The hotel room was beige. Everything beige. Walls. Carpet. Bedspread. A painting of a vague, blurry shape. Could be a flower. Could be nothing.
They sat. She on the edge of the bed. He in the stiff chair by the desk. Ten feet apart. A canyon.
Silence.
Not a heavy silence. An empty one. The kind after a building collapses. Just dust settling.
No mint smell. No cigarette smoke. Just the hotel smell. Stale air conditioning. Cheap detergent. Nothing.
He looked at his hands. The cracks in his knuckles. The dirt under his nails that never really came clean. He didn't try to hide them.
She looked at the floor. Her heels were off. Stockinged feet on the scratchy carpet. She wiggled her toes. A small, human motion.
No one spoke.
The fight on the bridge was done. The static was clear. The truth was out, ugly and plain. Now there was just… this. The aftermath.
A truck rumbled by outside. The window rattled. A tiny, brief quake. Then quiet again.
She let out a breath. A long, slow sigh. It wasn't sad. Wasn't happy. Just a release of air. A body function.
He shifted in the chair. The vinyl squeaked. A loud sound in the quiet.
They weren't looking at each other. They were looking at the space between them. At the beige void.
This was it. The quiet room. The place with no ghosts. No props. No rooftop chill. No cab stink. No perfume. No promises. Just two people. Who used to be two other people.
He felt tired. A deep, bone-deep tired he'd carried for years. It felt heavier now. Now that he could put it down. He didn't.
She unclasped her hands. Looked at her palms. As if reading lines. A future that never was. Then she folded them again.
A minute passed. Maybe five. Time was glue.
He thought about saying something. This is weird. Or, What now? The words dissolved before they reached his tongue. Useless.
She finally moved. Leaned back on her hands. Looked up at the ceiling. At the smoke detector. A little green light blinking. A steady, silent pulse.
"I'm tired," she said. To the ceiling.
"Yeah."
"Not sleepy tired. Just… tired."
"I know."
She brought her gaze down. Looked at him. Not through him. At him. The man in the chair. "You look tired too."
"I am."
A small, shared truth. The smallest one. They were both tired.
The quiet wasn't peaceful. It was the quiet of a hospital room. After the bad news has been delivered. And there's nothing left to say.
He wanted a cigarette. Not because he needed it. Because it was something to do. A ritual. A tiny fire to focus on. He didn't have any. He didn't move.
She wanted a mint. Out of habit. A taste to define the moment. She didn't have any. Her purse was across the room. A million miles away.
So they just sat. In the neutral, scentless room. With the beige walls closing in. Or maybe holding them up.
This was the reality. Stripped bare. No romance. No tragedy. Just two strangers who knew each other's ghosts better than they knew each other.
The quiet stretched. Thin. Taut.
It was worse than the screaming. The screaming had passion. This had nothing. This was the zero. The flatline.
He cleared his throat. The sound was enormous.
She blinked. Slowly. Like coming out of a trance.
They looked at each other. Across the beige desert.
No words came.
The quiet room had done its job. It had taken everything away. All the noise. All the memory. All the flavor.
All that was left was the sentence they were both serving. And the silent, shared understanding that the sentence was life. And this was it.