of my eyes with my wrist as I knead spices into the raw ground beef with my bare hands, blow it away with a huff, and finally I get sick of it. Wash my hands and head up to our bathroom in search of a hair tie.
I hear our toilet flush, a pause, and then flush again. When I go into the bathroom, there’s a sour tang in the air. Adrian is wiping his mouth with a hand towel. Mouthwash bubbles as it swirls down the drain. I eye Adrian, waiting for some kind of explanation.
“I realized I haven’t brushed my teeth since I’ve been back and they felt fuzzy.” He brushes lips against my temple. “Dinner smells good—I can smell it from up here.”
And then he’s heading downstairs, leaving me in the bathroom wondering if I’ve missed something.
His toothbrush is dry. The bottle of mouthwash is still in the medicine cabinet—where I always put it. In the ten years we’ve been married, he has never one time put the mouthwash back in the cabinet when he’s done with it, he just leaves it on the counter. It’s one of those little things in a marriage that drive you bonkers, but aren’t worth making a big deal out of. I just put it back, sigh and shake my head and sometimes mutter a few annoyed curses. I do things like that which prompt the same response from him, and it’s just how it is.
But the mouthwash being put away…it sticks in my head as meaning something; I just can’t put my finger on what.
He smelled like mouthwash when he kissed my temple. I scented it, briefly, faintly.
And something else.
Sharp, sour.
“Nadia?” I hear him shout. “Water’s boiling. I’m gonna put the noodles in.”
I set it aside. Later, I’ll have time to puzzle over why he would lie about mouthwash.
But it sticks in my craw—whatever the hell that stupid phrase even means. What’s a craw, anyway? I consider Googling the origin and meaning of the phrase, but it slips my mind and the rest of the evening passes in easy conversation and watching a sci-fi thriller on Netflix and opening another bottle of wine and then I’m tipsy and we sleep together, this time just sleeping, and yet even as I drunkenly slumber, I dream of Adrian standing in front of me, and he’s just looking at me, and in the dream I NEED to ask him what he’s hiding, but my lips won’t work, my mouth won’t open, and he turns away in the dream and the opportunity to ask him is gone. And when I wake up with the sliver of silver moon hung in the window frame like a stray fingernail clipping, I can’t grasp the shape of the dream, only the fleeting emotional substance of it.
Whisky & Women
I’m having trouble with my appetite. Just…not hungry. Nauseated. I’ve been warned that with pancreatic cancer, having symptoms at all is not a good sign. The early symptoms tend to be vague, more generalized and not immediately tagged as symptomatic of cancer. Thus the fact that I didn’t get mine diagnosed till it was already spreading, and fast.
It’s already beyond my pancreas, so surgery wasn’t an option even then, at the very beginning. Chemo isn’t going to cure it. Just extend my life. Make it suck less.
People have lived for years with it, and others have died within months of first detection.
I’m maudlin, today. Nadia is at work, and I’m feeling like shit. Since she’s gone, I let myself just wallow in the shittiness, a rarity for me. It sucks. It hurts. I don’t want it. It’s not fair. Wah-wah-wah. The river of bullshit from my weak mind and sensitive, artiste heart is sickening even to me. Fuck this.
I’m trying to force myself out of the funk when my phone rings. Oh, yay! A distraction.
“Hello?” I answer it on the third ring. Don’t want to seem too eager.
“Adrian, hey. This is Nathan Fischer.”
I blink. “Hey, bud. Long time no see, how are you?”
Nathan is a carpenter, real salt of the earth kinda guy. I met him on the set of Love, Me, for which I was a consultant and executive producer and he was a set construction foreman. We ended up spending a lot of time together during the filming, drinking whiskey in my trailer and talking about our mutual love of old Hollywood westerns. We still talk, every so often, still connect for drinks every few months. He sometimes gets