Marc and Annette lie on the bed, staring up at the tiny white topographical map of ceiling above the bed. A single sheet stretches between them, covering the odd angles of their naked bodies.

“I don’t know how you can say I’m being selfish,” says Annette.

“Bullshit.”

“Fuck you, you prick.”

“Cunt.”

Annette drags on her cigarette, taps the ash into the small dish between them on the bed. “Yeah, “ she says. “I’m a cunt. That’s what I am, right? Just a cunt for you to fuck. Now that’s selfish.”

“You can’t even understand. Don’t even try. I’m so…fucking sick and tired of…explaining…”

“Maybe you’re not doing a good job of it, then. Because, I don’t know…I think I get it.”

“Oh, you get it. You get it. Fuck. Yeah. You’re not the one taking the pills so you don’t get sick while you take the other pills.”

“Ha. You get the irony of that, right?”

“Don’t condescend to me.”

She lifts up, the sheet falling away from her breasts. Marc watches the pale breast, the thick red nipple as it hangs. He wants to bite it.

“Shut up…stop whining like a little…think about it. Think about it. Think about what I have to do.”

“I’ll be there,” she says. He doesn’t want her to talk anymore. He’s rubbing his temples. He wants to take a shower and forget he ever brought it up.

“For what? The nine months? You’ll help me get fat and do those stupid breathing exercises and say ‘you can’t do it honey, push!’ and then when I’ve got a two year old child and I have to say, this is why you don’t have a daddy—“

“What do you want from me? Isn’t it…isn’t it better to have something…to leave something…? Don’t you want that for us? You say you love me, right? Well. I want there to be something of us…I won’t have anything. I have nothing else to give.”

“Shut the fuck up. Don’t even make it seem like something noble, you fucking nimrod.”

“I’m not even supposed to be alive.”

“Whatever.” He’s told her about the plane crash many times. She’s seen the burns, the scars on his arms and legs. The two-year old who lived as a plane crashed into a cornfield in Buttfuck, Kansas. His mom had shown her the news clippings.

“I hate you. I goddamn hate you.”

“I guess that’s why you broke up with me, then. Except, here we are fucking, and then you ask me that.”

“I can’t make you understand.”

“Try a little fucking harder then.”

Marc sighs. She leans back, and he’s still staring at the nipple, the flesh of the breast the way it slides against her ribcage. He feels himself growing harder and shifts his legs under the remainder of the sheet.

“My parents will help, you know.”

She laughs and rolls back. “Christ on a stick. Yeah…oh, that’s good. Your parents hate me. They fucking HATE me, Marc. And what do you think they’ll say when I go to them with little Marc Jr. asking for a hand-out?”

She turns away, pushing forward with her arms. Going to get up. He wants to turn it back. Undo this. The room is washed out, pale in the sun. He reaches out grabs her upper arm. She yelps. “Get the fuck off of me!” she turns to slap at his arm with her other hand. He can’t help it; he likes the way her breasts move. He tries to focus on that while the blood rushes up into his head. He feels the pinprick pressure at the back of the skull, now it’s blossoming outward. He freezes, hand still tight on her arm.

“Fuck.”

“Marc? What? Are you OK?”

“Yeah…” his voice trails off. They sit there in the quiet. Neither speaking. He can hear her breathing. She doesn’t move, but he can feel the pulse of her heat, beating rapidly, pumping blood through her veins.

“Marc?” she says again. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he breathes in deep and smells something sharp and musty. Neither of them had noticed that the ashtray had tipped over into the cotton sheets. Smoke is rising from the bed.

“Oh Jesus, oh shit,” says Annette, suddenly rising up and back, away from Marc’s grip. “Fuck,” she says, “Fuck.” She’s trying to pat it out with a shirt now, his shirt, stopping the slow brown creep of the singing flame. “God fucking damn it,” she says, leaning back. “I just washed these, too.”

The fog in his head begins to clear. Color bleeds back in to the room little by little as he watches her, leaning back on her knees, afternoon sunlight filtering through the blinds across her pale breasts and big nipples. She’s panting a little, her ribcage rising and falling, and he wants to capture that moment and paint it and live in it for as long as he can.

When there is nothing left between two people, the physics of the room appear to change. A stillness overcomes the space between them, lazy dust motes trapped in a shaft of light.  There is movement, of course — the nervous fidget of fingers, the swaying of legs, the tilt of the head to a slightly sharper angle.  A yawn.  But these movements become infinitesimal in the void between the occupants of the room.

Also, there is silence.  Not true silence, of course.  Conversation occurs in small, precise rounds, ticking in time to an invisible clock.  In these moments the dialogue doesn’t falter; it simply ends, resets, begins anew.  But beneath these mechanical sounds, one can hear the silence. It doesn’t come from the speaker — it emanates from the listener. This silence is deep; it is the practice of hiding oneself completely from a conversation so as to eliminate any echo or reverberation.

Eventually, one of them will leave.  The woman will stand, leisurely, and stretch.  She will reach for her purse.  She will do this neither too slowly nor too quickly, yet the timing will still be incorrect, vastly noticeable, and completely ignored.

“Well,” she will say, “I should go.”  Her tone is as flat as the statement.

He will glance up, taking one more sip of coffee to give himself an extra moment.  He will set down the mug, arrange the newspaper so it aligns to the edge of the table.  He will — in this order — look her in the eyes and then smile.  But these two acts will not align; they come one after the other, eliminating the warmth from either.

He will say something, but the words are irrelevant; in this space, words undergo an alchemical transformation, are rendered inert.  They become meaningless.  In this space the silence has deafened her.