“I’m going outside to play with Rachel,” announces the girl and she skips past him, and out through the lobby. “See you later,” she calls, as she disappears into the garden, slamming the front door behind her.

Arthur stands alone in the kitchen. On the table top, the half completed picture of the butterfly flaps briefly at the closing of the front door, before settling into stillness. The only sound now is the dull roar of the stove’s solitary flame and the green beans bubbling quietly.

“But… I am not afraid of butterflies,” says Arthur Kovic.

He says the words out loud.

He wonders why he did.

•

“Who was the girl downstairs? A friend of Jennifer’s? I’ve never seen her before.”

Arthur Kovic stands by the wardrobe. He is wearing grey boxer shorts and the dishevelled upper remnants of his work clothes. He has removed the sock with the hole and thrown it away, although he is still wearing the other. Carefully he undoes his tie and slips it over the hanger.

“Mmm...” moans Anna from beneath the crumpled duvet.

His wife of fifteen years lies crippled by a migraine. She has forgotten the pot that she set boiling. It is not the first time.

Arthur describes the dark-haired girl to Anna as he hangs up his trousers, neatly folding out the creases, and finally removing the useless, leftover sock. He sits down on the edge of the bed and feels Anna shift away from him as he does so.

He opens his mouth to ask where Jennifer is this evening but quickly thinks better of it. His wife can offer no logical explanation. Anna can offer nothing at all when the migraines come.

Arthur sits for a moment, looking at the smooth white island of her shoulder blade, protruding from beneath the duvet. After a moment he stands up and heads, wordlessly, to the shower.

•

With the bathroom door locked and the warm waters cascading down on him, Arthur masturbates in the shower. He does not think about anything much at all as he does so. When he is finished, he sits quietly on the edge of the bathtub and applies fungal foot powder. The masturbation and the foot powder have become part of a weekend ritual. They help to make the unpleasant itching between his toes and in his brain dissipate. He cannot remember the last time he and Anna had sex. Arthur remembers that tomorrow is his birthday and quietly begins to dread the possibility that Anna may feel compelled to remedy this. Arthur looks down at his feet and the flaccid penis that sits dripping onto the tiles of the bathroom floor. He looks at his face, reflected back in the misted bathroom mirror. It looks the same as it ever did.

Outside the birds are singing and Arthur smiles. It is a nice evening. He will go out into the greenhouse before dinner and attend to his tomatoes.

•

In the greenhouse, Arthur waters the plants and listens to the dulcet tones of a radio program on soil erosion. Arthur has built the greenhouse himself and he is proud that everything inside of it is something he made live. Every year he repeats the same process: Six to eight weeks before the last of the spring frost occurs, he plants the seeds. He transplants them just as the soil has begun to warm. He enjoys carving the stakes and watching the slow, familiar process of the shoots as they curl around the posts.

This year should be a good crop, thinks Arthur and he tips the watering can and watches the little pots of earth slowly begin to moisten.

As he puts down the watering can, he notices something hanging by a thread from the greenhouse door. Arthur Kovic knows every inch of his greenhouse and can spot something out of place in a second.

The last of the natural light is fading and so he switches on the greenhouse lamp and wanders over to inspect the new thing. It is small, about two inches in length and an inch in diameter, with hard ridges lining its upper surface: A tiny chrysalis.

Arthur stands in silence, staring at the chrysalis, as if he is expecting something to happen. Then he goes inside to attend to supper.

•

Arthur Kovic dreams: strange and formless dreams. In the dreams there is a heart beating, but Arthur does not think it is his own. In the dreams it is not entirely dark but the world is, instead, dimly illuminated by a soft, brown light. Things move and shift in the lugubrious, auburn embers of the dream. Things that, at first, appear to be a familiar blend and morph into things that slowly creep into the strange. The dream things frighten him. Arthur tries to speak, but the shape of his mouth does not feel entirely the same anymore and the words that come out are distorted and wrong.

Everything is wrong in the dream.

He feels he is on the verge of discovering a terrible secret and is overcome with the belief that, when he does, it will somehow all be his fault.

He wakes up, in a cold sweat, to the sound of music.

Saturday

The music fills him with tranquillity. A soft piano accompanies the voice of Nina Simone as it drifts up the staircase and floods him with a reassuring calm. He turns over to the empty space where Anna lay. The migraines did not abate throughout the night and he had expected that today would bring much of the same: that it would be a good excuse for her to cancel the planned festivities. He is surprised, therefore, to find the mattress lying empty before him, the curtains partially drawn and the sunlight filtering in across the hardwood floor.

Arthur smiles as he sits up.

From the kitchen downstairs the delicious aroma of frying bacon drifts into his nostrils as he yawns and stretches. Shrugging off the disturbing dreams of the night before, he stands up and reaches for his dressing gown.

•

Arthur sits at the dining table chewing over a mouthful of bacon dipped in the yolk of a lightly poached egg.

The breakfast surprised him almost as much as the unexpected kiss he received upon entering the kitchen. He tries to remember the last time Anna kissed him. Perhaps she is practising for tonight, Arthur thinks and unfolds his newspaper, scanning the headline that dominates the front page. The country has a new leader and the media talk of a real change coming to the world.

Anna comes over to him and reads from over his shoulder.

“Isn’t it exciting, darling?” she coos and kisses him again on the cheek. This only increases Arthur’s discomfort. He has begun chewing on a second mouthful of bacon and cannot properly reply. The mumbling he produces as a response, reminds him briefly of the shape of his mouth in the dream and a small, silent terror explodes like a tiny light bulb in his brain.

“I have to be off to the hairdressers,” explains Anna. “Jennifer has gone shopping with her friends, so you’ll have a bit of peace and quiet this morning.”

Arthur watches as Anna pulls on her jacket and grabs the spare set of keys from the table.

“Have a good day, birthday boy. Don’t be late home tonight!” she winks at him.

Arthur swallows the bacon and makes another sound in his throat.

“But, I’m not going anywhere,” he protests.

His wife pulls a face. “What nonsense! I think you’ll want to go for a drive, won’t you?” She nods at the car keys that lie by a vase of flowers.

Arthur squints at the unfamiliar shape of the keys as his wife clicks out into the hall and he hears the front door close behind her.

On the stereo, Nina Simone strikes up again.

“Everything must change. Nothing stays the same. Everything must change. No-one, no-one stays the same.”

Arthur frowns. The remnants of the poached egg glare up at him like a single yellow eye.

•

“Morning, Neighbour.”

Arthur does not answer Ned’s greeting as he stumbles outside, still cloaked in his dressing gown, a slice of buttered toast in one hand and the unfamiliar keys in the other.

The toast falls to the ground, butter side up, as Arthur’s eyes widen.