A Song for the Discontented

by Jason Gurley

         They go before me, the two of them, into the parking lot, which is wide and square and populated with cars the color and texture of rotten and bruised plums and apples; of faded banana peels; of whitewashed fences and bleached seashells. The sky is a pleasant slate-blue, but while this is enjoyable for me (I am not an advocate, or enjoyer, of bright, sunny days; they’re overrated and stifling), this apparently displeases her greatly.
         They are a couple; he, uncomfortable in his own clothes: his shirt a wrinkled and equally obscene blend of orange and green plaid; beneath the long hem of the shirt he is wearing very loud red shorts, the kind which bear a pale blue stripe down the outside seam, and a white ring around the cuff; he stumbles uneasily in a pair of flip-flops which do not come naturally to him; he is heavy, with a paunch that adds a tinge of healthiness to his otherwise sun-scarred skin; from behind I see only his thinning silver hair, streaked with a few remaining lines of black, but he strikes me as someone who is rather jovial and friendly; for this reason I am perplexed by the company he keeps.
         She walks, at first, at arm’s length from him, legs stiff and elbows bent and saggy. From the angle of her arms I guess that she is clasping and unclasping her hands at her breast. Her hair is also going gray, but unhappily so—it is wiry and disloyal to the tools which attempt to hold it in place.
         “Come here,” he says, extending his palm to her.
         She does, and fits her elbow into his hand, and he hangs on her arm as a nurse would a soldier at a party in the days of the war.
         “My day is almost over,” she complains bitterly, in an ugly voice.
With a glance at his plastic wristwatch, he says, “It’s only six o’clock, dear.” There is an edge to his voice which suggests that he has been through the stagnant waters of this conversation before, and would rather circumnavigate them.
         “But what can I do in four hours?” she moans. “In four hours it will be ten, and then I’ll be tired and will go to sleep.”
         “Four hours is time to do something fun,” he follows heartlessly.
         “Not enough! What? What can I do in four hours?” she laments. “Four hours. It’s nothing! And then I’ll sleep, and it’ll go like that”—she snaps her fingers hard—“and then it’ll be Sunday, which will go way too fast, and after that work starts all over again.”
         He sighs, and says nothing; perhaps deciding that there is nothing to say which will ease her mood.
         “And the sky!” she says. “It’s gray!”
         It’s not, really; as I observed a moment ago, it’s a wonderful slate, deepening at the edges of my vision into a lush, dusky blue, then fading into the nearing blackness of night. But I can see there is no correcting her.
         He stumbles again in his loose shoes, and they find their car and step inside, and I think to myself that she is a woman for whom contentment will never come; it will always be slightly out of reach: she will be prevented from reaching it by some awful deed which she will not allow herself to enjoy, and when that deed is complete, another will arise, slighting the possibility of happiness. She will focus only on the passing of time, never enjoying the moment, in which happiness can always, certainly, be found.