Gold Digger – Story 21 – THE WOMAN

I found myself walking toward D’s building.

Not accidentally.

Let’s not be ridiculous.

I knew exactly where I was going.

I just hadn’t decided what I was going to do when I got there.

There is a difference.

I think.

I wasn’t wearing the black dress.

Wasn’t performing anything.

Just coat, jeans, the key in my pocket, and the specific ordinary version of myself that doesn’t have a plan.

I was half a street away when the door opened.

D came out.

Not alone.

A young woman beside him – early twenties, dark hair, the kind of easy beautiful that doesn’t require effort. Laughing at something he’d said. Close in the way people are close when they’re completely comfortable.

He said something else.

She laughed again.

They went inside.

The door closed.

I stood on the pavement.

A man with a dog walked past.

Then walked past again.

That felt like information.

Here is what I thought.

Of course.

Of course he has a life.

Of course there are women in it who are young and beautiful.

Of course there are women who laugh easily when he talks.

Of course there are women who don’t arrive with spreadsheets and leave before the coffee is made.

He doesn’t owe me anything.

He has never owed me anything.

I knew that.

I turned around and walked home.

I made tea.

Tidied the counter.

Opened the spreadsheet.

Richard. Green.

Noah. Yellow trending green.

D’s row.

Doesn’t exist.

The plan intact.

The system functioning.

Everything exactly where it’s supposed to be.

I closed the laptop.

I don’t know when it started.

That’s the honest version.

One moment I was standing at the counter with my coat still on and the key still in my pocket and the next I was on the kitchen floor and something had come loose that I didn’t know was held together and I was crying in the specific ugly way that has nothing to do with looking sad and everything to do with something breaking that you didn’t know was under pressure.

I wasn’t crying about the woman.

I knew that immediately.

I wasn’t even crying about D.

Which left a much more difficult question.

Something I’d been successfully avoiding for so long I’d started mistaking the avoidance for resolution.

Something that had apparently been sitting very quietly in a room I’d locked and decided not to visit and had finally – in a coat on a kitchen floor on an ordinary afternoon – run out of patience.

I sat there for a long time.

The tiles were cold.

I didn’t move.

At some point the tea went cold too.

Just sat there with my back against the cabinet while something I couldn’t name finished doing what it was doing.

Then I stopped.

The way you stop.

Not because it was resolved.

Just because the body runs out eventually.

I got up.

Washed my face.

Left the key on the counter.

Didn’t look at the spreadsheet.

Went to bed.

Spreadsheet status: 

Richard → active. 

Noah → active.

 D → [row does not exist]

 The plan is intact. operator status: compromised. I don’t know what about exactly. that might be the whole problem. – Mila