PLANGENTLY SULLEN

An agile young man climbed the flights of stairs up to his office. Fortunately, his body moved with effortless grace. Fortunate that is, as he was too riled up to be concerned with the physical action of walking up the stairs. He thought about his wife and her detestable habit of asking him why he was mad. Generally, as he had repeatedly explained to her, he was not prone to getting angry; although he did frequently battle with an air that would be described as nothing less than plangently sullen. She never understood this though, and usually kept prying when he simply did not feel like talking. Usually her barrage of protests ended up making him mad, which he had not actually been before.
"Why are you mad?" "Why aren't you talking to me, you haven't said a word in 15 minutes; I know you're mad about something."
One time the wife embraced the man quietly when he had been introspective. The man, feeling her tender reassurance, wept freely and was then able to speak to her and work through what had been hounding him. He candidly discussed his fears, disappointments, and dreams. This brought them closer. But this morning she just kept asking him why he was mad, insisting that he was mad at her. The man thought about Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and the depth of human love portrayed by the man's postmortem journey home to see his wife. This made him feel much better. Now at the top of the stairs, the man went into his office and reached for the phone. It had been a long time since he had sincerely told his wife he loved her.
There was no answer. So the man went about his day; business as usual.