Election Day
It was all over the news. The protests started early in the morning, and the crowd was marching through the main street in hundreds that eventually grew into four digits, with everyone shouting at the people sipping drinks in street cafes to get off their fucking asses and come along with them. Some did. The two of them were upstairs at his place, still in bed. The crowds woke them up, and she got out of the bed, wrapped only in a bedsheet, to look through the window at the goings on. The curve of her soft glutes was subtly lit by the sun filtered through the curtains, just enough to make you want to pinch them.
“They are all over the place. What is this supposed to be?”
She turned her head half-profile to him.
“It’s called protests, honey. When unsatisfied, people crowd up and take matters into their own hands.”
“There sure are a lot of hands down here. But I just can’t be bothered really, didn’t even have a proper breakfast yet. And it would take me ages to decide what to wear. What would you wear to a protest anyway?”
The chanting of the protesters got louder. Irritated, she turned from the window and went to the kitchen. She came back with a tray of coffee and pastries. His preferred breakfast: coffee and a croissant. As for her, she usually started her day with a bowl of muesli accidentally sprinkled with ash from the appetizer cigarette she’d have after waking up. Her bare feet made sounds on the wooden floor as she twinkled over to the table and opened the newspaper. The headline said:
“PROTESTS ANNOUNCED-LARGE GATHERINGS IN MAJOR PUBLIC PLACES EXPECTED.”
Right underneath it, there was a heart-throbbing article on the Brangelina divorce and and something about a French ventriloquist called Jacques. He was a newspaper kinda guy; didn’t care much for online news, she was the exact opposite. There was a pile of old newspapers in the corner, a whole pile of stories past their exctinction date, the events already passed and their protagonists scattered around new pages, somewhere else. You can’t have a proper breakfast without music, so she went to the stereo and put on Sebastien Tellier’s L’Adulte. Slowly, she danced to it as if unaware of him watching from the bedroom. Immersed in the melody, she felt like Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Goddard’s Le Mepris, swirling in the sun on the roof of Casa Malaparte. Just instead of the noise of the waves crashing into the cliffs of Capri, all she could here were sounds of people clashing with the local police downstairs. There were proclamations, screams, calls for action: “GET THEM! GET THEM!” It was a matter of time before teargas would fill the morning air.
“Honey, do we have any orange juice in the fridge?I’d like some.”
“Not sure. Well, look it up yourself. You practically live here, you know this place better than me”
A bit grumpy, she relented and went back. Soon she dressed and prepared to go down to the shop to pick some up. He merely re-located into the big leather armchair in the living room. She tossed him the newspaper and went on her way.
“Don’t get yourself into trouble, kid. And while you’re at it, buy a carton of milk as well.”
And off she went. Now that she was gone, her absence made the boredom his life had turned into before her even more palpable. An endless sequence of days, nights and errands. The occasional fling, a vacation. What was there to regret? They were slowly approaching that benchmark where the relationship either goes serious or sinks, and he still had no idea where the whole thing was going, or what her thoughts on the matter were. Sure, they had a good time, and the sex was great and she wasn’t as shallow as you’d think, but maybe it was his fault, some sort of inherent defect preventing him from fully commiting to an another human being. His train of thought came to an abrupt halt when he heard the noise of cracking glass outside in the street. The mob broke into one of the government buildings close by. That’s when it downed on him. It was election day, and the festivities this year got slightly out of control, to put it mildly. The city hall bullies weren’t going to budge down easily, hence a swift and powerful reaction was required. But he was never the feather-ruffling kind, just stay quiet and swim along the current as long as it doesn’t disrupt you sufficiently enough to take action, which was never really the case before. Where was she anyway? She should have had been back two hours ago. It’s probably the over-crowded streets, you need to fight your way through that swarm of transparents and megaphones.
“WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH! WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!”
If I was the target of that, I’d seriously consider fleeing the city. But for the moment, that was mission impossible. The reporters on tv interviewed cops and fire fighters on site, which were in charge of extinguishing whatever needed to be extinguished or hosed down. His phone rang. It kept irritating him ringing consistently until he had found it on his desk. It was her, and the voice had a shivering tone to it. She was stuck in traffic and couldn’t approach the neighborhood. With her a car, instead of going to a grocery store just down the street. She could never be trusted with making a practical decision. It never occured to him that her most impractical decision may have had been to stay with a guy like him. Was it really going to end like this?
