headaches and heartaches

a short story

The migraine is like a screwdriver twisting repeatedly in his left temple. It has been so ever since Edgar was a teenager. He used to joke about having a screw loose, but now at forty three he no longer finds it funny. The migraines are as much a part of his life as… what. Could it really be that the awful headaches are his longest lasting relationship. After so many years he is resigned. The migraine is a friend, and comes to visit often.

The screen he has to look at all day has no doubt its share of the blame, but really artificial lighting of any kind does the trick. The computer, thankfully, stays in the office, he can check his personal email there, and it’s never really personal. He has a laptop at home but turns it on so rarely that once all of the outstanding updates are installed, and there are always dozens, he just turns it off again, bored and annoyed. He’s old enough and smart enough for the phone to be used only as a phone, and there is no one to call and no one to text. As for television, he doesn’t dare turn it on anymore after the sun has disappeared, and lately even during the day. The screwdriver friend seems to be particularly attracted to it, and there is no reason to extend further invitations, especially as there is nothing good to watch.

It is sad that he can now only read in the mornings, save for the odd afternoon in the park, arriving usually too late from work to make use of daylight. Reading by candlelight strains his eyes, and that too can cause a migraine. He has tried all sorts of different lightbulbs but none makes any difference, and wearing sunglasses inside the house, besides being ridiculous, only serves as a palliative for when the screwdriver is already twisting in his left temple, making it twist a little less violently, maybe, if he’s lucky, but they never work as a preventive measure. In fact, nothing can prevent his old friend from visiting. And only pills, whichever ones he can get his hands on, can alleviate the pain enough for him to function.

Thus more and more it’s not uncommon for him to get home and sit in the dark, even if he would rather read, or even watch some stupid show, but he won’t take the risk. Anything that requires artificial light is out of the question, because no matter how pleasurable the book or entertaining the show or movie, it will invite his old friend migs the migraineous, and he would rather be alone. Music or silence, those are his only options to avoid or palliate the twisty screwdriver, and more and more it’s usually silence. He hopes he is not developing sensitivity to sound as well as light. It’s one thing for a migraine to be caused or get worse from a blaring car horn, or the annoying nasal voice of a colleague, but from Bach or Debussy… that would be a real tragedy.

It might be the increasing rate at which his migraine friend comes, rendering his thoughts muddled, his awareness vague, his attention scattered. Or it might be something else, maybe just the inexorable effect of aging. But he has been forgetting things, sometimes important things, work related things, but more often less important ones, like buying milk, or whisky. If he tries to think back to what he did the week before, it’s a blank. He can reason back to memory, but really has none. He never remembers getting home the day before, nor how long the water in the shower took to warm up, nor whatever frozen or ordered in poor excuse for food he had for dinner, now always by candlelight, he’s joked enough times to himself and the void that it’s so romantic. Nor does he remember how many glasses of whisky or how many cigarettes he had after his meal, nor what kind of music he was listening to when he fell asleep on the couch, nor the moment when, in the middle of the night, the stereo still on but the cd long played out, he got up and went to bed.

He could probably say with some certainty that he got home around six thirty. He knows the water always takes at least three minutes to get warm enough, and as the days get cold later in the year, four or five or more. It has been annoying him for years but he never called anyone to fix it, soon enough it’s spring, and then at the height of summer he will instead complain the water isn’t cool enough. He can open the trashcan and confirm whether the remnant package from last night’s meal says premade cannelloni or squid ink spaghetti with calamari, his favorites, or if it’s from a chinese or israeli take out place, his other favorites. He can check the bottle of whisky and see how far the liquid is from the sharpie line he drew two days before to make sure he doesn’t drink too much. He always goes a little beyond it, but only a little. And he can check the ashtray and count the cigarette butts, consumed all the way to the filter, all of them, before he empties it into the trash can. And he can check what cd is still inside the stereo, and it will probably be something baroque, or turn of the century french impressionism, rarely now something romantic and bombastic and definitely nothing after that.

