Xhenet Aliu - Brass

“Oh, Dear Abby chiming in over here,” Margot said.

“It’s just a theory. Why don’t one of you gals give it a try and see how it works out for you?”

“I’m perfectly happy,” Rini said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Me too, ’cause it’s quitting time,” Margot said.

“That’s happiness, right. It’s all about what you’re not doing, it has nothing to do with what you are doing,” Deena said.

“Somebody’s ragging it today,” Rini said.

Deena sighed. “Yeah, I guess I am. The monthly visitor, the curse. The curse of being able to let out for three days what I feel on all the rest of them.”

I didn’t want the day to end on that low note, so I pretended I didn’t hear her over the hydraulic huff and puff of the machines all around us. “Good night, ladies,” I said. “See you all tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, and for years and years after that,” Rini said.

Deena slapped her hand down on the table. “Goddammit, I said be nice to the girl.”

I wished I had Deena, Rini, and Margot as my cavalry after work, when, after too many days in the same recycled pair of underwear, there was no putting off going back to the apartment I hadn’t even had a chance to get used to calling home. Bashkim wouldn’t be there in the flesh, but he would be there in essence, his tank tops draped over the shower rod to dry, the smell of Brut in the air like some musky macho tree in bloom. I was bracing myself so hard against him that I didn’t even think about Yllka, at least until she intercepted me on the stairway on my way up.

“Elsie, you’re home,” she said.

Sometimes I felt like English was my second language, too, because coming up with the right words could be so damn hard. Home didn’t seem quite right, but I was coming up blank otherwise. My things were in there, my pillow and the drool on my pillowcase, even Bashkim’s scent, which he emitted but I was the recipient of. It was homelike. It was home enough.

“I need some stuff,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Are you not staying?”

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t planning to,” I said. It wasn’t in the plan, but since when had I been known to stick with plans? Now that I was there, my legs were twitchy to get up those stairs, into a space that I’d half-paid for with money that I’d earned myself. It wasn’t much to speak of, but it was all I could speak of. I was thirsty for tap water from my own foggy Burger King Star Wars collectible glasses, not the identical set at Mom’s.

“Oh,” she said again. When I started climbing the steps upstairs, she called out, “He didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Of course he did. That’s what fists do,” I said.

“I mean he didn’t mean to hurt you forever.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“What I mean is.” She sighed. “Does it still hurt?”

“Not really,” I said. “Are you being literal?”

“Being what? No, I just mean, are you still sore?”

I paused a second. “I guess I’m fine.”

“What I mean is that he was very angry and he meant it at the time, but that was just a little moment, and now he’s feeling sorry all of the time.”

“He hasn’t said he’s sorry. I haven’t heard from him at all.”

“He’s scared. He thinks you’re gone forever. It’s hard for him to say sorry, but even harder for him to say he’s scared.”

“So you have to say it for him instead? Uh-uh. I don’t accept that kind of apology.”

I waited for her to remind me that it was my own big mouth that started the trouble in the first place, but Yllka just sighed and turned away. “Yes, well, that is your choice. I have to learn to stay out of these things,” she said.

It was the last thing I expected to hear from Yllka, and I wondered if she’d gotten into her own trouble with Bashkim. She didn’t look bruised anywhere, and I couldn’t imagine Bashkim laying down any law with her. Probably she just didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Probably she figured she shouldn’t block my exit.

“Yeah, well. I’m going to go upstairs,” I said.

“And you’re not coming back to work?” she asked.

“No, I got another job,” I said. “Tell Cheryl and Janice I said sorry for having to cover my sections, will you?” I didn’t like those ladies at first, but in the end it turned out they weren’t really that bad. They were like everyone else, broken things stuck back together with a kind of epoxy that ensured they would never be shattered again.

“You want me to say you’re sorry for you?” she said. “No, that’s the kind of thing I shouldn’t do, you’re right.”

“Fine, I’ll let them know myself sometime then.”

“That would be nice,” Yllka said.

“Okay,” I said. “Bye.” And we turned our backs to each other without waving, as if we both knew we weren’t really saying goodbye.

Almost everything in the apartment was the same, maybe even a little cleaner than usual. I wondered if Bashkim was a better housekeeper than me, even though he never put his hand on a broom when I was around. It was probably just that he didn’t get the chance to dirty anything up. He barely had a reason to have an apartment at all, as much as he worked, and yet he’d been so happy to move out of the boardinghouse and into his own place, so he must have been just as desperate as I was to make a little home for himself. It meant something to have somewhere to put up your own ugly string art with broken frames that would never hang totally straight. It felt good to be there again. At first I didn’t want it to feel good, but then I figured I shouldn’t ever chase away a good feeling, so I pulled up a chair to the kitchen table and let myself sit with it.

And then the good feeling faded, as good feelings do, and I remembered what I was there for. I grabbed a few of my things from the drawers and closet and shoved them into a couple of the plastic Pathmark shopping bags that seemed to procreate underneath the kitchen sink. When I had what I needed, enough clothes to get me through another week but not so many that I would never need to return, I started to head for the door, but suddenly a wave of fatigue hit that nearly crumpled my puffy, achy body in place.

“Christ,” I said aloud. I thought for a second that I was blacking out, but then I realized that my eyes were just closed, and there was such relief that I thought how nice it must feel to be in a coma, never having to open your eyes again. I shuffled over to the mattress, so deflated by then that it was nothing more than a tarp between me and the dirty floor, and I lay down. Those early shifts were going to take some getting used to.

Bashkim tried to be quiet when he came in early the next morning. He cracked open the door, saw me there, and went back out into the kitchen to take off his shoes and pants. Then he lay down next to me without touching me, didn’t even grab a blanket even though it was freezing in the room. I was awake for all of it, but I didn’t say anything. When his breathing got deep and heavy, which meant he was asleep, I checked my watch and saw that it was time for me to get up, and I tried to return the favor by being as quiet as I could be, feeling blindly around for my shoes and pants, which I didn’t remember taking off. His breathing halted for a second and then returned to normal, so I knew that he woke up despite my tiptoeing around, but he didn’t bother trying to find anything to say, either. I tried to ignore the feeling I had, or convince myself that I was confusing it with another, more suitable feeling, but there was no denying it: I felt glad. And I felt sorry, sorry for being away all this time, sorry for making him so mad back at the diner. I’d been waiting and waiting to hear sorry from him but instead it got trapped inside of me and it was what I felt above all things, more than love, more than anger. Shit, I thought, because it meant I was still tethered to him. I had an obligation to see it through until I was not sorry, and I wondered if that was what responsibility to other people was all about, sticking around until you made up to them whatever it was you fucked up to begin with. I touched my belly, and the girls at work were right: I was huge, and I was tethered to this baby, literally of course, what with the umbilical cord and all, but also because I already had a lifetime of making up to do before she was even born.