The Borderless Part 2 He dropped the briefcase with a thud on the dark red carpet that greeted him in his hallway. He dropped his shoulders with a sigh, loosened his muscles as if about to enter a jacuzzi, and started to walk towards the warm smell of cooked meat. The hallway was a muddled collection of sounds. The muffled sounds of a carton emanating from the tv, the heavy metal music thundering from a bedroom above and a sizzling pan from a steamy kitchen all congealed in this shifting pool of noise. He entered the kitchen to see the image of his now plump bride leaning over a sizzling pan, carefully inspecting the browning steak as if it had been her first time to cook. A young slender girl slightly over average height had now been shrunk and widened to a middle aged woman just under. A process which took years seemed to only hit her husbands consciousness now. Nevertheless he carried on with the well known tradition and proceeded to ask the small necessary questions that were the subtle pieces of adhesive that kept their marriage bonded. 'How was your day?', 'how are the kids?' and 'how are you?' were the essential ones which he labored every evening to come up with a different way of asking and then, an even harder task, to listen while she gave her often long branching answers and respond appropriately. To him it was all method and to hide this from her, to give it a tinge of originality or even romance, he needed to change and morph each question into something new. But for him it was a mechanical process he had long given up on. He needed to escape.