White Plaster Walls and Ash

When she walked out the door, he was still there, sitting in the small house by the beach. He was in the living room on the couch, staring silently into the white plaster walls. And he could smell the odor of the last night’s fire. He remembered how the smoke had leaked out and into the little room. The flue must be dirty, he thought, looking at the vent’s scorched seams. The man could see the ash in the basin of the fireplace. He looked at it. Wondered about it. Wanted to take it up between his thumb and forefinger and roll it around. Feel the texture. Get the scent.

“Are you going to be here when I get back?” the woman asked him, angrily crying, before she herself left the house.

They had been arguing, the way they did. The man had sat stoically on the couch, staring at the white plaster walls and the ash. And she yelled. Cried. Begging for answers, but he never had any. He kept quiet, the way he knew how. She asked him questions that he didn’t know the answers too, like “Do you love me?” and “Are you going to be here when I get back?” But realizing long ago that he would never be able to answer her questions, he had learned to sit stoical, staring at the white plaster walls and the ash. Sullen and lonely.

In front of the man was a coffee table, and on it were the empties from the nights before, an ash tray full of butts, the woman’s fifth of vodka that was half full, despite the her best efforts to finish it before they had gone to bed, last night. He looked at the bottle now, staring at it as he had the walls and the ash in the fireplace. The TV on, but he didn’t watch it. He looked at the vodka. Thought about it. Wanted it.

So, after the woman had been gone for a while, he made himself a drink. Vodka straight. He didn’t have any ice, but that wasn’t of any concern now. The vodka was cheap, but he drank it anyway. He didn’t drink for the flavor. Reaching over the table he grabbed a cigarette butt from the ash tray and looked at it. The man didn’t know who it belonged to, nor did he care. Many people had been at the little house last night, he thought, and this particular cigarette, as was true for several others, had too much tobacco left inside to waste, a good inch or so. The TV was on, but still he wasn’t watching. Lighting the cigarette, leaning back from the coffee table and into the folds of the couch, he drew in a deep breath. The cigarette burned and crackled and grew bright red at the tip, like they do, and as he smoked, the man coughed, and examined the cigarette, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he held it up to his eye. He was looking into the ember now. Wondering about it. Wanting to touch it.

Again, he drew at the cigarette and looked into the white plaster walls and the ash. And he could smell the smoke from the previous night’s fire…

They had lain in bed talking before falling asleep. He said he loved her. Said he would be there, forever. Said that he wanted a family and children and… And this morning, in the midst of loneliness, he didn’t know if any of it was true.

He made another drink. Drank it. And made another.

Outside, through the cracks in the closed blinds, the man could see the sky. It was blue. There was a light breeze and on the horizon he could see the marine layer coming in and it looked like ash. The palm trees were swaying, dancing with the currents of the day. “The whims of depravity,” he said. The man didn’t like salt air mixing with car exhausts and industrial waste and sewage, which flowed freely down the river, a half mile from the small house, into the ocean. You could smell it from the porch. He didn’t like the city’s fumes and sounds. An orchestra of madness is all it is. And it has reached the crescendo of its ill harmonics, he thought, as he simultaneously wished for blinds without cracks to shade his red-eyed stare.

Turning back to the white plaster walls and the ash in the fireplace he pushed those things from his mind. Back to a blank slate. No emotion. He sat stoically skulking on the couch, alone.

He made another drink. Drank it. And made another.

The couch was old, but comfortable. The man liked old things. His woman called him a Luddite. She screamed it. She hated it about the man; nevertheless it made him feel proud to be associated with such fine people.

There were dogs in the house too, but they were asleep and ignoring him, who sat so silently, transfixed by the walls and the ash. He felt very alone. The woman was comfort enough, or she should have been, he thought, but he liked it when she was gone and he was left to solitude. At least that is what he told himself when he wasn’t satisfied with his life, anymore. What it had become was not what he had imagined.

Hours past while the man sat and drank from the fifth and smoked leftover cigarettes, from the ash tray, down to the filter and starred at the walls. He coughed when he smoked, hacking up his lungs, who deplored the tobacco so much, though they lusted after other things.

All around him, there were boxes, unopened and labeled. They said things like “kitchen” and “bedroom.” They had lived there together for months, but still they had not unpacked and around him everything reminded him of The Move. He wanted to move now. He wanted to get away.

He made his last drink with the last of the vodka. Drank it. And put the glass down with a thud…

When the woman got back, later in the afternoon, when the ash colored clouds were overhead and the breeze had gotten heavier, all she found was an empty fifth of vodka, cigarettes smoked down to the filter, white plaster walls and the fireplace. And the smell of smoke.

On the table were flowers. They had not been there before and they had a lurid, yet bent, appeal to them and she picked them up. They had been picked from the yards of working class people who had spent the day off, somewhere else.

The man was at the ocean. In the water. It was cold and late in the day and he was drunk. He couldn’t feel pain anymore. No one else was in the ocean with him. And, again, looking into the west, he ignored everything behind him, silently. The houses and apartments, the palm trees and cars, stores and people, and the thoughts of the woman who was at the little house with the white plaster walls and the ash in the basin of the fireplace and the sleeping dogs. He waded out further. Began to swim out west. It felt like Manifest Destiny must have, he thought, as his long muscular arms broke through the frigid currents of the blue sea. The water was dirty, plastic bags floated by – more trash, debris, elements of production, growth, chemical agents to progress. Industrialization…

At the house the woman, her name was Lucinda, was crying and holding the flowers, smelling them, cherishing them as if they were her lover and not just another reminder of death. The flowers, like the man and her, were dying, plucked from their life source. The end will be coming soon.

Suddenly, out of rage and confusion, she threw the flowers into the fireplace, got rubbing alcohol form the bathroom cabinet and set the attractive beauties ablaze with the flit of a match. She could smell them as they burned orange, yellow, red…blue. The TV was on but she wasn’t watching it. Instead, she sat stoically on the couch staring at the white plaster walls, the coffee table with the empties and the cigarette butts smoked down to the filters and the ash of the now smoldering flowers.

The wind was howling outside. It was raining now and she could hear the sounds of vehicles driving by on wet asphalt. The man was still not home. It was dark. And long into the night she waited, hoping for the man to step through the door and embrace her tenderly. She missed him. Loved him. And he was gone off to be himself, alone.


first published in Relationships and Other Stuff (anthology)
By: Dillon Mullenix