with blood dripping down your wrists staining the tub so thoroughly that there would always be an off-color splotch to the left of the drain that no amount of elbow grease could remove.
He opens his eyes to see Mieka looking over him, and he’s caught back in time staring at the face that stole his heart. But then the world flashes in fast-forward and he sees the wrinkles around her eyes and the two black hairs protruding from her upper lip and the soft droop of skin that hangs from her neck and he reaches out, if only to touch her for a final time.
AT FIRST, Mieka is relieved. The robber is now safely isolated on the other side of the door. But the relief is quickly overcome by a strange anticipation. She sees Oliver fall, sees the blood start to clot on his shirt. So much blood. Blood has never made her squeamish but watching the white turn red makes her head spin and stomach clench. She can feel the sensation of her own blood: once pouring from between her legs, once trickling from her wrists down her fingers. And all the other times.
She looks at Oliver; his face is composed and still while his eyes dart searching for focus. He tries to reach out to her but only manages a limp motion that reminds her of fish on the line resigned to its fate. She imagines this as his long overdue apology. Not just for this moment, the whole of it. The life they never got back.
HE SEARCHES for an apology to give, surely he must be sorry for something, for everything. But he just keeps looking at the age-spotted familiar face and wishing that it were the pretty robber’s face that was creased in desperation. If he squints Mieka’s structured face blurs into the delicacy of the woman who moments before shot him. He sighs.
All this trying to repair what they had. It never crossed his mind that it’s been too late to save it. They’ve both lost too much blood attempting to try.
OLIVER IS smiling, so boyishly it cracks something inside her. It’s a smile she’d envisioned on their son. Sons. She caresses Oliver’s forehead, admiring the way life has failed to transform his face. It’s a wonder she didn’t see it before. For just a moment their divergent paths seem to converge over the pool of blood, both hers and his, past and present. Death as the final thread that connects them.
“Oliver?” His eyes settle on hers and she feels like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff about to jump. In the best way. She realizes it’s the joy of being surprised by her own ending.
Kamyn Asher is a writer and editor living in Amsterdam. She’s had short stories and flash fiction published in Bone Parade and The Genre Society.