His days are also without any variation, but he can’t complain, and doesn’t. He has a good enough salary that allows him modest comforts. To live in a small but comfortable apartment, in a reasonably built apartment building in a good neighborhood, with walls that are not too thin, but more importantly with neighbors that do not shout instead of speaking or listen to terrible music at high volumes during the middle of the night, or any hour of the day, for that matter. He drives a ten year old but good quality and trustworthy automobile, german, all paid up, with which he could theoretically go on a cross country road trip, maybe finally visit his sister Rebecca. He used to call her Becca when they were younger, but somehow that doesn’t feel right anymore. Not that they ever speak enough for that to happen naturally, or even unnaturally. In the last twenty years he has seen her only a handful of times, returning to his hometown only for christmases at first, and then not at all.

He is a respectable citizen. He doesn’t cheat on his taxes, he recycles. He might even be said to have some mild prestige as far as his work is concerned, though he lacks ambition, that’s what his boss always tells him during performance reviews. And to the extent that it is possible in an indistinct office doing indistinct office things, he even enjoys what he does. He treats every task as a puzzle, and is able to amuse himself enough through excel sheets and status reports and memos to get through the day. Never once during the last two decades has he thought that he hated his life or even his job, at this or that company, and in fact the only time he remembered hating his days, and that mildly, was when he was briefly unemployed and on the dole, and that was a long time ago.

If he had friends once, they disappeared along with youthful dreams and hopes. People from the office invite him sometimes for a drink after work, or an unofficial dinner, or an official party, but he rarely attends, except when he suspects his absence would affect his standing in the company. Still, whatever the function ends up being, he considers it part of his job, not leisure. He had a wife once. No children. He must have been around thirty. It seems like another life. A couple of failed attempts followed, after which he gave up on romance altogether. It was not worth the trouble.

He has enough savings for emergency surgeries, or emergency vacations, or emergency extravagances, within reason, but he can’t start to imagine what those could be. Thus far he hasn’t touched his savings account, and he doesn’t really know how much money he has in the bank. That’s the most important part, in his estimation, to earn enough money to not even think about finances at all. And it’s not that difficult, seeing as he has no lavish tastes or expensive vices, save perhaps for Glenfiddich whisky and Davidoff cigarettes, and for more than a year now, Natasha.

Or Tasha, as he calls her when he brings her breakfast in bed on the rare occasion of her staying overnight, usually because he had a migraine. A slavic beauty, one of those with strange, alluring eyes, asiatic in shape and european in color, so blue one could take a swim. Her hair was not quite blonde, her bosom generous and her legs magical. Besides, she was very sweet. She always seemed genuinely confused as to why he needed her services. You’re handsome man, why don’t you get girlfriend, she often said after doing her job exquisitely well, forgetting the articles as is only normal for slavs. He always shrugged his shoulders, and if she ever insisted he would tell the truth as he understood it. He didn’t have any patience for all the theater required, in the end money was less demeaning than that.

When the unfortunate event of a migraine coming to visit at the same time as Tasha did occur, she took care of him with great tenderness, and he felt half ashamed and half enamored. He sees her every two or three weeks. Sometimes he takes her out to dinner somewhere fancy, but lately she started to refuse his invitations, regardless of how much money he offered. The last time she came by the house he wasn’t alone. His migraine was there already. He spent most of the night with his left temple over her wonderful thighs, her hand stroking his hair, until he was able to fall asleep. In the morning the migraine was gone, but Tasha had bad news. She was getting married, and recommended a colleague. He felt almost offended. Why was he heartbroken. Over a prostitute. How ridiculous. Unsurprisingly, the migraines became even worse and more frequent.

.

A month or so after he last saw Natasha he went to the doctor. He had done some tests and now the results were in. The receptionist at the doctor’s office, or whoever it was that called him, refused to give any details, though she probably didn’t know anyway. By temperament he is a pessimist, and subscribes to the maxim that says disasters come in twos or threes. Losing Tasha was the first, it was fitting that a serious health problem be next. He is not a hypochondriac, but he is an alarmist, so he expected the worst. Some kind of inoperable brain tumor, most likely and at the very least. Thinking of all this in the waiting room he had a moment of clarity, in which he knew as much as anyone can know anything what to do and how, and more importantly why. But the clarity dissipated when the doctor called him into his office.

