Day 245 - Hallway Story

Hallway Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Samson was very nearly asleep. He sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and stared at the door to Lacy’s apartment. She was home, he was sure of it. She wasn’t answering her door. It was, of course, almost four in the morning, so she could have been asleep. Or she could have been angry because Samson was drunk and started knocking on her door at three in the morning. Samson was sure she was just ignoring him because she wasn’t his girlfriend anymore. He didn’t like that. He didn’t think that was fair. He would have told her that too if she had answered her door. After twenty minutes or so of knocking on the door and talking to no one in particular he grew tired and sat down. He leaned against the door at first, but in a moment of clarity he decided it was a bad idea in case she actually opened the door and he fell backwards into her apartment. He might hurt himself. And she would be annoyed. He was probably already annoying her. He didn’t need to annoy her more. So he moved across from her door and leaned against that wall. It was a major victory in planning. He didn’t think about how she would or wouldn’t feel when she found him sitting across from her door. He assumed it would seem romantic. It would show his dedication to her. He didn’t consider how pathetic or desperate it looked. He didn’t consider that she would not be impressed and that a drunken buffoon passed out across from her apartment door was not the grand romantic gesture he assured himself it was.

Samson hadn’t been considering much lately other than how much was left in the bottle. That was one major problem among many many other problems.

Samson had been drinking for a long time. He couldn’t remember his last meal. He was sure it had been sometime in the last couple of days. He wasn’t that sure though. He knew he had been eating less and less and drinking more and more. For the most part he was still going about his daily business, still going to work, still functioning. But not always. Not tonight. Tonight had been bad.

Tonight was a special night. It had been a special night for a long long time. A year ago or two years ago he and Lacy might have been very drunk, celebrating the night together. They had celebrated the night at least twelve times together. Samson tried to count how many times they had been together, but he couldn’t keep the numbers straight in his mind. They had dated and broken up and dated and broken up one too many times. They had been together so many times over the last two decades, but he wasn’t sure just how many times they had actually been together on their anniversary. They had been together while still dating. They had been together briefly while engaged. They had celebrated the night even when they weren’t a couple. They had found each other and celebrated the night even when they had been with other people. And then there were years they didn’t see each other at all, through fate or accident or effort. There were times that the wounds were too fresh and the nerves too raw and they couldn’t stand to look at each other. But even during those times, Samson always thought of her. He was sure she thought of him too. That’s what he told himself.

It was their night. It had been for twenty years. And it would be for another twenty. It was the most important night in their life together. It was the anniversary of when they met and so it became the anniversary of when they were to be wed. The wedding never happened, but the date remained engrained deeply in them both.

She should have been home. She should have been answering her door. Samson had stayed away all year, just like she asked him to, but tonight was different. It had to be different. Surely she understood that. It was their night, even if it wasn’t their night anymore.

There had been some celebration in it for him earlier, but mostly it had been pity and depression and hate. He told himself these last few weeks had been him just having fun. He masked his problems in the bottle. He knew he couldn’t go to her tonight looking or smelling the way he had been looking and smelling. He cleaned himself up. He ate food and actually got some sleep. He had plans to look and seem like his old self. But she didn’t answer the phone. Again and again he called and she didn’t answer. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And so he had a drink to try to make him forget. He had a drink and then one more and then he stopped counting.

Somewhere along the line he ended up at her apartment. There were many many hours he could not remember during the night. He didn’t need them. He knew where he was now and he knew his purpose. He knew he was going to get her to come to the door.

But then an hour or more went by and the door never opened and she never answered. And so it came to pass that Samson sat on the ground and eventually ended up watching the door, waiting for her, as his eyes slowly grew heavier and lowered as his body demanded that he pass out.

Samson slept. And when he woke up the next day he had no idea where he was or how he got there. He was sick and hungover and suffered the awful feeling that he had made a huge mistake. Samson vaguely began to recall some of the phone calls, some of the repeated pounding on the door. He had made overtures of love. And of hate. And of love again. He had yelled and he had cried. He had professed his undying love and all his sins. He also then realized that this was the apartment that he and Lacy had shared right after college and that she hadn’t lived here in over ten years.