The door closed. All of a sudden, nothing mattered. I felt absolutely calm. I didn't get up - I skipped work without phoning in and slept. About 10am the phone rang and woke me up. I didn't answer it. I got to sleep again after a few minutes and woke up again a little after midday. I was hungry by then, so I got up, threw on a dressing gown and went down to the kitchen. I ate a couple of unbuttered rolls and some yoghurt. I couldn't be bothered with anything else.
By mid afternoon the tranquil feeling had begun to fray at the edges and I started to worry a little about what the guys at work might think. About three-thirty I called in and said I'd come down with food poisoning. I was still feeling weird, so I overacted on the phone, trying to compensate for the detachment. There was groaning involved. Still, they seemed to take me at my word. I put the TV on after I'd called them - before that I'd just been kind of drifting around looking at stuff without really understanding it. I couldn't focus on the TV but the babble in the background slowly brought me back down to earth. By the evening I was feeling mostly normal. I still didn't feel like talking to anyone, but around six I cooked some pasta and after that I did a little reading.
It wasn't like we'd really argued, or that that night had been particularly special. There had been gentlenesses and kind words spoken, true. Also a couple of grating things. Nothing I can recall specifically now. It was pretty average. In the morning we hardly said a word to each other. Still, for the hours after the door closed I felt like my life had been put on hold somehow, like there was no reason for me to do anything, really. And that was fine. Comfortable. I just went with my instincts, didn't feel happy, didn't feel sad. It was the strangest thing.