What He's Poised to Do

The exit to her office sets her thinking about work. The day before had been the Friday before a Monday that will contain her biggest meeting in months. The Monday meeting was the main reason she could not sleep, even after sex. Her firm is fighting an injunction that would halt construction on a large office park in a subdivision called Potter Grove. The advocates who have filed the injunction are arguing that the construction would most likely pollute a nearby aquifer. The lawyers in her office are trying to get a judge to lift the injunction by arguing that one of the other attorneys is out of jurisdiction, and tracing that attorney’s history has fallen to Sophie and her staff of paralegals. Every detail has to be in place. When, that morning, Joe had started complaining that he did not feel motivated in his own life, that he felt as though he were stalling, she had given him a hug when what she really wanted to do was to push him against the wall. While she hugged him, she noticed that it was harder than ever to reach all the way around him. Maybe he had gained weight. She marked off the distance from him. What would happen next?

Suddenly she remembers the dream she had the night before, when she was stretched out alongside Joe, wondering if she would ever sleep again, backtracking over the sex that had just concluded. At some point, she had answered most of her questions or decided that they could not be answered, and she had remembered that there was at least a little pleasure in it for her. She had squeezed her hand between her legs and then relaxed into sleep, where she had dreamed about Peter. He was a judge, and he was presiding over her life. He was deciding which man deserved her, and what music she should listen to, and whether she needed to work fourteen-hour days, and whether she should have a child. He made his opinions known in writing, behind elaborate wax seals. She was angry at first, and then relieved. Why not put your future in the hands of someone you trust? Toward the end of the dream, issues of jurisdiction returned, but they were blurry.

She is tired in the car. She has been tired all morning. She has never been more tired. While she was making coffee, she had almost put her hand in the machine. Joe does not know she is tired. How would he? The rattling noise, which is usually annoying, is putting her to sleep. In the car she has another kind of dream. It lasts only a second, and then she is back awake, worried that she has missed the turnoff for her mother’s house. The radio isn’t playing Billie Holiday anymore. It’s playing Smokey Robinson. The song is called “Swept for You Baby,” and though she does not remember ever hearing it before, she finds herself singing along. She makes a mental note to tell Peter, and then another mental note that she does not tell Peter anything anymore. It is nothing she can tell Joe. Maybe she will tell her mother. The rattling noise is putting her to sleep again. The sun is in her eyes. Her back itches and she resolves to scratch it the next time the car comes to rest at a stop sign or a red light.

The next time the car comes to rest, it is not at a stop sign or a red light. What are some of the other choices? It is overturned. Sophie is out on the road under the hood. Inertia has brought her there. Broken glass is spread around like rhythm. A bone comes through her arm. An artery in her thigh is laid open for all the world to see. “Look at my blood!” she wants to say. It is healthy blood, and it is running out. Time is running out with it. She is growing lighter than air. She has a sudden urge to weigh herself.

THE GOVINDAN ANANTHANARAYANAN ACADEMY FOR MORAL AND ETHICAL PRACTICE AND THE TREATMENT OF SADNESS RESULTING FROM THE MISAPPLICATION OF THE ABOVE (Australindia, 1921)