The Last Death of Ron and Melanie

Through the glass, the steel ribbons of the other track gradually stopped rushing by in a shiny blur and started to come into focus as Amtrak 871 slowed for the next station stop. The blurred yellows, oranges, golds and dull grays of the autumn countryside slowly morphed from a vivid abstract into a real-life of almost-barren, gray oaks and ashes desperately clinging to the last leaves that were refusing to die and spiral to the ground in a bitter northeast October wind.

At least he'd had the decency to send her the money for a first-class ticket and a window seat, Melanie thought to herself. Maybe there was still something left between them, after all. Her business Capital One card was maxed out, and they were hounding her. She kept meaning to send out marketing letters and finish her website. But she always seemed to find herself caught up in the demands of just doing the work and meeting deadlines to keep clients happy who always seemed to want everything yesterday, but always hassled her over her ninety-five-dollars-an-hour rate. And that was cheap.

The plan had been for her and Marie to go out on their own together with Double M Communications when the takeover a year ago put them both out of a corporate job after fifteen years of working their way up. Ron had put together a business plan for them, but he wasn't really on board with the idea.

"You're both very good at what you do, Mel," he'd said. "But two thirty-something women who've paid their dues launching their own creative shop and competing against agencies full of Gen Xers willing to do anything at any hour to please the client? Is that what you want at this point in your life?," he'd said. "Good luck with that."

The bastard, she thought. Why did it seem he was always right? Double M was just starting to pick up enough clients to sustain it and then their plan hadn't quite worked out thanks to life. She'd kept the name but now it was becoming such a . . . her temple was pounding as the motion of the train rose from the wheels, and sent vibrations through the emergency exit window into her temple.

Another twenty minutes and they'd be pulling into Johnson City. She sensed more than felt her breathing quicken a little and a wave of anxiety along with the adrenalin rush that got her wired when this happened, start trying to overwhelm her. She glanced at her palm; it was definitely flushed now. At least now she knew what was happening to her and the drugs were starting to work, too. The sense of panic and the feeling that she was going to have a heart attack and die right then and there wasn't happening anymore. Coming out of the crisis and getting into some stability, was the way doctor Thompson had put it last week. If only she knew.

But at least she was starting to feel more like herself. Once in the middle of the night she thought she even felt a bit of libido and suddenly wanted to touch herself and even reached under the covers, but then just laid there in the darkness for a few minutes with her sweaty palm resting on the mound between her spread thighs until she drifted back into light sleep. Sleep. That's what was really elusive.

The last month and a half had been pure hell, and Melanie was sure that the emergency room doctors didn't want to see her anymore than she wanted to be in the ER after nine trips in three and a half weeks. Not to mention all the times her arms had been jabbed for blood samples, two cardiac stress tests and a CAT scan. And feeling so exposed in those flimsy hospital gowns that barely went to her knees and made her feel invaded between her thighs. It was humiliating, being exposed like that . . . down there.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply from her diaphragm, I think I can, I think can, said the little voice in her head — which still raced all the time — in a steady rhythm. But I don't want to, but I don't want to, she thought.

It had all started suddenly, three days after Ron walked out. Thank God for her best friend Cindy, who'd been there to get her through the crisis, sitting by her side for hours on every trip the emergency room. And thank God for the healthcare insurance the bastard had bought for them both when they got married, or she'd really be up the perverbial creek. And the cat. The big gray-and-white part Persian, part-something-else furball seemed to sense she needed someone and spent hours purring on her lap while she read the latest Clive Cussler on the couch, and gently stroked Boo's chin and back every once in a while. He was full of affection just when she needed it and she reciprocated willingly.

The affectionate bond between her and the animal had been growing over the last few months. At first he'd been timid — he'd been left in a box outside the pet store, the shop owner had said the day last year they'd adopted the cat — so she couldn't blame Boo for being skittish around people and afraid to let himself go. But he was coming around now.

She remembered how Ron had always just sat silently in the armchair across the room, paying neither her nor Boo any heed, and channel surfing or flipping through his growing stack of unread magazines. It pissed her off the way he'd look up at her that certain way of his every once in a while but wouldn't say a fucking word. At least the blaring volume of the commercials cut through the silence in the living room. If you could call it that.

