The vanilla-scented room
So he rearranged the room. It surprised him how much it suddenly looked like his room, like Aisling had never been there at all. But then it was almost easy to imagine that the last five years were but a figment of his ever-active imagination, that she had not so much as been present in a bit part, much less as actress in the leading role, so swiftly and completely had she removed herself from their house, as if an actress walking off set at the end of a scene.
It was all the more surprising given that the room had looked as it did almost entirely due to her. It was Aisling who chose the shade of paint. Aisling chose the couch and the carpet. Though they had done this together there was no pretending that whilst they had agreed on their choices, the choices hadn't been hers. From time to time she would berate him for refusing to offer an opinion on some matter upon which she felt he ought to have an opinion. He would shrug and reply that if he felt strongly or even mildly about the matter at hand she would be the first to hear of it, but that if had no opinion he saw no value in making one up.
She had in fact taken little from the room: a bookcase and its contents, all of which were hers, and a small pine table which hadn't even belonged there anyway. She had left the TV, a large silver-grey set which dominated one corner of the room by the window.
Questions bombarded him from all angles, like electrons bounding in random directions. Why this, when that, how could she the other; but when he boiled them all down to their constituent elements there were two facts left dry and crusted on the bottom of the vessel: Aisling didn't want him anymore and she did want someone else. The extent to which those two facts were related was not particularly relevant, nor were any of the myriad other questions and facts regarding the whole thing, because she wasn't willing to let anything at all get in the way of her doing just exactly what she wanted to do.
