Silence -- A short, short story

She said, “What do you think we should take away from all this?”

He said, “I don’t know.” He crossed his legs, left over right. The chair was deep and he would have a little trouble getting up. He liked the color of the chair and the fabric. The color was beige and brown, alternating stripes, and the fabric an open weave. He liked the wide arms, too, but he always had to push off from the arms. He said, “Do we have to take away anything?”

“You have to take away something from everything you do, don’t you?”

There was silence, except not really, because never is there real silence. He knew that, like in a movie or TV show where two people have talked and no one can offer anything else for the moment and you get this loud empty sound. No one is saying anything; there is no dog barking outside, no fire or police siren far off, no children laughing at play, and the two people who were talking no longer are because nether has anything to say. But the room that should be silent is not, because the empty sound is there, loudly there, as though listeners turned up volume on their listening devices and you get this almost tunnel sound.

That’s the way it was when she said “You have to take away something from everything you do, don’t you?” He knew she would say something else; she always did. She could not abide silence.