Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 82 - Consumed
“So, how long have you been married to your husband?” Tabitha asked, stammering through idle chit-chat that she usually found foolish and pointless. She led Olivia and Frankie back down an extended corridor dizzyingly similar to the others they’d traversed earlier. “David, right?”
Having descended a flight of stairs into yet another subterranean level, Olivia and Frankie had lost all sense of direction. However, Tabitha didn’t even momentarily pause as she navigated down a staircase, through several closed doors, another flight of stairs, and then down a straight shot of concrete corridors with very few doors. Frankie was reminded of prison movies where serial killers are led to their impending demise at the end of lengthy hallways. Within fifteen minutes, though, specific markings - a long black scuff mark on the wall, another on the painted gray floor, among others - acted as road signs amidst this internal journey through concrete, and it was evident they were somewhere close to where they’d initially entered ENH.
“Yes, David,” Olivia answered. “Thirty-two years. We’ve been together closer to thirty-seven, though. Neither of us could settle on a major, so it took us forever to graduate.”
“Oh,” Tabitha said, struggling, as she always did, to respond when people complained about work or school, difficulties with classes, focus, or papers.
Contrarily, even still, she often missed the regiment of coursework and syllabi from years ago, remembering fondly her college days of methodically completing gradually escalating complexities in her studies that built upon each other in diverse layers. She saw her brain no differently than an athlete saw muscles, the strain of working through new theorems and processes akin to ripping apart the weakness of ignorance, then rebuilding even stronger and more prominent, more solid and confident, stripping away frailty and leaving confidence and assurance and knowledge and rightness in its wake.
“It’s funny,” Olivia said with a smile. “David and I are now younger than we were before we’d even met, though in some ways, I’m glad we never knew each other at this age.”
She gesticulated over her clothes, her concert t-shirt, frayed at the collar - obviously sliced with scissors with great precision and intention - her baggy shorts with pleats and cuffs and glitter-covered buttons, and legs that poofed out wildly at her hips like goofy clown pants.
“I’m humiliated even now to let anyone see me dress like this,” Olivia said. “Back then, I did it on purpose.”
Tabitha nodded grimly, always awkward and stilted while sharing personal information among strangers.
“Not me,” Frankie said. “This is how I looked right as things were getting good. This was an excellent time for me.”
“How so?” Tabitha asked, feeling more comfortable and at ease with Frankie than Olivia.
“Money was finally coming in - just a little, mind you,” Frankie said. “Work was good, and Becca was good. I was excited back then. We both were.”
“She was here then?” Olivia asked. “At ENH?”
“One of the originals,” Frankie said. “Which is why, I suppose, I saw less and less of her as time passed. She practically lived here, it seemed.”
“It’s consuming work,” Tabitha said and adjusted her grip around the sweat-covered handle of the makeshift EMP device.
“Consuming?” Frankie said. “Consuming is a choice. My work could have been consuming, but I still showed up for dinner most nights. I still fed the damn dogs.”
“Dogs?” Tabitha asked.
“We have — had, I guess - two dogs,” Frankie said. “Pomeranians. Little yipper dogs, but admittedly cute as hell. Guess how much a Pomeranian costs.”
“In 1986?” Olivia asked.
“Well, no, in the future, or well, it was just a few weeks ago,” Frankie said. “I still can’t figure out what to call the past we already experienced that is now apparently more than forty years from now.”
“The past is the past, no matter what your age was in it,” Tabitha said matter of factly. She brushed away something invisible from her pleated red dress. “Trust me on that.”
“So how much were they?” Olivia asked.
“Fifteen. Hundred. Dollars,” Frankie said, pausing for effect between each word. “Each.”
“Three thousand dollars for two dogs?” Tabitha said as if she’d just smelled spoilt milk. “You spent three thousand for two dogs?”
“Oh, not me,” Frankie said.
“It was Becca,” Tabitha said, the grimaced look still scrawled upon her tiny face.
“And guess who had to take care of them since Becca was always consumed, as you say?” Frankie said, repeatedly tapping his breastbone with his finger. “Right here. This guy.”
“What about you?” Olivia asked Tabitha. “Were you married before all this? I assume you were living with your parents back in 1986. Where are they now?”
“It’s just me,” Tabitha said.
“But your parents?” Olivia pressed.
“They’re fine now,” Tabitha said. She pursed her lips in silent response to Olivia’s questions, lulling their conversation to a temporary halt as they made their way through another set of white double doors and the length of one more corridor before Tabitha finally said, “We’re almost there.”
They passed another bank of offices before finally reaching the heavy metal fire door at the end of the corridor.
“I don’t remember this door,” Frankie said. “I swear. Whenever I think I know where we are, I get turned around again.”
As he said these words, the door unexpectedly swung open before them from the other side, and in walked a ghost.
End Part V
1.
“We have — had, I guess - two dogs,”…
Mismatched dashes.
2.
“And guess who had to take care of them since Becca was always consumed, as you say?” Frankie said,…
I would put a comma in place of the question mark. This seems to me to be a statement rather than a question. (I don’t hear a rise in intonation at the end, as a question mark would indicate.)