Damn him. He wasn't there when she needed him most. Maybe she should've asked Cindy to call him and at least tell him what was going on. Maybe he would've cared. Maybe he wouldn't have. Well, fuck him. If people didn't want to be part of her life, she could handle that.

And then two days ago, she almost hadn't answered the phone when it rang because she didn't recognize the number on the call display and besides, she was in the midst of getting dressed, with her bra only half on, to make her ten a.m. first weekly counseling appointment to deal with the messed-up-head part of her newly acquired anxiety disorder.

"I know we never really said good-bye and I'm sorry about that. I mean that, Mel. I never meant for us to end that way. I'd just like to see you one more time and then we can both get on with our lives," Ron had said. "Come down for the afternoon. Meet me at Magruder's. I'll bring the papers with me."

"Knock yourself out," she'd responded caustically, and then hung up. Had there been sadness in his voice? She wasn't sure. But she'd agreed to go after he offered to buy her a ticket. And hung up the phone feeling . . . confused. It was the only word she could think of to describe the wave of feelings that swarmed her when she put the receiver back in its cradle. Damn the GAD. I really don't need this, she'd thought. She felt like an idiot when her brain just wouldn't kick into gear properly and she couldn't put two words together but her body did strange and not-so-wonderful things at will. Not great for business when you work with words for a living, Melanie thought.

"You bastard, don't mess with my head," she'd muttered as she pushed her left bubby into the bra cup, snapped the clasp shut and ran her fingers under the straps and couldn't avoid noticing that her nipples were hard and straining against the purple Lycra, and a tingling sensating between her thighs. And the anxious sensation at the same time. And all she'd done was . . . think about him for a millisecond amongst all the scrambled thoughts in her racing head. It was like walking around all the time with IndyCars going around a track in your head.

She glanced at her watch. Twelve-fifteen. The train was running late. The countryscape of mown wheat fields, bogs, farms and half-dead stands of trees morphed into a cityscape as the train made its way past the grain elevators, industrial warehouses and auto supply stores that marked the eastern city limits of Johnson City. An eastbound CSX freight roared past on the opposite track, temporarily obscuring her view, and then the jagged skyline of downtown office towers and hotels filled her vision. The gray blanket of sky had cleared and sunlight glinted off mirrored windows.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our next station stop is Johnson City, in just a couple of minutes," the conductor affirmed over the train's public-address system. "Passengers getting off in Johnson City, please remain seated until the train comes to a complete stop."

A sense of dread — it was just the anxiety attack, she knew, but perhaps there was some melancholy, too — made her shudder for just an instant as the train lurched when it rattled across a switch and swung onto the station track, slowing alongside the platform. Maybe she shouldn't have come. Maybe she shouldn't have dressed the way she had for the occasion. What the hell had she been thinking? Too late now.

Melanie felt a tiny bead of sweat start to trickle off a strawberry blond strand, and meander down her temple and under the frame of her glasses. Then it dribbled down her neck and under the collar of her favourite denim dress, finding its way under her bra — black, his favourite — and into the crevice between her still-firm breasts. The rivulet tickled her stomach, made her quiver as it crossed her shaven bikini line and then it was absorbed by the black Lycra underwear she'd chosen . . . because it had always aroused him. Melanie quivered involuntarily, remembering how his hands and fingers had once gently, always arousingly, roamed her skin and caressed her in the most intimate places; how his tongue could inflame her when he buried his face between her thighs. But that seemed a passionless lifetime ago now. Was it only six months? I miss him, she thought. Maybe it's because I can't tell him to F-R-O anymore. If I sign the papers he's out of my life forever.

She'd loved him and married him for life and knew she would never remarry, and she despised him for leaving her alone. But she could live with that.

Their death had come slowly. Maybe it had started when they stopped giving each other an anniversary card on the ninth of every month as they'd done when they were first in love. Or maybe when Marie, with whom she'd work with for so long in the communications department, got taken by breast cancer before she was 32 and before they could make Double M Communications work as partners.

