‘I loved her a great deal. I don’t think she ever knew.’ He tells you this even though I was the one who had asked the question. But i’m always the one that asks the questions, it’s a force habit, cutting you off. You never really get a chance to get a word in, do you? I guess it doesn’t really bother you the way it doesn’t bother me that he’s looking at you when he answers my questions. Wait, there he goes again. He’s about to say something else. He’s looking at you as he puts out the cigarette. His mouth looks all tired, lines in every direction around it, like ripples in a pool.
‘She meant the world to me and i’d make jokes,’ and he looks at your fingers, do they remind him of hers’ He looks back up at your eyes, ‘What else could I do? What would you have done if you were me?’
I grab your arm because I don’t want you to answer that. It’s not for you to answer. He thinks you’re her, you’re not, remember that. I know it’s unfair but we’re, i’m the one asking the questions here. We came here to get answers. He’s left us with some many blanks to fill in, wouldn’t even give us the letters. Remember that. He burned them all up to keep us in suspense.
He lights another cigarette, and for a moment he looks like he could have been my father. I wouldn’t know but just the way he holds his head at a tilt to light it, like he was examining the flame, or the way that the tiny flame catches his face. That sudden, barest of shadows around the edges of it. You almost understand why she fell in love in with him, don’t you?
But then he coughs all out of proportion and something green and black tries to make it’s way to the corner of his mouth. He catches it before we can see it for what it is. They say he’s dying. You know how that goes though.
‘I didn’t have an easy life. I barely had a life at all. Always hiding in the corners as it were, hated the sun.’ He looks to the corner where the teapot is. It’s empty because we wouldn’t have any. He took it out and made such a big fuss about it, using the step ladder to get to it above the stove, but we said no anyway no matter how pathetic it looked. It was too hot for tea. Even if he put ice in it, it would have melt, just doesn’t taste the same then. No matter how polite I know you can be. We just sat down and tried not to make a big deal out of it. Just get some answers and get going. Since we were around he might as well answer us.
‘Until her, then i’d always look at it. That’s why i’m practically blind you see?’ He smiles as he rubs the lit end of the cigarette in the ashtray, pushing old twisted butts against the glass. ‘I only wanted to look at her all night, they way she’d hold her arm under her chin.’