"Remember that I’ll always love you."
Those were the last words she heard as he pushed her head back under the water.
And then she was gone.
* * *
The salt crunched and cracked under his loafers as he made his way across the parking lot. The normal click-clack metronome of his footsteps became muted and distorted.
There was just a powder-sugar haze on the grass, no real amount of snow, and it made him wonder why the grounds crew had been so enthusiastic about getting the salt down.
Maybe it was because it was still fairly warm out. Come February, and its biting winds, the grounds crew could rest on its laurels, bragging of efficiency when it was needed least.
Maybe there was something so enticing about the first snow, they just couldn’t help themselves.
Or maybe it was just one of those pointless things in the world that just didn’t make sense.
Synchronicity, or serendipity... which was the word he was looking for?
Ultimately, everything in the world had to make sense. It was just a matter of finding the sense in it.
A matter of picking it apart, and tearing it down, and putting it all back together again.
* * *
The water was cold.
That was irrelevant to her, of course, since her sensations had faded away under her lover’s hands.
He had taken from her any sensation of cold.
The sound of splashing water is different underwater than it is above the surface. It has an eerie, overbearing resonance.
* * *
The cat pounced on the mouse and managed to catch it unaware.
The mouse’s neck snapped quickly, and the lifeless body hung from the feline’s maw.
The cat dropped the mouse on the floor and rolled it around as if to say, "That was fun, let’s play again."
His playmate failed to respond with enthusiasm, and the cat wandered away.
There were other mice in the world, after all.
* * *
He sighed and looked out of his frosted window.
The sun, having reached its height, sparkled on the snow, a million diamonds stretched out across the parking lot.
This used to be a park. He had played in the park when he was young. His desk was probably just about where his favorite jungle gym had been.
Life was filled with ironies like that.
* * *
Hold me baby, hold me tight.
Hold me baby, yeah, all right.
Till the morning, til the dawn.
Hold me baby, all the night.
* * *
The cat looked up at the radio and yawned. It sounded like a human, and a rather noisy one at that, but it had failed to feed him, despite plaintiff and, later, desperate pleadings.
His owners left it on all day, for what reason the cat couldn’t fathom. It screamed music at him, it begged him to purchase products, it told him of the weather and the world events.
All to no avail. The cat understood the tactile and the cat understood his stomach. The world events meant nothing to him. Where the Hell was Bosnia, anyway?
* * *
For a moment, there was blackness, there was pain, there was a chill in her bones: A brief, flickering moment during which every nerve in her body cried out for release, for peace.
The body was dead, but the spirit would not leave it so easily as that. It had grown accustomed to its shell, and was not keen on leaving it so quickly.
There was a struggle, as the body floated in a zero-gravity abyss.
In the end, the nerves won out. They were tired, too tired to support the agony of being who she was and when she was and where she was.
"Remember that I’ll always love you."
* * *
The phone rang: once, twice, three times.
He watched the snowflakes which had begun to fall again. They floated on the breeze, settling down upon the windshields and the Handicapped Parking signs.
His frozen fingers, shielded by meager hand-knitted mittens, clutched the monkey bar above him. It was recess: he liked recess. During recess he got away from the problems of the world.
The phone didn’t ring a fourth time. His voice mail picked it up after the third ring.
"Hi," the machine would say. "You’ve reached me, all right, but I’m either away from my desk or on another line. So please leave me a message."
* * *
The cat stretched, arching his back as he dug his claws into the carpet.
The cat rolled on the floor.
The cat batted at the end of a bathrobe tie that hung off of the couch.
The cat wandered around some more, mewing at the radio. Not for food, just for the sheer silliness.
The cat tried to spelunk under the silk handkerchief on the floor, but it was too flat and the friction of the carpet was too much, so the cat just let it be.
* * *
He wiped his hands on his coat. His fingers were red and swollen from the cold.
It had been harder than he had hoped, but no so hard as he had feared.
She had trusted him, once. Trusted him as much as she had ever trusted her husband.
They had met at her house, like usual. They had done what they had done every Tuesday morning for the last three months, there, on the living room floor. They had gotten dressed and gone out for coffee, together but in separate cars. Everything had been normal.
So it had been easy to bring her out here, easy to coax her to the edge of the pier, and, with nobody looking, easy to push her in.
He looked at his watch. Nearly 11:30. He was expected in in the afternoon. Enough time, though, to grab lunch.
She never should have threatened to tell her husband.
She never should have threatened to tell anyone.
It was all her fault.
* * *
Can you tell me, was it easy?
Can you tell me, was I wrong
When I said we’d be forever?
All you’ve left me is this song.
* * *
The office radio was singing some annoying country song or other as he wandered through on his way to lunch. It had been a quiet morning.
He crunched his way through the snow and got into his car.
The car radio was playing something considerably more pleasant, a light piece by Pachelbel.
He relaxed into the seat and listened to his tires sliding and sloshing in the fresh snow.
It was just warm enough, he figured, to grab a hot dog at the outdoor cafe before it closed for the winter.
* * *
"Remember that I’ll always love you."
The last words he had ever said to her had been a lie.
He pulled his coat closer and sat in his car, the heater running gently. He took a bite of his gyro sandwich and watched the man at the table next to the stand.
The two of them were alone. He’d seen that man often. It was November now, the last week, and the cafe would be closing tomorrow, for the winter. Thursday was Thanksgiving.
The odd little man sat at the table eating his hot dog and watching the snow fall down.
A simpleton, clearly a simpleton.
The greater man bit into his gyro sandwich. It was 12:30. Enough time to get to work.
Everything would be wonderful.
He finished his sandwich and unzipped his coat. Sure, the cafe gave him napkins, but he preferred his own. Silk beat paper any day.
He reached into his suitcoat with his clean hand, but the handkerchief wasn’t there.
Odd.
No matter. Surely he’d left it at home, or maybe the drycleaners had lost it.
He shrugged it off, wiped his hands on the paper napkins, crumpled the foil and tossed it out the window, and drove off the work.
* * *
The cat returned to the mouse corpse, out of boredom.
How many times could the cat be expected to wander the same house, after all?
Granted, the food was nice, and the warmth in the winter was nice, but all the same, it could get downright boring wandering around all day, doing nothing, nowhere to go.
He batted at the mouse and sighed. Maybe he shouldn’t have killed it. It was much more fun alive than dead, and now, his owners would come home and make a big deal out of it.
He snurfle-sneezed dispassionately over the corpse.
* * *
The message on the voice mail was as simple as it was ominous:
"Yes, this is Sergeant Kilpatrick. There’s been an accident involving your wife and we’d like to talk to you about it."
He stared at the phone. The harder snows were coming in, he could feel it.
He looked at the card in his hand, the one she had given him for their anniversary.
Inside, she had written:
"Remember that I’ll always love you."