28.09.010
THE DISCOVERY OF TIME TRAVEL
She says: ‘But was it intentional? Does that make it murder?’
He says: ‘No, no … but he didn’t mean it, see?’
She says: ‘You … murdered me? You are going to murder me?’
He says: ‘It is a accident. I’m innocent – he’s innocent, but no-one believes him. All of your friends suspect him, all of your family. He loved her with every muscle, every ounce, every fibre in his body … oh, my muscles, they’re so relaxed! Are yours too? … It was an accident, but he caused it.’
She says: ‘And, she dies?’
He says: ‘Yes. Or, I guess … she could be injured, her head …’
She says: ‘No, she dies! No two ways about it.’
He says: ‘I love the subtlety of it. The use of gesture, it’s fantastic. I’m so relaxed!’
She says: ‘ … The same word, repeated often enough, ceases to hold meaning. The word is emptied of meaning.’
He says: ‘I love you.’
She says: ‘The way she conveys emotion, even the faintest movement …’
He says: ‘So how did you wind up sleeping with him?’
She says: ‘Ha, it was a joke!’
He says: ‘I can’t talk about it anymore, I feel like it would actually happen; that I would kill you.’
She says: ‘Then keep your hands to yourself buddy!’
He says: ‘I won’t touch you.’
They go on to discuss the finer points of a feeling so specifically vague, so particular to each individual in its use yet so sprawling in its points of reference, each utterance containing its own state of being, manifest in the nature of the context it is used in, yet also universalized by its second meaning, the one most frequented by fascists and the forces of devout ignorance.
Silence.
But for the insect voices and occasional rattle of rain, and sometimes hail, through the leaves of the palms by the pool outside,
silence.
She says: ‘I heard that silence is also a sound.’
He says: ‘Say again?’
She says: ‘I said, “I heard silence is a sound”!’
He says: ‘Hm, that sounds about right – if sound is a movement, and different sounds merely different speeds, then silence is just a very slow movement.’
She says: ‘Zero movement.’
He says: ‘Yet if silence is zero movement, then a negative sound makes a retrograde movement? So …’
She says: ‘Then if you can move beyond silence, move through it? Then …’
They both say: ‘You can move backwards in time!’
Silence once more.
He says: ‘It just got colder.’
She says: ‘I felt that too.’
He says: ‘Are we dead?’
She says: ‘Do you want to get out?’
He says: ‘But it’s not finished yet?’
She says: ‘Are sure you want to keep on going with it like this?’
He says: ‘It’s more the effect than anything else.’
She says: ‘A scene, repeated often enough, ceases to hold meaning. The scene, the world, is emptied of meaning.’
He says: ‘But with the static, without the sound, there is the implication of something horrific … a Terrifying Prospect.’
She says: ‘Thanks, and just when I was about to go step out into that big, empty house …’
He says: ‘I’ll go.’
She says: ‘No, don’t leave me here!’
He says: ‘I can’t stay. I feel like I am going to kill you if I stay.’
She says: ‘Just don’t touch me and it will be ok.’
He says: ‘This is just like Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’
She says ‘What is?’
He says: ‘Us. Here. Now.’
She says: ‘Oh.’
Silence, once more.
He says: ‘I guess I should go …’
She says: ‘But you’ve done everything?!’
He says: ‘All in order to seduce you here.’
She says: ‘Have you seduced me, have you?’
He says: ‘Yes, just as you have seduced me; we are past the point of seducement.’
She says: ‘We are not past that point. You should never be past that point!’
He says: ‘I jest. And what about with milk next time?’
She says: ‘Cheap milk?’
He says: ‘It’s still just like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, just with less static, kind of. So, did you or didn’t you sleep with him?’
She says: ‘Oh yeah. So anyway, I was with Florence and we were in the park next to the stretch of green …’
He says: ‘Yeah.’
She says: ‘… grass, next to the band stand that we were standing next to, and there was a band …’
He says: ‘Yeah?’
She says. ‘… playing, and so anyway, we were there and looking across the stretch of green grass and …’
He says: ‘So did you sleep with him or not?’
They are both laughing so hard that the lukewarm water from the bath splashes over the edges to make small oceans on the tiles, mingling with the crumbs of chocolate biscuit consumed so greedily with milk, earlier in the night, earlier in the silence of a distorted videocassette, Audrey applying lipstick like an android would. Laughing so hard, so filled with rapturous, mutual joy, and as her head connects audibly with the faucet and the black shadow of blood blossoms in the dank water and his frenzied efforts to haul her dripping limp frame from the tub send yet more water, dirty now from her blood, across the candle-lit tiles, his pleading whimpering shouts reverberating in the cavernous living space filled with the fineries of a life lived to live another after. Audrey knits a red sweater, scrolling silent, into a timeless infinite.
