Love and Will: Twenty Stories

Windows

Nothing’s on his mind. Can’t read, doesn’t want to sit around the apartment and snack anymore. If he stays here any longer he’ll uncork a bottle of wine and drink it down while he looks out the window, stares at the walls, ceiling light fixture and the floor. He gets up to go out. But if I go out, he thinks, where will I go? Take a walk, see what you’ll see. Don’t stick around here doing nothing, ending up sleepy from all the wine, overstuffed from all the snacks, asleep by seven or eight so up around four or five in the morning and then what’ll you do? More staring, eating, drinking. Maybe try the newspaper again.

He sits down, opens the newspaper. Explosion someplace. A woman shot. A woman raped. Two boys find a decomposed body on a beach. Milton Bax wins Endenta Prize. New movies. Spy grabbed. Two dozen pregnant whales run aground. Famous physicist dies of mysterious disease. A young woman crossed the ocean in a canoe. Television listings. Sports. Ads. Juniper Holland’s “perfect brownie” recipe. He crumples up the paper, sticks it into the fireplace. Lights the paper, watches it bum. An ash floats through a hole in the fireplace screen and he grabs it in the air. His hand’s smudged from the ash. He rubs his hand on his pants. Now his pants are smudged. He brushes his pants till only an indelible spot’s left. He sits in the chair. Think about something. Let something just come to mind. Daydream.

He remembers a real event. It was a number of years ago. Three. He was married then and was changing the baby’s diapers. Esther. “I peepee,” she liked to say, and he or Jill would change her. “If you know when you peepee,” he used to say, “then you should try to peepee and kaka into the toilet.” “Toilet?” she used to say. “Potty,” he used to say. “Potty and toilet, same thing.” “Same thing?” she used to say. “Sweetheart, don’t repeat everything I say.” “Don’t repeat?” she used to say. Though it only sounded a little like “Don’t repeat.” Like her “toilet” only sounded a little like “toilet.” “Potty” she could say. “Dough repee,” she used to say. “Toyet. Same sin.” She didn’t peepee into the toilet till she was three. People said that was very late. He and his wife didn’t mind her not using the toilet till then. Some things one gets used to. And he liked changing her most times. The softness of the diapers, patting her crotch and bottom with a warm washrag, drying her, pinning the diapers on her, the rubber pants, the long pants or stretchies or shorts. She would be on her back on the changing board and he would be sitting in front of her on the same bed and he would often lean over and kiss her forehead or the top of her head or her cheek. Sometimes he’d say “Kiss daddy,” and she’d kiss his cheek. Then he’d finish dressing her, if he hadn’t already finished, and stand her up on the floor or just lift her off the board and put her into or back into bed.

But he was changing her, he remembers, when the phone rang. He looks at his hand. Still a little dirt. He picks at it with his fingernail, then spits into a handkerchief and rubs it into his hand till the spot’s gone. It’s not that I mind dirt, he thinks. He smells his hand. It smells from spit, but that’ll go away quickly enough. And an ash really isn’t dirt. I could, in fact, almost any other day, walk around with my hand smudged like that or even worse. Not the whole hand smudged, but a much larger spot than there was. Anyway: walk around or just stay here without paying any attention to the smudge till it disappeared through nothing I consciously did.

He turns around and looks out the window. About fifteen feet from his window are two windows in a brick wall. Above the wall — his apartment and the apartment or apartments he’s looking at are on the top floors of their buildings — is some gray sky. Maybe I should stare at that slit of sky till something passes in it. A bird, helicopter, sheet of newspaper, a plane. Rain, even. Stare till it rains. It can’t snow. Not the season for it. What else could be in the sky that might pass, drop, stay there awhile, float by? A cloud, of course. Hailstones would be unlikely. A balloon. On the other side of the building he’s looking at is a street. Someone could walk on it holding a balloon. The balloon could be released, accidentally, intentionally, and float past that slit of sky he’s looking at. He looks at that sky for around two more minutes, tells himself to look at it another minute and if nothing passes in it, to stop. He looks at it another minute. Nothing passes. He faces forward, rests his head back against the chair, remembers.

