The last time he dropped in, he’d felt the tension between the couple was getting worse.
He found it embarrassing. If the truth be known, although he liked his old school-mate, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t divorced her within the first year of their marriage. This had been going on for the best part of three years now and he hadn’t found any improvement over the time of his visits. He remembered the conversation, last time he visited; how she had taken him to one side, saying when the arguments happen, she almost loses it. She told him that she gets all sorts of ideas, horrible ideas, in her head. She had gone on about this other world that she lets herself into. This place where everything is coming up roses.
She said she closes her eyes, without him seeing it, of course, and counts very slowly, up to ten, sometimes a lot longer. When she does this, she feels herself just drifting along as if she were walking in a meadow with tall poppies and other colourful flowers that she can touch as she walks through it. She went on to say that it acted like a sort of gasket.
When he asked her what she meant by that, she said that it allows her to interact with him, be at one with him, to enjoy her life with him, without all the pent-up anger spilling over. At the time, he had told her that if this was the way she handled the situation, he could only wish her well with it. This was how it was until the day he had popped in on the way home from work.
He’d been sitting down drinking the coffee she’d cheerfully made for him for a minute or two, before looking around the room and asking, “Where is the man?”
She sighed heavily, saying, “He’s in the bedroom, lying down.”
“Oh? I’ll look in on him.”
She just shrugged and said, “Sure.”
After a few minutes, he came back into the room looking pale. He said, “He’s not breathing!”
“I know.”
“Surely! What about this gasket you told me about?”
“It leaked.”