a fifty fifth story...'guilty'

‘Get  me a beer’.

‘You said you wouldn’t drink tonight’.
‘Look, I’ve had a tough day.  Get me a beer’.
‘But you..’
‘C’mon honey, one beer.  Please, c’mon’.
‘One?’
‘Just one..to take the edge off things’.
‘Ok.  Just one’.
‘Thanks, honey’.
‘One’.
‘Yeah, one, and brush the ice off of it’.

~

..She goes out of the kitchen.
He feels around the back of his neck with both hands.  His shoulders are tense. 
The whole cutting down routine, tiresome.
And it means having to spend more time the wife.
They got hitched too early.
Rushed right into it all.
They were in love too soon, used to tell her ‘nobody’s gonna love you like I will’.
Yes, really..

..Trouble started when they spent summer in the back country, house sitting.
That was when the cracks started to appear.
They argued a lot.
Drank too much.
There was nothing else to do.
Then she got depressed. 
Would stop halfway through they were making love together, saying she was tired.. 

..Tired!
What does that say to a man?!
Makes a man fall prey to his thoughts in the small hours of the morning, when thoughts come too readily.
And now he was working a ten hour shift.
And she was sitting at home, mooning over him, his bad habits.
She made him feel guilty for his drinking.
Guilty!
She should have seen the machinist at work!
Pressed the wrong switch with the engineer fixing the laundry press..

..The engineer had his arm crushed, bone and all.
The engineer had a wife, three kids.
The machinist lived alone, a bedsit down town.
Grim neighbourhood.
And still she moped about her life.
Even though she had him.
Was losing him..

..They both knew they were losing each other.