The phone rang. He yelled something like “Jill, would you get it? — I’m changing the baby.” She yelled she would and ran to her studio from wherever she was and picked up the phone. “Oh Randi,” she said, “hi,” and that’s all he remembers hearing from that phone call. That was all he heard. Because he remembers that maybe an hour later he thought about why he hadn’t heard more of the phone conversation than just “Oh Randi, hi,” and decided it was because she must have started speaking very low after that or else had shut the door. He never asked her about it, though once or twice had wanted to. But she came into the baby’s room a few minutes later, while he was on the floor putting away Esther’s books and toys and Esther was sitting on the floor trying to string beads, and looked very sad. She was very sad, but when she came into the room, or rather, stood inside the door with her shoulder against the jamb, as if, if she didn’t lean against it she wouldn’t be able to stand, all he could tell was that she looked very sad. What he thought then was that she was sad because of something she’d learned over the phone or something that had happened to her since she put the phone down. Because, he thought, what could Randi have told her that made her look so sad? And how come she didn’t let him speak to Randi? She was his niece. They were quite close. Maybe Randi had called to tell him something about his sister, but something so terrible that she was now relieved she wouldn’t have to be the one to tell him. “What is it,” he said, “something wrong?” She nodded. She brought her hand to her mouth.

He hears a plane, turns around to that slit of sky but doesn’t see anything. Then he sees it for a couple of seconds. Flying west. A jumbo jet. It could be going to any number of places. California, Tahiti, Japan. It could be going, eventually, east. If it is, it’ll soon turn around. But chances are much better, not that he really knows what he’s talking about, that it’s going west, or west now but north or south soon. He looks at the two windows. He’s never seen anyone in the right one. The shade’s always down. Never even seen the room. He’s seen artificial light behind the shade. In the evening, very late, maybe five or six times. But he’s never seen the shade raised even an inch from the sill in the year and two months he’s lived here. The fourteen months since Jill asked him to leave their apartment, which he did and got this apartment that same day. In the other window — it’s much smaller — he’s seen a woman showering maybe fifteen times. Showering or just shampooing, if one doesn’t always shower, meaning clean one’s body, which he’s never seen her do, except for her face and neck, when one shampoos. He wonders if the shaded window is part of the same apartment as that bathroom. The bathroom door is at the end of the left wall. If it was in the right wall, then the bathroom would have to lead to the shaded room. Though maybe the shaded room is a hallway in that apartment or a public hallway in that building. If he steps up to his window he can see four windows on the same floor to the right of the shaded window, two with blinds, two with shades, all opened or closed or lit or unlit at various times of the day, but none, except for the one next to the shaded window and there only a little, can he see inside. Not the right angle or too far away. But a public hallway wouldn’t have a shaded window. Makes no sense. For the last two months the bathroom window has had a shade on it. Almost to the sill. Possibly because she caught him watching her showering several times. Sometimes it was by accident. He’d be slumped below the top of the padded chair when he’d hear a shower go on, look around or above the chair and see her showering. Or he’d enter his apartment, shut the door and see her showering. Hear and see at the same time sometimes. The shower part of her bathtub is right by the bathroom window. For a while at night when he came home he wouldn’t tum on his apartment light till he found out if she was showering or not. If she was, he’d watch her in the dark till she left the bathroom or put her bathrobe on. If she only put on her underpants or bra, he’d continue to watch her till she left the room. If she put both underclothes on, he’d crawl away from the window to one of the lights, turn it on and stand and go about the apartment as if he just came home. But he only caught her showering once in the eight or so times when he came home and went through this routine, so he gave it up. She’s a woman of about thirty-five, somewhat plump, somewhat pretty, who spends a great deal of time lathering her long dark hair. Sometimes he’s seen her entirely covered with lather, which would start at her hair and slide down on all sides and sometimes in large clumps to the rest of her body, or the parts of her body he could see above the bathtub rim. He’s gotten quite excited sometimes when he’s seen her showering or drying herself and then putting on her underclothes. Once when she saw him looking at her while he was standing in the middle of the room and pretending to flip through a magazine, she slammed the window down and pulled the single shower curtain around her where he couldn’t see her showering anymore, not that he would have been able to see much through the smoked glass. Once when it was night and he was reading in this chair, he heard her singing in the shower. He doesn’t know if he had been so absorbed in the book that he had missed the shower going on, or else if the shower and singing had started at the same time. Anyway, he stood up, with his back to her put the book on the chair, shut the light, opened his door, slammed it, crawled to the far right corner of the window and raised his head just above the sill to watch her. By the time she was drying herself while standing in the tub, he had his pants down and his handkerchief out. He wonders about a woman who’d shower in front of an open window, one that faces another open window, especially one in which she must have known a man had caught or watched her showering several times. Maybe she has a let-him-look attitude about it, all he’s seeing is a body, one not much different than any other woman’s body her age, and if it does anything to him, it has nothing to do with her. Or maybe she liked showering in front of him, showing off her body, so to speak, the pleasure it might give him, let’s say, maybe even showering more times than she normally would because he was there, but then felt the situation had possibilities or ramifications she hadn’t thought about, so she stopped. He can’t see her toilet or sink from his window. They must be on the right side of the bathroom.

