Cycle

By Anna Taylor

Tuesday

George is about to leave for work when Edie's voice from the bedroom calls him back. He has his umbrella, coat under his arm. When he peers into the dim light of their curtained bedroom he sees that she is holding something out to him. Thermometer.
     ‘Edie,’ he says, rubbing his hands over his face. ‘I have to leave for work. Now.’
     She is sitting up in bed, her slept in bun askew, cotton slip twisted around her body, one nipple escaping from a slackened seam.
     ‘My temperature's just dropped,’ she says.
     How has his life come to this? He looks at their bedside clock.
     ‘I have six minutes,’ he says. ‘Tops.’
     He tries to take his pants off without removing his shoes. An unsuccessful operation. Edie seems suddenly shy, hand half covering her face. She slides down the bed towards him, hangs her legs over the edge as she waits.
     ‘This is a nightmare,’ she says, but she smiles at him as she says it.

That night, he lies in bed for two hours, waiting for sleep. He tries to fall into it — then tries not to try. Edie's breathing beside him is erratic. He can't drop into a rhythm with it — every time it speeds up or slows down, he feels himself tossed from the saddle. He has taken to wearing a sleeping mask — even the slice of light in the curtain gap feels like a knife in his eye — and he props it up on his forehead, slides out of bed. He moves in increments, trying not to wake her — one step, finding his balance, another step, balance. The bedroom door squeaks. He pauses in the doorway, listens for her sleeping breath.
     He switches on the living room lamp, one low light in the kitchen. Turns on the kettle, but the hiss of it sounds violent in the silent hum of the night — so he pulls out its plug, pours tepid water into a mug.
     Even outside of the bedroom, he finds himself moving stealthily, like an intruder in a comedy skit. The night seems to demand that of him — don't let the house know you're up.
      He opens the pantry, looking absent-mindedly for food. Sits at the kitchen table, sipping water he's not even thirsty for. His eyes feel filled with grit, like a child has tossed a handful of sand in his face. One leg has an internal quiver.
     If he was alone in the house he could turn all the lights on, even listen to music perhaps. Cook porridge. He feels suddenly oppressed by the need to inhabit the world of the sleeping when he, himself, is not asleep. His mind shakes off its torpor, revs its little engine. He needs a place of his own, he thinks, an apartment that he can stay at sometimes, or retreat to on a wakeful night. He needs to be able to listen to the radio, lie on a sofa, jog on the spot, drink beer. It feels painfully clear to him.
     ‘I need my own place,’ he says to himself, listening to the ring of that. The second hand on the clock ticks resolutely.

Cycling

Isaac goes to meet Edie, wheeling a bike with each hand. She appears over a rise of asphalt, clutching a windbreaker in a swinging fist, her walk jaunty.
     His heart catches when he sees her. She sees the two bikes, raises one arm above her head.
     ‘You're not serious,’ she says.
     They pedal their way round the harbour, slowly.
     ‘I’ll match your pace,’ Edie had said when they set off. He would have expected for it to make him feel bad, someone saying that — but there was no pity in her eyes when she smiled at him.
     ‘How fast can you go?’ he'd said, and she laughed.
     The harbour water is grey, an exact reflection of sky, but there's a sheen on its surface like varnish. Three birds fly overhead, their bodies and wings forming a perfect triangle. Every now and then, a car roars past.
     ‘I’m taking myself off the medication,’ Isaac says, trying to keep the seizing of his breath under control. ‘Bit by bit.’
     They have turned a corner and are pedalling into the swirl of a breeze. Pieces of Edie's hair lift up off her shoulders. Her knuckles on the handlebars bony, drained white.
     ‘How does that feel?’ she says.
      ‘Like I’m being washed clean.’

Hunting

George spends two weeks looking in the paper every lunchtime. He circles one- bedroom apartments and then folds the paper into a neat rectangle, slides it under other files on his desk. He works himself up to telling Edie, often when he's alone in the car on the way home from work. He wants to find the words, get the sentence flowing right, but in her presence he loses his grip.
     ‘Edie,’ he says, and then his voice always falters, language skittering away from his tongue; abandoning him.

The exhibition opens on Monday, and even though the halls are full now — packed, in some cases, literally, to the rafters — the sound in them is hollow, drained of workers, no more hammering, no more drills.
     The Indian lion skeleton is mounted next to its life-sized replica, a model that has had real skin and fur stretched across it. The skeleton appears weightless — suspended, mid-air — but George knows the substance of it, can still feel the fine grain of its surface from when he held each bone in his hands.
     He returns home, night after night, to Edie in the kitchen, or at her desk by the window. The house is littered with her drawings, often on tiny pieces of card. In the evenings, they sit side by side, watching the flickering television screen, and he reaches for her hand, tries to imagine, as he used to, that there's no separation between his skin and hers. But their temperatures seem too different these days — her hand hot, dry as an oven; his cool and slightly damp.
     Later in the evening she returns to her desk, orders and re-orders her pencils, the wood of them clicking against each other.
     ‘Edie,’ he says, and she turns to him, flashing the white bones of her teeth.

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