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Chapter Thirty-Eight - Hell, Part 3 - |
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My apartment died. Or I died and the apartment just became my tomb. Living quarters to death chamber, just like that. Nothing resonated. Music from the stereo passed through the walls without any vibrations. Open windows only exhaled. You could feel life drafting out the front door. Late summer into early autumn and the place was an icebox. With the first morning’s step outside, heat gradually crept back into my body, air into my lungs. Approaching the bus stop, color had almost returned to my vision. The further down Santa Monica the Number 4 carried me (a Number 4 bus takes me for a ride -- coincidence?), the further in my veins blood reached. By the time I stepped off the Number 320, things were almost back to normal, though it wasn’t till I got up the stairs and into my office that the Hands stopped trembling and the Sweat subsided. In what Bizarro world did the workplace become a shelter? Even the sight of 4, who was making my professional life increasingly difficult, served as a hushed whisper of life. I was safe in the place that had distracted me from my calling, and in the company of the woman who’d torn me apart. Ironic or pathetic, I came in earlier and left later with each passing day, avoiding the tomb at all costs.
•••
The way she behaved, 4 must have been bothered by my professionalism at the office. Eventually, I even gave up trying to reach her after hours. After I had, or maybe because I had, she cranked up the rude and bitchy several notches. If it weren’t for dirty looks, she wouldn’t have gazed at me at all. I was standing next to Not Gay in the parking lot at the end of a day chatting about, amazingly, something other than my heartbreak when 4’s car roared by. In the two seconds passing, she managed to smile at him and glare at me as we stood side by side. “Whoa. How did she do that?” Not Gay was impressed. “Your guess is as good as mine.” My guess was no good at all. The eyes that once beckoned me with urgent, focused passion now warded me off, yet demanded I not insult her by losing my desire for her. Our paths frequently collided in the stairwell. Apparently we were the only two who favored the stairs over the elevator. I wondered if she continued to go there because she knew I did and those encounters were her chance to vent at me. “Look, I don’t want to do this right now.” She was getting ahead of herself, throwing that one out by rote before I’d said anything. “I didn’t say a fucking word to you, so back off.” So much for my professionalism. “Whatever!” She stormed off. Whatever. After that day’s teeth were pulled, fires put out, and babies pacified, I’d had enough. Ending the day relatively early (seven o’clock), my immediate plans involved cocktails. Passing by my New Old Boss’s office on the way out changed all that. He called out to me. “Can I see you a minute?”
•••
I ran home from the bus stop at a full clip. Slamming open the door, the tomb shuddered and wheezed. I listened to 4’s “Love you madly” message several times, hoping it would still inflict its calm over me. It did, just barely. I pounded out her number and shook my foot impatiently till she picked up. “So, is this where we’ve come, huh?” “What do you want?” “I got reprimanded today for saying the ‘f-word’ to another employee.” “Maybe you should control yourself.” “A few weeks ago, you were begging me to say the ‘f-word’,” I snarled the phrase for effect, “while I was f-ing you from behind, till you f-ing came all over my f-ing tablecloth because you couldn’t fucking control yourself!” She hung up on me. I scratched my scalp till it bled. The phone rang - No one on the other end. “Will you please fuck off!!!” I slammed down the phone.
•••
I sat at my desk, staring out the window from 6:35 till I saw her car round into the parking garage at 9:07. “I forgot to tell you something last night,” I told her. She tried to brush past me in the stairwell without saying anything, the stink rising in her eyes. “I need my parking place back.” She stopped in her tracks and spun around to face me. She had the audacity to look hurt. “You don’t even have a car.” She also had the audacity to sound hurt. “Yeah, well, if we’re going to not do this, I figure we should make a clean break. Besides, I’m getting one.” “You’re getting a car?” “Don’t worry, you can stay there till the end of today. But tomorrow...” She looked like she’d just tasted something brand new and didn’t know what to make of it. I got the feeling this was the first time a man denied her anything. Damn, that felt good. Well, it did till I thought that maybe she was more upset about losing the bitchin’ parking place than anything else. I purposely waited an extra two days before I went car shopping, leaving my place conspicuously empty.
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