Jill took her hand away from her mouth. He forgets what Esther was doing at the time. She was probably just lying peacefully or squirming a little but on her back. But why’d he pick this particular memory? It’s the one that came to him, that’s all. It could have been one of any number of memories that came to him when he just sat back and let things enter his head. The time his mother died. (He was in the hospital room.) The time Esther was born. (He was in the delivery room.) The time he and Jill got married. (It was in the living room of the apartment she and Esther now live in.) The time he learned his brother’s plane had disappeared. (He was in his sister’s living room.) The time Jill ran into the bathroom with her nightgown on fire. (He was on the toilet. She had said from the kitchen only a half-minute before “Do you smell gas?” He had said “No, why — you mean real gas? Do you?”) The time Jill accepted his marriage proposal. (He was on his knees in her living room, his arms around her legs, crying, while she was rubbing his head with one hand and with the other trying to get him to stand.) The time an ice cream popsicle stuck to the entire top of his tongue. (He was standing on a busy street corner, pointing to his mouth and gagging. The ice cream vendor got in his truck and drove off. A man said “Don’t pull on it, kid. It’s the dry ice it was packed in. Pull on it and you’ll take off half your tongue. Just let it melt a few minutes and it’ll come off on its own.”) The time Esther fell, though it actually seemed she had flown, down a flight of stairs. (They were in the summer cottage they rented and which Jill still rents. He was in the main room, working at his desk. Something made him look to his left and he saw her flying headfirst down the stairs. The staircase was in the hallway around twenty feet away, but he missed catching her by just a couple of inches at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t see how that was possible. He must have seen her on one of the top steps, about to fall, and jumped out of his chair and ran to the stairs.) The time they took Esther to the hospital. (They were in their car, minutes after he’d missed catching her at the bottom of the stairs. He was driving. Esther was in Jill’s lap in the rear seat, a compress on her nose, towels around her bleeding head. A rabbit jumped across the road and he swerved but hit it. The rabbit flew over the car and landed about fifty feet behind them. He’d hit it while it was in midair. Jill screamed. Esther was unconscious.) The time they waited while the doctors and nurses treated Esther. (It was outside the hospital examination room. They thought she was going to die. One of the doctors had said a few minutes before “I don’t know if you know it, but she may die.” Jill said “Listen, you imbecile. I know we were negligent, but now’s the stupidest time in the world to remind us.” The doctor said he didn’t mean it that way. Jill said “You did too.” Carl pulled her into him, said “Don’t argue, don’t bother, don’t worry, it’ll all turn out all right. It’s got to be all right. I’ll go crazy if she dies.”) The time they buried his father. (Cemetery.) His mother. (Same cemetery.) The time he came home from summer camp and his parents said they’d given away his dog.

