Exercise 7, Kevin Eib

An hour passed. Still they waited for their names to be called. Jim tapped the blue crayon he'd been coloring with, blue, periwinkle, whatever Crayola called it, back into the golden cardboard box with a decisive tamp and craned his neck toward Toni with a deep huff of a sigh and pleading eyes. Toni lowered the book she'd been reading, one of those true crime novels written by a serial killer from the confines of his prison cell. Jim kept his silence. They'd had the conversation before, but he could never get it off his mind. They didn't really let those murderers publish their own stories, did they? It felt to Jim like a transgression, allowing these miscreants to escape their bars through words that would hunt him down and leave indelible marks on his mind or body while he slept. Some words should remain unsaid, some stories untold. And yet there it was, just under his nose. Who was it this time? Some unauthorized copy of Bob Bordella? It bristled his flesh into a tightened rash of nerves reddening around his throat and wrists just thinking about it. It was the sort of book Jim couldn't fathom reading, didn't even want in the house, but he allowed her this one concession provided she kept it out of the bedroom--someplace away from the sacred place of sleep where he needed the comfort of safety in the dark, protection from his worst imaginings. Someplace he could escape into her body for the night. Jim kept his eyes fixed on Toni, refused to acknowledge the book now in her lap. Toni pressed her thumb firmly against the page as if she were kneading herself into the pulp of the pages, making sure the book remembered where she had been. It was a small but intimate gesture, something that showed a sense of authority or ownership over the object gripped tightly, perhaps too tightly, in her hand. It was the sort of control that attracted Jim to Toni, made him feel safe with her. It was the sort of control that would ultimately suffocate him, make him leave her altogether. With her thumb as bookmarker she turned her head to meet Jim's gaze. "I told you so." Her smile forced the crinkles up around her eyes. He could see the crow's feet that were beginning to take shape. Where the twinkle in her eyes normally formed, today he found a glistening. She was nervous or upset--some sort of unwonted emotion stowed in the watery confines of her eyes. He stored his emotions someplace else. Someplace more remote. The metal side door opened and the doctor emerged in his long white coat. It marked only the third time he'd done so in the hour they'd been here. The room paused and everyone looked up, hopeful. "Susan Jones." A young girl, belly taut with pregnancy, moved heavily to the door and disappeared with the doctor. "Yeah, you told me so." Jim dropped the pout in his lips and smiled back, nodding his head at her know-it-all grin. He thought it would be a quick in and out, that they would go in and the doctor would say everything looks fine and they would be on their way. He was beginning to think he should have washed more than his hands after a night of drinking and fucking. "You hungry? I brought granolas." She thought of everything in advance. "Sure." Jim needed more than a granola bar but anything would do for now. He waited for Toni to rummage through her bag before putting out his hand, palm up. He had thrown on his green army jacket and hat thinking it would be enough to cover the gritty stench coming off his skin, the rank grease of his hair. Even the movement of putting his hand out betrayed his not having showered. Not that he cared what the man behind him swatting the newspaper back and forth thought. It was more that he was beginning to feel trapped in his skin, closed in with a roomful of strangers pushing against the boundaries of his space. The layer of old sweat made him fell small, away. "I'll put up the colors if you're done." "Just one more. I don't think I can handle the TV." The TV was playing a documentary on safe sex. High school kids talking about what they did wrong. What they would do differently given the chance. The past was over. Jim was thinking about a future with Toni. Trying to find the silver lining. "What'd you expect for free? Be glad it's not the drinking and driving video." She patted his knee with her free hand and cocked her head at the paper he'd been drawing on. "What is it?" "I don't know. Was just kind of doodling." He hadn't noticed his knees jouncing up and down until she placed her hand on him. Calmed him with her touch. "Hmm. Looks like a sky." "Or a bruise." He was chewing the hangnail off his thumb. Sucking on the salt of his skin. Not sure why he let the words come out so easily. Wishing they could be unsaid. Untold. "A midnight sky," she rejoined. "I just liked the way the colors blended together." He shot up out of the folding chair. "I'll be back. Wait for me if they call my name." "We're doing this together, remember?" As he bolted toward the bathroom the man with the newspaper, a heavyset man with a wiry beard, leaned in to Toni and asked in a hushed tone, "What's wrong with him?" Toni's eyes narrowed a bit and then she smiled. "Him?" Her voice trailed up, as if she were practicing a vocal exercise. "There's nothing wrong with him. We're in to get some test results is all." The man's face turned pink. "Sorry to bother you. I just thought--" "It's okay." The man disappeared behind his paper. Toni held the drawing in her hand. A series of purples and blues scrawled in overlapping patterns of scribbled lines filled with varying shades and pressures of crayon. She wondered what secret codes she held in her hand, pressed firmly in her grip.