Again.

He cursed at their inert form, then confronted the ruby-red door before him. He reached for the black metal knocker but retracted his hand as if bitten.

‘Not fair,’ he said. ‘Inconsiderate, she’d say. Just pick them up.’

With exaggerated grace and a smooth stoop, he swooped to retrieve the keys and stumbled against the door, hitting it hard with his shoulder. He giggled and slid to the floor, clutching the keys in a vice-like grip.

‘Gotcha.’

Inch by inch, he rose, turned to challenge the door and the lock, hoping he could introduce the key to the lock with little torment to each. He didn’t want to cause a disturbance.

‘She’s not been well.’ With a slight shake of the head, he confirmed his diagnosis.

A melodic female tune greeted him as the door opened. His shoulders slumped, his bag slipping to the floor.

‘Oh, bad times,’ he said.

They’d split a year back, only for a week, maybe two. She’d headed home to help her sister, recently mothered with a wee girl, and when she returned, their home was swamped with foreign melancholy songs. It took a month, maybe two, before they talked, before he was allowed into the bedroom. His nose twitched at the strong scent of spirit and paint. He placed the keys in the empty fruit bowl and boldly stepped into the lounge room. French words, pathos, one-to-three rhythms, played on the stereo beneath the large television screen. He panned the room: registering the sock against the cushion on the long cream sofa, a lounge chair askew and a coffee cup marking the dining table. He thought cloth, detergent, save the table, but then he saw the paint pots sitting on the polished surface, globules of magnolia having travelled and settled at the bottom of the rim.

‘Fuck it.’ He pocketed the sock from the sofa. ‘Clean house, tidy house.’ He kept his mimicry to a whisper.

The music slowed, stopped, the arm holding the needle lifting off the rotating record and moving back to its resting place with a gentle click.

Silence ruled.

‘Hello.’

The call lacked volume and died on his lips.

‘Hello, my sleeping beauty. Your prince has returned.’

His eyes looked upward, focusing on the ceiling, imagining the slumbering lifeless form occupying their bed. When they first moved into the apartment, she always greeted him at the door when he arrived home from work. She’d have an ice-cold beer, top removed, a kiss and sparkling eyes full of promised mischief. Sometimes it was him greeting her, wooden spoon in hand, basil and garlic swirling about his being. He liked to pour her a red wine; she liked the Malbec, a large glass, chilled to fifteen degrees.

He turned to the kitchen. No noise, no aromas common with pasta night. His night to cook. Fresh pasta sat in his shoulder bag, along with a block of parmesan cheese. He’d only meant to have the one drink, but a mate wanted to talk, and to listen to someone else’s grief shifted a load of angst from his shoulders.

The kitchen sink housed a pile of dishes paddling in grey, greasy water. He’d left them soaking the night before, meaning to wash while cooking the pasta. Two packets of mince sat on the counter, an onion, garlic, and many tins of tomato products. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and popped the cap, catching it before it hit the floor. He threw the gold top at the bin but missed. ‘Damn.’

He retreated, and his eyes turned to the stairs. Another sock clung to the middle step, a purple chocolate wrapper and foil beside it. He kept his voice low. ‘Oh dear.’ Chocolate wasn’t a good sign. She’d given it up two months ago. No ifs, no buts, she said, and alcohol. He stopped a good foot from the bedroom, the humid heat repelling any desire to enter. The bed covers lay scrunched and heaped at the foot of the bed. Curtains remained drawn, and the room smelt sickly. Damp towels carpeted the bathroom’s ceramic floor, with a wounded pot of cream and a sodden scrunchy holding the towels in place.

He touched the door to the second bedroom, easing it open and found his wife sitting on the floor with scraps of wallpaper curled around her body. The left hand, dripping in thick paint, button mushroom white, rested in a tray, the roller upended on the carpet. A long roll of wallpaper hung over a cot; rough chunks of plaster clung to the back of the paper. She sat cross-legged, her head bowed. A bottle, empty, lay at her side. A glass of wine sat on the sideboard by the door.

He drank from his beer and took a step into the room. ‘Sorry, I’m late,’ he said.

With minute movements, her head turned to face him. He hesitated, retreating a step, not recognising the drawn, chalk-white face. For a moment their eyes met, his alarmed, fretful, and hers focused.

‘Hello dear.’

Her flat tone struggled to reach his ears.

‘Hard day?’

He opened his mouth to comment, to say what? She’d stripped the room, gouged plaster from the walls. The spacecraft mobile they’d pieced together over a bottle of wine, and many beers now lived in the racing car bin. He stuttered and stumbled and reached out to steady his gait. The wine glass trembled as he clutched at the sideboard. They watched it fall. Let it fall. Red wine splashed across the pale blue carpet, and the glass rolled against his wife’s bare leg.

They both studied the wine bleeding into the carpet.

‘I’ll get you another one,’ he said.

‘There isn’t any more.’

‘Can I get you a beer?’

‘I don’t,’ her eyes glared, ‘want a beer.’

He drank from his bottle, watching her from behind the beer’s slender neck. She focused on his face, dropping low, her eyes stopping on his crutch. He lowered the bottle, alarmed at the pale, lifeless orbs. The fluid caught in his throat and he coughed.

‘Doing some painting, eh?’

‘Get out.’ She didn’t move from his crutch.

‘Oh, come on, love. We—’

She threw the glass at him. It smashed against the wall, the red blurring the beige. She wailed aloud and pulled at the wallpaper as if trying to wrap herself tight. The cot toppled and fell as the paper pulled free.

He stepped backwards, disturbed at the sight of his wife wrapped in the light blue paper. A line of racing cars circled her body. The cot’s bare mattress rested in her lap. He turned and ran from the room. His hand grabbed at the railing, pulling himself downward. He stumbled through the front door, looking left, looking right, and ran for the exit, taking the steps two at a time, a guttural sob following his descent.