48-49 Years Old

‘Tell me about love,’ she said to the builder. He was round again tending to the edges of the hole he was making in her kitchen. It was through the door way now. The corridor that led to the kitchen had begun to slope into nothingness. He always seemed to be applying plaster to the edges, or smoothing the precipice. She had given up asking him about it, he never really said anything except that it was fine. Everything would be fine. ‘It’s structural,’ he usually said if she asked more insistently.

So, ‘tell me about love,’ she said instead. And he would. He would stare into the hole in her house and start talking as if the things he was saying were things he found in the hole. Some heavy objects that he would dredge out and describe to her, before he lowered them back in.
‘Love,’ he said, ‘it’s like going outside. I go outside and it feels like I just stood on a thin pane of glass, and everywhere I look there’s a huge crack I just made.’ She said it sounded horrible. ‘Can’t help that,’ he said. ‘It’s just how it feels. A million cracks with every step, but somehow I know it won’t break. ‘

‘Tell me something else about love,’ she said. ‘Had a cat once,’ he told her. He told her about when he and the cat used to just sit and he would look at what the cat was looking at. He could tell that the cat really really loved him. He felt good about it.

‘What about me?’ She said. ‘Do you love me?’ And for a long time he stared into the hole, eventually he nodded. And then when she went into the other room he considered diving into the hole in her kitchen because there would never be anything to say the way it should be said.

He got a drink for himself instead. He had a bag, you see, with a little holder for his flask. ‘I love this bag,’ he said to himself. And then, loud enough for her to hear in the other room – ‘We should see about getting a cat.’