Or perhaps it had started with the second miscarriage two years ago and the bitter news that there would be no question of ever having a family after that. He simply hadn't known how to handle the days she spent crying, and went for long walks for hours on his own. Or spent hours down the basement surfing the Internet. Then came the constant bickering and then the shouting matches instead of curling up with each other and steaming mugs of tea and quiet conversation about whatever was on their minds.

Eventually they just slept in the same bed — many nights not even that, neither one allowing their body to cross an imaginary boundary and recoiling involuntarily if their feet happened to touch in the night.

It was not being touched by him nor feeling him inside her and their bodies intertwined in the still of the night that prolonged the agony. And then, the night before her thirty-third birthday, he'd simply come home from his university twentieth reunion, told her he'd fucked an old flame in a secluded corner of the quad, called her a passionless bitch, said he couldn't handle her indifference towards him anymore and that he wanted a divorce, and walked out after ten years of marriage and five years of togetherness before that, leaving her balling her eyes out at the kitchen table.

For a second she contemplated not getting off the train, but there was the question of the extra fare for the rest of the way to Albany, plus the return fare. She realized she was staring through the glass when a businessman on the platform with one ear glued to a cell phone glanced up at her and smiled for an instant as he talked. She wondered if there was still a sparkle in her hazel eyes, or whether it was gone forever. The coach jerked a little as the train came to a final stop. Melanie smoothed the denim over her ample hips, pulled her overcoat from the overhead bin, and stepped down onto the hard asphalt in the biting breeze.

"Thank you for traveling with us today," the club-car steward smiled up at her with the standard line. "See you this evening," he added, remembering she'd said that she would be returning on the same afternoon train from Albany and had pre-ordered the beef for dinner.

The taxis were lined bumper to bumper in the drop-off and pick-up area, and plumes of white exhaust smoke spiraled out of their tailpipes, chasing leaves blowing around the station entrance. "No thanks, it's only a short walk to where I'm going," she said in response to a gesture from a cabbie in the middle of the line-up.

Melanie turned up the collar of her overcoat and quick-stepped across First Street as the walk signal changed. This was not the best part of downtown — it had mostly died, too — and the street that had once been a vibrant shopping district in her youth was all but deserted as Melanie walked past shops in turn-of-the-century buildings that were either advertising moving or going out of business sales, or were already long empty and boarded up. Why had they talked about moving back to this?, she thought. She'd been happy with her life in the big smoke. Mostly. The painted lettering on the sign that advertised the former old city jail as Magruder's Pub and Restaurant was faded and chipped. I guess business hasn't been so good these days for them either, Melanie thought. Steel chairs and tables, reserved only for the summer, were stacked against the outside front wall beyond the patio railing. The seats of the top-most chairs were covered under a layer of dead leaves. The heavy oak door caused a twinge in her right elbow and she barely managed to heave it open before it shut hard against her heel. Damn the arthritis. Not thirty-five yet and she was falling apart. In more ways than one.

In the dark rosewood interior, her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting from the high, vaulted ceiling of the Tudor-style pub that was still a popular weekday lunch spot with downtown office workers, but was deathly quiet this afternoon. Ron's shadowy figure, at their old table in the farthest corner of the pub, waved an arm.

"Hello, Mel," he said without getting up. "I ordered your favourite. I hope it's spicy enough. They've got a new bartender here these days. How was the trip? Jesus, Mel, your face is all flushed."

She arranged her coat over the back of a chair, then sipped the virgin caesar and tried to stifle a choking cough as the Worcestershire and tabasco sauces in the drink hit the back of her throat.

"A bit too spicy, she gasped. "But then we haven't gotten much right lately between us, have we? The trip, Ronnie? You know what they say. It's not about where you're going, it's about the journey. Oh, and don't worry about my beautiful flushed face. I'm learning to live with it. I guess you could say I've got a system upgrade I didn't really need at this point in my life. It's called anxiety disorder and these days just talking about it sets me off. So please, Ron, don't fucking set me off. Let's not talk about it."

