Back at the bar, a neatly dressed, if unstylish man, nurses a scotch. Though it be not yet midday, no daylight makes its way to the bar. One would hardly know the time without mechanical assistance. He’s not the only one at the bar, though perhaps the loneliest.

And the band plays...  

 

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore

Darling, I guess

My mind’s more at ease

But nevertheless

Why stir up old memories?I used to love a good scotch. But this place...this...this...this dilapidated neighborhood three side streets from hell...it just...well...they said they’d take everything. They were damned right about that.

The bartender nods. She’s heard the story a thousand times.

She’d left me three times before I came here. Three times she had told me she was done with me forever. Three times she said she would never forgive me again. And not for...I mean...not really for the cheating, though that was always...but it was more than that. It was the betrayal. Caring for myself more than her. Not being satisfied with her. With us. That was what she could never forgive me for. That she could never be enough for me.

Unforgiveable.

Until it wasn’t.

And she would come back. And we would start all over again. And we would forgive each other, and we would be enough. For her. For me. For us. Three times she left me forever, and two and a half times she came back.

If only she’d...I was ready. I was finally ready. I thought I could change. On my own. I thought, this time, this time is different. If only she comes back, I’ll be a new man. We’ll get married. Settle down. We will be all we need in the whole world. We will be the whole world. If only she comes back one more time.

And she did. Not to forgive me. Not to give me another chance. She came back to bring me here. To change me for good. I could change or I could go to hell.

Looks like I did both.

Gods, I thought I could do it. I thought...alright, she’s challenging me. Daring me to do this...this...I didn’t even know what, but I was ready to do anything. Take any challenge. Any dare. Climb the tallest mountain, swim the deepest sea, endure torture for her sake. Prove to her that I had changed.

And they were....gods, they were laughing at me the whole time. They let me...well...that’s what this place is, I suppose. Does the professor even exist? I’ve been here every day since she left, and I’ve never seen him again. Not since...well...since...

I thought I would...I expected challenges. I expected monsters to fight. Beautiful sirens I would spurn with a strength unknown to ordinary mortals. Hairshirts and fasting and dragons to slay. The professor told me it would be the greatest challenge of my life, and I was prepared. I would prove myself, prove I was as strong as she needed me to be. That I was worthy.

Bunk.

He brought me there, of course. To the place that would be the challenge of my life. Told me to wait. To wait until I had proved myself.

And he left.

And I waited.

And I waited.

For hours. Days. Weeks. For ten thousand years I waited, and still he did not return. If he ever returned, it was after I had gone. Some ten thousand years after I had been abandoned to dwell alone in that place with naught by my own thoughts, he had still not returned. It was not a prison, not exactly. I was free to roam. There were books and music. There were wide expanses for me to wander and comfortable places upon which to rest. It was not a prison but a home. A lonely home.

I learned to cook. To clean. To stare into the void and be at peace with myself. I lost desire not only for women but for adventure. For change. I began to cook the same simple meal every night for years at a time. Decades. I learned the comfort of simplicity. Of stability. I became a sea turtle, swimming the same journeys year after year, satisfied with his lot. I knew that if I was ever again given the chance, I could at last become the man she wanted me to be.

When she appeared through an open doorway, I couldn’t believe it. She was ten thousand years gone, and yet standing before me. I smiled at the ghost and reached my hands out, tears in my eyes. A reunion after lifetimes. She hardly noticed, more interested in the wallpaper than in me.

My heart dropped.

She told me she was getting bored. That she had been waiting over an hour. An hour! She was still the woman who had brought me here. Who had left me only days ago for having yet another affair. No. Not me. Some other man. Some man I used to be. She took my hands not as a gesture of forgiveness, of reconciliation. She merely took them as you might take a child’s. C’mon, honey, it’s time to go.

And I let her. Let her story be true. Let myself believe that I had been in my prison home for hardly more than an hour. Not because it was true, but because there was nothing for it but to believe her. I wanted nothing but for her to be true. To surrender myself to her.

She tried to chastise me, of course. For my latest philander that had brought her to leave. My wandering ways that had driven her to madness. To bring me to this cursed place. To give up on me. Abandon me to the gods.

I told her she was right. That I had been a fool. That the philandering adventurer was dead. That I was a new man. A man who could be satisfied with quiet nights at home. With cleaning dishes and mowing the lawn. With a book and a pipe. With a newspaper in the morning, box lunch at work, and dinner and tv before bed. Playing golf on Saturday and making love on Sunday. A man ready for the diamond ring and the house in the suburbs.

She stared at me in disbelief. Suspicious. She hardly believed such a change could come in less than an hour. That such things take more time. But I had been sitting for ten thousand years. The change had not only come, it was set in a stone that could not be eroded but for another ten thousand. Whether or not she believed me mattered not. The change had come.

And in time, she accepted her new man. Reveled in the change she had desired for so long.

Until she didn’t

Because she didn’t love me. The new me. The solid and stable husband. She may have hated the man I had been, but she despised the man I had become. She thought if she could drive the adventurous spirit from me, if I could learn to care more for her than myself, that we could be happy forever.

Well, she got what she wished for. She got what she wished for and left me because of it. Left me for good.

For her, the only thing worse than a philanderer was a bore. The bore I had become. The bore I am today. The bore I had become over ten thousand years. For what is man with no desire, no ambition, a man of contentment? What can he ever be but a tedious, prosaic, and insipid bore?

I admit it. Look at me. Do you see a man of action? A man of adventure? This place stole that man from me. Took him apart, piece by piece, over ten millennia. That man is dead. And though I mourn him...well...if I am to be truly honest, I have no wish to bring him back.

They took that as well.

Heavy sigh.