It was a room in which the wallpaper matched everything, or maybe everything matched the wallpaper. It was not wallpaper really, it was more a fabric that made the walls soft to the touch. Hopefully it also made their screams somehow bearable for the other in hotel Stanislaus. They were loud again. It was the continuation of the argument they have had in the car. They would continue to fight for at least another twenty hours or so. Until one of them would see bright spots on the left hand side. Little stress dots. The brain created them to remind him to just give up, give up completely, to just sleep, to make this one a last battle, to walk away. They were so completely different in this. It was supposed to be Paris, but they never made it. They only made it to Nancy, screaming. She could just pull the plug on reality, who could refrigerate any room at any point in any conversation, make everything freeze, instantly. That was it. It was over. It would not continue. White dots on the left hand side. Three maybe, maybe five. Painful, sleepless, useless.
The deep end.
She smiled now. They had a great dinner, she went for the cheese platter. She spoke French, the French that sounds like a real language. She knew so much about the things he really wanted to find out about. She was a smart cookie. She just had no idea how much she slashed his guts every single time, and more and more and more, until it all just was not worth it anymore, until his nose bled. The real deal. Until he could not breathe. Complete refrigeration. Pain.
And all this was when they were the good couple. All this was before they broke it off. Before the real hell started. Beyond expectations. New ground. Bad. Bad. Bad.