Marie spent many of her days like this, as Jones and her saved up the funds to visit Manhattan Island, which was still called Manhattan Island, coincidentally enough. When Jones would work the morning shift was the best for her. They would get home around the same time that Marie got off of work, if not a little later. When they worked the night shift, they would arrive back greasy and sweaty and baked by the midnight moon. On these nights, Jones wasn’t much for talking. They simply sat there, smoking their cigarettes and reading on their electronic reader. Marie always wanted to make sure that there was music in the house when Jones arrived home. This music would mostly come from the piano, but on days where Marie was having a rough time, she would throw on muzak on the radio. Jones promptly asked her to turn off the “annoying chitter-chatter” every time they got home, which became an amusing gag between the two for a long while.

Eventually, they did save up enough funds to visit Manhattan Island, and were scheduled to take one week off of work respectively and go see something that Jones, or Marie for that matter, had never seen before. They were set to take off Northeast in two weeks. It was the day after they had made the reservations for the shifty motel in Garden City where they would be commuting to the island from, and it was Friday. I’m sure I don’t have to mention the pattern to you now.

They both were drunk on a new bottle of the same old cheap whiskey and Jones was telling a story from their high school days. They had a Mohican haircut of several bright colors back then. It was the story of when they first started smoking cigarettes. The only thing that happened within this story was that their childhood best friend, the one who had given them the laptop that “Return to Sender” was initially typed on, gave them a cigarette. The two were celebrating a freshman year of high school in the bag and the dwindling amounts of summer vacations that were left at their disposal. That is all that happened within the story, but Jones took about twenty minutes to tell the whole thing, adding little embellishments and going on little tangents. It was after this story that Jones went into a coughing fit and was hung over the toilet for quite some time.

They coughed and coughed and coughed up blood and black, sludgy shit.

Eventually, Jones wound up on the floor, face up and looking at the ceiling light.

“I love you.” They said.

“What?” Marie asked.

“I love you. As much as I can love anyone or anything anyway. I just wanted to say it.”

Marie smiled at this, flushing the blood and black, sludgy shit down the toilet.

“I love you too, Jones.” She said. Jones passed out after this, and she carried them to bed.