Kenny Rogers - "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town"

"Do you want some water?" comes from behind the door, and he knows exactly what's happened. She's gone to the kitchen, gotten a glass of water for herself, and now feels guilty, holding her selfish water, offering her glass. Which, if accepted, she will relinquish and get another. "No thanks," he says, in the warm stale bedroom apartment air, she continues on her way to the couch. He imagines the dishes in the sink, the way she would have ignored them to fill her glass, the way her feet peel off the hardwood when she walks. Every day is a whole newspaper in this place, so much happens, if you look at it a certain way, too much to take in in a sitting. If you look at it a certain way, you can split every moment into a thousand shards of meaning, and each of those can be rearranged to fit your mood. And today his mood is sour, no way around that. Today, it's the receipts that cause the most distress. Crumpled, strewn, fallen, bank balances and weird charges. Not even the cell phone, that endless pit of hopelessness, is as distressing as the receipts. The cell phone is just guessing, he'd never look, but the receipts, that's glimpses of proof. The neighbours are stomping around, doubtless fighting. Fighting. Might be an idea. "What are they doing?" she calls from the couch. He gets up, stands at the door frame, looking out. "Marching band practice," he says, with an unknowing look. She laughs, for the first time in weeks. But instead of being a relief, it's a condemnation. A smile from her these days is like a porno, he can only ever watch.

Just thought about the way you smile. xx He presses 'send' like launching skeet. Up in the air, see if she's ready. Been conversing with her ghost all night, next to him on the chair, the size of a thick credit card. All his life he's been left and lovelorn and lost, but she's the first one he's chased like a maniac. Something so special about her froggy eyes, her oversized feet, the way love emanates from her like a dying bird. I see her brighten when we're together, a rare journal-keeper in the world of constant public memoirs. The first time they made love was drunk after a screening of Buena Vista Social Club, and they had port and it was all tits and teeth and they seemed to be literally spinning in the bed. That stayed with him almost every day, he thought about that at cold bus stops and in bank lines. Other times he checked his balance and it was dwindling and that meant he loved her.

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