Here or There extract

Desire can always be split into two. The things you desire, by their very nature, are never the things you have. Although the things you have are still desired, still things you appreciate – when you take the time to remember. Desire will always disappoint you, in the end. For what you want is never as good as the wanting itself.

She had shown him this, in a way. He had to be grateful: without her he would have been lost, even unto himself, and at least for a while everything had had meaning, a purpose. She enlightened him, back then, and he drank her in until he was so intoxicated she controlled all his actions, a feeling he wholeheartedly embraced. Diminished responsibility, he’d like to claim, but he would be laughed at or, worse, despised.

“It was mutual; it was what we both wanted,” she’d argue, “wasn’t it?” she’d add, a little insecurity creeping through. Because, at the end of the day, she’d lost more than he had, sacrificed her whole world in search of one she could control, only to find herself wanting, again.

It had been on the news; he remembered the day she had gone to the front door as usual, picked up that day’s national newspaper and retreated to the kitchen for a routine cup of coffee. He had been in the bedroom when he heard her exclaim and, thinking she had hurt herself, he rushed clumsily into the kitchen, almost tripping over the bags that at that time resided permanently on the bedroom floor. Instead she was seated, one hand over her mouth and the other clutching at the paper sheets, eyes rapidly scanning words that had by then become so familiar to them.

“What did you expect?” he had asked her. “It’s no surprise they’ve covered it – there’s a lot of interest in these sorts of things.”

“‘These sorts of things’?” she had responded defensively, immediately standing him alongside the media fiends and vicious critics. That’s how it became, eventually; at one time the two of them had stood together, but now their own actions only served to pit them against each other.

“These sorts of things, as you refer to them, are our lives, our actions, our circumstances. How can you dismiss them like that? How can you offer them up to the media frenzy and sit back with satisfaction. How can you not care that more and more people are hearing about this? It’s become a farce, not a consequence.”

Her face crumpled and stained with tears, and he went to her and put his arms around her. Though he couldn’t help thinking, yet again, how unattractive she looked when she was crying.

“I didn’t offer anything, and I am not satisfied. It’s just a small part of the course of events, that’s all – one day it will be forgotten.” She sobbed in his arms but was quiet for the rest of the day. He didn’t know if he believed his own words. He wanted to agree with her, but he had to keep up his role as protector, had to sustain the meaning they’d once injected into their relationship in order to make it worthwhile.

Meaning was slipping as fast as time. Any chance of perspective had crumbled a long time ago, perhaps even the day she revealed her proposition, and the day he had complied, eager to please her and longing for an ideal that he foolishly believed was within their grasp.

He wondered if he had ever been a good person – certainly he didn’t feel like one now – and if he had given up that side of him, sacrificed his integrity for the pursuit of pleasure. He was no longer capable of judging himself or her, though plenty of others were, and when he looked at her now, stared into her eyes, he saw a series of events, emotions, turmoil – several things, but no longer a person. She had transformed in his vision to embody all that they had been embroiled in, and in his eyes she was now the antithesis of her former self – suffocation rather than a means of escape.

He thought he still loved her and, despite events, he was not willing to let go of everything they had worked towards. They had deconstructed so much, painfully and ruthlessly, and there was no way he would give up before the reconstruction took place, wherever and however that may be. We owe it to ourselves, he told himself, otherwise we’ll never know if we did the right thing. But the right thing is always wrong for someone, the good mirrored by bad, desire twinned with dissatisfaction.

He could remember that last night as clearly as if he were still experiencing it – in terms of senses rather than memory. The candles flickering across the room, casting eerie shadows on the walls and slowly dying away as the night passed. The smell of mint on her breath, the scent of which he caught from time-to-time as she whispered to him quietly. Jumbled words that he later forgot but nevertheless clung to, each one as poignant as the next. The light touch of her hand on the back of his neck.

In the dull light his mind twisted and burned, feverish with regret and longing. We were meant to find catharsis, he seethed, not play out this bitter endgame.

He realised that what once she had given him, only she could take away, and he loved and hated her all at the same time, resented her manipulation and impulsiveness, while also recognising those reprobate traits in himself. Their own desires had stung them, beaten them, switched the polarity so that, like two negative magnets, no amount of effort could keep them clinging together. Desire will always disappoint you, in the end.

At the close of the night, the harsh words and the emptiness he felt as she drew away, drifted almost, though not reluctantly, until she was gone. And the words on the small, white square of paper, written in pencil so as to render them finite: