The Finish (standard:romance, 1603 words)
Author: Patricia	Added: Dec 28 2003	Views/Reads: 3537/2288	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man re-discovers a forgotten past...

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

He looked down at the slight paunch that he'd developed over the years.
Years of enjoyment of her cooking.  Her baking.  Her 'Sit, I'll do it.' 
Only inciting his latent laziness to full flower. 

He pictured her soft, tender hands caressing washboard abs.  Tanned skin
and hard muscles pressing against his wife's pale softness. 

He'd been like that once, a long time in the past.  Too many good meals
and six packs ago. 

His hands relaxed, stroking the comforting hardness of the wood. 

How could she?  The thought echoed through his mind as he stared emptily
at his son's bicycle.  The one needing the spokes tightened.  The one 
that he'd never gotten around to fixing because he'd been too busy, to 
self-involved with his hobbies and bowling, to make time to repair.  To 
busy with his job and it's odd hours, the weekends apart. 

Too busy to spend time with his wife, his lover, the one person that
made him truly happy and comfortable. 

Okay, I'm busy, he thought.  Everyone's busy. 

He recalled the heady days of their honeymoon.  It was vivid, near, the
heat of her remembered closeness searing him even now.  The raw, 
rumbling need to possess her never far from him. 

Back then, when their marriage was born, he had kept her close, their
passion wouldn't allow anything else. 

But over the years, 12 years and three kids, they must have drifted
apart.  Floated away from the first blush of romance and needy wanting 
to the comforting clasp of the knowledge that your mate, the one you 
had chosen, was yours and yours alone. 

The thudding reality of sameness and routine. 

Dinner ready when he walked through the door.  Laundry done on the
weekends and groceries to be purchased.  His bed warmed by her soft 
fragrance as he slung his smelly socks into the hamper. 

He was a pig, he realized.  He stank even now, the combination of
unwashed fear assailing his nostrils through the pure scent of 
turpentine and varnish.  No wonder she was with someone else.  Twelve 
years of putting up with my shit-stained shorts and smelly socks. 

Angrily, he snatched up a spoke wrench and feverishly began attacking
the wobbly wheel before him.  The need to act, to do something, driving 
every frenzied tightening, the spokes, singing as he twisted and 
wrenched, finally giving way with a tortured spring, the jagged spike 
scraping his knuckles as it broke. 

"Damnit!" he yelled, hurling the wrench across the crowded garage.  It
landed with a clatter of metal, all too loud in the deafening silence 
following his outburst. 

He sucked his torn knuckles, crumpling next to his bench. 

At one time, they had existed for the physical act of making love.  The
slow building of tension, the romantic kisses, the thoughtfulness, the 
need, drifting to the actual act itelf; a pounding, pulse-filled 
frenzy, over all too soon to burst into excruciating shared pleasure, 
to drift into the best part, the warm glowy contact, the murmurs, the 
stroking, the long languorous slide to sleep, holding her, caressing 
her love-warmed skin. 

Now it was a weekly event, usually on Saturday.  Perfunctory.  A
transaction, an obligation.  Hurried now by the need to finish, to 
sleep.  Now he rolled over after a quick kiss, a brief murmur of some 
endearing platitude, made unsatisfying by it's repetition.  The 
sameness, the boredom. 

Her body, slightly thickened with age still exciting him.  Her pillowy
breasts, baby chewed and beginning to sag, still evoked a rush of naked 
heat whenever he saw them.  But familiarity with her made him unmindful 
of the consequences of loss. 

His hands clutched his face as he rocked himself.  He still loved her! 
He hadn't changed that much had he?  He was still the same man? Right? 

He had never been expressive, not like the hero's in those novels that
she read.  Always spewing their feelings at the drop of a hat or a 
slant eyed glance.  Always having the right thing to say at every 
swashbuckling moment. He could never be like that.. 

His most eloquent words had been his wedding vows: To have and to hold,
to cherish always.  And even then he had only been repeating what the 
minister had said. 

Not his words, but echoing his thoughts and feelings that he never,
ever, expressed out loud. 

He looked at his work roughened hands seeing the calluses, the scarring,
the strength in the ready palms. 

This is how he expressed himself.  On the job site.  Building.  The
hammer in his fist more satisfying and creative than Rembrant's brush.  
The nail his paint and the wood his canvas. 

He glanced through the garage at the half-finished projects, the
abandoned work.  All set aside for the more pressing needs of the 
moment.  The kids, the car, the mortgage payment. 

His eyes fixed on the spice rack that he had started and almost
finished.  The spice rack that he had promised to make for her, 
bragging that he could do a better job on than any pieceworker in 
Taiwan. 

The spice rack that he had started, worked on and now lay forgotten.  A
dusty promise that he had made and broke.  A betrayal. 

He stood, hesitated and took the nearly completed item from it's resting
place among all the dusty remnants of his broken intentions. 

A light sanding, a slight smoothing of it's surface.  He wouldn't stain
it, the dust and dirt too heavy to accept a good coat of shellac.  Just 
a smoothing of it's roughness.  That's what it would accept. 

He reached for the sandpaper.  It's coarse grittyness a balm for the
corresponding roughness in his heart. 

Eloquence, he thought as he slowly stroked the gritty wood.  Eloquence
in his creation and completion. 

He rubbed the fine grit of the paper over every surface of the rack,
polishing the coarse, unfinished wood to a fineness that surprised even 
himself.  The dust and grime of neglect slowly grinding away, leaving 
it's own distinct pattern embedded within the very grain of the wood 
that he was smoothing.  It's swirls and grayness creating a finish, a 
patina, that even he couldn't have imagined. 

It's old, but it looks new.  The ingrained grime adding a character, a
freshness - a unique beauty that belied it's age and origins. 

A suitable gift.  A testimony to his mute, quiet love of the remarkable
woman that had shared his life, bore him sons and still owned his 
heart. 

Gently he blew last of the wood dust from his work.  His very breath
infusing itself into the now smooth, bright surface.  Old yet new 
again.  A dusty old promise  renewed and refinished.  He hoped that it 
would be enough. 

For now. 


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