Time - Short Fiction by Josephine Rowe [27.10.2010]
Time
In their last few years together, he watched her teeth grow crowded. He would not have minded this, except she found a way to blame him for it. He saw how her clothing wanted for more of her, how she trailed her fingers across all the surfaces of their house – the tabletops, tiles, windowsills, doorframes – as if she were trying to interpret a strange Braille, and never quite understanding what she read.
Somehow, she said, mostly to herself, our lives have become very small.
Then she told him that she probably didn’t love him. That she had, but she didn’t now. He nodded softly, thinking that time can be blamed for most things.
When they were young they slept together on the floors of houses which had just come up for lease. They went to the estate agent’s late in the afternoon, so that they were the last to borrow the keys. If they liked the place they left a window open, or a door unlocked. Then returned the keys to the office, smiling at the receptionist.
The gas was usually still on, even if the electricity was not. They had long showers and blasted the heating on winter nights. They made love in dark lounge rooms and on the cold kitchen floors of houses they’d never cook meals in or invite friends to, squares of streetlight coming through the curtainless windows.
In this way they travelled up and down the east coast several times, everything that they owned in the back of a temperamental HR Holden.
He does not feel sorry for this younger version of themselves, a couple of hundred dollars between them, picking fruit in Mildura when the money was about to run out. Occasionally doing a runner on a petrol station when they were stuck for fuel. They took the number plates off the Holden together – she the front and he the back – and stowed them beneath the passenger seat before pulling into the Shell.
Then moving on. Always moving. Until they slowed down, stopped, and her teeth grew crowded.
Josephine Rowe is a writer and poet from Melbourne. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in Overland, Island, Best Australian Poems, Going Down Swinging, Torpedo and Herding Kites.
Time is from Josephine Rowe’s short fiction collection How a Moth Becomes a Boat and is available to purchase here.
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Comments
Emmett Stinson — 27 October at 03:09PM
A great story from a great book!
Matthia Dempsey — 27 October at 03:27PM
Beautiful, love this book.
Sal West — 20 December at 11:39AM
Trite, twee and boring.