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You hear it coming from the kitchen.
An old, dusty tune forgotten after a lifetime of distractions.
It’s a nostalgic crackling. Someone’s old-style radio box tick, tick, ticking away, dials and nodes dancing behind yellowed plastic, thrumming to soft melodies. It’s an 80’s hit, though nothing meant for the dance floor. You’re humming it’s chorus before you can identify what it is.
He doesn’t look happy, per se. But she’s there, and she’s fixed something up for him, and you know he’ll hate it, and yet he’ll still eat it like it were his last meal. Like he always does.
It’s such a familiar sight.
You watch from the doorway how the grey wires of his mustache don’t hide everything: that little upturn of his lips, effortlessly humble, quietly solemn. Content.
Her tiny, black flats prance across the tiles and he tries his best to keep up, tries to act like his arthritic joints could carry him half as quick.
But you’ve danced with Sunny before. You know she leads more than she follows.
Her feet stay mounted on the tips of his, like a pebble balanced on a boulder, her small hands in his leathery palms. He spins them around, lifting her legs when he bends his own with silent echoes of pain written across his face, the epitome of restraint. His waltz is off by a couple degrees of spryness, but the integrity is still there.
You could point out a million discrete points in his expression that convey just how invested he is, how hard he’s trying, if you wanted.
His crow’s feet especially wrinkled, pulled taut in a happy squint. Laugh lines noticeable from miles away, a glimmer of teeth showing. His soft chuckles when she slips off beat and they have to start all over again.
She stutters in pace when she sees you, and you try hard not to smile too quickly.
“I leave you alone for five minutes and you’re already putting the moves on my lady.” You dock your hands on your hips, shaking your head as she giggles and peers up at you two, bouncing on her heels. “I guess old habits do die hard.”
He makes this grating noise you can’t decipher. The screeching of a lonely owl that’s been howling in your loft for far too many years.
“She’s quite the woman. I couldn’t help it.”
Sunny laughs, head tilted back, eyes squinted into colored slits with glee, like she gets it. As if she were there for the glory days of Snake’s libido. For every codec call when a broad would walk by and you’d get the gutter flow of Snake’s thoughts.
Your hand ruffles the pointed tufts of pale hair sticking out all around her headband, pushing it into her eyes as she huffs it away. He wraps his arm around your waist, and suddenly the three of you are swaying together.
Wilted pads on the back of your neck, a warm exhale on your throat that makes your body shake. Like grabbing an animal by the scruff, he makes sure it’s honest, but quick. Detached, ginger.
She covers her mouth like she’s witnessing a scandal when his lips touch yours. The scorched edges of burnt hair, blunt and prickling. A rope cut gnarly and slow, twine all frayed and ugly. His affectation always hurts, on some level.
Ancient lungs that have screamed enough to make battlefields blush hum quietly in your ear some tune you stare into the corner trying to remember the name of.
He never used to sing before. It’s an instrument years out of commission. Untuned. Strings thrumming tightly, wound-up and gradually unwinding by your fingers. Your fresh sheets of melodies.
It’s a metaphor. Like the broken pilot light on your stove. The staleness in the air when your vents stop shaking. You begin to tremble yourself when he opens his mouth and sings to you, so quiet but not ashamed. Treasuring. Savoring the sweet tang of love on his taste-buds.
“Dancing, with tears in my eyes.”
Sunny’s cheek is pressed against your thigh; as high as her little head can reach. His hand is wide on the back of her neck, his other arm around your lower back, swooning and swaying you two to the beat.
“Weeping for the memory of a life gone by.”
Her eyes are closed with contentment, and you have to follow suit when he looks at you, sunken features gleaming with a devotion you used to daydream of.
He tells you, indirectly, of a love that died. It raises the hair on your neck and sends a trail of bumps down your right side, frozen by the intensity of his presence.
You’re dancing with a phantom in your kitchen at ten till midnight, and it’s colder than it’s ever been.
“It’s time, and we’re in each other's arms,
It’s late but I don’t think we really care.
Dancing, with tears in my eyes,
Weeping for the memory of a love that died.”
With time, the song ends, and your love fades with it. Onto the next track, there’s no dallying. Like your patience for all of those fruitless consultations and senseless appointments, shoving it aside like a greedy bully, taking him with it.
You hear the distant beeping of a heart monitor climbing the jagged rungs of a metaphorical Everest inside your mind, surmounting your blockades, ruining the charade. His hands are colder than his energy, his body not so aligned with his desires. Sunny doesn’t look her namesake, because the massive star you two share is dwindling in temperature.
It’s been dead for years. Imploded. Gaseous remains hurdled into someone else’s stratosphere, not half as bright. It only took this long for the darkness to finally reach you.