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Date Posted: 07:24:52 05/03/08 Sat
Author: ManiRani
Author Host/IP: pool-71-106-208-217.lsanca.dsl-w.verizon.net / 71.106.208.217
Subject: After

Hi everyone,
I've lurked forever, but have written very little. This is just an idea I've been tossing around in my head for a while, so I thought I'd post it. I know this forum's not as active as it used to be, but this is completely un-beta'd, so I'd appreciate any concrit. Thanks! Mani





After she leaves, she wishes – not for the first time – that she were a normal woman. She wish that she could stay in bed for days or sob her regrets out on the shoulders of sympathetic girlfriends. It’s her own fault, of course, that she no longer has anyone to whom she can unburden her heart, and every time she thinks of it, the jagged edge of that knowledge twists a little deeper into her gut. She yearns for Walter to rasp teasing advice in her ear or for Birkoff to roll his eyes at her and complain that he could find the solution to her problems, if only she would shut up and let him work in peace. More than anything, she longs to see Michael’s face, still and serious as she pours out her worries and her shame; aches to have him pull her into his arms and to feel his whispered reassurances rumbling through her bones. But Birkoff died long before he should have and her role in Center’s so-called restructuring (in the coming weeks, operatives will mutter “purge” behind her back and she will pretend not to hear) has stripped her of her dearest friend’s trust. And she has just watched Michael disappear into the sun and shimmering jade, giving up his life for the second time today.

She has known for days, weeks, how this endgame was going to play itself out and, true to her training, she’s prepared herself. Mr. Jones has given her two days before she is due back in Section – “How bloody magnanimous,” she thinks, even as she recognizes that she has no right to feel bitter – and she plans to use her time efficiently. Three bottles of Barolo, the last gift Michael ever gave her, sit on her terrace, waiting to usher her into oblivion. She recalls the first time she tasted it, the two of them pretending to be honeymooners on a wine tour in Piemonte while trying to retrieve a disk hidden in one of the wineries dotting the Italian countryside. He had warned her that Barolo was an acquired taste and, sure enough, she grimaced as the wine overwhelmed her palate; but Michael, savoring the smell of tar and roses, looked perfectly content for the first time since she had known him. At that moment, in the cool, earthen basement of a village winery, she finally learned to have faith in something that was too complicated to understand. To love something that seemed too hard to love.

She will begin work again on Monday, all sleek hair and waterproof mascara. Her allotted time for self-pity will have passed and she will do the only thing that she can. One by one, she will remove every physical trace of him from her apartment – the spare key to his apartment that he had (finally) given her, the extra toothbrush in the bathroom, the sweater he left at the foot of her rumpled bed, knowing that she would be naked under it the next time she answered opened her door to him, greeting him with her lips and her legs and her eyes filled with promises. She will start sleeping in the middle of the bed again, and when she cook enough dinner for two people, she will remind herself fiercely that she is planning for leftovers.

But for this moment, she drinks steadily, holds on to the last piece of herself that was undeniably his, and hopes that it is enough to get her through the day. She peers through her glass and its ruby liquid at the refracting shapes of a world dissolving into pieces around her. She feels the glow of the dying sun seep into her skin and warm her guilty heart. She closes her eyes, takes another sip, and tries not to remember the taste of roses on his tongue.

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