II - The First Tale
It was more than midnight in a 24h drugstore. Aside the people who worked there, there was a girl – late 20s, nor tall or short, brunette, wearing pyjamas-like clothing, but not real pyjamas – and a guy – nearly 35, tall, wearing a long coat, carrying a small shopping basket and looking for tampons. He had his wedding ring on, and he was with his other hand nervously playing with it. It was a small drugstore and the brunette girl, after getting the medicine she needed, walked past him quickly, “The blue ones are my favourites, if you ask me, probably the third one from the right”, got a chiclet and a chocolate, payed, and went away. The man got the tampons, payed, and left too.
***
Night. Half past ten. The same drugstore. Few days later. The girl is sitting outside it, smoking. The man gets out, pass through her, “Smoking is bad for your health”, she chuckles. “Did your wife liked the tampons?”, “She said she would rather have the pink ones”, “Sorry, my mistake”, “At least I learned something”. She puts down the cigarette, he turns on his car. She got a bottle of water. He drove out of the parking lot. She took the medicine out of her bag. Her hand, shaking, puts the medicine inside her mouth. She drank the water, and breathed deeply.
***
Some weeks later, two o’clock, a.m.. He is sitting outside. His jacket on the side. He lights a cigarette, covering it from the wind with his hands. She gets out of the drugstore, with a plastic bag and green hair. She sits. “Smoking is bad for your health”, “Your hair is gonna fall if you keep painting it with strange colors”, “Colors make you happy, they have deep meanings”, “What does green mean?”, “Grass, I guess”. He sighs, get a long drag. “It means hope”, “So nothing about grass?”, “Nope”, “My mistake again, so”. She takes her medicine, her hand is shaking again. “Do you want?”. He offers her a cigarette. “Trying to stop”, “Great for you. Trying to start again”, “None of my business”. She gets up and walk away. He stays a little more, finishes it. Throw away. Gets up, leave.
***
11h30 p.m. He is paying. She is getting her meds. He is turning the car on. She is leaving. The car doesn’t turn on. She looks like she is going to throw up. She threatens to throw, but she doesn’t. She sits down. He gets off of the car. She sits, take some pills, with the help of a good dose of alcohol. He sits beside her. “You alright?”, “Super”, “You’re drunk”, “Not yet”, “You must go home”, “I’m goin’, it’s close by”, “Are you gonna be alright on the way home?”, “Yeah, I’m not drunk enough not to get home”, “Thought you said you were not drunk”, “Maybe a little”, “Do you wanna ride?”, “Nope, need some fresh air. Go away”. He gets up, turn the car on, it works. He goes away. She gets up, and go home.
***
Exactly midnight. She is paying. He is waiting outside. “Why do you need so many pills?”, “I’m dying, what is your excuse?”, “Runnin’ away”, “Your wife?”, “My life”. She sits down. He is smoking again. She asks for one. “Thought you were stopping”, “I’m already dying, what else do you want”, “Thought it was a joke”, “Everyone is dying, can’t I be too?”. He gives her the cigarette. Silence. She coughs. More silence. “Half of those are happiness meds. They make me look drugged and happy, while I’m not. It’s sad, all that, in fact”. “Wish I had a real happiness med. Not those fake ones they give us”, “My psychiatrist would go bankrupt with that”. She chuckles again. He smiles, and stops. Take a long drag, let it go slowly, take another one. “My wife is pregnant again”, “Congratulations”, “She will lose it soon. She always kill them”, “Maybe you are the one with the weak sperm”. That was sincere. He didn’t expect that. “I feel like killing things all the time. Stuff don’t seem to live long with me. I killed a cactus once. Never killed a baby. Never had one to kill”, “You’re better than my wife so”, “Tried to kill a woman once, out of my own free will, intentionally”, “Really?”, “Yeah”, “What happened?”, “She went to the hospital, the guys in white wanted to sent her to a safe place, but she didn’t wanna go, so they made her live with her mother and take a lot of pills everyday, or else they would need to ,send her to the white house, with the white walls and white beds, and a lot of people in white”. More silence. More smoke. She lighted up another one. He threw his away. He put his head down and started to nervously play with his ring again. “How?”, “The classic ones. Cut my wrist. You know, vertically, the right way. You think of trying?”, “What?”. He got angry. “Better not, you have a son, or daughter, or whatever, on the way”, “What the fuck you are saying?”, “You have cuts on your wrist too, but they are on the wrong way. No can do. They bleed, yours, but not enough. Doin’ it wrong. Your wife probably bleeds more”, “Fuck you”, “Gotta be goin’, we have been here nearly an hour”. She takes her med, drinks the water, throw away the cigarette, drinks more water. “Go fuck your wife, it’s better than being at a drugstore with a suicidal girl who you know nothin’ about. It gets even worse when you are not even buying”, “Shut your fuckin’ mouth up”, “As I said, gotta be goin’, before it’s morning again and I gotta go workin my ass out”. She left. He stayed there, his head between his tights for a long time. He went home.
