L (and Things Come Apart)

by Ian Orti

  He didn’t know if she was reading or writing, but it didn’t matter as long as she was there. He poured an aperitif, left it in front of her without looking or stopping on his way to deliver other drinks to other customers, and then collected her empty glass on the way back.

  He enjoyed the smell of sulphur, and watched smoke rise from mouths and lit matches for smokers as he passed their tables, illuminating the faces of those who spoke with unlit cigarettes teetering from their lips. They played cards, discussing this war or that war and who was really to blame and how obvious the cause and clear the solution. Here in the parliament of the people’s chosen nightspot, with heads soaked in drink, it was only the scandal of politics and sex and life and debt, which awaited them outside. But as the hours progressed their crippling obligations slowly pulled them from their seats and into the darkness of the coming day. For now it was still night, and unseasonably warm and when it was finally empty and the last customer had disappeared, Henry and L placed two chairs on the street and sat with a bottle of port between them.

  “Will you miss me when I’m gone?” she asked.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m just asking if you’ll miss me.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I suppose I’ll miss you, too.”

  “Then why go?”

  She brought her glass to her lips. “Is the fear of missing someone reason enough to stay in one place?”

  “I’m probably the wrong person to ask.”

  “Have you ever missed someone before?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “No,” said L. “But I imagine it would be beautiful. To know that in someone’s absence there’s pain. I imagine it gives a person substance.”

  “How about tonight? Will you miss me when I leave tonight?”

  L smiled. Closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “I know you’ll be back. I can take you for granted.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t miss you either.”

  “What makes you think I’ll still be here?”

  “Because you might miss me if you leave.”

  “But we just established that would be a good thing.”

  “The pain and sadness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. If that’s what you want to leave me with.”

  “But if I go, I’m not coming back, and I’m not sure you would miss me forever yet.”

  “Then maybe you should stay a little longer.”

  “Fine,” said L. “But I’m afraid it won’t be much longer.”

  “That’s okay,” he swallowed the last of his port. ”I’m sure it won’t take too long for me to miss you the way you want me to.”

  As L filled their glasses they watched smoke rise from chimneys and bodies pass before them in the street, playing their game. Henry had done most of the guessing only to prolong their time together, until he turned to her and saw her eyes closed and her hands inside her sleeves.

  The rest of the night was his to spend walking the distance back home. Henry placed his hand on her shoulder and she woke with a terrifying start. Henry pulled his arm away, but she grabbed it.

  “Sorry, Henry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She apologized again for frightening him and asked him to see her safely up the black iron stairs.

  After he watched her enter the flat, Henry walked home along the cobblestone road. He turned back and from a distance he could see the faint glow from the window on the second floor. He had wanted to stay but couldn’t find the words, or the reason. As he walked, the air became cooler. The night had been clear and when they had run out of passing people to imagine lives for, they watched the stars. They’d made up their own constellations, their own images, their own stories to go with them. Then the stars had begun to fall. First one, then another, until soon there were millions and Henry realized this cascade of falling stars bending with the wind was in fact falling snow. As the wind picked up the snow began to blow sideways, blowing past Henry, who buried his face in the collar of his coat as icy pellets grazed his cheeks. He turned his back to the wind and started walking backwards to ease the stinging on his face. As he walked he watched the light from the second storey dissolve, then noticed a figure standing motionless in front of the flat. Henry stopped to try to see who it was, but it was impossible to see clearly. The figure moved towards the window of the café, then to the middle of the street and looked up at the flat before walking around the side towards the iron stairwell and out of sight. Moments later the figure emerged again from the darkness and started walking towards Henry. Henry continued his backwards walk, then slowly turned and continued home, burying his face in the collar of his coat and accelerating his pace.

  The first night it snowed in the city, the night Henry was pursued temporarily by the man outside the flat, it continued for three days until all movement stopped. Commuters cursed the strikers, strikers cursed the city.

  That same night, not long after the man outside had frightened Henry away, in the bathtub of the second storey flat, beneath the surface of the water, with only a single candle burning, everything below the surface was skewed. A hand ceased to be a hand, and a long slender wrist severed in the flickering light. Beyond the bath a noise could be heard and then all light was extinguished inside the room. Beneath the surface of the water the sounds were pronounced and resonated. A hand curled around a doorknob. An aging floor ground its wooden teeth beneath slow, menacing footsteps. Rusty hinges squealed.

  But beneath the surface of the water there was only darkness and it was seen in layers. A shadow within shadows. Beneath the surface of the water in the second storey flat, only the sound of a rapidly beating heart could be heard. Above the surface, rusty hinges squealed again and an aging floor ground its teeth a final time before the door closed, and there was only the sound of snow crunching on the steps of iron stairs outside.

  In the bathtub, water fell from L’s black hair as she emerged from beneath the surface with slender, wet fingers gripping a wide candle as her lips parted and she gasped for air.

