-- fiction, first version was published in CityBeat Magazine's 'Living Out Loud' column
Come Down
I
woke to these sounds -- workmen, storm sirens, and the wind testing my
window, the steady rattle, the fight of thin panes against the frame.
Below, men hammered, and across the room, my window spoke; it moaned,
squeaked, and knocked, trapped inside the wall of my cramped efficiency.
Screenless and stubborn, it was stuck shut.
I
glanced through the glass, looking down below, but few people walked
into the alley. I sat for hours, trying to write, looking for bodies and
stories. Besides the workmen, no one appeared, and they never glanced
my way. Only relentless pounding and storming. At war with sound, I
stared at the computer. Nothing. For a long time, a blank trip, my
fingers suspended over keys, hanging there.
At dusk,
when I peered out the window again, someone entered the alley. Hands in
his pockets, he stared at his feet. Then he looked up. His hair, brown,
was a mess. He was small, thin. His blue sweater burned a neon blur
through the shadows. His jeans were the borrowed kind, gray. He squinted
to see me.
The window moved, seemed to sing. I eased closer. Bang, knock, went the workmen. Crack, smash, went the storm.
Come down, the stranger mouthed at me. Shrugging, he smiled, and his thick lips spread; his face was all teeth.
I pressed my forehead against the glass.
He waited, wet and mute.
I
thought about practical things -- feed cats, clean, try to write. But
the window shook, and when I touched it, it whisper-screamed. Or maybe I
did.
In a blue-gray turn, pivoting on one foot, he left. Just like that.
The
workmen sawed trees, demolished skyscrapers, and blew up my world. I
forgot to sleep or eat. I reminded myself to blink. My hearing
heightened. The hammering shook the walls. I wondered if they'd cave in,
collapse. But I wouldn't leave. I watched.
Three nights later, he reappeared in the alley. Pulling his sweater tight around his middle, he mouthed, Come down.
The sky drooled rain on the roof, smothering the building and all inside.
Shifting in his shoes, he waited, drenched.
I
thought about stripping him dry and clean. I thought about kissing
something. For two years, I had been stuck inside blank pages. Here, I
studied the glass cracks. I imagined the window breaking, my body
falling, sucked out by the wind, a leech. The wind's pitch grew higher.
Whale sounds. One floor down, I could fall into him gently. No suicide.
He shrugged and left.
I guessed
that was goodbye. I felt nausea beyond butterflies. I was good at
forgetting. The queen of amnesia. I went out for smokes. Then, back in
the building hallway, I felt a draft. I opened my apartment door.
Someone. In there.
His back turned, he seemed at home, sitting on my floor. Then he whipped around, looking at me, startled, as if I were the intruder.
In our holding places, we were silent, divided by the broken glass scattered across my ground.
Expressionless,
he stared with dark eyes, his seeing holes. For a moment, I thought I
saw behind them into the nerves, the song of his scattered mind. There, I
saw my own damaged mind. Two years, no touch. Nothing. Inside, trapped
in the lone, rhythmic hammering. Deeply.
"You got in," I said.
He
nodded. "Fire escape. Broke the window...with a rock," he said. His
voice was airy, with slight pauses in between words. He smiled,
nervously. "Sorry...you wouldn't...come down."
I moved closer, standing above him, hands on hips. I shook.
He grabbed my arm.
All skin was slippery.
I
thought of practical things -- call cops, play dead, shout profanities,
but my voice was throat-buried. With my free hand, I picked up a piece
of glass. A weapon, just in case. I imagined cutting him. I imagined the
way the blood would spread a thick slide across his hand as I freed
myself. I imagined his generic, hurt expression.
No
workmen chattered. No wind whistled. But outside air drifted through the
space where the window used to be, and I felt the urge to kiss his
small hand, the hand that broke it, the violent, flawless, nameless
hand. I grabbed his damp, blue sweater and hung on, dropping the glass.
He reached toward my eyes. I guess to touch the lids. Yes.
Quiet.
Everywhere, hands.
His
sweater, the blue shade, so elusive. If I tried hard enough, maybe I
could see through the color straight into his chest, his throat, his
brain, a brain that held this new draft, the broken glass, the story of
two nameless beings touching shared, broken minds and broken space, one
stranger lost in an alley, hammering through vacancy, shattering it,
filling it. The story of lifting each other, inside and up.
God, I hope the room is still there when we come down.
-- C.A. MacConnell
