Melting Away, Slowly... Pt. 01

"No," I said, rather flatly.

Then Martha saw her list lying face down on the floor and picked it up.

"Darn, my list must have blown off the counter. When are you going shopping again?" was her next question.

"Probably not until early next week," I replied, vague about the actual timing.

"I need a couple of these things before the weekend," she sighed, "I guess I'll have to go to the drug store at lunch or on my way home and pick them up."

I solemnly nodded my head in agreement. Yes, indeed. From now on, if she wanted things that were strictly for her, she would have to get them herself.

I suppose that Martha told me all about her day, and gave me her standard litany of complaints about her department, the Vice-President, the work-load, and whatever. I wasn't really paying attention, and when I finished my dinner, I got up from the table and began to clean my plates and silverware off and put them into the dishwasher.

Martha was looking at me with a shocked expression on her face, as I walked out of the kitchen and back to my office. I suspect that she knew I hadn't been paying any attention to her during dinner, and now, instead of waiting for her to finish dinner and working together to clean up, I had just taken care of myself, and left.

I had booted up my computer and was checking my email, and the schedules that would be posted by now for the coming school semester. There were no surprises in my classes, no last minute changes or cancellations, so I was content.

Just for the hell of it, I got on to the general class schedule and looked up "Beginning Ballroom Dancing", noted that it was held Tuesday and Thursday evening from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, and the instructor was listed as 'Williamson', under the P.E. department.

After thinking about it for a second or two, I went to the registration section of the site, and signed myself up to 'audit' P.E. 160, Beginning Ballroom Dancing. As an instructor, taking classes was one of the 'free' benefits, and this was the first time since I'd started that I actually indulged.

The thought of taking a class with Stephanie sounded like it might be fun.

Logging off my computer for the time being, a book beckoned me, a mystery that I'd been meaning to read for some time. With an evening to kill, I picked it up, turned the reading light on above my favorite chair, and settled in, intending to spend the evening with a good book.

Almost as soon as I had gotten into the chair, Martha poked her head into the office.

"Mark, honey," she started.

My immediate thought, hearing the 'honey' in her sentence was, 'What does she want now.'

"The sink in my bathroom is draining very slowly. Could you take a look at it?" she asked, and then turned and walked away without even waiting for an answer.

Still a creature of habit, I got up from my chair, and wandered into the bathroom in my son's old room (AKA 'her' room). I turned on the hot water full force, and very quickly saw that it was indeed backing up. I could guess at what the problem was: women's hair in the sink, combined with the soap residue and toothpaste; all of the wonderful gunky substances that we put down a sink, that inevitably form clogs in drains. So I could either do a quick, short-term fix on it, putting one of the drain cleaners down the sink to chemically clean it, or I could do the job properly and take apart the gas trap plumbing below the sink, and clean it out by hand.

I turned to go and get my tools, when a thought struck me. This wasn't a plumbing problem that affected either me, my bathroom or the whole house. It was just Martha's problem. I walked back out of the bathroom, headed out towards the hall, and my office.

Then I saw it sitting on the chest-of-drawers that Martha used in the bedroom — the box with the $2,500 diamond pendant in it, the one that I had purchased as a Christmas gift, which Martha told me I ought to take back and get my money back on. I walked over, picked up the box, and slipped it into my pocket, and then I left the room.

I shut the door and parked myself back in my chair and read. I don't know when Martha went to bed that night, but I finished my book at a little after midnight, and crawled into my king-sized bed, and was out like a light.