Jill said to him “—died.” He said “Who?” “—Kahn.” “What? I’m not hearing you for some reason. Who?” “Gretta Kahn. Gretta Kahn. She died two days ago, Monday.” “Oh Jesus, that can’t be. It can’t. What are you talking about? That was Randi on the phone, right? So what’s she got to do with Gretta?” “Not your niece, Randi. Gretta’s oldest son, Randy. He called from Charleston. Gretta died in San Diego. A massive heart attack, he said. She was visiting Mona. And because he knew she was such a good friend of ours—” “Her daughter?” “Mona, her daughter and Randy’s sister, yes. They’re having the funeral in San Diego — something about it’s easier to, not the expense — and just wanted us to have the option of coming. I told him I didn’t think we could. I was right, wasn’t I?” “Come on,” he said, “she was too healthy. Anyone but her. Besides, it’s too ridiculous. For it was just around this time of year last year—” “That’s right. It’s like a medical prophecy come true, except it’s the reverse of what frequently is supposed to happen in that frequently it’s the husband who dies a year after his wife.” He remembers she cried, they talked a lot about Gretta that night, neither of them slept well, and this went on for two or three days. She was one of their best friends. And of their best friends, she was just about the nicest of them and the one they loved most. Or else it seemed that way at the time. Was it so? He thinks it was, and if it wasn’t, then she came as close as anyone at the time to being the nicest of their best friends and the one they loved the most. They didn’t have many friends that both of them considered their best friends. He had best friends, she did. A few they shared. Or he had several fairly good friends, she had several very good friends, and a few of her very good friends he considered fairly good friends of his. What’s he talking about? Gretta was a very good close friend of them both. They talked about deep serious things together, all three of them or just when he or Jill was with her. Sometimes. Sometimes they just had a good time together, when not a serious subject or mood came up. Jill and he didn’t go to Gretta for advice, either separately or together, and she never came to either of them for it, but when they were with one another, separately or together, they often talked about the most important things in their lives, past or present, including what was bothering them most. When he or Jill were alone with Gretta they also occasionally talked about their respective spouses, something they didn’t do with Gretta’s husband Ike and Ike didn’t do with them, talk personally about Gretta or about anything deep or serious that might interest either of them, though they still considered him to be one of their dearest friends, because he was so generous and warm and Gretta’s husband, though maybe not one of their closest. He remembers trying to bring Gretta back then in his thoughts. Three years ago. He remembers that a day or so after Gretta died he said to Jill when the phone was ringing “Maybe that’s Randy again, saying it was only a joke and Gretta isn’t dead.” He remembers Jill saying “That’s crazy” or “too bizarre for me.” “I know that was crazy or too bizarre,” he remembers saying after he or she finished talking to whomever it was on the phone, “what I said about Gretta before, but it was what I wished most. That it had been a joke. To lose Ike one year, Gretta the next? To lose them both? All a joke. For Randy or Mona or whatever the other son’s name is — Gene — to say on the phone ‘Gretta and Ike are alive. They said they’ll explain everything when they get to New York and see you all.’” He remembers lying in bed the next few days thinking of the various ways she could be alive. That it was a seizure of some kind where she appeared dead but wasn’t. Or she had been dead but was revived. Where they’d get a letter from Gretta the next day or so explaining why Randy gave Jill that message and why she had to send this letter instead of making a phone call. That it was a bet. That it was part of a plot. That it was a chain of almost inconceivable false and incompetent medical reports from hospital to doctor to Gretta’s children. It took him a while to get used to her death.

