He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. Suddenly waking – choking on some saliva that slid down his windpipe. He rolls clumsily off the sofa and lands hard on the threadbare shag carpeting on all fours.

Struggling to breathe through his nose while at the same time barking hoarsely in an effort to expel the slime trail of drool invading his trachea.

Once he stops coughing. Catching his breath. Aware of the strange click coming from the phonograph console, a relic from the 1970s that had belonged to Jennifer. It was one of the few possessions she had brought into their lives when they moved in together in the late 80s.

He remembers now that he’d been listening to The Very Best of Loretta Lynn. His ass crocheted to the beat-up sofa while sucking back the last of a two-four. He must have dozed off at some point. His head clears up enough to remember that he’d been listening to Fist City before he passed out.

One of Jennifer’s favourite cuts off that record.

The clicking comes from the needle sitting at the end of the record, still rotating on the turn table. He lifts the stylus. His eyes in and out of focus, trying to follow the revolving LP label. For some reason this reminds him.

Today is day three.

Whenever Jennifer walked out on him, she was gone anywhere from three to five days. Although the last time (six months ago?) she managed to stay away for a full seven days. The sixth day had nearly sent him around the bend. He got so drunk.

He couldn’t remember much of day seven.

Normally, day three would bring an onset of self-reflection. He would sift through the events that led up to Jennifer packing her bag and storming out of the house. Taking refuge either with her mother in Summerside or her sister in Halifax.

Or some girlfriend anywhere between Fredericton and Oshawa.

The day of reflection always swung back and forth between resentment and atonement with various moments of self-recrimination and self-justification along the way. He is still trying to breathe properly after choking on his own saliva.

That was happening more and more these days. Terrible coughing fits where he could hardly breathe after merely swallowing. Something or other – saliva or a drink of something or a crumb from something he ate that was lingering at the back of his throat. Or gone down the wrong way. Of course, the smokes didn’t help.

He sets the needle back down on Fist City. Loretta threatening to pulverize the rival who wants to take her man away. Introduce her dental work to Fist City.

Jennifer always said that the violent nature of the song, the reason that Loretta was coerced into violence, was due to the weak nature of the man in question. It was right there in the chorus, the part about her baby not being a saint who will sometimes “cat around with a kitty.”

Jennifer went so far as to say, “The fact that men can’t be trusted will always somehow pit sisters against sisters.”

He doesn’t even pretend to understand half of what comes out of her mouth after a couple of wine coolers. All this feminist talk is rigged against men. But the question he has recently begun to ask himself. Why does she keep coming back?

Why does she stay with him at all?

She often claims that her will power to change his ways is more powerful than his stubbornness to stay as he is. Somewhere in his beer-soaked worldview he sees that she is trying to help him. Maybe even trying to save him.

This knowledge sometimes moves him, often scares him or, depending on how much he pours down his throat, disgusts him via his deeply-buried sewer system of self- loathing.

That’s when, on this third day of self-reflection, something funny starts to happen.

A relatively new thing. Imagining her as his guardian angel. Fighting to the teeth to save his worthless soul and breathe life into it again. His feelings of unworthiness mixed in with stirrings of desire. Down there. In the spacious expanse under his too-baggy jeans.

He thinks about seeing her walk back through the front door under her own volition. Still willing to get back on the balding treadmill of coupledom. If only to see what kind of ground she can gain. There would be a serious, if brief, go at reconciliation.

An earnest stab at gaining ground together.

Eventually, their paths would diverge. His reeling toward boredom and hers marching into martyrdom.

The pathetic twitching behind the crooked zipper of his baggy jeans. Filling him with shame. Only to inflame him even more.

He tugs his zipper to half-mast before it gets stuck. Losing all patience and clawing at his belt buckle and button. Then yanking down his jeans and boxers to sag around his knees. He perches his pallid flat ass on the edge of a sofa arm. Gathering barely enough saliva to spit in his palm. Eyes squeezed tight, fumbling beneath his beer gut.

In his mind, she is enfolding him in her towel after a shower. Her dripping stretch- marked body opening to him. An after-thought of a spasm shudders through him.

Leaves him cold and fuzzy-headed.

