Out of Season

I.

I LOOKED at my watch as you looked at yours.
    We were so concerned with time because we both believed in it. Yeah, we abided by it. You know what I’m talking about here; you understand.
    We also share a Religion, so — are we compatible? Yes we are compatible. But don’t get too carried away, you never know when time gets bored with you, then I should change my lover. You know this. You understand this. Because you’re so fucking smart.

I looked at my watch as the sky turned gray-blue and you said, "it’s getting dark." I didn’t believe you. I looked at the sky from behind the windshield, you driving, no we were parked. It was only about to rain. That’s it, it was quite early.
    "Yeah but it’s getting dark. That’s what I said."
    "Don’t get philosophical, Marina, I’m tired. I’m so old I’m tired. I want to die." That’s what I said, I said, "I want to die," repeated it.
    But we lived on a little further, until we got really old. Now today we should be 37 both, that’s old, and our baby’s baby is very very young, and my lover’s young, and her baby by me of course quite older than our baby’s baby but that’s not the point. The point is you’re still so fucking smart, babe. I mean will you please let me tell my story? It’s not about you. It’s not about the lover, but time. That’s it, do you hear me? Shit, woman, time, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

There was a different kind of afternoon, though I don’t know what I mean by that: I there looked at my watch purpling from an orangey afternoon sky pallette. Whatever. Six o’clock, still like five o’clock in December because this was in the summer. Do you remember? Oh you know everything. (But I still love you, you know that. You know. I also love Selina, one young lover I brought to a fantastic world of sex, she’s just as smart, but at least, her watch is not Japanese, she’s now a model.).
    I mention pallette. I’m not a painter. The sky is a painting, but I’m a mason. I married you, I did. You were, let me see, a professor of comparative literature, ... and I graduated with a bachelor of arts degree major in political science. Who cares? I’m a fancy mason. I’m the only mason in this goddam Visayan city who reads books, all of them American. How innovative I am.
    Haha, but I’m a writer, that makes my case much more different, one perfect literary material, could make you successful inventing me. Beginning writer, I am, though. Not much to myself. But soon submitted two stories each to four magazines, three simultaneously published after a rejection by the first two magazines. Aren’t you proud of me? You were proud of me. I’m your husband, as you are my wife.

This was the same afternoon in a summer where I said, "look at the sky. Orange. Blue-gray but still orange. All our afternoons now turning gray, huh? you can’t tell one from another. Anyway, this is not America but the sky today looks like California anyway. That’s not the point. What did you say about this Conrad guy, he started writing late. Almayer’s Folly at 32, finishing it at 37. Well, tell you what, just so we can have an end to this — at least I’m trying. Okay? Just so we’d have an end to this, you win. I’ll try one of those styles you want from Esquire, or Harper’s, or my Playboys. Shit ... maybe also Conrad. You gave me, what was that — some book beginning with a boat anchored on a lazy river. Who wants to read that?"
    "What," because you’re always suspicious, "what are you saying, ... "
    "I’m writing. It came to me this morning. I thought maybe the depressed among us can maybe try to be among the best of writers."
    "What? What? You stupid," you said, whispering, you thirty-something whore, "oh my God, what?" Shit. That made you happy, and that was all I could say — shit, expressing nothing.

II.

SO I DID. You helped me polish the first. Okay, thank you. But, take this last afternoon. Take yesterday! Yesterday afternoon. Deja vu:
    The sky turned December-gray and you said, "it’s getting dark." I looked at my watch and he said, Mickey Mouse said, five, 5:00 sharp. You looked at yours and you said, "I’m getting philosophical, you want to die, but I’m happy for you. Can’t I get a kiss before I see these people at the seminar?" Oh, Smarty, one day. One fucking day. Yawa¹, I said....

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be saying these things, nor be writing with these, mother. You’re my mother too, yes? I say shit and I say yawa and you’re my mother. Jesus, you’re my wife! And you’re so smart! You’re so fucking smart I could kill you! Hey ... you know why I’m doing this? You realize I don’t want to do this? But, dog’s shit, wife, I love you, that’s all I’m going to say. So I say this, and I say that, and it’s all because I love you. Are you ashamed? Maybe you are. Because what do you do to me? Huh? You die. You simply die! You die WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! Shit, woman, ... you’re a shit full of horse.

III.

ONE DAY. Today! You die, kid, just like that. One day you die. I should’ve known. But what do I know, it’s you who know everything there is to know.
    One afternoon, yesterday afternoon, you say "it’s getting dark" while you’re smiling. I didn’t believe you, from behind the windshield I looked at the sky, your eyes somewhere abroad, then you looked at the sky, beyond the windshield, it was early, you might as well have said, "It’s late," or "It’s too late," or something like this, but you’re so symbolistic ... that’s what I’m saying. You’re so symbolistic. You’re ... oh you know what. You’re so symbolistic because you’re so smart ... what the hell do you do these things for!

