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It seemed almost yesterday, but it had actually been more than three years, since my husband Kyle and I spent our evenings going to shows that cost too much and eating dinners that were mere accents to the decor of the restaurants they were served in. Vegas was good for that. I think the real magic of Vegas was how it profited from the over indulged ego of international capitalism and wealth without a gun, a committee or a merger. The wealth is Vegas came from consensual exploitation. It seemed just yesterday that I had a friend clever enough, and patient enough to discuss such an issue with, but in reality it had been more than three years.
The water was very hot but I forced my less than sexy, thirty something body into it nonetheless. Convinced that as my skin went numb, my pores opened unnaturally wide; wide enough for life's disappointment and frustration to drain out of my body and eventually down the drain, the hotter the water the more through the cleansing. So I sunk down as far as my 5'6'' 175 lbs would allow without creating a watery mess, pressed play and pretended that life was not so bad.
The reader, a middle aged women with a soothing British accent, began to read the flowery fairy tale, complete with voice changes for the different characters and inflection for the emotions, "Once upon a time down the lush pasture road the handsome flaxen haired man of considerable means the sweet, sullen girl of slight privilege happily ever the end." I was happy to lose myself in the tale for more than three hours. It wasn't until the tape player clicked off that I felt the lifeless silence of my 850 sq foot town house. I was alone. Just the flicker of candle light and the occasional purr of my gray tabby cat. It seemed odd for it to come upon all at once like a great revelation or epiphany. But it did. I was alone. My sisters, all adults, had lives. One even had a baby, a husband, a house. My parents spent their days reflecting on their lives to date and pushing numbers around to figure out how to fund their relentless tomorrows. I was thirty now, too old to have friends with free time. They had mortgages, husbands, recitals, car payments, and promotions that had to tend to. And Kyle. Kyle had been gone for more than three years now. He had burned to death in helicopter and along with his delicate flesh burned our hopes our dreams our future our past and my faith.
Like a DVD my mind raced backward to days of happiness. True happiness. It seemed cruel to remember these days at such a vulnerable moment, naked and warm in the lonely quiet. But the mind's eye has no conscience. It showed me visions of a youthful me sitting outside of Kyle's apartment with a bag a groceries waiting for him to come home so I could fix him dinner it replayed our first Valentines day the day we met my eighteenth birthday my senior prom it summonsed all the smells and sounds of mark less days of laughing with my sisters and my mother cook outs amusement parks ski trips old houses that we lived in the faces of old friends. Why this trip down memory lane, why this tour of days gone by? Without answers I settled back to enjoy the film. I tried to count my blessings and happiness but they were too numerous and recanted too quickly, so I just let the memories wash over me. And as abruptly as the documentary had begun it stopped. I stood up and began to let the noisily draining water fill the silence. I reached around the shower door and slipped my favorite towel off the door rack and began to dry off. I stepped careful out of the tub on to a once green chenille rug. I expected my body to cool quickly in the poorly insulated house, but I didn't. In fact my body did not cool at all. Slowly I mixed chores that I didn't want to face in the morning, such as picking up my dirty clothes and putting the radio away, with dressing for bed. I was feeling a bit out of sorts. I could not cool off and rather than seeing the empty space around me I saw faces from the past. To weak and lethargic to be frightened I tried to hurry my preparation for bed. I abandoned my chores, blew out the candles and headed toward the bedroom. I knew the bedroom was just around the corner, but where was the corner. Everyway I turned stood an object from the past, an old favorite toy, or an old nameless playmate. The whole house smelled of my mother's Oil of Olea, and I was hot very hot. My legs stopped moving, and my arm began to tingle, my numb fingers searched in vain for the light switch and then my cat said, "Give in. This is what you said you wanted."
The coroner said I died of a heart attack, the town gossips concluded it was a broken heart, my friends said it was loneliness, but my mother knew, "she drown in her memories."
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