The Ticket

  She felt like a child sitting across from him, moving only to sip her tea in mimetic form to his beer, a movement, at this point, he would not notice.  He was on his fourth, four was lethargy, and six was belligerence. She still had time to change her mind, as she always had.  The ticket was in his pocket and the slip of paper was on the table; she had an eye on both while she sat watching him.  He picked up the paper yet again and took the ticket out of his pocket, looked at both, grinned, and replaced each to its former location.

  “Beer!”

  She made her way quickly to the kitchen to fetch his beer.  She was dutiful about it; she needed to be, about the beer, the food, and his ticket, especially about his ticket.  Every morning she wrote down his numbers anew on a slip of paper, though they never changed and she knew them well, and she would walk to the corner convenience store to buy the ticket, and walk that ticket home and place it on the counter.  Every night she would walk in the other direction to the old pizza shop, where an even older man sat behind the counter watching a black and white television, and she would wait for the numbers to be called which she would carefully write down on paper, and walk that paper home and place it next to the ticket.  When her husband came home he would compare the paper and the ticket.  Was it her fault that the beer was warm because he had failed to give her money for the electric bill, or the food cold because he failed to tell her he would be late, or the numbers wrong because he failed to marry a sufficiently lucky woman?

  Tonight was different.  He compared the numbers and his ticket, compared them again, and smiled, at her, and for a moment she remembered the man and her resolve wavered.  Just as abruptly, though, he turned away to his cell phone.  She did not have to ask about the smile or everyone he talked to for the next hour, not because she already knew, but rather that she had long ago fallen from any partnership she might have thought she had with him.  There was no such partnership.  He was the pinnacle, and he was quick to evince that point with words or fist to those who would listen, and to those who would not.  By the time he was done dinner was cold, but tonight was different, and he finished his meal in silence, only culminated it with, “Beer!”

  She placed the beer on the end table next to the empties and the piece of paper.  There was still time.  He snatched the bottle before her hand had left it and she retreated to her chair and her tea.

  Perhaps she was too persnickety about her marriage.  She had built it on her adoration of a man and the devout following of her childhood ideal, but by what right did she have to hold either vision up to her mind’s eye?  Over time both collapsed under his captious words.  As a child she would often stack up blocks and other toys into precarious structures, of which she would defend intensely against any outside influences, but which she would eventually destroy herself by crumbling a newspaper page into a tight ball and tossing it at her creation.  At one time she had believed that she could build her life in the same way out of hope, love, and prayer, and she could defend it as she had as a child, but as time went on she found that she could not do hope and love alone, and prayer — oh, how she missed Sundays — she no longer believed God could hear her from this neighborhood.  Intent, even great intent, would not protect her bricolage, any more than concealer would hide her turgid cheek.

  “Beer!”

  He grabbed the beer from her before she could set it down.  She began to collect the empty bottles from the table, her alate hand gliding in only far enough to pick up a bottle, then recoiling to her chest where she held them with her other arm.  The last empty was by the slip of paper, but as she reached for it he swung his arm out as if he were swatting at an insect and knocked the bottle from the table.  She was not startled by his action and didn’t flinch.  She was long numb to it, at first in defiance, and now in futility.  She picked up the bottle and tucked it in her arm, walked to the kitchen and deposited the bottles one at a time into the trash bag, and just as methodically put on her coat and fastened each clasp.  She took the open trash bag and left the house through the back door, not closing either, and walked around the house to the trash cans at the curb.  Under the halo of the streetlight she pulled off a lid and dropped the bag in the direction of the can, missed, and let the lid fall to the pavement.

  She didn’t look back at the house; she had seen the shadows on her way to the curb.  An hour of phone calls and more had come en masse to discuss friendship and position.  Instead she pulled up her collar to the chill on her neck, thrust her hands into her pockets and began to walk, not to ticket or numbers, but away.  She felt a piece of paper in her pocket, the numbers that were called tonight.  She continued to walk as she crumbled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it to the ground.



(word count = 973, all words used).
Written for: "Hawk's Vocabulary Extravaganza" , Feb 2012.
Prompt: Captious  Devout    Lethargy  Persnickety  Alate  Bricolage  En masse  Evince  Mimetic  Turgid