Windows

Remember when we walked downtown, and I was so tired? We walked a ways, looking for a good place to sit. I made you walk faster with me through the dark spaces between the puddles of light from the street lamps, as if the light would keep us any safer from the muggers and rapists I imagined to be around every corner. I wished I could be more nonchalant, but I’d forgotten my pepper spray in the car and it made me nervous. The ledge we finally found was deliciously vandalized, wasn’t it? Some of the graffiti was tacky, sure, but most of it was mesmerizing. An incredible urban collage, vibrating with bright angst and talent. We liked the street musicians across the street too, didn’t we? I don’t remember what they sounded like, but I know we chatted a moment about how good they were as we sat there on the ledge over the sidewalk. I was feeling sentimental, I guess, when I mentioned that I wondered what must be going on behind the windows of those hotel rooms across the street. You must have been feeling sentimental too, because you started making up stories with me; a story for each lit window on the top floor. They were all so cliché, I think one of them had to be true.

~*~

We speculated about the impending divorce of the couple in the room on the far left. They’re entering the room, I imagined, after a fight at a forced dinner date. Maybe she saw him eyeing the waitress—again—or maybe his credit card bounced—again. Maybe she had too much wine—again—or maybe she was critical and cruel about a genuine effort he made—again.

“Nothing is different.” Her back makes a whispering sound against the wall as she sinks to the floor. “Not after counseling, not after this stupid second honeymoon. It’s sick, sticking us in the same room for a night after so long; after we’ve barely even spoken in months.” She’s quiet for a minute, cradling her head in her hands, her fingers locked in her hair. Her husband stands awkwardly by the door, looking down at her. He shifts his weight, licks his lips, waiting for her to speak again. “It’s like I never left.” She whispers finally, more a musing of her own rather than a statement to him. “It’s like I never left.”

“That’s cause you didn’t,” He says slowly, confused.

“It felt like I did, for a little while.”

“And now it doesn’t?”

“Not anymore.”

He sighs and pinches his forehead between his thumb and first two fingers, eyes shut tight as the feeling behind her words reaches him. “It still feels like it to me.” It’s quiet for a while before he speaks softly again. “Do you love me?” He asks.

“Not today.”

“You say that every day.”

“I know.”

~*~

The next story is sweeter, if even more cliché. I envision a young couple cuddling under the cool, detergent-smelling covers of the hotel bed, giggling. Her hair is long, spread like a million threads of umber silk over the overstuffed pillow. A mound of white silk and tulle is bundled on the floor.

“You tore my dress.” She teases him, tossing her hair from her forehead before resting her chin on his chest.

“Just a couple of stitches!” He feigns a look of hurt. “Besides, you’re never going to wear it again.”

“Oh? What if I want our daughter to have it for her wedding?

“What if we have a son?”

“His future wife, then!”

“What if she doesn’t like your style?”

“I’m her future mother-in-law; if she doesn’t, she at least has to pretend she does.”

“Eh, she wouldn’t have to pretend; it’s lovely. Sexy as hell on you. In fact, why don’t you put it back on so I can take it off again?”

“No!” She giggled and pushed away his wandering hands. “You have to tell me something about your songs!”

“My songs? Why?”

“You’ve written so many, and some of them sound…well, I thought maybe…I was wondering…” She ducks her head against his shoulder then looks up into his eyes with a shy smile. “Have you written any of them for me?”

“Baby, They’re all for you!”

“Even the ones from three years ago?”

“Yeah, those too. Silly girl; who else would they be for?”

She smiles. “I love you.” She kisses him with all the wedding-night happiness bubbling up inside her, threatening to burst.

He laughs. “I love you too, so much. Now go take a shower before we sleep; I know how you like the way the sheets feel against your skin after you’ve showered when you go to bed.”

“I like the feeling of you against my skin.” She says softly, curling up against his side in the crook of his arm. “And I don’t want to leave.”

“I like that feeling too.” He whispers, “And I pray you never leave.” He bends his head to kiss her hair.

“I won’t.” She mutters sleepily. He strokes her hair as she slumbers, and soon he yawns, curling his body around hers.
They fall asleep breathing peacefully, safe and happy, naked and entwined.

~*~

Something less peaceful, perhaps; someone alone. Not everything is so definite; a divorce, a marriage. Most of life is more ambiguous; utterly confusing.