  It would be days before she slept again. To pass the time she would walk as far as her feet would take her. She would walk to the point of exhaustion, and then walk some more. She walked like a hunter. Like someone in search of something. But each night she would come home with nothing. In the middle of the night after giving up on sleep, she would slip down to the café and sit at a table in the dark. To pass the time she would draw, or sketch, or write on a handful of pages she brought down from her flat, filling the pages until they were almost black. Words on top of words on top of words on top of lines on top of shapes on top of more words and when the sun finally broke over the horizon she would slip back upstairs.

  15

  HENRY SELDOM CURSED BUT WAS THE KIND of man who revelled in the colours of another man’s profanities. There were many curses, the most serious being the coupling of a single syllable word and a single physical gesture: a smashing glass, a fist against a table, a slamming door, a stomping foot. All were passionately percussive sounds which Henry grew to know quite well over the course of his life, but his favourite was the long-winded multi-syllabic curse coupled with the gently rapping of a head against a table.

  “How are your renovations coming along?”

  “Beautifully,” said the builder.

  “How about a drink to celebrate?”

  “Why not?” added the builder with a desperate smile. The builder then grabbed Henry’s wrist firmly. “Henry, do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to install a chandelier? Most require special attachments to the ceiling and to hang a chandelier in this place would almost certainly have required reinforcing the ceiling as well as installing a special electrical box. It’s an extensive renovation. This morning when I arrived to finish the job, there was one in every room.”

  “Maybe you’ve been sleepwalking,” suggested H
enry.

  “Sure, that’s the most logical explanation for a problem which defies logic, except that I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I close my eyes and all I hear is music. I don’t know from where it comes, but what I do know is that when I open my eyes, it stops. I close them again, and there it is.”

  “Maybe you should speak to a doctor.”

  “And risk losing my job? Things have never been better.”

  “Risk losing what job?” piped the wrinkled man from a table in the corner. He was waving a newspaper. “None of you are working now, remember?”

  “Enough, old man, this is not the time…” and as the old man pressed the builder about the growing strike, Henry turned to the other side of the counter. He had not seen L sitting there prior to his conversation with the builder, but he was happy to see her there now, her hands wrapped around an empty cup.

  “Tea?” asked Henry.

  “I just had tea,” said L. “How about something else?” She looked tired.

  “How did you sleep last night?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Storm?”

  “I guess.”

  Outside, the snow piled higher.

  16

  THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN.

  “Incredible.”

  Henry assumed the customer was a painter by the rolled canvas and brushes clenched in paint-speckled hands. “Incredible,” said the painter again, sitting on a stool by the counter. “Do you have any wine? Or perhaps something a little stronger?” Henry poured something a little stronger into a small, round glass and placed it in front of the painter.

  “I think I‘m going mad—actually—I don’t think. I am.” Henry hated to see people in anguish unnecessarily alone, so he poured himself something a little stronger, held it up to the painter and toasted both the passing of the season and the slow but steady decay of their mental faculties. The painter rolled a cigarette from a leather pouch and Henry slid an ashtray across the counter, gently striking the painter’s empty glass.

  “Another?”

  The painter agreed.

  “Has there been anything strange on television?” asked the painter.

  “Same old stories.”

  “Today, when I was walking, there were people, people everywhere. Just like any other day. Cars, offices, shops. The usual. And then I saw a mammoth.”

  “A mammoth what?” asked Henry, rolling one of the painter’s cigarettes. He was waiting for the painter to finish.

  “A mammoth. Period. Tusks. Hair. Huge. It was no glimpse—I followed it for blocks. It swayed from side to side. It rounded a corner. Then it was gone. Gone. I’m gone. It must be me. I must be gone.”

  “Maybe some kids let it out of the zoo last night.”

  “Sure, except that there hasn’t been a zoo in this city for decades and no mammoth has walked these parts for tens of thousands of years. I thought maybe the fumes from my paints…but it’s impossible. Everything else is intact.”

  Henry tried to reassure the painter with an incredible story of his own. “Once,” he said, leaning on his elbow and shielding his mouth with his hand so as to ensure that no one else could read his lips and share the information he was about to divulge, “I saw a man drop dead at his own dinner table in the middle of a dinner party. And no one did a thing. They continued eating and drinking over his dead body.”

  The painter exhaled, “At least there is something substantial in death. Death isn’t an ice age beast roaming the streets undisturbed.”

  “Wait,” said Henry, “It’s not finished. Then the man woke up. Just like that.”

  “Then he probably wasn’t dead.”

  “Oh, I can assure you,” Henry said. “He was dead.”

  “I’m probably just overtired,” said the painter. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  Henry handed the painter the cigarette he had rolled and the painter smoked it and several others while Henry placed chairs upside down on the tables and filled a bucket with warm water, preparing to mop the floor. The painter asked if Henry was closing and Henry explained that he only closed after the last customer left. He expelled the final breaths of his cigarette, thanked Henry and headed outside.

