Chapter 5: Waiting, Anticipating

It’s funny how pain seems to stretch time. After what felt like an hour, Paul switched his weight to his other foot, and I realized it had been a couple of minutes. My legs started to cramp. When I played football in high school it was a matter of faith that nothing hurt worse than a bad muscle cramp. We were all wrong about that because somehow it was better. It balanced the fire in my arms. Time passed and Richard leaned over to tell Paul something. It must have been a joke. They both laughed.

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Time passed and all the aches and pains merged into one sense of intense discomfort.

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Time passed.

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I found myself reflecting on the day past. Remembering how things had been that morning was so ironic I had to laugh. Laughing hurt and the gag got in the way. Somehow that was funny too. I may have gone hysterical for a moment, but that kind of thing does not mix well with gags and restraints, so I went back to being miserable.

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Time passed.

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I started to wonder how long she would be gone.

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Time passed.

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Eventually, I remembered why she left: a corset. She had gone to get a corset. My compass point ticked north, again.

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Time passed.

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Then, time no longer mattered. A wash of clarity that I might have enjoyed under other circumstances swept through my mind. Many seemingly important things ran through my thoughts and did not return. It was as if they were hosed into the drain. I had more important things to think about. It came to me how odd I had been acting all day.

Mr. Berle, my tenth-grade band conductor, used to call me “Motormouth.” My job at the car shows was as spokesman, a hired mouthpiece. Half of my ex-girlfriends claimed they never got a word in edgewise. Not today. Since I met Cynthia, hardly a thing I had said was not a short answer to a direct question. Urges to speak were squashed by her glance, a stern look, or a raised eyebrow. It was surreal, almost unreal, but revealing.

It was such a revelation that I missed her return.