There is nothing wrong with you. That’s what the doctor said. He didn’t believe it, but his migraine appeared out of nowhere, and he couldn’t concentrate enough to inspect the expressions on the doctor’s face. We found nothing… less than nothing, you have the health of a thirty year old. He had to be lying. What about the migraines. There had to be a reason. They had to look closer, to find something. There is no real explanation for migraines… some people have them, some don’t, they are treatable but not curable, you just have to live with them as you always have until now. What kind of quack doctor is this. Some days from then, maybe weeks or months or even a year, but eventually, he would keel over and die with an aneurysm or whatever and it would have been perfectly avoidable. No, if it was an aneurysm we would have seen it. Edgar was almost disappointed by the good news, but since he couldn’t think properly because his friend screwdriver was twisting again in his left temple now at full speed and intensity, he was too tired to contest the verdict. On the way out he got a glass of water and took a pill. And then he took a couple more. Sometimes his friend didn’t get the hint with one or two, and only three or four would make him scarce.

.

In front of his office there’s a kiosk selling newspapers. That’s always his first stop, to buy a newspaper whose pages he’ll only skim and whose headlines he’ll read with little attention. He didn’t care that he was late. He got in the building and headed to the cafeteria, got a packaged muffin from the machine and something purporting to be coffee from another machine next to it. Then he sat down. And there, another moment of clarity, the old friend migraine completely gone. He didn’t open the paper to learn that miners were trapped in Peru or Thailand, or that a corruption scandal broke out in the government, or that there were riots on the outskirts of the capital because some thug had been killed by the police. All those things happen every day and he didn’t care about them. Clarity pure and simple, the opposite of a migraine, now undisturbed by the expectation of bad news. Enlightenment, as the buddhists call it. He should get up and never come back. Say nothing to anyone, get in his car and drive. It didn’t matter where. Just drive until he ran out of gas. Then he would walk. If it was dark he would sleep under a bridge, or most likely under a tree or in a barn, as he would make sure to avoid urban areas, choosing instead the countryside. Yes, that’s what he would do.

He had to force himself to remain seated. These moments of lucidity usually disappear very quickly. Soon a voice inside his head reminds him of the realities of life, his apartment, his car, his job, even his sister, but especially Tasha. Except now there is no Tasha anymore. The voice telling him to get over himself and get on with his life is fainter than usual. Maybe it was the pills. They were new.

He focused on finishing the black liquid and ignored the muffin and the newspaper. Better to get out of there as soon as possible, but not to drive without a destination, rather to his desk. Still in a daze he says to himself that it’s absurd to be shaken by every little random thought that comes into our minds. One time he thought of punching his boss. More than once, in fact. But he never did. Why should lucidity be any different. Just another thought to ignore.

A colleague outside the elevator forced him to come back to earth. The boss wants to talk to you, What about, No idea, but it’s never good is it… did you catch the game last night. No, he hadn’t. He never does, but that never stopped his colleague from asking, and then from droning on about plays and tactics and results. After the regular absurd monologue his colleague finally left him alone, and he started to imagine what his boss wanted. His stupid boss. That tiny man with fat fingers and greasy hair. His sports obsessed colleague was right. It was never anything good. The fat man delighted in humiliating his subordinates, publicly if necessary. And there he is sweet talking the poor woman from accounting, she can barely hide her disgust. Accounting, yes. Edgar remembered that he had made quite a few mistakes in his latest reports, but they weren’t that important. Or were they. Was he getting fired. Maybe that, and not an incurable disease, was the second disaster he had been expecting. He walked to the other side of the office feeling like a prisoner on death row.

Please sit down, No… I would rather stand… I have things to catch up on, Please Edgar, sit down. He sat down uncomfortably, and as soon as he did he had another moment of enlightenment, a sudden urge to get up and run, but he didn’t. Then, as he forced himself to stay, the migraine returned in full force. Is anything wrong, No, no, it’s fine, just a headache, Is everything alright… I mean, at the doctor’s, Yes, everything’s fine, it was a routine check up, Well that’s good to hear, listen… I have some news.

