The RoomLooking at the piles of papers, fabric samples, colour swatches, photographs and magazines spread out over the kitchen table, Lisa could not help but feel slightly overwhelmed. Planning a wedding was not something she was prepared for, even after watching a fair few friends do it. A year ago, getting engaged to Johnny felt like the right thing the perfect thing to do. Looking forward to a beautiful wedding with friends and family all gathered to celebrate their love had been something she cherished, and there was not a trace of doubt in her head or in her heart. But somewhere along the line her outlook had changed, and with every new thing which needed to be scheduled, booked, planned, chosen and bought she had felt more and more doubtful of her own choice.She did love John, and their time together had been some of the best years of her life. He had supported her both emotionally and financially through quite a few of her more or less fruitless attempts at figuring out what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. His seemingly endless patience and understanding, however, had somehow grown to irritate her. "You have no ambitions!" she had shouted at him during a particularly spiteful moment, and he had seemed to shrink before her; losing all of his fight in a single moment. She had apologised and they had made up, but her outburst had touched upon truth with her and upon a nerve with John. Not long after that fight, John had started spending more and more time at work, which Lisa both resented and enjoyed.Lisa leaned back in the kitchen chair, closing her eyes, sighing and yawned lazily. She listened to the busy road outside the open kitchen window, felt the warm afternoon sun on her face and tried to focus her mind on which flowers she wanted for the reception. If she had let herself think about it, she would know that all the choices she had to make about the wedding did not matter. Not really. But instead, she decided on the pale purple Hydrangeas.

At his desk, John was pushing his glasses back up his nose and sighing. In his hands he held the report he had been working on for months, finally finished and accurate. He glanced up at the landscape of cubicles and people, once again pondering his position as an ant in the anthill. The bank he had been working for for nearly ten years now was a multinational bank with offices in 20 countries, with a stock-market value of more billions than he could fathom. John was one of thousands of employees at his level, doing monotone work monitoring small loans, debts, private bankruptcies and private finance for the Smiths of the country. Even if he took a positive view on his position, all he could ever hope for at this desk in this vast ocean of cubicles was to be the best of the worst; the highest of the lowest.He remembered the day he took the job, not long after having met and fallen in love with Lisa. They were young, and she was still in community college nursing her dream at the time of becoming a sculptor. The apartment they were living in was run down and cramped, but it was theirs and they had done their best to make it into a home. The job at the bank had come up, and it seemed like a good idea. John was good with numbers, had done a few finance courses at college and despite his lack of banking experience the bank was happy to take him on. He and Lisa had agreed that the job was not what they were hoping he would end up doing in the long run, but as the years passed and he became more secure in his position John had found it was distinctly difficult to resign in favour of unemployment just to follow his dream. And by now it seemed too late to do anything else; certainly too late to go back to college. The report he was now holding in his hands had started almost a year ago as a little morsel of an idea at the back of his mind. Having dealt with thousands if not tens of thousands of clients in his time at the bank, he had realised that the company's resources could be streamlined quite a bit to pre-empt most of the complaints and worries he had to deal with on a daily basis. The idea had grown into an obsession, and soon he realised that the situation was actually something he might be able to do something about.While the idea was still just that an idea he had had a run-in with Lisa at home. As usual when they argued, this time they had argued about money. The engagement ring he had bought for Lisa had been very expensive, and as a result they were having to cut costs; prompting a seemingly endless string of fights. Not until Lisa brought up the fact that he had been in the same position at the bank for as long as he had did he realise that she was right and that their struggle to make ends meet was not what they deserved.So the very next day at work he had started to write things down, to time what he did, to write down specifics and coming to conclusions about how to improve procedures and save the bank quite a bit of money. "What are you working on, anyway?", Mark had asked a couple of weeks earlier as he was packing up his laptop getting ready to go home. "You're always here late with your nose in books and notes." Mark sat across from John in his cubicle, and by the laws of office (the laws of nature never applied here) they had become friends."It's just a project. An idea I felt I needed to get down on paper before it took over my brain. You know the kind." Mark had given him a curious look, as though he was deciding whether or not he was interested enough at 4.59pm to ask more questions. Apparently deciding he really was not, he had smiled, nodded and said his good-byes.John opened his top desk drawer and dropped the report on top of the pile of junk inside. Today was not the right day to hand it in. He shut the drawer, stood up and turned off his desk light. As he looked over the cubicle partition, he saw Mark was doing the same. "Carpool?" John asked, and Mark nodded. Wordlessly, guided by long since established communal habits, they joined the throng heading for the lifts. John hated this time of day. There was relief in leaving work, and he was always happy to come home to Lisa, but the queues to the lifts, out of the parking garage and on the motorway didn't exactly help the feeling of being a herded sheep.

