The Man Who Thought Too Much Part II

 Sid rose from bed, and was relieved to leave the oppressive atmosphere of the bedroom. He hoped his shower might scare away some of his night phantoms, but as the warm water cascaded over him, it seemed to offer only a further opportunity to dwell on them, to made them bigger and more solid, and invite them to spend the rest of the day with him. Toweling himself dry, he padded back into the bedroom to see that Maureen had turned over, and was now facing the rumpled, Sid Bartram-shaped patch of bed he had recently relinquished. Nice, he thought to himself. She keeps her back to me when I’m there, and can only face me when I’m not there anymore. Bitch.

 He felt a surge of guilt reddening his face as if he had actually said the word out loud instead of thinking it. He can never thought such things about his wife before. Never. What on earth was happening to him today?

 He checked his watch, and saw there was still half an hour before he had to leave for the office. Feeling a mixture of guilt and nervous anticipation at what he was about to do, he dropped his towel and climbed back in beside Maureen, aware but trying desperately to forgot that his half of the bed had become a lot smaller than it used to be. He pressed himself against her, willing sensation in the flaccid and underused object below his waist, but feeling only that terrible emptiness that he had woken with. How could he be expected to become aroused, when the once slender woman next to him looming under the duvet like a hibernating Brontosaurus was supposed to be the sole object of his affections?

 Maureen snorted, and a gust of warm air wafted over his face. Sid smelled rotten eggs and last night’s Chicken Kiev and almost gagged. He jumped out of bed again, almost tumbling to the ground in his hurry to get dressed, eat, drink, get the hell out of this awful place and rush to the safety of the office, where he could immerse himself in his spreadsheets and his moneymaking seconds, and forget the crazy thoughts that were flying through his head this morning.

 When he was about to leave, he tiptoed back up the stairs, desperate not to wake his wife in case he might have to (horror of all horrors!) actually converse with the woman. “Have a nice relaxing day off, love,” he whispered, leaning over and giving her the lightest ever peck on her cheek. He tried not to breath while he did so, his guilt being slowly replaced by a much more manageable emotion – amusement. Comedies had been made about this sort of thing, he said to himself. Couples who’d been married for thirty years weren’t supposed to love each other anymore, they were supposed to find each other amusing and sickening in equal measure. Okay, the sickening seemed to be winning hands-down over the amusement factor at the moment, but that could change.

 By the time Sid had walked half a mile to the station, had found his favourite seat on the train, and was tucking into the UK news in the Daily Telegraph, he was feeling quite cheerful. Fair enough, his wife had grown into a hideous fat, lank-haired smelly whale, but perhaps he could simply pretend they weren’t even married anymore. They shared a bed, they ate together, and that was fine. But it wasn’t as if they had sex when they were in bed, and actually talked when they were sitting at the dining table, was it? They were just two people that just happened to do some things together, and it wasn’t really necessary for them to like each other, was it? After all, she probably thought the same about him. His hair was growing thinner by the day, and the upper half of his body seemed to be gradually seeping into the lower half, spilling out at the waist when there wasn’t any room left. He hardly cut an attractive figure. The best way out of the problem was for both of them just to get on with their lives, to obtain as much enjoyment as possible from their existence, and to think as little as possible about the other person.

 Sid became absorbed in the newspaper for a few moments, a faint smile flickering on his lips. If anyone had been observing him closely, they would have seen the smile not just fade, but suddenly end as quickly as it had appeared. Sid’s mind had drifted away again, and had traveled back a couple of stops on his train of thought. My waist is getting rather large, he said to himself, folding his newspaper and peering down to where his belly was bulging out into his white shirt. He clenched his stomach muscles and pulled it in, breathing in so loudly as he did so that the woman opposite looked sharply at him, alarmed. Perhaps if I keep on doing that, my stomach muscles will strengthen and prevent everything from bulging out, he thought. He was vaguely aware that pulling in his lower stomach simply meant it sagging forward further up, just beneath his ribcage, but he thought that might look slightly better.

 Contented again, he opened the Telegraph again and turned again to the article he had been reading on the situation in the Middle East. All the time he tried to keep his stomach muscles clenched, but found it took such a conscious effort that he lost track of the article and found he could make little sense of it. He breathed out suddenly and loudly, and then looked back down to see whether his belly was sticking out any less than it was before. Perhaps it was, just a little, he thought, and breathed in again, repeating the process. At this rate my stomach will be flat as a pancake by the time we reach Euston.