Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

I nodded, remembering the bawdy pun of Connie cracking before the cock crowed.

Vanessa removed her hand from my arm. She turned her eyes away from my face and for a moment fixed them on the dashboard.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m intruding in my own home. I got to start making some rules. For one, nothing in the bathroom or on the couch.”

“That’s not too bad,” I said. “I always feel like an intruder.”

She brightened a little and looked at me again, as though I’d intended my comment to amuse her.

“I thought you were going to tell me that they’re young and I ought to expect it,” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Well, you’re not an intruder,” she said. “You seem very connected.”

Even though I nodded, I felt an urge to disabuse her of her misconception. Yet we fell silent for an instant, suspended and paused, with her eyes searching my face. She touched my arm again.

“It’s kind of stupid to talk in the car,” she said. “We’ll freeze. It’s too cold to sit here.”

“I agree with you,” I responded, mildly surprised by Vanessa’s gentle but abrupt turn in the conversation. However, I wasn’t offended. Perhaps parting with her now would have been for the best. I had a long walk ahead of me. But her next action revealed to me that what she’d implied was far different from what I’d heard: Rather than bid me goodbye for the evening, she turned off the engine and opened her door. Evidently, I’d just invited her into my apartment.

“Don’t forget your wine,” she said.

And while my brain suddenly scrambled in a panic to reclaim and correct the previous moment, I found myself getting out into the snow and watching Vanessa walk around the front of the car and step up onto the sidewalk, where I was standing and, as she undoubtedly assumed, waiting for her. Once again, she slipped her arm under mine, so I could escort her. I can’t say which one of us shut my car door, but it shook loose a gray, slushy clump from the wheel-well, and as a sheet of snow began to creep from the roof onto the windshield, I felt Vanessa tug me gently into motion by the forearm.

“I’ll protect you on the stairs,” she said.

“Thank you,” I replied, though my mind was now rushing ahead of us, past the mail gathered on the floor, then into the corridor with the dust smoldering on the radiators, and farther ahead, into my apartment, where unknown men on official business had recently poked and rummaged. I was afraid not only of what we might find but also of what monster might be waiting for us.

Yet I managed my keys well enough to let us into the building, and as we moved through the hall, Vanessa was saying something about not interrupting the young lovers, and then laughing about how I’d just left my clothes in her car; I was always forgetting my things. Approaching my apartment door, I was strangely eager about hurrying inside, in fear of lingering vulnerably in the hall. But Vanessa didn’t seem to notice my agitation, for she was still laughing as my door swung open, and the part of my mind that had rushed ahead and feverishly searched all the rooms to make sure everything was in order, now sped back around to greet us at the door.

When I turned on the light, nothing scurried away to hide or leaped out to bludgeon me.

In fact, despite the decades that had seemed to elapse since the previous day, everything appeared unchanged.

Even so, I remained alert with apprehension. I crept forward, slowly surveying the items in the room.

Although Vanessa continued to talk happily, her voice sounded thin and meaningless. I was aware of her stepping around me and slipping off her coat, her movements as swift and nonchalant as always, yet now like a shadow skirting past my shoulder.

She was asking me something, and I wanted to turn and give her my attention, but my eyes were still searching for some sign that my home had been investigated.

“Sure,” I responded because Vanessa wanted a bottle opener.

As I started toward the kitchen, I realized — calmly, almost as a matter-of-fact — that the little illuminated clock on the VCR was nearly three hours behind. Then, in the kitchen, I noticed that the teapot was on the front burner of the stove, rather than the back right one, and all the chairs were pushed in around the table.

When I returned to the main room, Vanessa was sitting on the couch, peeling the seal off of the bottle top.

“You have a guy’s apartment,” she said.

I set two glasses on the coffee table and handed her the opener.

Looking briefly around, she added, “It could use a female’s touch.”

“I’ve got no style,” I confessed, which made her smile, as though I were flirting with her.

“Your ex- didn’t leave anything behind.”

“I cleaned out every trace of her,” I said.

As she held the bottle in her lap and twisted the corkscrew, she kept her head up and her eyes on me, her black-rimmed glasses perched midway down her nose. The cork popped free. Still without looking at her hands, she set down the bottle opener, with the cork impaled upon it, and picked up a glass.

“You going to take off your coat?” she asked.

I turned aside and began to unfasten the buttons, conscious of her gaze. Rather than hang up my overcoat, I draped it over the back of a chair, where Vanessa had deposited her things.

Just then, I noticed that although my monitor and all my computer accessories remained on the desk against the wall, the computer itself was missing.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, my voice faltering a little. “I’m just a bit anxious about moving out of here.”

“Yeah, I remember you mentioning that. Here.” She held up a glass of wine. “You’re not moving tonight. Try to relax,” she added, sliding over to make room for me.

“I’d like to go tonight,” I said, sitting down.

“Well, don’t run away on me. Let me know where you go.”

“Would you come with me?” I abruptly asked.

“I might visit you as long as you don’t move too far away.” She laughed and sipped her wine.

“Do you like your clothing store?”

“I like that it’s mine. Besides, I’ve got to do something.”

She shifted slightly, moving herself closer to me.

“I think a person needs to make a major change occasionally,” I said.

“Me too.”

Even though I discerned something mildly insipid and sluggish in her smile, I felt an urge to persuade her to flee with me. I suspected that she might have been using the wine — both this night and night before — to take the edge off the awkwardness. Perhaps in the future, if she felt more comfortable with me, she would drink less.

“Sometimes, a person needs to lift herself up and head in a new direction,” I ventured. “Otherwise, you might find yourself caught in a rut or repeating the same mistakes over again.”

“Absolutely,” she said, eager to nod, her knee now bumping against my leg. “You can’t live life without an occasional risk.”

“That’s what I’m doing now,” I said, referring to my imminent flight from the city and all the horrors it contained. But, of course, she didn’t know about my problems, so she most likely assumed that I was talking about our budding relationship, which, for her, was the occasional risk.

“That’s good,” she said.

Her knee steadily touched my thigh.

“But you always make the same mistakes,” she said. “You think that you’re heading in the opposite direction, but you end up in the same pile of shit that you just left behind.” As I watched her nod her head in agreement with her own observation, I imagined that she was remembering some particular occurrence in her own life.

“Not always,” I said.