The Noctambulists and Other Fictions - Excerpt

Withholding-

1.Audit

The date of the divorce coincided with their tenth anniversary.  That, Cliff reasoned ahould make it easy to remember.  He preferred even numbers, symmetrical coordinates.  So far, he hadn't fared badly:  wed at thirty, divorced at forty.

It was a formality, a sensible end to a sensibe alliance.  Cliff hadn't expected it to be any different.  Their time together had passed so smoothly ( a graph of its history would show a gently sloping line, no dramatic zigzags), so effortlessly that Cliff was startled when Connie referred to their relationship as having "gone dead."

Although the choice of cliche (he told himself) was not meant to be taken literally, it bothered him.  He couldn't dismiss it as a dead metaphor.  It made him think of handball, his twice-a-week battle against middle-aged spread in the playground across the street.  He heard the flesh-colored "spaldeen" hit the concrete wall with a hollow pop, saw it roll, rather than high-bound, back to him.

Had their relationship ever had much bounce to it?  Cliff now wondered and got out their photo album to look for verification.  It was a thin volume since both Connie and he were camera shy--a minor irony.  He was a skilled amateur photographer who, were he to indulge his fantasies, could picture himself shooting assignment for the National Geographic.

Their wedding pictures, candid shotts taken by a friend as they were coming out of the Municipal Building, were inconclusive.  It had been a blustery day.  Connie's face was half obscured by windblown hair.  She must have been freezing in her pastel-blue suit.  He was wearing a raincoat, collar turned up.  The color had faded from the two photographs from their wedding trip to the Canaries.  Both had been taken with a Polaroid by a street photographer.  One showed them on the hotel terrace, squinting out to sea.  The sun was in their eyes.  The second, taken under the shade of a beach umbrella, had them smiling.  Connie's face was all teeth.  He looked befuddled, his long jaw slack.  No facial hair to hide behind.  He hadn't let his beard grow until after the honeymoon.