Not Unlike Greek Tragedy

Before he'd left her apartment, he'd made the miraculous difference. Without her in the room but in the
shower, bent, mutated the accident his elbow had created, a potted spider plant burst like a first-rate
liar on the floor.

Had she heard the ceramic scrape? The counter letting go. The faux-cedar crack of the lower cabinet
struck first?

No. She was too lost in the slick pleasure of apricot body wash. The collision of pitches the vase found
as it bumbled linoleum into explosion.

He had approximately, or maybe roughly, five minutes. The memorized Rolodex of habits went leafing. Legs,
shaved? Odd-numbered days. Today: the second. Shampoo, the hair? Once every four. Just yesterday. Towel
dry. Step on scale. But maybe avoidance. And then the baby-sluffs of bare feet intending coffee, the kitchen.

Pigeon thumps. Windowledge. Sheridan Drive elongated. North shore. From carpet without the least
twitch of comedy, in the hall, the elevator would lower ease deeper past the twelfth floor. To reach his
desk at work to end the rush, he would have to catch that. With the terms of the disaster and his future of
getting yelled at, on the floor.

As instincts received them there were two choices. Leave the scene, launch the door. Or inhabit a nearby good
boyfriend: kneel to sweep, cup, trash, apologize, kiss, promise, and displace himself that many times from
his schedule. To subject himself gladly to the rhythm of a mishap. And work overtime to erase into its
whim fully.

Two of them. And that was his error. That there was crack enough in his time to open. Where they were,
divided and explicit, decisiveness was already a fantasy. In that pose she found him. In an ugly, absurd
half-crouch; like a beast of prey caught mid-bowels, too weak to fight the privacy of standing.