"Lisa!" The call from the hallway woke Lisa, and she sat up with a start. In the kitchen chair by the open window with the sun shining in, she had fallen asleep. She yawned, stretched and rubbed a crick in her neck. John called again, and she heard him hanging up his jacket and keys on the hooks in the hall. "In here.", she replied groggily. There was no enthusiasm in her voice, nor did she feel any, but she put it to drowsiness and put it out of her mind. When John walked in she stood up and reached up to greet him with a hug.He smiled his broad smile which told her that he had been looking forward to seeing her all day. With a twinge of sadness she could not quite pin down she allowed him to wrap his huge arms around her and hold her close. "How has your day been, sweetie?", he asked and gave her the top of her head a little kiss. The noncommittal groan she issued into his chest was as much of a response as she could muster right then, and he responded to her listlessness by lifting her onto the kitchen counter and giving her a soft kiss; her head in his hands.The doubts and confusion that had been tumbling around in her head all day seemed to melt away as she looked up into his kind and smiling face. He loved her so much; she could almost feel it radiating off of him as he began unpacking the shopping. The tension he carried in his shoulders every morning seemed always to lift when he came home to her, and she sat contentedly on the counter with her knees pulled up under her chin, watching him move around the kitchen packing away the tins and tubs. As he pulled the last package from the bag, he turned to Lisa with a mischievous look on his face. She could tell at once that it was something special, and dropped down to the floor."What's this?", she asked, not immediately reaching for the gold box John was holding out to her. "I thought you deserved something nice. Your birthday is in just a couple of weeks, but I couldn't wait to give this to you. Here; open it." He stepped closer, putting the box in her hand and she gingerly took it. Unwrapping the gold paper carefully she spoke quietly; "Please say you didn't spend a...", but her question was cut off by a soft touch on her arm which halted her unwrapping. "Lisa. I wish you would stop worrying about money. There's nothing I wouldn't do to take care of you, and you deserve things in your life which aren't just things you need." She smiled timidly up at him and he encouraged her with a gentle nudge; "Just enjoy your present."

"I wish I could stop worrying about money, too", John thought as he watched Lisa open the gift he had brought her. The image of the finished report in his desk drawer floated up in his mind, stirring a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. For ten years he had been polishing the seat of his desk chair, taking calls from angry clients and suffering the same routine every day aside from weekends and three weeks holiday each year. Of course he was earning more now than he did ten years ago, but he was still ashamed of his paycheque. The red dress he was now watching Lisa pull out of the box was one of the few items outside their everyday needs he had bought since.. well, since he bought her the ring."It's beautiful, John." Lisa said, as she held up the dress to see how it looked. As John had known it would from the moment he walked past it in a shop window, the dress looked spectacular even just draped over her jeans and t-shirt. The sun was going down outside their kitchen window, and in the orange glow which caught in her auburn hair she looked breathtaking. She gave him a kiss which lingered ever so slightly longer than usual, and then left the room saying she was going to try it on right away.John sat down by the kitchen table, feeling slightly groggy but very happy. He looked down at the myriad of papers spread out on the table and picked one of them up. It was a sample wedding invitation, and printed in ornate gold letters on cream coloured paper were the words "You are cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of John Marshall Wiseau and Lisa Abigail Williams". He was of the definite opinion that he did not have an opinion on whether the cream coloured paper was better than the eggshell, or if he preferred burgundy lettering over gold; but he did know that the words on the invitations made him feel sure of the world.Hearing Lisa's quiet footsteps on the marble floor, John turned around in his chair and caught his breath. The dress he had bought her was a made of a soft, deep blood red material which showed off her slender but curvy figure and when she moved the dress seemed to ripple around her body like water. She stopped halfway across the room, and as John stood up to face her, her cheeks flushed to nearly match the colour of the dress. He put his hand gently on her shoulder and bent down to whisper in her ear "You look stunning.". He sighed contentedly as Lisa looked up at him; smiling. He encircled her waist with his arms and his lips nearly touching hers he breathed the words "I love you.". "I know", Lisa whispered, and they kissed.

