metastatic.
(It was more green than blue, but then memories are what they are. Could have been the other way round. There was definitely a waterfall in the distance and a fair amount of insecurity. Location — to begin with, and reason for being there. Pleasure, though, there was some — if I’m not mistaken.)
I said, “She’s falling back on her payment. Also, she’s stage four, she’s dying. ‘Metastatic,’ according to Doctor Kowalski.”
This was on the phone. I was supine on the couch in the apartment we once used to share, sipping a drink from a crystal tumbler. You were in a hotel room three time zones to the west, doing some sort of business, never knew what your business was exactly.
(Do you think you can hear each drop of water in a waterfall? I was trying to catch every single one out. Not sure I succeeded. You looked impatient, I wasn’t sure that was the best use of my time.)
“How can you bring her not keeping up with her mortgage and her dying in the same sentence?” you said.
My upper lip touched an ice cube — a welcome diversion. My eyebrows arched, irrespective of your question.
“No connection, really,” I said and added, “Trying to save time on the long distance call, perhaps.”
(That waterfall was a tourist attraction, with all the safety provisions in place. Ropes to hold on to, safe paths to walk along. Yet there was that sense of danger, tiny as it might have been, of getting lost in the colours and the noise. Of not finding your way back to a secure place. I might have been imagining things, though.)
“She’ll pull through and pay for the house. Trust me she will,” you said.
(You were not there at the waterfall, I remembered all of a sudden. But someone was — very much like you.)
“All, right, I love you too,” I said and hung up.
