Cumulonimbus

He would cock his brow at inopportune times. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He would deny taking my elbow polisher but then I’d notice a bright glint of sunshine off his akimboed elbows. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He would waltz into the room holding a peach and never ask me if I also wanted a peach. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He’d watch me skip a stone across the still surface of the local lake but would never compliment me, even if my stone skipped eight times, which was objectively awesome. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He’d point up at a cumulonimbus cloud and ask me what kind of cloud it was, and before I could even answer, he’d go, “It’s a cumulonimbus, you dumb fuck.” But that wasn’t the worst of it. He would hide under my bed, and just as I, clad in my nightclothes, was about to crawl under the covers, he’d slash at my Achilles’ tendon with a razor blade. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Actually that last one was the worst of it. After blade sliced tendon, I bled. I bled voluminously. “Oh shit,” he said, commando-crawling out from underneath my bed. “I meant to just come close to slicing you, not actually do it.” But I was bleeding profusely. I was bleeding in…uh…bleeding in a way that was…produced a lot of bleeding. I grabbed wads of tissues and pressed them against the wound. “Should I call an ambulance?” I nodded, went, “Ahhh. Oooh. Ahhhhh.” That was the worst of it. Next to that, his back-of-neck slaps and offensive imitations of me and daily greetings of “Morning, dipshit!” paled in comparison.

He sat by my bed in the hospital. He was contrite, and his contrition was genuine. I could see that. I asked if he could go away. “Never,” he said. “I am never leaving your side again.” “Shit,” I said, and I meant it.

A little while later, he waltzed into my hospital room holding an apricot. He saw me eyeing it. He lifted it to his open mouth. He took a very big bite.

He closed his eyes.

“Jesus,” he said. “Sweet Jesus, that’s good.”

He walked over to me, rivulets of apricot juice running down his chin. Outside my window, a cumulonimbus cloud slowly—very, very slowly—drifted into view.