BETRAYAL.

A DYING WOMAN AND HER HUSBAND'S MISTRESS MEET.

She knows death approaches, you can see it in her face and in her eyes, but you can’t understand what she’s saying, her words are mumbled; they fall from her mouth like dying birds. You lean closer, get as near as you can to her and try to pick out the words, the sounds, find a meaning. She touches your cheek, her fingers are clammy, the fingernails are sharp. She draws you closer, whispers in your ear, I’m being poisoned; they’re poisoning me. She lets you go and looks at you as you upright yourself, her eyes peering into your eyes as if she were searching for something lost. You frown as if unsure what you’d heard; you juggle her words around in your mind like small balls from hand to hand. She repeats herself, the words this time being pushed out as if they were babies being brought into the world, and you grab at them trying to catch them as they come, but they fall away from you, go from your reach. She grabs at your skirt, grips it tightly, drags you downward. They’re poisoning me, she says, her eyes piercing you, her fist twisting your skirt. I’m dying, dying. She releases you and lies back on the pillow and sighs. She closes her eyes as the door behind you opens and her husband enters and closes the door behind him. She says she’s being poisoned, you tell him. He looks at her lying in the bed with her eyes closed. She always was a drama queen, he says coldly. She has cancer and she’s dying and there’s nothing they can do. You look from him to her and back to him again. You touch his hand. I didn’t think I’d get this close to her, you say softly. She was always an abstraction before, someone out there beyond my world. You look down at her lying there breathing shallow. He sighs and touches your hands and brings them into his. She’ll be gone soon, he says, then we can make love and be together without having to watch the time or pretend we’re only friends. You remember the last time you and he had made love the night before, the passion spent, the words and cries of the moment, the warmth of flesh and lips and kisses, the exchanging of juices, but now it all seems so empty, so distasteful, like a big betrayal, a stab in the back. You look at him, withdraw your hands from his, and back away. You breathe in the stale air, the scent of death, the words he speaks, fall away from you, as you look towards the bed and see she’s gazing at you, her eyes suddenly brighter, her lips thin slowly open into a small smile, then its gone again, the smile, the eyes, the words, and it’s just you and him and the dark approaching death all twirling around in your head and his wife’s just lying there her eyes closed, dead.