"You always did have a way with words," Ron said, as his lips hooked on the rim of the glass of Keith's. He took a long, slow sip and watched the bubbles in the white head of foam bursting into nothingness.

"Hmmm. Too bad it can't seem to earn me a living anymore." She slowly crunched the celery stick that had been in her cocktail and wished that it had alcohol. But that wouldn't be good for what ailed her.

"You'll find a way to keep Double M going, Mel. You've always found your way."

"Mmm . . . and look at what that's got me," she said bitterly.

"First you walk out and then I end up in the hospital nine times in a month not knowing what the hell's happening to me. Oh and then there were the episodes of crying like a fucking baby because I was so scared. And oh . . . then my two biggest clients decide budgets are tight and they're going to do everything in house for the next year. It's been a wonderful summer and fall, Ron. Basically I'm thirty-three and fucked, so to speak."

"The hospital? Nine times? Christ, Mel, you should've called me. Why the hell didn't you? Did you think I — " There was guilt, sadness, frustration in his voice.

"Didn't give a damn about me you mean?" she interjected. "Gee, why would I think that? After all, the last thing you said to me was 'Fuck you,' before you slammed the door on your way out."

"You did tell me to fuck right off in that special way of yours," Ron retorted, slamming his Keith's glass on the white linen tablecloth. Beer splashed on the cuff of his Oliver Perry blazer. "You were being a bitch," he said. "For weeks."

"Good."

"You see, that's what I mean."

"You know what you can do."

Ron closed his eyes, sighed and shook his head. "Forget it. I give up," he mumbled. "Anyway, you'll get through it all. You've always been . . . stoic."

"Stoic? Thanks a lot, Ronnie. I do know what that word means, you know. So was I just too stoic for you, after all?"

"That's not fair, Mel. We had some good years. I really do — I mean, did — love you, you know. From the moment we met that first day of our senior year at JCSS. I don't know how many times I told you that."

He tossed back a last mouthful of Keith's, leaving a ring of white foam bubbling in the bottom of the glass. He signaled the bartender for another. "Maybe we should order," he mumbled, and hid his face behind a menu.

"I remember the shepherd's pie was always good here," Melanie said. "We used to order that a lot, didn't we? I'll have that, just for old times' sake. What the hell are we doing back here, anyway?"

"You forget we were going to get out of the rat race together and Double M might do just fine here. You forget I work in this town now."

Her eyes took in the short, neatly trimmed hair that was starting to show some signs of early gray that actually added to his handsomeness, the Perry Ellis checkered tie and the tailored Oliver Perry pinstripe charcoal blazer. "And obviously doing well. Bet you'll be their top financial security adviser any day now. Looks like you're making big bucks," she added, gesturing toward the tailored blazer. I just hope you're not making it with your clients' money." "Or your clients," she added.

"Jesus, Mel, you really are bitter, aren't you? What kind of — never mind. I thought —," he started to say. "Well, you didn't have to come. I did offer to mail the papers," he retorted. "I didn't make you come today."

"Yes, you're right about that," she blurted in retort, secretly enjoying watching him blush when he figured it out, "You didn't." She felt the anxiety thing. She couldn't believe she'd actually said that.

Steam was spiraling off the shepherd's pie when the server put the dish down in front of her. She smothered it with HP Sauce and poked holes in the layer of mashed potatoes so the meat and gravy underneath wouldn't burn her tongue. Across the table Ron kept cutting pieces of steak and then switching the fork to his right hand. The lack of etiquette still irritated her. Maybe it shouldn't, but it did.

"I see you still haven't watched the DVD of *OSS*," she said. "You know, the one where the American spy gets caught by the Gestapo in France because he's eating in a café with his fork in his right hand instead of his left."

"I'm not much into old movies anymore."

"You never were, really."

"I was because you were."

"So you never enjoyed them after all."

"I enjoyed just being with you," he retorted. "But I guess you don't think that anymore." A faint hint of a soft smile turned up the corner of his mouth. "Remember . . . remember that Sunday we spent the whole day in bed, making love and watching *Gone with the Wind*? That was one of my favourite Sundays."