It was a place that sat about in rags an edifice that looked out at the world with such a weightiness a gloominess that truly was dismaying. All those loiterers. Staff workers. Authors. Characters in the books. They all had lost resistance. On that day in fact it seemed as though the whole thing
books as well
had just passed out.
Having situated myself at the end of one of the reading tables I decided that I would go back to the hotel as early as possible check in eat dinner early go out look for him. Unless
I told myself
the seat adjacent to my seat now filling in
Unless I get to bed get up then catch the first train home show up tomorrow night for work. The question is I told myself how do I kill this afternoon.
It happened
as she told it
three months prior to the day when he was born.
Not me he reassured me winking leading us out to the VERANDAH. (Night Two.) Him he said. He was so giddy as compared to her right now. The difference: night to day. He pointed to a padded chair said Please. She said Sit down. He said I’ll get the glasses.
In her story it was morning when a gentleman first knocked upon the door. Then late that night a figure showed up at her bed. The gentleman in the doorway was deformed. The figure at the bed was feminine though in describing this mysterious figure she did not say female. She did not say woman.
With one match she lit the cluster of short candles in the center of the table while he hurried to get the bottle open. I had understood it that the figure was an apparition she said seating herself across from me. He said I can’t remember sitting down beside her. Was it someone in the family? Someone that we knew?
A sadness sifted like pale sands behind her eyes as she replied that it was neither friend nor family. She said But the love that I was sensing from this presence made me feel as though it had to be connected to me.
Cheers he said. Good friends.
The presence told her
as she told us
pulling up her feet into the padded chair
She gave her nose a little blow.
that he
The being called him he.
would manage to accomplish something meaningful in life.
The point in telling us the story now as she explained was that the meaningful had lately with the onset of these calls begun to signify or possibly even point the way to something else. She told us that the figure who had appeared at the end of her bed had always made her fear
For him she said.
this fear increasing with the coming up of certain birthdays. How I dreaded all those numbers she said returning to the other portion of the story
the deformed gentleman at the door. He knocked.
I asked what time.
What time? she said.
She didn’t answer it.
But that was what the approaches of those birthday milestones did to me she said then going on to explain that through the years her focus had remained exclusively upon the figure who had appeared at the end of her bed. Hearing this
along with the further breakdown as to years months days
I started to imagine her surrounded by the glowing script of sleeplessness. Four date scrawled ghostly walls. A ceiling overnumbered doodled into spaces filling in around her night by night with ritualized yet ever frightening projected computations.
She said But now I’m thinking about that ugly ugly
In her face I saw his image taking shape.
In days that followed it
(THE NIGHT WE MET
FIRST FRIDAY NIGHT
NIGHT ONE which could have led to OVERNIGHT ONE
FIRST OVERNIGHT
continuing into
SATURDAY MORNING ONE
FIRST SATURDAY MORNING
MORNINGAFTER ONE
DAY TWO extending into NIGHT TWO
OVERNIGHT TWO
FIRST SATURDAY NIGHT which could
or more significantly
SUNDAY MORNING ONE
FIRST SUNDAY MORNING
MORNINGAFTER ONE
TWO
No. Get back. Look at the END OF THE WEEKEND ONE.
He said The reason that he chose to carve the flowers into the façade had little to do with decoration.
Well at first it did she interrupted.
Yes he said. At first. Quite right. But
Shall we have our brandy now? she interrupted.
He got up advancing toward the cart that held the brandy things but then continued to explain that there was something sinister that he
MB she interrupted.
Yes. MB. Of course she knows I’m talking about MB he said.
was something sinister that he was planning for the next inhabitants of the manor whom he did not want to sell it to. He said He had no choice. He said He had to sell. He said As halfway through the building process he lost all his
NIGHT ONE.
NIGHT WE MET which should have led to
millions.
THE BEGINNING OF THE REST OF
Just imagine that she said.
Yes just imagine that he said.
but did not lead to that at all)
I often would experience a kind of achy feeling in my limbs as though I’d taken a tumble.
On those days my eyes as if engaging in a nearly constant effort to adjust from darkness often ached a little too. I felt a residue accruing on my skin. More frequently I washed my hands my face I even took an extra shower after work. One night just TWO NIGHTS AFTER WE FIRST MET my shift beginning I was lighting the candles on the little tables. On that night which could have been FIRST SUNDAY
END OF WEEKEND ONE
but wasn’t
I discovered that a previously somewhat meditative workplace ritual now left me feeling desolate inside. Cleared out. Abandoned.
Looking down regretfully at a blackened fingertip I stood behind the curtain that concealed supplies employee toilet that week’s schedule cartoon clippings pushpinned to the wall. I watched the patrons enter through the open door across the lounge all smoking glowing like a crowd of ghosts that simply could not wait to get inside.
Far more distressing though was what would happen on the nights when I had laid my freshly shampooed head upon my pillow. Sleep uninterrupted would arrive however entering into sleep I’d hear a sound. I right away interpreted this sound as having traveled up the elevator shaft to squeeze between the elevator doors turn left accelerating down the hall another left another hall to drop down to the space beneath my door. This sound as I was somehow made to know originated as a whisper under my apartment building. Such an up down corner whipping voyage rushing underneath my door had been responsible for the whisper’s gradual amplification of itself into a voice.
I’ll buy a post card
write a sentence
indicating that I
mail it
go home
never see them
speak to them again
I never spoke to them again.
I left the Public Library behind to return to the City Museum where hungry after a somewhat forced examination of the items in the cases arranged down the center of the long adjoining halls of Ancient India I went for late lunch in the courtyard followed by an educational (Headphones: Y) slow exploration of Baroque. As on the previous day I felt so lonely in the crowd