On The Bench

Late autumn afternoon, Paris. A low bench – its blockiness a predictable facsimile of the architectural backdrop – seats two people who gaze intently at a notebook in the man’s hands.

Janice:

Why’s he sitting so I have to perch right at the edge of this damn bench? It’s uncomfortable enough, this low to the ground, with no back to rest on. Who designs this shit? What the hell is wrong with this city? I need to speak:

“So that was the name he was using?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We probably shouldn’t say it out loud, now that…”

“No, absolutely. Let’s refer to him as Dante.”

“Why?”

“Mmmm. Seems darkly poetic, with a trace of sulfur or something.”

“Jesus.”

“What?”

“Nothing, doesn’t matter.”

And what’s with the prim pose, bony knees all hunched together like that? Or those skinny arms? This pointing with his pinky finger all of a sudden? He never does that. All this stupid melodrama and subterfuge. This “meet me at precisely 6:00 pm on the corner of Rue Merde du Taureau” bullshit. God, he’s creeping me out. And after what he did, too. Am I an ingrate? He does something like this (for me!) and all I want to do is scream at him to stop fucking crowding me and let me get back to my trashy paperback! His maps and charts just seem so prissy and irrelevant. Damn.

Martin:

She must be overwhelmed. It’s the residual trauma, has to be. I don’t think she could’ve absorbed the enormity of it yet, of what I did for her: tracking the sick fuck down, all the way from Waukegan to the farmhouse just outside Fontainebleau; feigning long-lost camaraderie, then ending it with one wrenching thrust and twist of a hunting knife. Christ, does she think that was easy? Does she think there isn’t a moment when the memory of that ripping, bursting of warm innards giving way doesn’t invade my daily thoughts? That look in his eyes? Fuck! This reunion isn’t going how I imagined.

“You seem angry.”

“No, no, Martin, I’m not, really.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“What exactly?”

“This ending, here, in Paris, just as we planned a year ago. Here, on this bench, our trials over, justice served. Triumphant. Whatever.”

“You really did it, didn’t you?”

Yes. Yes. Except the word, waylaid by sudden emotion, merely ghosts past my lips. She doesn’t understand.

“You killed him.”

“He raped you.”

“Martin, you killed him. He was your father, too.”

Yes. Yes, he was.

The dark gauze of a viola drifts from gaps in the many panes behind them. Something dense and hulking reflects from the window itself. Traffic stains, like crime-scene blood-spatter, fan outward from the base of the wall to their left. The ground is uneven. Recessed lights prepare to illuminate. Or cast shadows. A cello joins the viola. It dawns on them simultaneously that a) they need to get home, and b) they’re no longer at all sure what that even means.

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A version of this short story appeared on BlergPop on 28 April, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.