Marina, listen here. You’ve listened to me all these years but you haven’t really listened. And I want you to listen now. I’ll tell you, and you better get this into your head, the thing I hate about you is you always try to go philosophical with me just to please me. Yeah. That’s right. Just to make me feel triumphant at where I’m so good at, where you’re weak at, at logic. You taught me logic in prose but you know I taught you logic with the home investments, ...
    Of course I started poor and quite rash — a mere mason, though my teacher mother’s son. Then you remember, all the young ones in town getting ahead of me until there was no more room for me but I wasn’t so keen on being practical? But I loved my work. Which taught me logic. Perfect logic, though it too may fall. Anyway, the important thing was I loved my work. I continued in it. Even in college, I earned the degree thru money saved from doing masonry. Quite a feat, I suppose, against my mother’s disgust over a pseudo-working class style at life. Maybe it was just some artist in me that demanded I feel pain. Then, what? Then I married you. I married you, didn’t I? You got pregnant, I married you. Put up a ceramics shop, while still doing some fancy masonry. You graduated pregnant. Then I graduated. But I kept myself in here. In masonry. And in ceramics. That’s not really the point. The point is the logic involved. What else?
    Sonia? Hell. Gave Sonia everything, sent Sonia to Manila, fine arts for Sonia, from my ceramics shop earning0s. Our car needing the overhaul, her exams near, okay never mind car, exams are near send Sonia everything. The fact is our only daughter, who is our only child Sonia, she gets pregnant somewhere herself, married at twenty the boy-man somewhere by herself, a good man the young man they say, okay, but I keep saying, and I’d say it again, even now, "this is what it all amounts to. I’m closing my goddam shop, oh goddam wife of mine, I want to die from all this, I want to die from all this, I want to die now! It’s no use." I don’t remember what I meant by all that I said, all I see now was me banging my fist everywhere, and you were so f------ calm, you bitch, you were so fucking calm:
    "It’s okay, Fred, it’s okay. All right? C’mon, it really could have been worse. You have much to thank for," you said, smiling. "You have me for a wife. And I thank you for being my husband."
    Tears in your eyes.

IV.

EVEN AS you knew I continued seeing Selina during her visits on vacation from Manila. With or without our baby. Even as you knew I really couldn’t spend a longer time with you than with the shop. You forgave. You understood, you bitch of bitches, you believed I still had a crush on you, which was correct, you brilliant bitch, and you remained faithful, oh you were faithful. A bitch? No. It was Selina who was the bitch. Okay, all right. But Selina thought herself a "feminist" type, whatever the hell that meant to her, and you knew I liked her, she is therefore not and never was to be considered a bitch.
    I like her. I love you. That’s all I want to say. Won’t you please talk back? Please?

What did I do? Father (I confess things to you now, so now you’re a priest), I confess to spending luxury money on too many American magazines. Some logic I had, one sonofabitch. Like, I bought you a Japanese watch, while I bought Selina a Swiss one.
    I like her. I loved you. I still do. Shit. What a mess! You don’t believe me? You don’t believe I love you? I waste my time writing my stories ... don’t I love you, doing that?
    Isn’t that enough? You want me to burn my shop? I don’t need it. You earned okay, now you don’t need to earn being like dead, what the hell do I need the shop for with Sonia now doing okay? You want me to burn that shop? I’ll burn it. You want me to go hungry? I’ll go hungry. Just don’t fucking leave me, wife, please, you shithead wife, please, you shithead. What do you want, you want me to cry? You want to see me cry? Well, see now, wife. C’mon! See now, wife! SEE NOW! SEE FUCKING NOW!

Well, what do you do? You die, it was all you could think of. Smiling, and then crying, you die. That’s it. Fucking pills.
    "What was it she took, Doc," I said, for the hell of conversation which I didn’t want but designed to have anyway.
    I didn’t cry, Mar. I was stupidly nervous, that’s all, do you hear?
    The Doc started saying something like, "If only she had — "
    "It’s okay. Don’t tell me, then."
    I was nervous; I didn’t want to know, Mar. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want anything.
    "Don’t get nervous, Fred."
    "Hahahaha ... I’m sorry." I thought I was going to cry then, that was only what I thought. "Don’t get nervous with me yourself, Mike."
    "Okay ... " said Mike. He was quite understanding too, wasn’t he, your stupid Doc. "It was a whole bottle of — "
    "Mike, okay, Mike! It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter, Mike!"
    "Jesus, I’m sorry, Fred...." That surprised him, didn’t it? Later he was saying, "You want to talk, Fred?" He said that three times, inverting it in the last.
    Yeah, that was just it, maybe. I thought, talk. Talk now or I’ll kill you. "Yeah, yeah, thanks," was all I said anyway.
    I drank from the fountain; maybe I had to run away, maybe jog, like I do every gray afternoon ... Christ, I just had to. But I couldn’t anything, I could only nothing. Thank you!
    "Why ... why do you think ... Fred, did she ... " Ah, the hallway at the hospital looked like a description of itself that didn’t want any goddam word to fucking say it. "It’s okay. Let’s not talk about it now," said Mike.
    He was half-right, maybe. How can anybody know anybody’s story at the moment it was still happening? Your story, especially. You’re too fucking smart for comfort, you were really a character! Not all characters are specially difficult, you weren’t even crazy.

Anyway, why did you? Why, woman? Why, wife? Don’t give me shit now, Marina, you loved me so, I know that. I loved you so, too, didn’t I? We were so goddam compatible, did you know that? Jesus ... I’d maybe even marry you again if you want. Wasn’t that why I married you for, being compatible? Wasn’t that how? You were simply so goddam smart, girl, you were really tops! You understood me....
    So, okay, here. HERE! Go ahead, TELL me your story.... Haha. On the other hand, now, Jesus let’s just forget it. Let’s not talk about it now, let’s not talk about it at all, let’s just not talk about it forever.

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¹the devil

[V]