Anne-Marie Kinney - Radio Iris

“What about the carpet?”

“That’s not an issue.”

“Okay… and then what?”

“There’s an envelope underneath the floor, okay?”

“Uh-huh…”

“A sealed envelope. I need you to overnight it to my hotel.”

“Um…”

“No, it’s easy. You can pry it open with a spoon, or a pen even, I mean, maybe.”

“Okay.” Iris scans her desk for an appropriate tool.

“I’m at the Hyatt, okay? Room 312? Will you do that, please?”

“Yes. You’ll get it.”

“Perfect. I’ve got to go now.”

Iris hangs up and decides to try using a pen, but when she goes to his office and looks behind the desk, she sees that there is a faint rectangle in the carpet. She easily peels it up, and the floorboard is so loose, in fact, that she lifts it with her fingers. She finds the dusty manila envelope, brushes it off, and replaces the floorboard and carpet flap.

Before she leaves his office, she removes a post-it note from a pad on his desk and writes, What am I up to? She folds the note until it is the size of a fingernail, then tucks it into the back of his desk’s top drawer.

At lunch that same day, she sits near the two old men. They are deeply involved in a game of chess. She watches them with a sideways glance, still ostensibly facing down at her magazine. They say nothing, communicating in concentrated stares at the board, followed by boastful glances at each other, squinting eyes and smirks. The only table she could get is right in the sun, and she feels it burning her arms. She tries to fold herself inward, to minimize her surface, and eats her sandwich with her elbows practically in her lap. The men are safe in the shadow of the café’s green-and-white striped awning, and the cover of their jackets. They are in a separate climate from her, Iris thinks. They are so far away over there that the weather is different.

When the game is done, they shake hands and the taller one begins packing up the board and tucking it into a worn, brown leather case. Once they are gone, she, finished eating, stands and weaves her way over to their vacated spot. On a napkin, she writes, Teach me to play, and tucks it under the metal base of the table.

Iris lies in bed, on her side, rose quilt covering her head so she is enveloped in a hothouse of her own breath, with the foggy moonlight arcing through the open window. Slowly, her weight shifts, slowly, slowly, until she is facedown and her head begins to slip, inch by inch, down the edge of the bed, taking the covers with her like a human landslide, her momentum building.

But she hasn’t fallen yet. She is having the dream again.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table, and it is bright outside, but musty inside the old house. There is nobody there. She has been sitting at the table a long time, legs crossed so they have lost all feeling. She feels immobile, leaden. Finally, like tearing off a band-aid, she uncrosses her legs and massages them from ankle to thigh, gasping as the pins and needles set in.

When equilibrium has returned to her limbs, she rises and walks to the counter, where she finds a carton of milk next to the sink. All the windows are shut, so the silence has nowhere to travel. The silence stays put. She picks up the carton and it is lukewarm, nearly full. She opens the fridge, empty, and sets it on the middle shelf.

She steps out of the kitchen, leaving her shoes at the edge where tile meets carpet, and goes down the dark hallway toward the other end of the house. She opens the back door and steps out into the giant backyard with its single fig tree looming in the distance, letting the wind set the screen door flapping behind her. She steps into the dry grass, and the blades prick the soles of her feet. The sun is on its way down, sitting now at eye level, a radioactive white scrawl across the landscape. The wind rolls, howling its song into her hair and through her clothes. She approaches the fig tree, grass crackling under each footstep, and suddenly, birds erupt from its branches in a great flapping horde. In shadow like this, they could be bats. They could be anything, amorphous black shapes now scattering across the sky, squeaking like metal on metal until they are so far away they make no sound at all. Iris takes a step back. The tree, she thinks, doesn’t want her to come any closer. She closes her eyes and the wind turns colors in her mind— blue, purple, and finally black, and she can feel the tree’s roots rushing beneath the ground under her feet, undulating darkly toward the house.

Suddenly she hears a clang, then a rattle, and opens her eyes to see a figure in shadow, scrabbling up over the chain link fence. She watches as the figure hops down and takes off running down the long dirt road, until whoever it is has vanished before her eyes, blended in with the night fog.

She wakes up on the floor, still wrapped like a mummy. The quilt is tight around her nose and mouth. Panicked, she fumbles for an opening in the covers and sucks in the cool night air, her body filmed over with sweat.

It is now five in the morning on Friday, and Iris has climbed back into bed, but has not managed to get back to sleep. She lies still on her back to accommodate the crick in her neck, her knees still smarting from the fall. She swims her legs around in circles under the sheets, to loosen the blood, mentally infusing it with the power to quiet her whole self. But this is not sleep.

Outside, birds are beginning to chirp. She opens her eyes, blinks, and decides that this is as good a time as any to get up. She throws the covers off and heads for the shower, tripping over her shoes in the dark. By a quarter to six, she is dressed in a gray, knee-length skirt and a pale blue polyester blouse that looks almost like silk. She has tea and toast standing at the kitchen counter, watching the sky turn white outside the sliding glass door to her small balcony, which is bare save for some dry leaves and dirt, with a view overlooking the alley, where someone has spray painted “Lery— were’s my money bitch” on the wall of the apartment building next door. Ready for the day a couple of hours too early, she leaves for work. She might as well. There is nowhere else she can think of to go.

Hers is not the only car on the road, but every few blocks or so she finds herself alone at an intersection, waiting on a red light at a corner that looks and feels abandoned, stores with metal enclosures locked, empty bus shelters. She turns off the radio, cutting off Rod Stewart on I wish I’d never seen your face. Her eyes scan the desolate street and it feels like an aftermath to something she missed, as though everyone but she got the memo to evacuate, paper bags and soda cans like tumbleweeds skittering across the pavement. Then a car pulls up beside her and her white-knuckled giddiness wanes.

At the office, she gets the door unlocked, shuts off the burglar alarm, wanders from room to room flipping on all the fluorescent lights, turns on printers and copiers. The office fills with the sound of rebooting, mechanical buzzes and clicks. It is all but alive. Once the suite is aglow in that greenish wash that has come to look normal to her, it doesn’t matter what time it is. Artificial light gives no clues. There is just one window to the outside that is visible from her desk, just before the hallway. The window sits fifteen feet off the ground, facing the street.

Iris hoists herself up on her desk between the phone and computer. This window has bothered her for some time, though she only noticed it a few months ago. Too high for anyone to look out of, she cannot imagine what it is for. And yet, it was planned, blueprinted and built this way, a non-window that she only assumes looks out on the street because there is nothing on the other side of the wall in which it sits. If she’s figured right. It is not even seven, and her boss won’t be in until at least nine. She wonders if there might be a custodian’s closet somewhere in the building from which she might borrow a ladder. She could take full advantage of this time.