He hears a shower turned on behind him. He turns around. The shade’s down, woman’s singing. Both their windows are open. The weather’s been gray and unseasonably cool the last few days but has warmed up in the last hour and the sun’s now out. He looks at the sky. He recognizes the melody she’s singing but can’t make out the words. He shuts his eyes and listens. She’s singing in French, but he’s almost sure the song’s American. She has a sweet voice. Professional, almost. For all he knows about singing voices, professional. Dulcet was the word Jill used for a voice this sweet. Jill knew about voices. She listened to opera, lieder and madrigals a few hours a day, once wanted to be an opera singer, sang in several languages in the shower sometimes but would never do it with the window open or so loud. “Sweeter than sweet,” she said, “is when you use ‘dulcet,’ or at least when I use it.” He doesn’t know if he’d recognize this woman if he saw her on the street. For one thing, it’s been a long time since he’s seen her in the shower. If he saw her and recognized her would he introduce himself? He doubts it. Of course not. Would she recognize him if she saw him? He doubts it. Maybe she would. Maybe she’s already seen him on the street and recognized him several times while all to some of those times he might have looked straight at her but didn’t recognize her. He wouldn’t mind meeting her. He knows no woman to go out with. He hasn’t been to bed with a woman since Jill, though he has been out with a number of them but never more than once or twice each. The third or fourth time is when you often get to go to bed together. He wonders if he should call Jill. He’d ask how she is. She’d say fine, probably, but why did he call? “To find out how you are and to find out, of course — how could you even ask that? — how Esther is.” “You spoke to Esther this morning,” she could say, “you’ll see her this weekend. She’s having her supper now.” It’s around that time. He looks at his wrist. His watch isn’t on it. Where’d he leave it? This could lead to a minute or two of panic. Watch, pen and wallet, all quite valuable when one considers the wallet’s contents, and all given to him by Jill. Sentimental value then? Not only. But when they’re out of his pockets and off his wrist, he likes to keep them together. The dresser. He goes into the bathroom, sees the three of them and his checkbook and keys on top of the dresser, looks at the watch. He should buy a clock. A small one, that doesn’t tick. It’s five after six. Just around the time she’d be eating. He used to like feeding her. “Baby eat meat,” she used to say. “Baby eat corn and peas, no beans,” though she used to pronounce them “con and peats.” Used to like putting the bib on her, making sure her hands were clean and if they weren’t, washing them with a little warm water on a dish towel and drying them with the towel’s other end. Now she feeds and washes herself, though sometimes when she insists he lets her eat with slightly dirty hands. Now she tucks the napkin into her shirt or spreads it out on her lap, though sometimes he lets her use her sleeve. He used to like feeding her spoonfuls and forkfuls of food, touching the cereal with his tongue before he gave it to her to make sure it wasn’t hot. Squeezing orange juice for her almost every morning, every so often squeezing quarter of a grapefruit to add to the glass. He was usually the first up. Around six. Esther around seven. Jill around eight. Putting her to bed — he liked that too. Bathing her first, though the one who bathed her usually wasn’t the one who then read to her and put her to bed. And after he washed her but while she was still playing with her water toys or the soap in the tub, massaging and brushing and flossing his teeth and gums and then applying that sodium bicarb-peroxide paste. He didn’t like giving her shampoos. Liked rubbing her back to get her to sleep. Making love with his wife while the baby slept in the same room. She was always so receptive. His wife was. They loved each other, and he thinks the baby, as much as a one-to-two-year-old could, loved him then too. What went wrong? Why did it have to go wrong? Were there several or many things wrong or just one main one? He still loves Jill but she no longer loves him. That’s what she’s said so that’s what he has to believe. He should go out. Take a walk, see what he sees. Not a movie. Maybe step in for coffee someplace, regular or espress. Maybe a beer. No beer. He doesn’t like drinking in bars alone. Doesn’t like eating out alone. Coffee in some stand-up place or on a coffee shop stool is still okay.

The shower’s turned off. The singing’s stopped. She’s probably drying herself but she could also be shaving her underarms or legs. Saw both of those once or twice too. Today she left the shade up a couple of inches, but it’s not dark enough outside yet to look. Not dark at all. Anyway, he shouldn’t be sneaking looks. Maybe he should go out to buy a men’s magazine. One with naked women, but which still has serious articles and maybe serious fiction in it. Photos showing everything, but of women alone or together rather than with naked men. He doesn’t like to buy that kind of magazine, give a clerk money and sometimes have to get change back for it, walk home with it rolled up if he doesn’t have an envelope or newspaper to put it in, or have it around the apartment. But about every three to four months, maybe two to three months is a closer estimation, he buys one, uses it in his own way, then tears it up after a couple of days and sticks the pieces deep into a garbage bag, makes sure they’re covered with garbage, and drops the bag in one of the trash cans in front of his building. But he doesn’t want to go out just to buy one of those magazines, though he wishes now he hadn’t torn up the last one he bought.