Unsure of what had woke her up, Lisa opened her eyes reluctantly. The room was still, and all she could hear was John's regular breathing next to her and the muffled sounds of the street through the closed windows. She glanced across to the chair, over which her new red dress was flung. She smiled, remembering the night's adventures she and John had shared. Parts of whatever it was that had brought them together all those years ago had still not died out, and the time they had spent together had made them incredibly close in the physical sense. Twisting around to face the sleeping John, a tiny wave of arousal sent shivers up her spine; only to meet the conflicting thoughts in her brain which never seemed to quite go away."Surely physical attraction does not make for solid grounds for a marriage," she thought. "Most of the time he annoys me, and I'm even glad when he's late home after work. I should want to see him, and feel glad when he comes home." Lazily she put a hand on his chest and sighed. "I should at least feel love, and not just lust." She let her hand absent-mindedly stroke his chest as she sank deeper into brooding. "Am I still here because it's all I know now? Is the reason I'm afraid of leaving that I can't even begin to imagine where I'll be if he's not here? Maybe a sense of security is the best one can hope for after this long; maybe that feeling is a kind of love..." But she caught herself. John was waking up, and looked sleepily into her eyes with a smile. What John felt for her, she was sure, was not only a sense of security. His eyes told her that he felt for her what she wished she still felt; a raw and unending love. A tear rolled across Lisa's cheek as she thought "... his love is unrequited."

John had been drifting in and out of sleep for he didn't know how long when he felt Lisa's warm hand on his chest. He didn't move, but enjoyed her soft touch. His mind not entirely awake, his thoughts wandered between the odd dream he had been having about something which might have been dinosaurs and the real world where Lisa's soft body was next to his in bed on a Saturday morning. Gradually the dream faded not only from his thoughts but from his memory and he began to focus on Lisa. Finally he turned his head and opened his eyes to look at her. Her hair was ruffled from sleep and their mutual nocturnal activities, her cheeks were slightly flushed still and she looked perfect. He was about to say something; possibly to tell her good morning or to let her know how wonderful she looked, but when she looked up to meet his eyes he noticed that she was sad. The look in her eye told him that no words were the right words right now, and so instead he reached out to wipe a tear from her face. As he did so, the look on her face changed. It did not exactly harden, but it seemed to him to grow more determined, as though she had come to a decision not to be sad anymore. Her eyes seemed to change as well, and he recognised all too well what she was thinking. He felt a lot more awake all of a sudden, and lifted himself up onto his elbow to kiss her.

By Saturday afternoon, the nearness they had shared in the night seemed to be ancient history; long forgotten and unimportant. Since stepping out of bed an hour or so after waking up, Lisa seemed to have gradually shut down emotionally. She was now sitting on the floor by the sofa, watching a meaningless soap-opera and lazily picking at a hole in her sock. John was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, dressed to go for a run; watching her in silence and wondering if he had imagined their recent physical intimacy. Lisa was ignoring him, and it was making him irritated. The fact that he was irritated frustrated him. He was generally a calm and quiet person who did not anger easily, but he could not understand Lisa's behaviour today; the change between the morning in bed and now was too vast. "Do you want me to pick up some dinner on the way home?", he tried. She shrugged, still keeping her eyes on the television.There was a knock at the door, but neither of them moved a muscle to acknowledge it. At the second knock, John shook his head, straightened himself up and went to open the door. It was Mark, holding his running shoes in one hand and a bottle of a vile-looking blueish drink in the other. The smile he had had on his face when the door opened faltered somewhat at dejected look on John's face. "What's up, dude? Not up for running today?" John glanced at Lisa, who was still sitting on the floor and did not even seem to have noticed that there was a third person in the room. Looking back at Mark, he had recovered his smile and said cheerily "Oh sure I am. Neither rain, nor sleet and all that jazz." Mark glanced over John's shoulder out the window, where the sun was blazing down from a clear-blue sky. "Well then. There's no time like the present!" He leaned through the door, "Bye Lisa!" She gave him a weak smile and a lazy wave of the hand in return. She did not acknowledge John's goodbye.