  Henry waited several minutes, finished placing the chairs on the tables and then walked to the front door, turned the lock and turned off the outside light. He enjoyed the quiet moments spent mopping while music played softly around him; he always took his time closing up. Henry placed the mop in the bucket, but when he tried to shake it loose he saw that the water had frozen solid around the mop. Henry held his hand over the heat register wondering how he’d overlooked the fact that he was gradually freezing his customers, but the iron grill was warm against his palm. Henry struggled to lift the bucket to the sink with the mop frozen inside. He placed it beneath the faucet to let hot water pour over the bucket. The music was suddenly louder. He paused momentarily, then turned the tap in the opposite direction and listened to the music fade. When he turned the tap again, music filled the room once more as a small blackbird poked its head from the faucet and then took to the air. Henry turned his eyes to the bird as it landed on the leg of one of the upside-down chairs before leaving its perch, flapping its wings and causing the chair to fall to the floor. All the tables were close together and soon each one joined in a chorus of tumbling chairs. Henry watched the bird fly out the open door. He closed the tap and walked towards the open door to leave, a door he was sure he had closed. He paused at one of the fallen chairs and ran his fingers against its wooden frame. He shut the door, locking it behind him. He would deal with the chairs tomorrow.

  He walked with his eyes lowered to the ground. When he turned around, he saw L leaving from the side of the café. She did not see him. And he watched her walk until, silhouetted against the falling snow, she disappeared. When he started walking again, the snow in front of him deepened into footprints he had yet to make. With each step he took forward a new footprint formed ahead of him. Behind him, a single set of footprints slowly faded beneath the blowing snow. When he stopped the footprints stopped. When he moved, they began again. He looked around but could see no one nearby. When he looked back to the café, much further away now, he could make out a dark figure looking up at the second storey. The figure moved closer, pressed his face and hands to the window to look inside, then moved on, disappearing behind a building. Henry stood for a while waiting to see if he would reappear, but he did not. Slowly, Henry continued walking home, following the footprints, which gradually disappeared behind him.

  17

  WHEN HE RETURNED THE FOLLOWING MORNING, L was sitting at one of the tables sipping some tea. She was not alone. Others were inside sipping on warm drinks and reading old newspapers. Henry recognized the old man standing behind the counter.

  “Hey vagrant,” said the old man to Henry, “don’t let me catch you sneaking wine in here again or you’ll be out on the street. You hear me? This is no place for the riffraff.” The old man slung his head backwards, roaring silently to himself.

  “I was awake early,” said L. “I came downstairs for a walk and the door was wide open. I sat inside so it wouldn’t be empty and so you wouldn’t get robbed. Then people started to come inside. Everyone has paid.”

  “It’s all under control, old man,” said the old man.

  “Must have forgotten to lock the door last night,” said Henry.

  Henry thanked the old man, offered him a bottle of wine in return for his work, but the man declined, asking only for some bread and cheese. He said he had his own wine.

  “I mopped the floor when I came in,” said L. “There was water and a mop in the bucket. I assumed you forgot or were too tired.”

  Henry looked around. The place was different. The walls had changed. Someone or something had stripped them, peeled away the paint, because now they were stone, coarse and grey, and no one but Henry seemed to notice. It was as though the storm had blown straight through his place and shredded the walls. Not
hing else had been disturbed. He had only been gone a night and since no one who had seen his place before inquired about its new interior, Henry thought it best to say nothing, just in case it was only he who recognized the difference.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” said L. “It’s very charming. And warm.”

  He had never known himself to be considered either, but the walls, which he had absolutely no recollection of changing, were now charming. They were warm.

  And the floors, he noticed, lifting his feet abruptly, nearly falling. The floors, once wood, he was sure—he had helped to lay it himself—were now marble. He stomped his foot, and as L’s eyes rose to meet Henry’s, he ran his foot against the floor, smiled at L and said, “Just a spider. I hate those things.”

  Henry poured himself a cup of coffee. He held the warm cup in both hands and watched the morning turn to afternoon.

  Early in the evening, while watching the television and playing their game of marionettes with the characters, Henry told L about the man he had seen wandering outside the window staring inside. They were watching an old cartoon with two pigs huddled in the corner of a thatched house, trembling and speaking desperately to each other. L moved their conversation to the television, lending her voice to one of the pigs.

  “What did he say?” she asked with a high-pitched, animated voice.

  “He didn’t say anything. I was too far away to talk to him.” Henry followed her eyes to the television.

  “Then how do you know he was looking for me?”

  The pigs were excited on the screen. Henry recognized the cartoon and placed his voice in the other animated pig. “I saw him standing outside the window looking in, then he disappeared around the side of the building. Near the stairs. Maybe a friend of yours.”