Free The Last Time I Died by Joe Nelms Page B

you did, Arnold Rosen?
    He smiles a weak smile as he lies to me.
    —Really, I’m sorry.
    As a caveman, I know I have the option of crushing his skull with the oversized ceramic brain paperweight on his desk. That’s what cavemen do when they’re provoked. I have a priority, though, and crushing skulls isn’t it. Neither is getting arrested. So, Arnold Rosen, please wallow in all the snarky, interpersonal one-upmanship you’d like. I fold. My focus is singular and if you’re not going to help me, I’ll move on. Like a caveman.
    I pass a couple of cops on my way out. They give me a quick onceover but then hustle along to the office of a respected psychiatrist whose assistant called a few minutes ago.

25
    *It’s two years and nine months ago.
    I’m blowing out Lisa’s hair.
    She could get it done by her guy, but she says I’m better. I’m not, but I like doing it.
    She’s fresh out of the shower, wrapped in her robe. No carefully applied makeup. No signature perfume. No tailored clothes. Just Lisa. She smells wonderful. Sitting in front of her mirror. Patiently waiting for me to do what I do. We’ve got plenty of time before we have to be anywhere.
    Things have calmed to a dull predictable roar between the two of us, as I believe they do with most legally committed couples. We wake up together and leave for our jobs and come home around the same time (she works as hard as I do) and might even be enjoying the early grooves of what will hopefully soon be a deep rut.
    I’ve got the top three-quarters of the left side of her mane twisted around and clipped up and I’m working on the bottom quarter. You have to get the bottom straight before you move to the top sections. It’s the foundation. This part usually takes the longest but it’s a good warm up for the finesse involved in the top layers. This is my system. You have to get the foundation straight or you’re wasting your time. A wet foundation will get the hair you’ve dried on top of it damp enough that it will start to wave. So do the foundation first. The foundation is everything.
    I’m transforming her.
    Blowing her hair out takes about a half an hour, but while we’re in the thick of it, time is nonexistent. It could be a minute. It could be a day. The sound of the dryer creates a protective cocoon of sound around us, tells the rest of the world to fuck right off. The heat bouncing back reminds me this is where I should be. Right here.
    Occasionally, she’ll look up from the gossip rag she’s reading and smile. I smile back although I’m so focused I’m sure it looks like a smirk.
    I tend to underestimate the range of my facial expressions. What feels like a broad smile to me looks like a wan grimace to its recipient. Pure shock comes off as mild amusement. Anger as grating irritation. I noticed the tendency when I looked at pictures in which I thought I was perhaps smiling too much. I wasn’t. The interpolation to other expressions wasn’t too tough. I checked in my bathroom mirror to confirm the hypothesis—yes, when I made a super happy face I looked sardonic, when I acted depressed I looked bored. That explained a lot. I was twenty-seven when I figured this out and there was already a mass grave of emotional disasters I could easily attribute to my underperforming face. I decided to do nothing about the issue. What could I do, after all? Overact? Fake emotion? To what end? You get what you get and that’s it.
    Lisa’s expressions are the opposite. Easy. Quick. Transparent. Exactly what she’s feeling. When she’s happy, she looks happy. When she’s sad, she looks sad. I won’t go so far as to say she has a simple interior life because she’s too smart for that. She’s complicated and thoughtful, but has an amazing capacity to leave things in the past. While I will let a grudge echo into other emotions long after its causal event has been forgotten, she releases grievances without a second thought, moving on with zero baggage.