He turns around and looks at the sky. Go out. See what’s out there. Call Jill. Ask to speak to Esther. Go to a movie. Go to a bar. Go to a bookstore and buy a book whatever it costs. For the first time in your life, find a book you want very much to read but any other time you’d think way too expensive for you. If you haven’t the cash, write a check. If they won’t take a check, ask them to put the book aside, leave a deposit for it, go back to the apartment, and next day, or even tonight, if the store’s still open and not too far away, get that book. Or just walk along the street. Walk to walk. Walk for exercise. For fresh air. To tire yourself out. Walk all the way downtown. Through the theater district. Past the Village to Lower Broadway. Go to several bookstores and bars and then cab home. Or call Jill and say you’re sad and lonely and want to come back to her. “I want us to live as a family again,” say. “I love you,” say. “I love Esther. It’s not that I can’t live without you. It’s that I don’t want to. Living alone’s killing me in a way. I sneak looks at the bathroom window across from my apartment. A woman showers there and I want to see her nude. I have seen her nude, she’s bought a shade just to keep me from seeing her nude, but I often quickly turn my head to her window hoping the shade’s up and she’s standing there nude. I have these absurd fantasies about meeting her on the street and going to bed with her. I think about buying those awful men’s magazines just to use the photos of naked women in them to alleviate my excitedness. My sexual frustration. My pent-up whatever it is that keeps getting more pent-up every day. I have bought those magazines, maybe every other month. I thought of Gretta today. I think of her a lot. Not in a sexual way. I’m sorry I linked those two subjects up like that. One coming after the other. Gretta and sex. Or rather those magazines and Gretta. But I think of her a lot. Those were good days then, the time when we knew her and she died. I mean, we were sad for her. It crippled us for a while. But we were happy with one another then, the time when we knew her and a little after the time she died. The two of us and the three of us, meaning the two of us when that’s all there was of us and then with Esther, and you can’t say we weren’t. I know I had a bad temper. You can’t say we weren’t happy then. I know I was impossibly moody at times. But I’m getting to understand the reasons why I had those sudden swings of mood and also how to prevent them and I doubt I’ll ever get like that again or at least as much.” Call and say all that. Or walk or take a cab acrosstown and ring her bell from the lobby and ask to come up. Then say it to her or as much as you think she can take for one time.

A plane’s overhead. He looks out the window. The plane passes but not in the part of the sky he’s able to see. Jill has a lover now. She’s in love. They’ll probably get married. That’s what she’s said. He’s met him. Seems like a decent fellow. And tall, handsome, rugged, smart. Esther likes him too. Loves him in a little girl’s way, Jill’s said. He’s wonderful and attentive and devoted to both of them, Jill’s said, and when the three of them are together they get along exceptionally well. Go outside. Take that walk. Exhaust yourself walking so you’ll sleep eight to ten hours straight. Have an exotic coffee outside, have brandies and beer, have a good dinner outside and then buy a book, or buy it before you have dinner, you never would have bought for yourself before and come home. He gets up to go. He hears a shade snapped up. Bathroom’s? He looks at his ceiling, floor, slowly turns around to look at that woman’s bathroom. It’s the shaded room’s shade that’s up. It must have snapped up by accident. No one seems to be in the room. It’s unlit. He goes up to his window and sees a mirror at the end of that room reflecting his building’s roof and the light from the sky above it. Someone goes over to the mirror and looks into it. From behind it looks like Gretta. That’s the way she looked from behind. He saw her walking away from him, from them, down her road, picking a blossom off a tree, berries off a bush, going into rooms, working in her kitchen, cooking there, putting away dishes there, putting seeds into the bird feeders around her house, snapping pictures, serving hors d’oeuvres, many times. Kind of short, round, hair like that. Shape like that. Way she’s fussing with her hair now like that. Then a man, both are fully dressed, comes into view and walks up behind her and hugs her while they both look into the mirror, the man looking over her shoulder. He can’t see their faces in the mirror. Their images are entirely blocked by their standing in front of the mirror. Then they turn around and come up to the window, the man with his hand on her shoulder. It’s Ike and Gretta. Ike raises his hand to pull the shade down and sees him looking at them. Ike points to him, they stare at him. Gretta seems shocked, Ike amused. He says “Gretta, Ike, oh God, this is too wonderful. Tell me what apartment you’re in and I’ll run right over. I’m so lonely. I was till I saw you. On and off, I mean, and sad — you can’t believe how much — on and off too. Jill and I are divorced. She’s going to remarry, while I love her as much as I ever did. That was a lot, remember? but that’s not news. Esther’s just great. A truly exemplary child. Intelligent, beautiful, generous, precious, good; a real dear. We missed you so. We were devastated by your deaths. The untrue news of them, rather, for here you are. We both loved you so. Love you so, love you, and I know I can still speak for Jill on this. Seeing you now is the best thing that’s happened to me in a year. In two, in three. Or come over here. I’m in number nine, apartment 5D. But I’ll run over to your place because I know I can get there faster than you could here. Or maybe, with this shade business of Ike’s — raising his hand to pull it down, it seemed like — and the look that was on both your faces, you had something else in mind and want me to wait here a half-hour or so. You can hear me through your closed window, can’t you?”

