The Other Mike

I

Sydney stared through the passenger window at the tree line, each stripped trunk blurring together into a palisade. Her husband, Mike, stared unblinking through the windshield at the road, uncoiling itself endlessly around each switchback.

"The GPS says it's just another four miles". Sydney recognized Mike's speaking voice. It differed so sharply from his talking voice, it seemed to her that he must have some beta version of himself that covered for the introspection that hid just behind his face.

"I don't trust that map. That's the one that told us to park in a field ten miles away from the festival. "

"Meh, we'll see when we get there..." said Mike paradoxically. He glanced up at the purple ribbon of road, suctioned to the glass between them, then back to the road.

This had been their marriage for the last year. Sydney remembered meeting her husband for the first time at the book reading. When she had folded herself into one of the metal chairs, she had expected to be the entire audience, instead of one half of it. Seeing him shuffle down in the vacant row in front of her, cargo pants and fleece vest perfectly complimenting his unkempt brown beard, she thought that he looked much too young to be divorced. How many other people cared enough about a new, slim volume of poetry by Tove Karlsson to actually put on shoes, start their car, and weave through knots of traffic to see her read publicly?

He had glanced over his shoulder at her, the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling endearingly.

"So, how long did you have to wait in line before the gates opened?"

She normally hated blatant flirtation attempts. It seemed that, whenever she left the house, to go shopping, jogging, writing her thesis at the library, someone had forged her signature across a social contract of politeness. She almost preferred the adolescent voice warbling "nice tits" as the car rattled by, to the more insidious, studied attempts at harassment. At least then the middle finger shooting up seemed warranted. The gray haired, pot bellied grocery store harasser was the most pernicious variety. Usually starting with a grandfatherly "I have a daughter your age" opener, he would eventually rob her of the full four minutes of silence she was planning on enjoying before reaching the cashier.

Mike, however, Mike had been different. His smile hadn't said, I'm already casting you in the movie that ends with me fucking you. There seemed to be a warm indifference to him, as if he just wanted to place a pre-emptive olive branch in her hand. If things went further, that was nice as well.

"About four hours. When they broke through the barrier, the crowd literally stampeded each other to death." Sydney gestured to the thin bespectacled employee unloading new hardbacks onto the stacks adjacent to them. "He just finished sweeping up the bodies with a comically large squeegee mop."

Mike laughed, a deep rumble that seemed to gather itself in his shoulders.  It was as if they were old friends, and he was already carelessly pulling off his ugly fleece to throw on her couch.

They stayed for the entire reading, both staring hunch-shouldered at Tove as she read fragments of verse. Most involved conflating a post-modern crucifixion with stag horns, and more than a few involved shimmering black shards of industrial waste.

They stayed after that as well. They stayed for a two year engagement, while Mike moved from his small studio apartment into her more spacious one bedroom. They cross bred their book collections, although both shared a taste for small press, experimental literature. To the outside eye, Sydney's bookshelf would have appeared heavier, but still aesthetically homogenous. The engagement was  a
partial education in functioning within mutual space. They both grew attuned to the fine threads of irritation that were tied between commonplace objects and habit.