It was a rather frightening thought, to have to go through all of that again, flirting, fucking, dating, moving in, whatever. So fucking tiresome. He has had enough of dating too. You meet her, pretend to be interested in what she’s saying in order to get to the main dish as soon as possible and then, after you get the one-night-stand out of the way, you examine the emotional residue. If there’s enough of it, you give it an another shot, an another drink. A phone call, no longer necessarily a pretense. You’re glad she still cares, it’s already beyond the point where you still wanted to impress her, put on a show of masculine authority, a protective attitude that was supposed to create an illusion of virility. After the third or fourth encounter, you slowly dismantle each other’s protective shield, there’s talk about mid-term plans, maybe a dinner with her friends, a weekend with your friend and his wife on the coast. And then the same thing,you freak out, does she expect that little velvet box or not? It was on his mind for a while now. And now, the more thought about it, the more it seemed it was the right thing to do. The only thing that was lacking was the ring. No need to wait any more.
Marriage proposals are a delicate thing since they can go terribly wrong. In movies, they teach you it’s a bad idea to put the ring into the champagne glass or the cake. She she didn’t wear too much bling, and his mother had taught him long ago “if you buy jewelry for a woman, it has to be wrapped into the proper question. Rings without question marks are not a good idea, trust me.” She was right. In her case, the ring was preceded by a pregnancy test. And a marriage based on that is like a house built in marshland, it’s bound to sink sooner or later. Anyway, a proposal without a ring is nonsense, so he got dressed and went down to do some life-changing impulse shopping. Anything less but a diamond would be inacceptable, of course. Downstairs, election day was taking on a revolutionary tone to it, with grafitti, egg shells all over the square and lots of people, which were prevented from invading the city hall by heavily armed cops. In a short while, a couple of stones flew towards the windows of the building and smashed a window. The cops went in their direction and started combing the masses to find the culprits. It wasn’t pretty. They used night sticks and gas, a tornado of arms and legs unleashed chaos right then and there, with blue eyes and broken noses for everyone. More stones flew towards the city hall, there was no point in defending it anymore. The mob broke in and soon, chairs, folders and computers started flying out, the air was filled with clouds made of paper sheets.
In the street close by, there was a jeweller that met his expectations. He entered inside, it was small but well-appointed and elegant, with matching price tags as well. The clerk adressed him as soon as the current customer left, a middle-aged gentleman dressed in a tweed jacket.
“Good day sir, what can I do for you?”
“Oh, I need a ring. For a woman.”
“You’re going to propose? Well, congratulations! Just don’t overspend, in case you’ll want a refund.”
“What?!”
“Oh, don’t mind me. A bad joke, that’s all. I try to ease the tension, men get very nervous about engagement rings. It’s completely natural. Now, what exactly did you have in mind? A diamond?”
“I think so, yes. Show me what you got.”
He bought a solitaire-cut small diamond on a white gold band. Classy and simple. So, that was it. Was she going to say yes? He didn’t really consider the possibility of her saying no. You don’t do impulse shopping when it comes to engagement rings. Outside, the sidewalks were drumming with the sounds of police boots thumping through the gathering. Someone got a megaphone and climbed on a lightning pole.
“ARE WE GOING TO PUT UP WITH THEM ANY MORE?ARE WE?!”
He didn’t go to the polls, there were none due to the situation in the local government. But that day, he voted for the two of them; for their future. As he was on his way back home, the little velvet box in his pocket burned a hole in his pants, he couldn’t bear the suspense. She had no idea what he had in store for her. The store itself was still open, so it was quite handy, there was no champagne in the house anyway, and the occasion certainly called for it. With the bottle in a plastic bag, he passed by the street with all the protesters. The overpowering energy was like a big pool just waiting for you to dive in. But he had other priorities that day. Back at home, she was nowhere to be found. On the table, there was a fresh box of cigarettes; there were two butts in the ashtray. He grabbed the phone and dialled her number again. No answer. On the tv, the news anchor kept talking about the casualties of the day.
“The customer is currently unavailable, please leave a message.”
In the bathroom, her toothbrush was gone. Everything pointed to the conclusion he had dreaded the most. The little box will probably be the store record-a refund the very next day. Hopefully there’s a wall of shame over there. In the evening, the streets cleared and it was all trashed, but peaceful again. He went downstairs and into a neighborhood bar. There was a slender brunette sitting at the counter, her back turned to him. He took a seat next to her. After 15 minutes of an incredibly awkward silence, he adressed her.
“Can I buy you a drink, miss?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
The drink turned into several drinks, and they turned into a one night stand. When he woke up, she was gone. And so was the ring. Clearly, impulse jewelry shopping is the equivalent of a one-nighter: you’re screwed either way, be it a broken heart or chlamydia.Two days afterwards, he was in the waiting room of the local STD clinic, with his dick spilling fire everytime he needed to take a piss.
