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Title: Incontrovertible Times
Category: VA, implied R . "I know you're going through some tough times, Mulder." For a moment, I don't even hear your voice, Scully: it's nearly drowned out in the hum of the AC, the freeway's right outside, we've got some decent Chinese take out, iced tea, pie after supper and I'm not expecting a sucker punch to the gut right now. You repeat yourself. "I know you're going through some tough times, Mulder." I don't need your pity, Scully: I don't need it, not now, not ever. I say it out loud, and you freeze, your voice freezes; I can hear the crackle of ice racing across the pristine waters. "I'm not giving you my pity, Mulder." I lean back: the ceiling is stuccoed, little half-swirls of plaster from here to infinity. "What is it then?" You shift. The bed shifts underneath you; the top of the Styrofoam container for the ravioli bobs. You shift, and you say, in that cool voice: "Sympathy." "Yeah, you sound real sympathetic right now, Scully." "Mulder--" You blow air out through your teeth, then recompose yourself, drawing your arms back into your sides. My turn to shift. I fiddle with the blanket, pluck a few whiteheads from the thin covers. The air conditioning hums: it's on in the middle of December. In the office, we'd be arguing over who got to sit in front of the heating vent. Heating vent. Shit. "I'm sorry." I say, the words kicking out of my throat with a sputter. "What?" Your turn to be surprised. "I'm sorry for snapping at you." And you're still sitting there with the calmly arranged face, hands in your lap and you're cool as cool as can be. You say you care, you say you feel it, you say you're just as angry as I am but the cold hard incontrovertible truth of it is that-- Is that what? Your voice catches. You can't say anything, and you swing your head around, stare out the curtained motel window, hands still white against the black of your suit. You're frozen, your mouth is frozen, your breathing, even your breathing is caught in pause. You're not breathing in the everlasting time it takes for the air conditioning to thrum twice. The air conditioning is always on out here: always. But, back to the chase. You turn around on one ever-so-pointed heel and catch me full in the face. You tilt your head at me, regard me for a blink, then say in that composed voice, that utterly composed voice that the hard incontrovertible fact is that you're in this solely because of me. You're stepping close to me. The sound of your heels catch through the thin carpeting, clack against the concrete underneath, and you step closer, closer, until the world simply dilates into the blue circle around your pupils, the little band of brilliance between white and black-- The hard incontrovertible truth of it is, Mulder-- And there it is again, Scully. Your voice is catching over those dashed lines. You can't climb over them, you can't climb over the sheer wall they present to your rationality, to your skepticism, to your disbelief. You can't say it. You just blink up to me, mouth working desperately as you try the words again and again and again. You try the words again and again, doggedly persistent, and the shape of your lips around the words are bewitching, hypnotizing. You're hypnotizing, Scully, you know that? And it's not anything you do, it's not anything you say or think or you can even control: It's the way you exist. This shape of color, black and white and that fixed shade of curved metallic red. This fine, slashing shape of your hands, this paleness of your skin, this dreamily precise sound of your voice, and this edge of those colored lips moving in this particular pattern. Everything's so neat and organized, laid out-- It's hypnotizing, like the roll of waves to shore. Wave mechanics: that's a study, a branch of physics. Mechanics are predictable. I remember that much from my Physics B class: Rules and regulations, under these conditions this will always be the result. And the result is hypnotizing. There's no deviation about you, Scully, you're dead set in your ways, stubborner than even I am, blinder than I am, and I'm hypnotized, mesmerized, by what my eyes have found-- I'm hypnotized, and I reach out and I touch your face. You arch up against my hand, you hang there for a moment, and then there's the texture of your face sliding down my palm. I pull away; there's something gritty caught between my fingers. I turn my hand over, and the particles glitter in the lamplight: it's touch-up. And now, where I ran my thumb against the curve of your eye, there's something of a bruise. A purple circle, ugly and vivid, tracing the path of my thumb. For a moment, I think it is a bruise, and I pull away in self-disgust. You laugh, sort of thin and shaky as you bring my hand back to your face. You move my hand up and down, and now the mascara, the liner is running in thick lines down your face. 'I haven't slept well lately,' you say, half laughing. 'I haven't slept well at all.' 'Neither have I,' I answer, half laughing, half shaking. 'These last few months have been hellish on the good old Circadian cycle,' I add. 'Yeah,' you say. 'Cover stick to go over it gets expensive.' 'Oh?' I say. 'Twenty six dollars a tube. Thirty by mail.' 'By mail?' 'How many Elizabeth Arden shops do you see out in the middle of a sugar beet field?' 'Lemme see.' I make a mock show of considering. "One. Two. Three, if you count that one back in Boise but that was potatoes, not sugar bee-" We laugh. And in the sudden levity, I make the mistake of tracing a black tear with the edge of my thumb. You snap away from me. Damn, you say, whipping around to scrub your face with a tissue. You say, I want my money back. This stuff is supposed to be waterproof, the woman at the counter promised me it was and I paid enough for it. I touch your shoulder and leave a long streak of pale, flesh-colored powder across black cloth. The mascara just melts in, I guess. You turn around. You start scrubbing with a tear dampened, blackened tissue; you don't say anything. I'm sorry, I say, backing off, palms up. I ruined your suit. You don't say anything. You don't say anything. You just squeeze your eyes, bite your lip, shut me out and you-- The hard incontrovertible truth of it is, Scully-- Scully-- .end Feedback to anasile@aol.com
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