Psychological horror · 2 min read · Set in Ostrova ·
The Second Chair
A couple has the same conversation for the third time, and each remembers a different one.
- perspective: close-third
They had the conversation at the kitchen table, as they always did, with the lamp on and the dishes done and Ilka's hands wrapped round a mug she was not drinking from.
Pavel said that he thought they should talk about the money. She said that she knew. He said that he did not want it to be an argument. She said that it would not be, and she meant it, and he could see that she meant it, and for a moment the kitchen was so reasonable that he almost laughed.
Then there was a pause.
It was not a long one. He would later try to describe it to himself and fail, and the closest he could come was to say that it was the length of a breath held by someone else. In the pause the lamp seemed to lean. When it ended, Ilka was looking at him with enormous kindness and saying, “Then we'll do it your way.”
“I didn't say a way,” Pavel said.
“You said you wanted to sell it.”
He had not said that. He was certain he had not said that. He had said, a minute earlier, that he wanted to keep it, and the thing he had been trying to say next was that he understood why she could not.
“Fine,” he said. “We'll sell.”
That was the second time. The first had been in March, when he had gone to the table meaning to tell her that he was leaving, and had come away having agreed to repaint the hall. He had always put it down to being tired.
On the third time he wrote it down.
He kept the notebook in his coat. At the first sign of a pause he put his hand in his pocket and wrote, without looking, as quickly as he could, what each of them had just said. He was clumsy with it. He was out of practice at not being kind.
Afterwards, in the bathroom, he read what he had written. In his own hand it said: *Ilka: I think we should stop.* Below it: *Pavel: I agree.*
He sat on the edge of the bath for a long time. In the kitchen he could hear her humming, and the tap running, and the unmistakable sound of somebody who had just won a very hard argument and was putting the cups away.
He went back in. She smiled at him. She said, “I'm glad we talked.”
He opened his mouth to ask whether she had heard the same thing he had, and found that the pause was already there, patient as a held coat, waiting to be filled; and what came out of him instead was, “So am I.”