Ageless

Chapter 12

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Two Years Ago

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The door to our apartment had jammed again. The key didn't quite fit in the knob unless I jiggled it in just the right way, jabbing with the thin metal while balancing two armfuls of groceries between my elbows and one knee. The key finally clicked and the door gave, but the sudden give caught me by such surprise that I lost my balance and dropped one of the paper grocery bags. An assortment of tomatoes, peppers, avocados, lettuce and other fresh vegetables spilled across the dim hallway of the complex. The variety of assorted fruit rolling across the floor of the dilapidated corridor was almost an enhancement, the bright colors making it look slightly less depressing.

Cursing, I shoved open the door to the tiny apartment. The overhead light was flickering like a strobe light again, even though Malcolm had promised to replace it days ago.

My husband was sitting on the couch, still in the stained T-shirt and sweatpants that he had worn to bed the night before. The guitar I had bought for him as a present two Christmases ago was strapped to his chest and resting on his thighs; teaching himself to play had become his latest project. His laptop was open on the coffee table, broadcasting the 'How-To-Play Guitar' tutorial channel that Malcolm had been using for the last month. Before that, his last hobby had been making his own home brew beer: at least this one didn't leave the entire apartment smelling like yeast, although it did tend to get more complaints from the neighbors.

When I entered, his head snapped up from the laptop and he smiled back at me.

"Hey Babe," he said. He strummed the guitar with a pick hidden in his right hand. "At long last, my muse has returned."

I scanned the room. I could see the soggy remains of his cereal resting in a bowl on the coffee table. By the looks of it, he hadn't moved from his spot on the couch all day.

"Had a productive day, did we?" I walked over to the kitchen, which was only a couple of paces away from the door, even though it was on the far side of the apartment, and set down the groceries that were not currently decorating the outer corridor. "How's that job search coming?"

"No bites yet," -he paused to make sure I could see his grin- "but on the bright side, today was not a complete waste. The good news is that I did teach myself two new David Bowie songs." He drummed the hollow wood of the guitar with his fingers. "Looks like this wasn't the most useless present you got me after all, nope, that distinction now goes to the self-heating socks that nearly lit my feet on fire."

"That's nice," I said. "So then when were you planning on-"

"Whaddya want to hear me play first? 'Heroes', or 'The Man Who Sold the World'?"

"Oh, I don't know if-"

"I'll do 'The Man Who Sold the World' first. I really like that song."

"Okay, Maybe later but first we should talk-"

"You know, not many people our age know that David Bowie wrote this one, it never got that big during his time. It wasn't until Nirvana covered the song many years later that it became popular within our generation."

"That's great babe, but-"

"See, I always assumed that they had written it; never even bothered to go back and check if was an original or a cover. Had I done so, I would have found that it had already been written by Mr. Bowie himself, more than twenty years earlier."

"Malcolm!"

His skull might have been thick, but my tone was sharp enough to cut through it. Immediately, he ducked out of the guitar strap and set it carefully on the spotted wooden floor next to the couch. "Sorry," he said. "Got a little carried away. What's wrong?"