As the door clicked shut, Lisa drew a long shuddering breath and slumped back against the sofa. She felt drained, and even though John thought she was just ignoring him she had really just been trying to keep it together. The urge to shout, to throw things and to run out the door had passed and turned into apathy. She had been sitting on the floor for about half an hour, and was wiping a tear off her cheek when there was another knock at the door. Instinctively, she shut off the television and remained frozen on the floor; listening. A familiar voice on the other side of the door called "Lisa, are you there? I saw John pass by my house on his run and I thought you might like some company." Relieved, Lisa got up and went to open the door for Denny.Denny greeted her with his usual, toothy, smile and held up a bag of sandwiches from the local deli. "I brought lunch!", he explained happily, and they both went to sit down in the kitchen. Lisa did not really feel much like eating, but Denny's cheerfulness was almost contagious and she immediately felt a little bit better. Happy to not need to be engaging, Lisa nibbled on her sandwich and listened to Denny tell her about his week. He was a sophomore at the community college, studying finance and banking, and even though John was employed at a modest level at the bank he was working at, Denny looked up to him as an idol. They had met when Denny was at the bank for a work-experience programme, and ever since then Denny had been coming over to their place every week. At first he came over to get help with whatever he was studying at the moment, but as time had gone by the three of them had grown to be friends.Lisa nodded and interjected the appropriate really-s and yeah-s every now and then, and was enjoying letting her mind wander a little bit. Her mind flew back into focus however when, after a moment's silence, Denny said with a guilty look on his face "... so I really need to find some money to cover it." She sat up, lowering her half-eaten sandwich. "Wait. What did you say you needed this money for?" He looked up at her, apparently slightly surprised that she was giving him her full attention now. The resolve he had had before seemed to drain away, and he focused his eyes on the napkin he was folding nervously on the table. Lisa leaned forward slightly and tried to catch his eye again. "Please talk to me. I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention. You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to," she put her hand on his, "but you can trust me."Smiling hesitantly, but not looking up, Denny was quiet for another moment, and Lisa was alarmed at the pained look on his face. He sighed deeply. "Please don't tell John." Lisa clasped his hand tighter, "Denny, what's going on? You're worrying me." He shut his eyes and seemed to brace himself. "I lost my job, Lisa." She opened her mouth to tell him that that wasn't so bad; that they'd figure things out together; that they'd help him with whatever he needed to find a new job; but before she had a chance to utter a single word, Denny finally let go and opened up the floodgates."It started about six months ago, when I lost my job at the campus book-shop. You know how happy I was that I was finally able to live in a place off-campus and support myself. The thought of telling my mother I'd have to move back home was unbearable, and I just couldn't disappoint John like that. He has been so incredibly supportive, and him having paid my tuition the last think I would ever do is ask him for money. I decided I would look for a job for two weeks, and if nothing turned up I would move back in with my mother."Three weeks later, all my bills were due and I was feeling desperate." Denny's voice caught in his throat. Lisa, having now completely forgotten about her sandwich, switched chairs to sit next to him; still holding his hand. Haltingly, almost painfully, he continued. "Someone I know, not a friend really but more of a hang around, told me he knew of a way to get a lot of money really easily." At the look of disbelief on Lisa's face, Denny looked immediately apologetic. "I know, I know. There's no way I should have thought that sounded like a good idea, but you can't understand how I was feeling. I was failing at everything. Because I was worrying about money, I couldn't focus on studying. My grades dropped, and because I had to get them back up again I didn't have time to find a job." He let go of Lisa's hand and buried his face in his hands."So this guy," Denny continued, speaking into his hands now, "introduced me to a friend of his. He needed someone to hang