Wedding Ring

Dzzzzing-dzzzng-dzzz. Then silence.

‘What was that?’

‘No.’ I look at my hand. ‘NO’. The wedding ring is gone.

I am in the toilet, at Mocca, and the wedding ring is not on my finger anymore.  ‘Dzzzz’, a buzzing echo sings inside my head.

‘NO.’

It’s not even MY wedding ring, it’s yours. ‘Dzzzz’ - like a swarm of scarabs through my veins. Where is the bloody thing? I can’t believe it.

‘You’ll lose it’, I’d said earlier, and you gave it to me for safe keeping – because what with the morning climbing trips and the hand infection, your wedding ring has been lying in a jacket pocket for over a week..  I took it and slid it next to mine. We joked (‘I’m married to myself now’) I thought it felt a bit loose. More jokes (‘what big hands you have, grampa’) ha-ha, etc.  

Twenty minutes later, dzzzzing – and the ring is gone. I can’t believe it. I must find it.

I can’t see it. I look around my feet, behind the toilet, under my bag. Nothing.  I look inside the toilet. My head feels like the inside of a church bell during a wedding. A wedding. Oh God. What do I say to you, tonight?

You’ve had it since 1994. Twenty years, then you give it to me for twenty minutes and DZZZING.

The cubicle is hot and smells of air freshener. I can’t breathe. I’m on my knees, looking behind the toilet again, and down a truly dreadful drain. Oh. Oh. OH.

I’m gagging not because this is potentially too disgusting – yes I would plunge my hand down the toilet if I detected a splash, a glint, anything - but because it was such a nice day and now it’s scary, hot, smelly and huge.

Don’t panic. Breathe. Wait, there must be an explanation. It’s only a small room, a smooth floor, a shiny ring, nowhere to go. I heard it fall (how lucky was THAT?) – I felt it slide off my middle finger and hit the floor then bounce, twice. Then what? Did it jump into my bag? Did it slide under the door and out? I open and check, nothing and thankfully, no one waiting. I twirl about and – OH, what was that? A small metallic noise under my boot? Or still the echo in my head?

I pat the floor with my hands (it’s nothing, really, compared to the horror of losing your wedding ring!) and something cuts into my palm. I cup my hand above it and wait for the heart to stop flinging itself inside my chest. I crouch there, like a batty entomologist who just captured the last three-legged golden cricket of Guadelupe – dying to open her hand, weary that it may hop off into the jungle.