The song ends and the clicking takes over. The skip-jump to nowhere before he wipes himself with a nearby tissue. Self-abuse. That’s what the gym teacher who had somehow been saddled with teaching sex-ed called it back in high school. He and his friends laughed about it when they knocked back beers behind the football field bleachers.

He pulls up his shorts and jeans. Lifts the needle off the record and sets it back on the armrest. Something twigs his memory. Jennifer stepping out of the shower. Her wet skin. Grabbing for the towel. Not to enfold him, but to cover herself.

Sitting crouched on the toilet lid. One arm clutching the towel to her breasts. The other shielding her lowered head.

He fishes the last Export A from an open pack. Plunks onto the sofa cushion. Loose springs groaning. The tip of his thumb rubbing the lighter’s rough wheel. The flinty bite sparking three or four times until a flame flickers. Long enough for him to light up.

He doesn’t have a clear idea when the blackouts started. How long they’d been going on. A month, maybe two is his best guess.

The last time he could think of was when he woke to the bedroom’s beeping smoke alarm. Gasping with eyes stinging and watering. Feeling heat on one side of his body. The bed smouldering where his lit cigarette was burning a hole after he passed out. He poured a pot of water from the kitchen on it and opened a window all the way. Stripped the burned sheets to see the hole in the mattress. When Jennifer got home, she was pissed as hell.

Kept yelling at him that he would end up killing them both one day, all the while packing her bags. Wasn’t going to hang around to go down in flames with him.

He could do that all by himself.

What did she call him? Some kind of cat. Not from the song. Something in German. There was a cat in a box that reminded her of him. Every time she came home, she didn’t know if she was going to find him dead or not. Always hesitating outside on the front porch. Waiting and wondering.

Something about how the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Until you open the box to see which it is. She was always talking stupid shit like that. Feminist shit.

Alive and dead. At the same time, for fuck’s sake.

He drops his butt into a nearby empty. Hears the hollow fizzle as it douses in the bottle’s dregs.

He walks unsteadily toward the bedroom. Past the bathroom. Noticing it is closed, he lingers a moment, then continues.

Inside the bedroom. The first thing he sees is her suitcase on his side of the stripped bed. Next to it a bath towel laid out on her side. Still a bit damp to the touch as he pulls it back to reveal the large hole his cigarette burnt while he was sleeping. The singed edge of the mattress and darkly discoloured foam stuffing. A lingering acrid smoky trace reminds him why he has been camping out on the sofa. But gives no clue as to how long. A couple of days most likely. Struggling to remember. The effort of it digging into his shoulder blades.

He lightly drums fingertips on the suitcase’s leatherette. Packed or unpacked? Or maybe both at the same time. Ready to leave? Just returned? He starts to tug the zipper then stops. All these shadowy gaps in his memory. Suitcases he cannot bring himself to open. Doors he dares not enter.

Coming back to him unbidden: how the bathroom was still steamy with Jennifer telling him to get out. These moments between the gaps. How she yanked the towel off the rack to wrap around her wet body, except for him trying to grab it away. The tug of war when all he wanted was for her to enfold him in the towel with her. That clean soapy sourness in his nostrils, breathing in musk and mildew. A crack in the ceiling next to the fan ventilator. Screaming at him to get out. Trying to wedge herself between the toilet and the sink. He sees himself pulling her up by the hair. Then something wet and bright.

Spattered on the edge of the toilet tank. Her kneeling in a twisted way. Head turned in an awkward position on the toilet lid. Facing away from him.

He covers the mattress’s burnt hole with the towel again. Her towel. Somehow finds himself outside the bedroom. Shuffling toward the bathroom. “Jen?”

The closed door. Blocking his way. “Jennie?”

A trace of courage flutters up from his belly. Withering to a faint heart murmur. A wariness hardening behind his red eyes. His fingers barely touch the handle. Not even daring to jiggle it to see if it’s locked. The door between them now.

Now which one is the cat? Which one of them is both alive and dead? His ear presses against the door. “You in there? Jennifer.”

He takes a step back. Legs crumpling in slow motion. Hands clasp the back of his head in a kind of surrender. Then crossing his arms in front of his chest. His hands balled up tight. Knees bending toward his bowed head. His body curling onto its side. Holding fast what little fight he has left in him.

– Steven Mayoff