Build God, Then We'll Talk

I ran my pale, thin fingers through my dark, mid-night black hair, brushing the tangles out. My eyes flickered to the clock that had been ticking for what seemed like hours, but only turned out to be a mere ten minutes. I fingered the strings at the end of my hoody sleeve, pulling at them gently.

"Anna, stop that," my mother hissed. Out of instinct, I pulled my hands back into the sleeve and pulled the remaining fabric over my knuckles, sinking into the warmth of the hoody. The old man beside me coughed loudly and shifted his weight in the chair, making it creak in misery under the heaviness of his body.

Next to him, his wife moved away to the point where she was practically falling out of the chair. She pulled her jacket around her chest tightly, then crossed her stocking covered legs over each other. She sighed at her husband, then pulled a compact out of her bag, dabbing some foundation over her right eye. After setting the compact back in her bag, she pulled out her fourth - or was it her fifth? - cigarette and lit it up, blowing toxic smoke into the air.

The girl across the room, perhaps only a few years older than me at fifteen, uncomfortably shifted her weight in her chair, and looked around at everyone in the room. Her eyes darted everyone, probably wondering if anyone was judging her at this moment. She wore a short dress that almost exposed more of her then the public eye was allowed to see. Her long legs were exposed for all to see, half way covered by her two inch high heels. Her dark, brown eyes were covered by about four pounds of black eyeshadow, her face concealed under coverup. Oddly, a metal cross was hung around her neck, showing off her religion.

The man on the far side of the room, sitting next to his wife, looked at the girl every couple of seconds with fear in his eye. He hid behind a newspaper, but if you watched closely, every time the second hand hit the number four, he was lifting his pale blue eyes up to meet the dark, myterious eyes of the girl across the room, like he was avoiding something that was burried far beneath the surface, but yet so close that if you picked it with a needle, it'd bleed out for all the world to see.

His wife on the other hand watched her husband carefully. She noticed much of what I noticed, but she tried to hide it by pretending to be interested in the rerun of Oprah playing on the large T.V on the wall in front of them. Every time the second hand hit the nine, she'd look at her husband until the second hand reached the three before returning her fake gaze back to the screen.

The truth is so much clearer when it's not our lives. For example, the man on the far side of the room with his wife obviously had something going on with the girl close to my age. The woman clearly knew about it, but had secrets of her own that she could be blamed for, which would only make her seem like a hypocrite, a fact that would much likely come up in any argument the two held with each other. The other two couple on the other side of the room obviously had had a hard marriage. The man had some kind of mental issue and took it out on his drug addicted wife.

In their lives, I'm sure it seemed that their secrets were buried six feet under, hidden from the cruel world that could - and would - one day expose them for the hateful, pittiful people they are. They couldn't change the way life had made them, they hadn't even chosen it for their own selves. A random twist of fate was to blame for these events.

Take the three in the far left corner, for instance. The girl was struggling bad. With what, one could never be sure, but it was something hard, like money. She had probably fallen in debt somehow and felt too ashamed to ask her parents to help her out. A good, catholic girl could never do wrong in her parents' eyes, especially fall into debt. There was only one way out, and the good Lord knows that everyone loves a virign. How better to tell someone a virgin then their religion?

This is where the man comes into play. He's obviously been having trouble with the marriage he is in, with his young, attractive wife. It was hard working long hours at the office - cases never solved themselves, you know - which put him in a bad mood. He needed to let go for a while, cut loose, but with the constant fighting, his wife already didn't want anything to do with him, meaning that getting her in bed would be impossible. Besides, him and his wife had enjoyed many expensive, intimate nights together. He needed something new, something fresh; a virgin.

Now, you may take pity on this poor woman, being cheated on and everything. I mean, she only gave him four of the best years of her life, right? Wrong. Being a trophy wife gave you many privagleges, like getting in with the wealthy wives at the country club, a high reputation, and much control over the town, but that was hardly ever enough. As the years of marriage droned on, being the young, attractive wife of a much older, powerful man wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It only took two years for this woman to notice this, then she began looking at the younger, but still as wealthy, single men out in the town.

And that exact man just walked out of the office door. "Anna Nelson?" he called with a bright, white smile. I looked at my mother, who took a deep breath and quickly looked at me, then back to the dark haired man waiting for us.

"Well," she started. "Let's get this over with."