out at the library, being available to people who wanted to... stay awake." Lisa was sitting completely motionless, not knowing what to say. Denny continued to tell her how all he had to do was to wear an orange shirt so people could recognise him, sit in the college library for a couple of hours on weeknights and slip people pills in return for money. He told her that it seemed so simple, and that he could study at the same time, and that he didn't have to worry about money or his grades anymore."And now you're in trouble?", Lisa asked timidly. Denny's shoulders shook and when he lifted his head from his hands she saw his eyes were brimming with tears. "... and now I'm in very big trouble." He picked up the napkin he had been folding earlier and blew his nose noisily. "I was on my way to school last week, and somewhere along the way I managed to lose the pills I had with me. They must have fallen out of my bag or something on the bus, because when I got to the library they weren't there." Not bothering to hide his face anymore, Denny was fully crying now and speaking between sobs. "There's no way they'll believe that I didn't steal the pills or the money. No way! If I can't come up with the money to replace it by the end of the week they'll know, and they'll kill me."Shocked, Lisa protested "They won't kill you!", and then, hopefully, she added "Will they?". Denny blubbered incoherently through his sobs, but through it Lisa gathered that what they had said when he started was; steal from them and he was dead. She wrapped his arms around Denny and they sat quietly, apart from Denny's finally diminishing sobs and sniffles, for a while. When he seemed to have calmed down slightly she leaned back, leaving an arm around his shoulder. "I understand why you don't want to tell your mother. But we need to tell John. Yes, we have to", she responded to the look of terror on Denny's face, "he will be disappointed with you. Very disappointed. But he will help you. We will help you."

John could not get Lisa's odd behaviour off his mind. "I don't know what's up with her today", John said as he and Mark turned the corner into the park. Their weekly run was a relatively new tradition, brought on by a suggestion from Lisa that he make more of an effort to be good friends with Mark rather than just cubicle friends. "She's being distant and shutting me out. I think the stress of planning the wedding is getting to her." When Mark didn't respond, John continued. "What do you think? Should I stay out of her way or should I push her to talk to me?" Mark remained quiet for a moment, and then suddenly stopped. John, surprised, turned around to face him. "What?", he prompted, still jogging on the spot. Mark sighed. "You're asking me about your relationship, dude. This is not only uncharted friend-territory, but way beyond me. I don't really know you. I mean,", he scratched his head and appeared to be searching for the right words to explain himself, "I know you, but until now it's all been about work, sports or weekend plans. All I know about your relationship with Lisa are the facts; how long you've been together, what you did for your anniversary. That sort of stuff. I'm in no position to have an opinion on how you should handle this. Hell, I have no opinions on relationships at all; I'm chronically single, remember?" He chuckled awkwardly.John had stopped jogging and was looking disbelievingly at Mark. He began chuckling; the absurdity of the situation hitting him all at once. He and Mark had been friends for years, and Mark had never even been to their place beyond the doorway, never spoken to Lisa beyond the usual hello and goodbye, and now he was suddenly asking for relationship advice. The chuckle soon turned into a laughter, and soon both of them were bent double, roaring with laughter and streams of tears running down their faces. A tension neither of them had known was there was now melting away."I'm sorry, dude.", John said, slowly recovering from their fit. "You're right. But I'm going to make you wrong." He smiled at Mark, who gave him a puzzled look in return. "There's no reason we shouldn't be real friends, instead of just office friends.". "How very grown-up of us." Mark grinned mischievously, and John nearly fell back into laughing uncontrollably. But he caught himself. "Tell you what,", he said, "beat me to the deli and we'll have you over for dinner tonight. If I beat you, lunch is on you for a week.". Mark brightened and immediately began sprinting away down the path. Turning his head, he shouted back to a stunned John, "You might as well run home and start cooking!".[1]