Now, when she looked again at her partner’s face, which was wrinkled because of the fear that he was trying to contain within, a feeling that she couldn’t even remember the last time she felt began to rise inside her. This was a feeling she had been trying to suppress since they started working together. It could not be reconciled with professionalism, and the fact that they came across each other by chance in a magazine years later did not require them to become lovers again. Besides, their friendship had ended a long time ago, at least that’s what she convinced herself. A relationship that ended like that was not supposed to be revived, ever. It was this man who was dying to end their relationship; he was in favor of keeping their relationship alive, or at least trying to keep it, despite the distance that had involuntarily come between them. In short, it had ended, and even though she didn’t want to admit it, the last man who had entered her life was now with her in the same room. Their similar heights and temperaments were interpreted by those around them as a symbol of harmony, both in their relationships when they were relatively young and in their encounters in their professional life. Although no one at the magazine was aware of their past, they were paired as field partners and surprisingly neither of them objected to this situation. Maybe the ashes of the fire that once burned this couple were waiting for the right amount of wind to reignite, who knows?
“Not in a million years…” sighed Judy, unaware that these words were coming out of his lips aloud.
“I would have loved to encourage you by saying, ‘A toast for this exemplary journalist!’, but hey, my hands are too trembling to even attempt so…”
Although she did not understand the reason for this strange flattery, she replied with a thank you mixed with a grin. Ah, this man and his cowardly compliments, she knew he would never change for a long while now. But right now, they had a job to focus on, as they have been and will be for months ahead. For this reason alone, a person should have prevented herself from getting close to someone. Otherwise, how would the significant other, and more importantly, the feelings oh so special, be any significant from mundanity? Mundanity that is doomed to disappear in the flow of life? No, lovers ought to devote special time to love, only in this way could they give due value to their feelings.
There were two problems in Judy’s situation: The man next to her was not her lover, and even if he was, there was a crucial currency she was running out of swiftly: Time.
“So what do we do now?” said her partner, the fear on his face was now being replaced by a radiating warmth. A warmth she would find a familiar comfort, if things turned out differently.
“Let me finish my cigarette and let’s take a look at the Tax Office. Seeing this statue from behind doesn’t seem to do much good for us.”
“Deal. I can even go in first if you want. I practically am drenched already..”
He then headed towards the wide-stepped stairs next to them. However, he made a sudden turn and faced Judy:
“Oh, now I’m wondering: Do the people who work here greet this guy’s arse at the end of every workday?” meaning the Statue.
“Hey, shut it! Someone might hear. Besides, I wasn’t the one who just said that he was afraid of the people around here.” Judy said in a mocking tone.
“Guilty as charged. You know how I don’t have much of a filter upon my tongue.”
Saying that he walked away with a meaningful grin on his face and entered the arched door of the building.
What was this man trying to do, did he sense the feelings she was trying to suppress? After all, he was a journalist too, sort of. Then she felt the urge to go closer to the statue standing in front of him. As the rain increased in intensity, she realized that it was useless to even attempt to keep smoking a wet sludge of tobacco. The butt of her cigarette was lost in the stream under her feet before she knew.
As she got closer, one detail of the statue began to catch her attention: Even though he was standing, the man’s hips were out of alignment. The left lobe was visibly higher. Even if there was a message to be given, it seemed absurd in Judy’s eyes. She leaned in even closer to clear her mind of any doubts about whether it was suffering from the inevitable degradations of time. Despite the dim lighting and pouring rain, she was almost certain that this was the original version of the work. After taking one last curious look at the tired officer, she began to quickly walk the distance between her and the Tax Office.
The door was heavier than she expected and she had to push with both hands and all her strength to open it. Maybe there is a problem with its hinges, or maybe it is displaying a childish resistance because it somehow knew that it might soon be destroyed by those who pass under it every day, who knows? As soon as she entered, her eyes scouted for her partner, but in vain, the man was nowhere to be seen. She decided to look around in hopes of him returning soon. The thing that surprised her the most was the stairs leading to the upper floor, which were of the same dark wood as the door she had sweated to open, but looked much more well-kept.
“It’s too large for a 4-story building,” she thought, and her monologue was interrupted abruptly by a voice coming from behind the door on the right of the corridor. It didn’t take long for her to convince herself to eavesdrop; after all, she had made more harshly criticizable decisions under much worse circumstances, and all were useful, in some way or another.
As she got closer, she could make out the silhouettes of two people talking behind the frosted glass of the door. Since she could perceive voices more clearly, she thought that one of these people could be her partner, and her previous self-confidence was replaced by a protective instinct. However, she stopped when she was close enough to open the door. She wanted to hear what was being said in her supposed absence and she got what she wanted. At least partially. However, she didn’t have to be that close to hear the man who was bickering with her partner shouting:
“Enough! This town is what it is today because of YOU! Now get out of here! Both you and your lover, away with you to your city!”
