Our Contract of Distrust

-- 36 --

Today, something unprecedented has happened.

Peggy is away.

It may seem like a simple matter, but it has unsettled me completely. 

Peggy being late that one time was already strange enough, but to be entirely absent... it's just not the sort of thing that exists in demure, rule-abiding Peggy's constitution. 

So something has to be wrong. Immensely.

Like she must be sick – can't even leave the bed kind of sick. Or her mother was murdered. It has to be something on that level, otherwise Peggy would have still dragged herself in; masked, bundled and near-fainting, but obediently tapping away in her spot. 

Without Peggy by my side, I feel oddly exposed. 

Perhaps it's stupid. Like duh there's extra space there now. But there's a strange empty despair I feel welling up inside. 

A sense of dread. 

What if Peggy never returns to the factory? 

I don't know where she lives. Don't have her phone number. 

I'll never see her... hear her again. 

I don't even know her last name. 

It's surely pathetic for a 'friend' to know so little about someone. I ought to feel guilty, and I think I do. 

But more than that, I had never realised how attached I'd grown to her. 

It's like one of those stupid cliché sayings, about how you don't know what you have until you lose it. 

Could I have lost Peggy? 

So easily? Without ever having given anything? 

I never really tried to maintain our relationship. To deepen or strengthen it. I just accepted what was offered without much thought. Or perhaps I didn't really accept anything, it was just too much effort to reject. 

It was surely always a one-sided haul on Peggy's end. But what could she possibly have seen in me to warrant any such effort? How had my responses ever been affirming or gratifying? 

Perhaps it's an ability innate within most people, and so I was never taught it – how one should reach out to others. 

How to accept and reciprocate. How to form mutual relationships. How to be a normal, responsive person. 

Have I ever willingly given anyone anything of myself? 

It's far easier to receive, to take, to judge and ignore, than to give. 

Perhaps all along I've been a horrible person, I just refused to notice it. 

____________________________

"You okay?" Feodor suddenly asks me.

I must've been staring into space. Who knows for how long.

"Yeah," I say.

He sits down across from me and pushes a cup of tea my way. I hadn't even heard the kettle boil.

"It's just," I say as I pull the tea in, "my friend wasn't at work today."

"You want to check up on her?"

"Mm, but I don't know how to contact her."

"Oh," Feodor nods, "I see."

He's obviously concerned, but doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to fix the problem.