Something from 2000

The key ring made that key ring sound. That sound that sounds like change when bums are walking down the street. The gate clicked. Then it was city silence. The air was thin and cooled the nostrils for the first time since winter. It was that kind of air that feels oxygen saturated, or at least what she would have expected oxygen-saturated air to feel like.

There were three windows with lights on, making the objects in the courtyard golden and nicely contrasted with the deep blue crayon shadows. Cats peered down at her like statues. In that way that statues can peer. Her ears were filled with the hums and buzzes of the inner workings of her body. The sound that blood makes when it runs through vesicles—especially those that are close to the ears.

Tits tits tits tits tits tits tits went her thoughts as she stepped quietly across the pavement. The mantra of the unoccupied mind merged with thhhhhhhhhhhh a sound similar to that coming from the radiators in her apartment—the radiators that were expelling all of the moisture that accumulated during the summer. Only she was not yet close enough to hear them.

If someone were watching her from one of the darkened windows above, he may have thought that at that moment, the two round-globed lamps lit her as if she were on stage. The purer cleaner light of the lamps making highlights, the reflected gold from the windows mid-tones and the blue of the ambient light, wherever that came from making shadows far nearer to perfect than the ones she had drawn on with makeup some time earlier.

The glass on the door that led into the foyer was cool when she put the palm of her hand against it. She put it there to push open the door and the door opened and she entered the small tile floored room. It smelled like dust and Murphy’s Oil Soap. They key ring repeated its sound.

The stairwell carried the greasy spirits of the nineteen twenties—and mixed itself with the odors of everyone’s dinner. The ancient carpet crinkled under her feet, but it was so used to being crinkled that you would only notice if you were small enough and not distracted by the creaking of the stairs.

She had left her door unlocked and stepped through the barrier of the outside smells—the community smells—into the smell of her apartment: a mixture of smoke and pan-fried meats. She hung her coat on the hook on the inside of the door in the front closet, it folded elegantly and went to sleep, for it had just been through a long exciting night in a coat check room.

Although her dress was light and creamy, her skin was warm to the touch, if anyone had been there to touch her. Her face was flushed as her body got used to the warmth of a heated living space. She walked slowly and flat-footed through the living room and the dining room and the hallway and into her bedroom.

Three pulls on ribbons and the dress fluttered to the ground without touching her. She stepped over it and under a nightgown made of the same material and it fell over her shoulders then hips then knees then toes at last brushing against the top of her perfect feet.

She walked around to the far side of the bed and lifted up the covers and rolled over against the man that was already there. She pressed herself against his back. He was naked and warm.

Where have you been, oh wife, oh wife? Her thoughts asked her. To the theatre alone, my love, another level of thoughts answered back. But why alone, oh wife, oh wife. She paused and thought. Because there was room for only one.

And did you not stray or break your vow?
I did, but once, and in my thoughts.

“But now I’m home,” she said out loud.

Her husband rolled over and put his hand across her shoulder. And they both slept long into the morning.