“She’s not my lover..” responded her partner. Inexplicably making her heart jump for a millisecond, or rather tumble. There was no time to be distracted by this, as the grating voice of the stranger behind the door continued.
“Oh, my apologies. THE FUCK DO I CARE?! There are already too many foreigners living among us. We don’t need your alienating newspapers, fancy cameras, all blabbering cr…”
Her partner was moving towards the door as the stranger kept shouting his words. Judy, on the other hand, waited for the battered man to open the door. She practiced a quick but tested surprised expression on her face as if she just made it in front of the door. When the door opened, the words “Ahm, I…” came out of her already open mouth.
“Come, Judy, let’s get out of here. This man must be crazy. I also want to take a nap as soon as possible.”
“What happened inside? Were you shouting?”
“I said move.”
Judy followed her partner, who was advancing furiously towards the outer door. She was astonished that he opened the door all the way with one hand, but probably out of anger, he did not hold the door for her to pass through, even though he went first, as he almost always did. On the contrary, he had already started to descend the steps behind the threshold. It was obvious that the rain had lost its fury, but her partner, looking at the sky to check if the clouds looked sinister still, held his hands out as he ran down the stairs. Judy accelerated her steps, fortunately, the old black door was closing at a slower pace than she could push it open, and thus she was able to pass through without torturing her hands again and called out to his partner:
“Hey! What gives? Tell me what happened inside!”
“The bastard broke my camera! Thank God it wasn’t an expensive device.”
“Wait, how so?”
“What do you mean, how? I don’t think I spoke ambiguously!”
“Take a moment to breathe. You’re still fuming through your nose, take a deep breath and explain the incident.”
“Okay, nurse-lady”. His response was one of the signs that the man was starting to calm down, not to mention the sly smile he now wore.
“When I entered, there was only light in the room where you found me, and I involuntarily started walking towards it. As I stepped into the room, a detail caught my attention. There was not a single chair in the shabby room, neither in front of nor behind the counters. With the confidence of not having you with me, I wanted to record this image and took out my camera.”
“Wait a minute, do you feel insecure around me?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I supposed it was a professional seniority thing. A naughty underling doing questionable things if left unsupervised? Anyway, just as I was starting to record, I heard the sound of a light switch coming from the corridor behind me, and as soon as I turned around, I found the idiot you saw in front of me. With a sudden movement, he snatched the camera from my hand and threw it against the wall. While I was looking at my shattered camera in shock, he gave me a ton of speeches. I was too zoned out to understand what the guy was all about, but I got the gist pretty clear. There is nothing to win in this place for me, buddy.”
Judy, with the joy of having caught one of the rare moments in which her partner acknowledged his weakness, even if tacitly, said:
“And you stood there like a log? You should have scolded the man too.”
“Didn’t you see that guy had a gun? Or wasn’t there? It doesn’t matter though, I already knew these villagers couldn’t be trusted. Even while arm wrestling with such people, it is possible that you may suddenly find you are missing half your torso.”
“If you say so” replied Judy. She actually wanted to bombard her partner about what he meant, but she was also aware that her partner was in no position to talk about it right now. Everyone knew that the people of such regions, who perceived the demands of the time as a threat, had conservative tendencies. Despite this, such a display of irritability was starting to make her feel uneasy as well.
“On the other hand…” she murmured, now she was neck deep in her thoughts. In fact, from such places and from people with such expressive anger, she could produce stories that would fill the pages of the magazine for weeks, if not months! The only problem was that she couldn’t decide whether it was worth pursuing. Worth the money, sure; but risking their skin for this?
The most reliable source he seemed to have was the town Tailor, and she made up her mind to bother him the next morning. She could also guess that her partner would not send him away alone, and would certainly want to come with. Even though he was in favor of disappearing into dust as soon as possible. She decided to peruse a bit more:
“So, are we ending the day like this now?”
He seemed almost completely calmed down, his hands were in his coat pockets and he wasn’t even buttoning his front. He could not look more lax than this even if he tried, she thought.
“I said I wanted to sleep. If you ask me, we should go to the hotel as soon as possible and hit the hay. The next morning we will return to where we came from by the first bus. I don’t care how much we will be scolded for this, but if they want a story from here so badly, let them come and find it themselves!”
“It seems that your longing for the city has inflamed you. We are staying at the Inn, there is no hotel here.”
“Whatever it is, it’s fine. But if your meaning of not finishing the day would result in one of our rooms being empty the whole night, then ‘not finishing the day’ would be okay with me too.”
“Charming guy” Judy thought to himself. No matter how hard she tried to hide it, her defense mechanisms could become dysfunctional because she sometimes forgot that the other person was her ex she used to date for more than 2 years. He knew what she wanted too. Was she taking this cat-and-mouse game a little too long? Besides, who ever met someone who could drink the nectar of life without squeezing it a bit first? After some thought, she decided not to force fate’s hand too much, for now:
“Maybe, but both lights need to be on first. I have some work to do in my room.” … “per usual”, they then both thought in sync.