His pregnant wife sleeping on his bed. The TV was on. She didn’t matter if he was out late at night. Nothing matter between the two of them. She was already pregnant when he went to buy her tampons. This was the longest she got in her five pregnancies. She bleeded on the other ones, when the babies died. She cried. She tried to take her life. She bleeded more. She cried alone, in the dark. He knew it. He cried alone in the dark. She knew it. He tried to take his life. It didn’t matter. He was too coward. She bleeded much more than him. But he didn’t give a damn about that. He went to buy her tampons because he knew the baby was going to die. It didn’t matter if that was true or not, he just felt the anger of himself, for being a coward, of her, for losing the babies, even knowing the fault wasn’t hers. He went to that same drugstore, knowing that were other ones really closer by, to talk to a stranger, who knew nothing about his life, just to run away from that stupidity of his, from that fear. It didn’t matter if those were only one or two lines, they were two lines away from that bullshit of his daily life.
He laid down, his head against the pillow, his hands grabbing the blanket, tight. He heard his wife rolling in his direction. They were face to face. That was the closest they have been in months. He could not only hear but feel and smell her breath. It was actually a good smell. “Doesn’t matter what happens right?”, “Yeah”, “If this pregnancy goes on or not, if this kid is going to be born”, “If we still want to be parents”, “If we still love each other, somehow”, “That too, and even if we still feel some kind of attraction”, “Yeah, even a little bit”, “Even a little bit”, “We are gonna get divorced”, “Before we hurt each other even more”, “I don’t wanna cry alone anymore, neither do you”, “Yeah”, “And together, we are crying alone”, “Will we be friends?”, “Don’t know, I think we will try to”, “We are gonna be parents together, right?”, “Hope so”. Silence. With their breaths, their bodies, their lips so close, they kissed for a long-short time, rolled to the other side, closed their eyes and slept.
***
It was more than midnight in a 24 hours drugstore. A woman was looking for tampons. A guy was buying cough meds. He passed through her and said “My ex-wife used to like the pink ones”, “Sorry, but I prefer the blue ones”, “Sorry, my mistake”, “Cough meds?”, “Si”, “And yours?”, “Goin’ to the white hospital, that I found out is not that white, takin’ a vacation from civilization for a while”, “You bad?”, “No, just got tired from my mom”, he chuckled. “So… No more ring?”, “No more wife”, “And the kid?”, “Gonna be two months old in less than a week”, “Still friends?”, “Kind of”, “No need for happy pills?”, “Therapist, but no happy pills yet”, “Good. Smoking?”, “Don’t really like the taste of them”, she chuckles. He pays and sits outside, drinking some water and taking his cough meds. She goes pay for her tampons. He waits her to get out to say goodbye. The door opens, but no one gets out. He feels a chill down his spine, forgets what he was waiting for, gets in the car, and leaves.
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