Come Sunday Morning

Sunday mornings were crossword puzzle mornings.

Not always. Not even usually. Work normally had precedence. And even if it didn’t, sometimes they weren’t together. Or something better was cooking.

But on the rare instances where those three points converged like planets lining up behind the sun, it was a crossword puzzle morning.

They’d drag on their scummiest clothes, grab the paper in front of whichever apartment they were sharing, and head on off to one local greasy spoon or another, prepared to do battle with both the puzzle and each other.

Hutch usually came across as the intellectual of the duo, and he was smart, no doubt about it, but Starsky had a mind for the esoteric. As such, they’d normally wind up arguing about the correct five letter word for a feral cat, or the Latin name of the rare Amazonian purple-spotted tree-frog.

“The word zzlzt doesn’t even exist!” Hutch would invariably shout, hands thrown up in exasperation.

“Yeah, but it fits, doesn’t it?” Starsky would reply, his smirk ever present.

“So does ‘moron’, but you don’t see me writing it down, do you?”

That was always good for a few chuckles. They didn’t mind. Putting on a show for the folks was more soul-soothing than blowing away perps trying to protect those same folks.

Sometimes the Universe evened things out like that.

************

It’s Sunday morning, and Starsky rolls over, flinging his arm across the sheets to touch the body that has never shared this bed. As always, the pain is deep, black, intense and futile, but it’s a habit he can’t seem to break.

A similar habit has him rubbing his chest as, clad in his grubbiest clothes, he descends the rickety steps of the brownstone he grew up in. Any pain there, save for the one around his heart, had faded long ago, only peeking out, like a yellowed love letter tied with a faded, tattered bow, on New York’s coldest, grayest days.

He opens the door and shivers at the blast of icy air that greets him. Spring, it appears, is once again here in name only. Bending over, he picks up the monolith that is the Sunday Times, already teasing out the world-class crossword section before the door is even closed behind him.

Yet another habit he can’t seem to break, no matter how many years yaw between now and then.

His glasses are on the coffee table, and he carries them, along with the paper, into the tiny kitchen, laying both on the table as he turns to brew some coffee—black, hot and strong—and pop a bagel in the toaster.

Both are quickly forgotten as he plucks a pen out of the mug on the service island and slips on his glasses, his eyes already going over the first clues like a dog on the scent.

An hour later, maybe two, the coffee’s cold, the bagel’s as hard as a rock, and two words have been filled in in a shaking, slanted hand.

The glasses have been flung across the kitchen somewhere, and his head’s buried in his hands.

And across the living room, the clock on the mantel ticks the seconds away, ever widening the chasm between truly living and merely existing.

Every one of those ticks buries another needle in his heart.

*******

Hutch sleeps in later these days. His body simply demands it. And, since his Sundays are almost always free, there’s really no reason to wake up early. Sometimes he wonders if there’s a reason to wake up at all.

He doesn’t even bother to check the other side of the bed. She’s always been an early riser, and he can’t see that changing any time in the future.

He gingerly eases his aching body out of the bed, wincing as his bare feet hit the cold floor. It’s times like these that make him wonder why he ever thought that Washington State was the ideal place to put down permanent roots. Sure, the constant rain made everything the exact shade of green he desired, but it also talked to his back in words he’d never use in front of his own wife, let alone his kids.

Moaning softly, he stretches out, then pulls on his grubbiest clothes, still more asleep than awake. He can hear his two youngest already squabbling over the comics, but even though the sound penetrates the fog in his brain, he still walks automatically to the door to pick up a paper no longer there.

It’s a habit he can’t seem to break, just like that little thrill that hits him as he wakes up, saying “It’s Sunday, we’re off work, and we’re together.”

Shivering from the blast of wind-driven rain that hits him squarely in his naked chest, he pulls quickly back and shuts the door, disappointed that their Sunday ritual has been postponed.

And then he remembers, and the pain in his back is nothing compared to the one in his heart, twisting it into a huge Gordian knot that he sometimes wishes a sword would come along and just hack through, ending his torment.

Instead, he wanders back into the den, where the paper is scattered hell to breakfast all over the large room. The boys have come to an amicable arrangement with the comic section, each pouring over the latest offerings from opposite sides of the plush, leather couch. His eldest sits cross-legged in one of the recliners, scanning the fashion section as if her life depended on keeping up with the Tiffany’s, and the Brittney’s, and whomever else she’s calling her best friends these days.

His wife eyes him significantly over the top edge of the Arts and Leisure section. “It’s somewhere under that pile,” she says in an all-too-knowing voice. For a moment, he hates her. Hates her with a seething rage for being tall, blonde, and beautiful; more beautiful, really, with each passing year.

Hates her for being the one he chose, but not the one he wanted.

His rage flees as quickly as it came, and he bends over to give her a peck on one soft, fragrant cheek before turning away and hunting through the pile for the crossword puzzle waiting there.

Teasing it out of the mess, he takes it over to the kitchen, where he lays it on the table while he brews another pot of coffee.

And when his wife comes into the kitchen an hour later, the coffee is burned to sludge and the crossword is exactly as he left it; untouched and pristine on the table.

And she looks where she knows she must, through the French doors and onto the covered porch, where she sees him, tall and slump-shouldered, cigarette in hand, staring through the pounding rain and into his past.

She doesn’t even need to see his lips to know the name shaping them. It’s the same word branded across his heart. It’s bad enough to know that it isn’t hers.

With a soft, sad sigh, she wanders back into the den, listening to the ticking of the mantle clock and feeling each one like a dart shot unerringly into her heart.

Unnoticed, Hutch pitches his cigarette out into the rain-drenched yard, tips his head back to the uncaring gray sky, and howls.

FIN