She wakes in a cold sweat. Another nightmare about nothing. It isn’t that she can’t remember; she can. It’s that the dreams are truly about nothing. Just images of familiar things, still-lives of her dresser or the birdbath outside her window, her office building, her car. Yet she always wakes terrified, and for hours after her stomach will plunge at the memory. Her hands are shaking; she knocks over the little orange bottle of Xanax as she reaches for it. The bottle rattles, three fall out. Water sloshes, making the pills slimy in her hand. She stuffs them past her lips and gulps down the water, then licks the bit of dissolved residue from her skin. Ok. Ok ok ok. She stops halfway through the short walk to the bathroom, steadying herself with one hand on the wall. The bright floral wallpaper and dark linoleum make her dizzy. She looks up, eyes clawing for some neutral space, but they are met with a popcorn ceiling sprayed with silver sparkles instead of the smooth white sheetrock she had been hoping for. Damn ‘60s. Suddenly, violently, she begins to dry-heave, knocking her head against the wall as she doubles over, clutching her stomach. When it’s over she spits right there on the floor the bile retched up by her empty stomach. Shit. Shakily she completes her journey to the bathroom and thrust her entire head into a rush of cold water from the rusty showerhead. Hard water in her eyes, up her nose, the cold raising goose bumps over the entire surface of her skin. After a towel is wrapped around her wet hair she is still shaking; she still wants to cry. She swallows the lump in her throat again and again and again, in such quick succession it is difficult to breathe. The negative image of that terrifyingly ordinary birdbath is stamped on the backs of her eyelids every time she blinks, and her stomach throws fits. As usual at this point during an attack, it is the panic itself she fears the most. She orders room service, just to hear a human voice. She tips the waiter too much and makes a weak attempt to engage him in conversation before he escapes back to the kitchen. People. There are people in the lobby. Leaving her dinner uneaten on the desk, she goes to the door. They were all strangers in the hotel lobby, and she would call someone instead, if she still had anyone to call.

~*~

A thing about hotels that is both wonderful and tragic is that they shelter all different kinds of people. Not necessarily together or at the same time, but at some point in that hotel there have been women, and a rapist. Children, and pedophiles. Lovers and their lovers’ lovers, criminals and law officials. Wealthy people making a cheap stop between destinations, significantly less wealthy people on their grand vacation. People coming, people going, people wanting, people satisfied, people staying for a while, people passing through, people living, people dying. The following is a classic tale, is it not?

He sits on the edge of the crisp hotel bed, the interior-decorator professional in him cringing at the tacky green-and-orange bedspread. Should’ve picked a better place than this. But no, he doesn’t want to spend a penny more than necessary. His wife will need every solace after she reads the note, as will his lover, and his lover’s spouse. But there’s nothing I can do about that. He liked everything in order, and it was. He had met multiple times with his attorney, settling his last will and testament. He had taken care of life insurance, he had enclosed in an envelope a carefully-worded note, along with pictures meant to illustrate the equal and boundless love he felt for the people in each of his double-lives. I love so much, he had written in the note, but I knew none of you would love what I loved, or that I loved it. He was trying to explain. He’d heard that sometimes the people left behind were more apt to reach some sort of peace if they had a good explanation. Really, there were five notes in the envelope: one to his wife, one to each of his two children, one to his lover, and one to them all as a general audience.

He had spoken to God, asked forgiveness for everything past, and in advance for the last sin he was to commit. Everything is indeed in order. He doesn’t know for sure where his soul will end up, considering the manner of his impending death, and that bothers him, but everything that can be neatly squared away has been, and this comforts him. He only hopes that, as his soul is flung into eternity, God’s grace will overcome His judgment and He will reach down to grasp the mortal hand that is sure to be outstretched. From what he knew and loved of Jesus, he had some faith that the grasping would occur. This is certainly not the worst of my sins, he muses absently, referencing to himself his adultery with Robert. Surely, if He will forgive the others so willfully committed, He might forgive this one as well. Slowly he counts out the number of pills sure to contain the necessary dosage.

~*~

A child of eight bounces on the springy bed. She is never allowed to jump on the bed at home, but on vacation her parents said she could, a little. And pizza! They had pizza for lunch yesterday, and they are going to have pizza again tonight. Pizza by the pool, the exhilarating scent combination of salty grease and chlorine. Every year this is what she looks forward to the most, besides the zoo. Tomorrow they would see the fruit bats as big as foxes, flying free in the walk-through rainforest. She prays that one will come and land on her. Her mother says they have diseases, but surely the zookeepers wouldn’t let them near people if that was true. Usually she trusts her mother, but in this instance she prefers her own logic. She loves the art museum too, but mostly the parts with the mummy coffins or the ancient Chinese tea sets. The paintings were interesting for a little while, but she doesn’t understand them in the way her older brother seems to. Maybe he is just more patient, She consoles herself. Secretly she suspects that her brother is just as naughty a child as she is; he is just better at hiding it.

“Honey, time to stop jumping now.” He mother unzips a suitcase entirely filled with stuffed animals. “Here, show Peppy and Kovu the view.” She suggests, pulling out the two most time- and love-worn creatures.

“Can I bring them to the pool?”

“No, honey.”

“Why not?”

“They can’t swim.”

“I’ll help them.”

“The water might go in their noses, sweetie. They’re too young.”

“When will they be old enough?”

“When they’re eight years old, like you.”

Five, six, seven, eight. She counted silently. Four more years. She thought. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I’ll be twelve years old. She is sad to leave them behind, but only for a moment. Her stomach jumps with excitement when her mother finally emerges from the bathroom in her bathing suit.

“Okay guys, let’s go! Dad will bring the pizza.”

“Come on, come on, let’s go!” She rushes to the door before her mother can think of something else that must be done before they head down to the pool.

~*~

We weren’t terribly creative with our stories, were we? But I suppose we are all ultimately clichés in some way. We certainly were that evening, two college sophomores enamored with the blooming nightlife of the Crossroads district, sipping free wine and trading opinions on contemporary art. I knew it at the time, and you probably did too, but I didn’t care. I still don’t. In fact, let’s go back sometime and do it all over again.