He didn’t go over to his window. He stood almost at the other end of his room, looking out his window from there. Shade on the window of the once shaded room did snap up, bathroom shade stayed down. He didn’t see a mirror in that room. If there is one, and in the place he said there was, then he imagined it before he saw it, for so far he’s been too far away from that room to see anything inside. The room’s unlit, though. That he can see from where he stands. He goes over to his window and looks inside that room. There’s a double bed, made, in there. A night table beside it. A lamp on the table. Ashtray next to the lamp. Radio beside the ashtray. Cup in a saucer on top of the radio. That’s all he can see in the room. Spoon in the saucer. Maybe a crack in the wall but nothing’s hanging on the part of the wall he can see. What will the tenant think when he or she, if there’s only one, sees the shade up? That it snapped up on its own? That a stranger was in the room and let it up? But how will she or he pull it down? Will he or she allow him- or herself to be seen from a window across from that building? It’s worth waiting for. Just to see the reaction of that person, if it can be seen, when she or he sees the shade up, and what kind of person lives there.

He moves the chair from the left side of his window to the right. He turns the chair around to the window and pushes it within inches of the window. He opens a bottle of wine, sits in the chair and drinks while he faces at an angle the now unshaded room. The day gets darker. He can see a big chunk of the sky from here. His phone hasn’t rung, when he’s been in his apartment, for almost two days. Stars come out. Two, three, then a few of them. The bathroom window shade stays down. The light in the bathroom goes on and off a few times in the next two hours. Twice it stayed on for only a few seconds, once for almost a half-hour. He finishes three-quarters of the bottle of wine, has to pee. It’s now night. Many stars are out. He can see the moon’s light but not the moon. The bathroom light hasn’t been turned on for about an hour. If the bathroom is part of the same apartment as the bedroom, he’s sure the woman who likes to shower would have walked into the bedroom by now. Or at least a door would have opened from the bathroom or some other part of the apartment — a hallway — into the bedroom and let some light into it by now. But no light’s come in. A little light from the moon perhaps. But now the bedroom’s almost black. He can’t see anything inside it. He finishes off the bottle. Now he really has to go to the bathroom or he’ll have to do it in his pants right here. Maybe into the bottle, but that would end up being a mess. He tries to hold it in. He doesn’t want to miss that person or persons, if there is more than one person living in that apartment containing that room, discovering the shade up and then pulling it down. And he’s certain it’ll be pulled down. But he can’t hold it in anymore and runs to the bathroom. He takes his watch off the dresser while he’s there. The shade’s still up and the bedroom’s still dark when he gets back. An hour later he has to go to the bathroom again. He runs to it, pees, runs to the kitchen and gets a beer out of the refrigerator, runs back to the chair. Nothing’s changed in that room. He opens the beer, sips, puts it down, wakes up in the chair and finds the shade down but the room still dark. He doesn’t know how long he’s been sleeping in the chair. He should take a walk. He looks at his watch. He can’t make out the luminescent numerals and hands. He squints. Still can’t make them out. He gets up and turns on the side table light. It’s past two. That’s hard to believe, he thinks. He should go to sleep. Maybe have a bite to eat from the food in the refrigerator and a slice of bread and then go to sleep. No, just take off your clothes, pull out the bed and go to sleep.