I kissed her goodnight and carried the wrong thing away with me.
Anger was louder than sad. Fear was louder. The wounded thing that lived in the basement of my pride was loudest of all. I went to my room carrying all of it like a weapon, which is the only way I know how to describe it now.
Elena came to bed around eleven. She smelled like soap and something sterile and sharp that I did not have a name for yet, something that reminded me of a doctor’s office. She asked if I had taken my sleeping pill. I said yes. In the bathroom I turned on the tap, let the water run, and spit the pill into the sink. I put the wet tablet in my pajama pocket. Then I went back to bed, turned onto my side away from her, and made my breathing heavy and deliberate.
She did not sleep either. I could feel it in the particular quality of the stillness beside me, the kind of stillness that is not rest but waiting. Her breathing was too careful. She was listening for something.
At thirteen minutes past one in the morning, the bedroom door opened.
A strip of hallway light moved across the floor. A man stepped inside carrying a narrow black case in one hand. He moved through the room with the quiet confidence of someone who knew the route. He closed the door behind him without letting it click. He did not come to my side of the bed. He went directly to Elena.
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
He bent toward her and said in a low voice that it would only take a minute.
Elena’s eyes squeezed shut.
Then came sounds I could not at that moment interpret correctly: a quiet snap, like latex, a metallic click as the case opened, a clean sterile smell that had no business existing in a dark bedroom. I lay there frozen for another three seconds with my whole body coiled and my brain still running several seconds behind what I was seeing.