A deep breath, this is it, he’s getting fired. He made one too many mistakes. But what does he care, he has savings, he doesn’t need to get another job right away, he could take a vacation, somewhere tropical, somewhere icy, it didn’t matter, maybe that was the cure for his migraines. You know Edgar… I always liked you. What a bold faced liar. You’ve worked for the company now for what, four, five years, Seven, See that’s exactly it, you’re part of the family, and I always believed in you, but you know, it’s tough, the economy is tough, everything is tough nowadays isn’t it. Just get to the point you fat bastard. Anyway, I think we’ve been unfair to you… for a while now… and I want to remedy that immediately… we’re giving you a raise… in fact, we’re promoting you, Felicia is retiring in two weeks, you know, and I can think of no one else better to take over from her, she has full confidence in you too, all the management team does. Was he dreaming. Was he hallucinating from the throbbing pain in his left temple. No, the stupid fat man is smiling, offering his stupid fat hand for Edgar to shake. He did it, got up to go away, and almost forgot to say thank you, but remembered just before opening the door. Look at you, you’re stunned. His boss was laughing, self satisfied.

Edgar was confused. Instead of a brain tumor or aneurysm he has the health of a young man. Instead of getting fired, his poor performance got him a raise and a promotion. What the hell was going on. He walked around the office absent minded but no one asked him what the meeting with the boss had been about. He was almost at his desk when he was hit by another moment of clarity. He walked back to his boss’s office and asked the secretary if he was busy. I forgot to tell him something important, he specified. Without giving her time to reply he knocked and got in. He said he was taking a vacation, and when his boss listed all the reasons why he couldn’t, not right now, not after being promoted, Edgar said, Then I quit.

.

He tried calling Natasha, but she didn’t pick up. He called again, and a few more times. Still nothing. Was she ignoring him. Either way he wouldn’t accept defeat. If he knew she intended to marry he would have proposed himself as the groom. But it never crossed his mind. Now he was determined. Soon after the last attempt she sent a text saying she couldn’t see him anymore and to stop calling. So text was allowed, that was his takeaway from the message. He said he really needed to see her, that he had something important to tell her, and a gift. A parting gift, he specified, to make it more palatable. He hadn’t bought it yet but it was a good idea. All that money he had been saving would come in handy. He would buy an expensive piece of jewellery, yes, that’s the answer. But she didn’t reply to the last text. It didn’t matter. He knew where she lived. He had once picked her up downtown and she asked to stop by her apartment. So that’s where he would go, right after buying a ring, and maybe a necklace, her beautiful collarbone demanded a pricey one, and some flowers, yes, he needed flowers. Roses.

Her neighborhood was terrible. He felt bad for her, and then confident. He would take her out of this misery, she wouldn’t have to live side by side with the dregs of humanity, this balkanized war zone of ten thousand ethnicities trying to remake whatever horrible place they came from so they wouldn’t feel so homesick. He got ten thousand threatening looks from ten thousand threatening faces as he walked to her apartment building. But he held his head high, and tried to not feel too absurd holding the giant bouquet of red roses in the ghetto, those were the classic choice, the florist said, to ask someone to marry. The jewellery was hidden in his coat pocket, hopefully no miscreant would rob him. He called her and again she didn’t answer, so he sent a text saying he was downstairs, and asking to come in.

A few minutes later three tall russian looking men came out of the building, all of which affecting a menacing stance of their own. Two tall ones in tracksuits, and a short one in a fancy suit and tie. This last one asked, Edgar yes. He nodded, and the reply from the blond ruffian was a punch in the stomach. He fell to the floor. A round of hard kicks against his back and his chest followed. They must have done this before and had gotten it down to a science, because he was about to pass out when they stopped. The other two never opened their mouth. The short one did again, Don’t come back, or we kill you. Then they picked up the roses and went back inside.

Soon there were other foreign faces about him, most of them young men and dark skinned. He tried to get up but couldn’t. They searched his pockets, took the necklace and the ring and his phone and whatever money he had in his wallet, which they threw back at him afterward. The pain was getting sharper, maybe he was bleeding internally and would soon die. But at least he didn’t have a migraine.