OOM: The unsettled routine
It's been going like this. Get up, feed the child, resist the urge to go back to bed. Go to work instead, where no one can do anything right and invariably pay the price for it. He's never been good at tolerating failure, but even he's started to wonder whether he's laying it on too thick. When a business is starting up and isn't really established yet, you have to be careful. People have to want to work for you. Scare them too badly, and they'll go to the opposition. He's seeing signs of it, but can't bring himself to care.
Someone at the ranch comes in to look after Martin, because he doesn't want to put up with him during the day. But he collects him every evening still, and everyone's learned to stop asking him where Random is and so they don't ask Martin now either. It suits him fine, because it's getting harder to pretend that everything's fine.
He spends a few hours with the boy in the evening, because Random had asked him to try with him. So he buys healthy takeout food that he doesn't have to cook and asks about his day and maybe takes him out for an ice cream, all the time fighting the urge to scream in frustration. Martin picks up on it easily and is subdued but he plays his part - still, they're both relieved when it's bedtime. Ramon reads him poetry in quiet Spanish, because he said he would and breathes a sigh of relief when he drops off.
One day a week, he doesn't work and makes a proper effort. Enough of an effort that he doesn't even drink the night before so he can be hangover-free. These days are spent on the beach or at the pool or taking him to a movie. He hates every minute but it was the one thing requested of him, so he tries.
But it's been almost three weeks now, and there's no sign of Random coming back. No word either, despite the fact that he said he'd write. In quiet moments after dark, he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling until he drives himself crazy and has to get up and pace around, chain-smoking constantly and asking endless, useless, questions of himself, of Random, of the woman that's daring to touch what she has no right to touch.
Tonight it's worse than ever and he can't take it anymore. The quiet is stifling but he doesn't want to go to the bar, because people know him there and some read his mind and he can't bear the invasion, can't bear that this weakness is somehow on display even if only because he can't stop pouring the next drink. So tonight he pulls on jeans and a shirt, calls the sitter and promises her triple pay if she'll get out of bed and come over now. She arrives within twenty minutes and manages a smile at him, he doesn't return it and just leaves the house.
It's quiet, the city is a thirty minute drive away. But there are bars enough in this small town, anonymous people who don't know him or Random and can't see inside and note the way he just wants to both collapse and hit things until blood flows out of his hands, taking the hurt with it. He's trying not to, trying to resist here because he's not supposed to be here and can't afford to be noticed by the authorities.
It goes well enough, in that average bar filled with average locals. No one approaches because even though he doesn't know it, he's glaring around the room and he's imposing when he looks like that. He'd be pleased if he knew, but as it is, he just drinks until the last patron leaves and the bartender anounces that he's closing up. Ramon grunts at him and takes his time with his last glass, perhaps because there are three of them dancing in front of his eyes by now. He isn't pushed (he's sorry for that, he'd take the glass and shove it through that kid's puny face, how fucking dare he tell him to drink up, even though he hasn't) and leaves eventually, swaying out into the night that smells of ocean. He tries to pollute it with another cigarette because he's never much liked fresh air, he likes the dirt in the city where things rot and grow in the darkness and there's a whole life going on in the shadows that you can't see or hear but you can feel it if you know how to look. And he does, he can, he belongs there and wants to go back and get dirty and know that he isn't the clean-cut guy he seems to be pretending to be because he isn't, is never that and he wants out.
But there are no distractions and Ramon walks home, no one stopping him or even seeing him. As the night swallows him up, he thinks to himself that he could just keep walking forever because there's no one here to pull him back and on nights like this, that's just fine. But he stops at his house, the one he bought because Random liked it, and doesn't hesitate before going in because he'll be found eventually and keeps telling himself that, he knows it, somehow, though he has to admit that hope is fading and he's losing the will to try and hold on to it because no one knows and he can't tell anyone and so there's no one that can remind him that it'll be alright in the end. But that's alright, because he's Ramon Salazar and he doesn't need a soul in the world, isn't that right?
That world, but you're not on that world any more, are you?
And this is the way life goes, at the moment.