It wasn’t so much a jump that was required – more of a slip. A fall, really. A perfectly timed fall and he would be on the tracks just as the train pulled into the station.
He could think of a dozen reasons to execute such a manoeuvre. Yet she was the only reason that had him testing the traction of his shoes on the edge of the platform.
She is sex incarnate and the whole room turns toward her to draw that conclusion for themselves. A long silk dress with a floral print navigates the curves of her body and clings to her legs as she descends the stairs. A belt balances this whole elegant show of grace, drawing dozens of eyes belonging to both men and women upward toward slender shoulders that support a neck down which drops of sweat can be seen to be running. It is sweat that ignites a fire and it can be traced backward up her neck to the base of long blonde hair that frames a face of youth and lust.
For a long moment the room is transfixed but eventually the toe-to-head examination arrives at her fedora and the bustle resumes without missing a beat, as though it had never been disrupted.
Now he was being trusted to give an opinion. He felt a strange amount of responsibility to offer sage advice that would steer her down the correct fork of the crossroads to choose. He could see that she was talented, but it was also true that…
“You’re right, Lyle. I get it. Thank you.”
She stood quickly and tore out the page of her notebook that contained her poem before handing him the notebook itself.
“Maybe now it’ll help you.”
He took it with unsettled bewilderment and watched her dart out the door, nearly bowling over another bohemian walking his dog.
He was still in a bit of shock and began to flip through the pages of the notebook. He stopped when he found a page toward the front with a sketch of a man in a tailored suit carrying a takeaway coffee cup and a bag not unlike his own. Behind the man were more men in suits that featured fewer and fewer details as the queue extended until they were little more than stick figures. At the top of the page were scratched the words “The Last March of the Lyles”.
She was gone and he could picture no future in which she would come back. The rear wheels of the pickup truck that she had driven away from him had kicked up a cloud of dust that was still settling. The sun slipped suddenly but silently behind the gentle slope that peaked behind his house as the last of the dust gently landed and rejoined the driveway from which it had been stirred. Life under the sun continued on the far side of the mountain but here on his side of the mountain the sun had set on him and him alone.
He had been fighting for some time to avoid becoming an alcoholic but it was a losing battle in the hour between dinner and sunset. Condensation was forming on the side of the wine glass and he watched it with intensity.
The heat was dry but unrelenting. Sweat forged a gentle pathway from his hairline to his eyebrow to the tip of his nose. The solitary drop hung there momentarily, suspended without support just as he had been for months. The drop finally released and fell gently to the ground after a moment that lasted three. It splashed gently on the porous brick below and evaporated immediately.
He stood and picked up the glass by the stem. The condensation was perfectly distributed around the glass, like freshly fallen snow settling on even ground.
He smashed the glass against the edge of the table and watched shards of the glass scatter – some from the force of the impact and some in the cascade of wine he had caused. He could feel blood running down his hand but his only reaction was to laugh.
He stepped forward, laughing even as he felt glass crunching below his feet. There was pain now but that meant that recovery would come next and recovery – the departure of physical pain; the pain real enough to feel – was the only bliss on which he could rely.