Part 2

About an hour later he ran back across the familiar dark parking lot, the asphalt still soaked through from the rain, and returned to his no longer solitary car. As he drove home, his eyes were fixed upon his newly painted nails. He controlled the car merely with his fingertips, in fear of smearing the fresh polish. His mind wandered, hypnotized by the rhythmic squeaking of the windshield wiper blades. He began replaying what the women at the salon said to him, “Oh, I’m so glad to see you again! Don’t you just look darling?” Their thick Bostonian accents made their comments come across as compliments given from the closest of friends; but he asked himself if they were just making a mockery of him.
He pulled into his driveway, slung his purse over his shoulder once again and stepped out into the rain. He made no attempt to cover his hair as he walked to the mailbox in front of his house. He pulled out a medium stack of envelopes, all of varying sizes and began flipping through them. The majority of them were addressed to his wife, Daria. He put the mail under his arm and listened to his heels clack against the sidewalk, up the stairs in the front of his house and back into his kitchen. He hung his purse over the back of a wooden chair and threw the envelopes on the table.
He picked up his wine glass where he had left it and emptied the rest of the open bottle into it. He raised it to his mouth and finished off the glass. After refilling it again, he climbed two flights of stairs to his bedroom and set his glass on a bedside table. His side of the bed was perfectly made, as if it hadn’t been touched in weeks; on his wife’s side, the sheets and blankets were wrinkled and tossed aside – the way she left them this morning. He kicked off his shoes, carefully pulled back the pristine blankets and climbed in. He lay on his side facing away from the cold, empty side of the bed and watched dust particles fall into his wine.
After a couple of minutes he dared to face the unkempt pillow beside his head. He pulled it closer to him carefully and enjoyed the fruity smell of the shampoo she used, mixed with Snuggle brand dryer sheets, a minty smelling face wash and cucumber lotion. With his face dug deeply into the feather pillow, he fell asleep.