DAY 06.

He has candles lit. It’s weird, but she goes with it. He’s made a fancy dinner. He says Grace before they eat, and takes her hand. She tries not to stare at him like he’s insane. She didn’t know he believed in God. She had no idea he believed in anything but sex and art and indie music. Sometimes, he’s full of surprises.

They eat in silence. The quiet is punctuated by his failed attempts at witty conversation. He asks about her day. She has no idea what to say.

He’s wearing a nice shirt. Her hands are sweating and she drops her fork. Her face burns. He pours her some more tonic water. She hates tonic water.

She begins to wonder if this is a date. There is an answer she is hoping for, but she knows that hoping with him usually gets her nowhere.

He doesn’t let her help him clean up. He plays her some guitar on his couch. He doesn’t sing so great but it doesn’t matter. He tries anyway. This is him showing off. The one way he knows how to connect is through music.

The first time she met him was all about music. They laid on her bed and listened to songs by bands she’d never heard of. He talked and talked her loneliness away. It was that easy.

They watch a movie in his room. She sits on the edge of his bed and tries to forget how many other girls have been here. His fingers stroke her hair every so often while Sleepy Hollow plays on his laptop.

She might throw up if he tries to kiss her. Not from not wanting to but from never having done so before. She’s wondered how it happens. How two people can just meet at the mouth in such an uncomplicated way. There are too many things to think about. Too many things that could go wrong.

All of this, whatever this really is, could just end in an instant. Poof, and it’s gone.

DAY 03.

We contemplated all of the wires, all of the parts. They came in a shiny plastic bag. That bag made us feel good. We could see everything inside. We knew what to expect. So unlike people, we thought. You could never see inside someone from the get go. Never knew what you were getting.

We read the instruction manual. Or maybe we skimmed it. People never came with instruction manuals. So unpredictable, human beings were.

We scoffed at the task ahead, as if we installed television sets all the time.

“This will be a piece of cake”, we thought. “We’ll finish just in time to tune in to “Hell’s Kitchen”. That Gordon Ramsay, he’s a pistol.” We scowled when we missed our eight-o-clock deadline.

“This is sure to be a snap”, we said with a positive attitude. We were obsessed with staying positive. It would be a dark day if the installation of our television sets was enough to send us into a depressive spiral. We took enough pills as it was. One for sleeping. One for weight control. One for staying focused.

We shook off those dark thoughts, put them in the backs of our minds. We were capable. We were intelligent. We were so self assured. So confident. Nothing would get us down.

We scratched our heads in thought. We kicked the television stand harder than we probably should’ve. Some of us ended up in the local physician’s office with stubbed toes. We took care not to kick the actual DVR box, because if that happened, well then we’d be really screwed.

Often, we pressed the power button on and off.

And then on again.

And then off again.

And then one more time on, because you never really know with these things.

Our technologically talented spouses swept us out of the way. They brushed us aside with a flick of their hands. They had read the instruction manual from cover to cover. They knew it inside and out.

“Leave this to the experts,” they said. Some of them got stubbed toes too.

Our smart friends who received computer science degrees came over to take a look. They’d only be a quick second. This whole problem, this headache, would be solved. With a pill. With a quick fix. With a remote control and a comfortable seating area. Except it wasn’t.

We ached from boredom. We tried reading our books. We subscribed to more magazines. We went jogging. We had sex. We went to lunch.

But what was there to talk about? How could we keep up with Brian from accounting at the water-cooler at work? His cheesy smile and gelled hair. That bastard. He could rattle off stats about “Lost” like no one’s business. He knew all the great conspiracy theories. We couldn’t add our input to the heated discussion of the final show of the series because we hadn’t seen it. Surely our jobs would suffer if we didn’t seem interested in our fellow co-workers, and the things they were invested in. We’d never beat out Brian for that promotion.

We were exhausted. Our toes were so sore. The couches weren’t nearly as comfortable as we had previously thought, so we upgraded to something leather. The kind that sank when we sat in it. The sex wasn’t that good. Our lunches became too expensive. We bought new running shoes. And then we called the cable guy.