All those months (months!) of running around (there is no other way to put it) had taken their toll. She was tired. Depleted. In fact, after a shower that morning, she nearly fell over as she took her jeans off their hook in the closet. They weighed more than she had remembered.
A conversation (Conversation? An honest question, more like it.) that had gone South in the mind of her lover was the final kick over the precipice of her ill health. For a time she enjoyed the free fall. She knew well enough how those ended; she knew to enjoy the ride.
When are you coming home? she had asked.
When I have a job, he replied.
You could take it on faith, come home, and look for a job, she said.
I have a job here now, though, he said. It's not much, but it's a job.
You could find a similar job here and keep looking, she said.
It seemed so reasonable. It seemed so....
I am tired of being alone, she ventured.
Don't I keep you from feeling alone? he asked.
Yes. But I am alone. Here and now, I am alone. And I am tired, she replied.
I am sorry you feel that way, that I don't fill you up.
You do, she said, yet it is a simple physical fact that there is nobody here in the room with me. That is the kind of alone I am tired of.
He disappeared from the conversation. She said she was tired and needed to sleep. He told her he loved her. She replied in kind. They slept simultaneously and one hundred and two miles apart.
Her sleep was as deep as death but not long enough. When she awoke, she recalled the conversation. She knew he wasn't coming home anytime soon. Maybe not at all. She accepted it, put on her heavy old jeans, and tried to walk.
She called him. He asked her how she was feeling.
Tired, she said.
You need to take better care of yourself, he said.
The irony very nearly killed her.