Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“ Peanuts ?”

“Every day my dad would read the comic strip. He really liked the television specials, too. He swears that's how he learned English.”

“Really? Are you a big fan of Guaraldi?” She nods her head enthusiastically, but says nothing as her lips are preoccupied by a straw. “The only songs I know by name are 'Linus and Lucy' and 'Young Man's Fancy',” I add.

The restaurant plays that Plain White T's song that seems too innocent to be popular. I look to see the tabby from before prowling about the yard cautiously. As she puts down her drink, Vinati looks to me, notices my eyes, and then slowly turns her attention to the cat. “Is this the guy who caused all the trouble earlier?” She smiles broadly in his direction. It's as though she has extra teeth.

“Probably,” I say without thinking. I look again. “Yeah, that's him all right.”

Eventually, the anonymous friend sends a text message. It's a cancellation, one that Vinati doesn't seem too dejected over. “She's such a fucking flake,” is added with a roll of the eyes.

The evening comes and goes.

Every teleologist will maintain that things happen for a reason. This is something of a tautology. The more militant members of this group will claim that everything happens for a reason. This is an argument that holds water only if one believes that the universe was created. Now, if one espouses this determinate, idealist view of the universe, it is typically sufficient for the belief in some transcendental sense of justice or karma or whatever you wish to call the incarnation (in the figurative sense) of an Ultimate Being, who forbade the reign of Darkness, and thought it necessary to bring about the Light (and, for the more scientifically-inclined deists, that this Being subsequently allowed for an inflaton field to expand — something like a holy spit bubble that is temporally concomitant to the Word). Perhaps it allows people to sleep a little better if they believe in a causal nexus, a Light both mysterious and conscious of every one of the particulates that dictate the passing of one moment to the next. Unfortunately, for those of us who have a hard time relating to, certainly with, this bodiless embodiment of will, wisdom, and supposed beneficence, which people call by an arbitrary name, we cannot accept such willed transcendence. We are forced to observe and attempt to explain only the adjuncts — the simple incidents without much significance when taken on their own — that serve to comprise the tapestry of experience we call existence. Being left to ponder context, we create what some call meaning.

I woke up in Williamsburg with my hand clutching Vinati's bare shoulder — the passing of a J, M, or Z train rattling the entire apartment as it passed. The dusk was beginning to inhabit the sky, and the brilliance of the sunset was made apparent by the orchid tints overtaking the fleecy cloud cover and the pale yellow light on the few regions of pavement where the neon lights did not fall.

And I was dazed. We had fallen asleep to Aeroplane Over the Sea (best rock album since Dark Side ) only an hour previously, but it had lapsed into silence. The only sound in the apartment at that moment was the resonating hum of a box fan on the other side of the room. From the street, one could hear the music coming from the corner bodega — those bachatas with virtually no bass and a lead guitar that sounds almost like a banjo — and the younger men calling out from cars vibrating with synthesized drum tracks to groups of pudgy teenage girls strolling down Broadway. Some of the older generations of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans stood outside drinking beer out of paper bags, while the younger ones down the street preferred cocktails in red Solo cups. They called each other “son” and “nigga,” regardless of age or skin tone, and could be heard, with a striking clarity, even in Vinati's bedroom. House cats peered out onto the scene with indifference from windows without screens. Intractable old women looked with chagrin to nothing in particular, and they all seemed to have carts filled with black plastic bags and brilliantly-colored clothing. White girls and boys rode bicycles toward the Williamsburg Bridge in isolation. A unicyclist was accompanied by an unleashed hyena that tore apart several bags of garbage. A Chinese woman shouldered a black bag filled to capacity with cans and bottles. She looked like an ant hauling a blackberry — not struggling by any means; she moved with something like diligence or persistence, the endeavor appearing effortless. And everywhere was the scent of wet asphalt, cloaking the city in a soporific blanket. After I closed the blinds, but before I fell asleep, I heard a train coming from Manhattan.

11.3

“Where are you going?” she murmurs as she covers herself with a transparent sheet, her purple nipples erect from a sudden breeze. Moonlight cascades in through the slits in her blinds, casting the side of her face in nacreous sienna.

“I'm just going to the bathroom. I don't want to walk out naked. Your roommate…”

“My roommate is back in Pittsburgh for the next week,” she laughs. She closes her eyes. “I told you that last…well—” I look to her, soberly, for the first time in what feels like years. “What time is it?” as she shoots up. There is a clock in plain view; she squints, and then turns back to me. “It's one.” She's goes supine once again. I nod, laugh, and then begin my way down the hall of the railroad apartment and into the kitchen.

Her place has been renovated — white walls, new floors, kitchen appliances that do not contain any remnant of a meal purchased with food stamps. This is not to say that every trace of the former tenants has been removed. (There is always dust, dust that has become embedded in every crack in the floor, entrenched itself so resolutely that it can elude even the most diligent of mops or sponges or brooms or any cleaning implement sent to remove it; and there it will remain until the boards in the floor themselves are wrenched from the framework that keeps them in place, only to be replaced by new boards that will absorb new dust. And the process of accumulation will immediately begin, continue, until someone once again decides to replace the floors, and on this occasion the enterprise will again begin anew, and this cycle will continue on forever, or at least until there is no more dust, no more waste. And yet this begs the far more important question, does it not? If there is no dust, then there is no shedding of skin, no refuse, no waste. If there is no dust, there can be no life.) The window frames have not been replaced, but the glass is a lot cleaner than it should be. Perhaps she lives in the only building in all of Brooklyn where the super (or someone hired by the landlord) cleans the outsides of the windows. The curtain undulates in the breeze like a flame dancing on the wick of a penny candle, a fluid motion so captivating that it's only a few seconds later that I realize that my penis is hanging out of the gate of my boxers, and that anyone living above the first floor of the building across the way has an unobstructed view of it. My apprehension eases as I see there are no forms in the windows, not even silhouettes against drawn blinds or curtains. The neighborhood is asleep except for a group of white kids in a nearby courtyard listening to the nasally and melancholy crooning of Colin Meloy, an odd songwriter who employs the word “sinew” more often than the author of a biology textbook. When the sound of yet another J, M, or Z train sends tremors throughout the building, it overwhelms even the most extroverted among the courtyard crew.

The bathroom holds few mysteries, even with the lights on. In my more suburban days, everything in the bathroom was tucked away in cupboards: the plunger, the toilet brush, medicines in the form of pills, liquids, and gel caps, towels, cologne, perfume, deodorant, antiperspirant, toothpaste, floss, moisturizer, topical ointments, tonics, hair gels, sprays, and mousses, bags of douche, cans of shaving cream or gel, razors, exfoliators, facial refiners, revitalizers, and rejuvinators. If the shower curtain wasn't drawn, one might get the chance to see washcloths, shampoos, conditioners, body scrubs, and an assortment of creams filled with substances that have been designed to perform duties somehow disparate from the act of cleansing. One is lucky to find anything more than soap, toilet paper, hand towels and tissue paper in a suburban bathroom, unless one begins to snoop. City bathrooms, however, are far more willing to divulge even their most embarrassing and repulsive secrets. Vinati's roommate has even left her herpes medication on display with name, address, and phone number readily available. I wonder if Upper St. Clair is nice.