The Watcher

40

Light and dark, dark and light. I turn on the light when I need it and turn it off when it’s time to sleep for a few hours. Then I wake up and resume. My back is against the wall, the pillows behind me. My neck is bent over the screen and my fingers curled over the keyboard.

I’m going to pay for this. That thought runs through my foggy consciousness at some point. I’m going to pay for this with neck and back problems. But neither pain nor concern for my body will stop me. Nothing can stop me. I need to finish the text. I need to understand both the woman and the man who are part of it. If that’s the last thing I do before… before that other thing that needs to be done. My fingers slow at the thought—Yes, there’s no other way forward, I see that now—and then once again they fly across those little black keys.

Then the moment arrives, and I place the final period.

I stare at the screen with dry eyes, having a hard time focusing. I ache all over and am beyond exhausted, but I’m done, finished, through. I roll my numb shoulders in circles and stretch my wrists. Then I glance at the overly cluttered nightstand next to the bed and set my computer on the floor. I have the thought that I need to carry all these cups and plates downstairs, but I’m going to lean back and close my eyes for half a minute first.

The next time I wake up, it’s because of rattling against the windowpane. The blinds are down, and at first everything feels groggy and incoherent, but then I remember and sit up straight. My text, it’s done. I pulled it off. I did it.

I spot the computer on the floor, lean down and pick it up, and scroll through the entire document, trying to muster any form of emotional reaction. But all I feel is a vast emptiness, as if an enormous explosion has occurred, a quake with its epicenter in my chest.

I turn on my phone, whose battery has died and which I haven’t bothered to plug in until now, and it immediately chimes—three texts from my sister and just as many voicemails. She goes from sympathy to worry to sarcasm. Am I sick? Or angry? Just how long am I planning to avoid her, anyway? And what about Friday, am I even planning to show up? Or are we meeting at my place this time? It would be nice if I could at least go to the trouble of telling her what the plan is.

I pick at the scab on my calf and fidget. What day is it, actually?

There’s a message from Peter, too.

He sounds a little lost, as if he had actually meant to hang up when the voicemail picked up but changed his mind at the last second.

“That didn’t go right the other day at all… I didn’t mean to just throw that out there… I understand that you’re curious. There’s a lot more I should probably say, but since you’re not picking up, it’ll have to be like this instead…”

I finger the phone.

“I see everything so clearly now. Please come home. Let me make you dinner or… well, at least agree to meet me for coffee.”

Then there’s a rustling on the other end, and the quality of Peter’s voice changes.

“Elena, what I actually wanted to say is that I love you, always have, always will.”

I can almost see him in front of me. His beautiful face with the slightly crooked nose, how the corner of his mouth twitches in that particular way when he has something important to say. Then he’s gone, and the message is over. I press the phone to my face.

“I love you, too,” I murmur.

Scarcely an hour later, I’ve taken a shower and located my printer in one of the moving boxes in the living room. I return to the bedroom, dry my hair, and put on clean clothes. It feels like I just shed my skin. In a way that’s exactly what I’ve done, peeled off the old and allowed what was hidden beneath the surface to emerge.

It takes a while to install the printer, but eventually I succeed. I open the file with my text, hit print, and watch while the paper starts feeding into the machine. One by one, the pages land in the tray, warm and upside down. While I wait, I listen to Peter’s message again.

Please come home.

I love you, always have, always will.

The printer has stopped, and I squat down, set down my phone, and pick up the stack of printed pages. I sit down on the floor, lean my back against the bed, and start from the beginning. I need to do a read-through, just one, before it’s time to proceed.

When I’ve made it about a third of the way through the text, I become aware of a sound down by the front door. A knock? Maybe. I ignore it and keep reading. After a while, the stairs creak. I don’t react now, either. Only when I clearly hear footsteps do I stop reading. They are coming closer. They come through the door and walk across the floor, over to the bed where I’m sitting. They move neither quickly nor slowly, those footsteps. They have an objective, but they’re not in a hurry. It could be a frightening experience, someone coming toward me, but it isn’t, because I know who it is.

I look up. And there we are face-to-face, yet again, my sister and I.