12/12/2000 Geoff Ashbrook
Wilcox, turning stables, "Tell them I said it, would you? Night." And it was slay bells on copper streets for all of his rest of the way home. The seat creaked underneath his coat and he turned to watch some people walk from the curb down a flight of stairs and out of view. His left hand hurt a little bit and was sticking to the little loose threads inside his mitten. He looked out the window as they went over James bridge, and he could see the large blocks of ice floating around in the water like a great giant had spilled her soda. And he noticed as he watched the air come out of his nose in the car that felt warm anyway that his one eyelid was fluttering a bit. He couldn't see through the scratchied up plexiglass very well but he could read that it was two something, or after two anyway. It wouldn't be so late, if he didn't have a paper to finish. He decided to watch the roof of the cab for the rest of the ride home, but he did turn to see traffic lights pass from time to time. The driver was saying something about having trouble with his daughter getting into a block of ground beef they kept in the freezer that should have lasted them a month but it was hard to hear what he was saying, you know, because there were only those little holes punched in the plexiglass and the other half of the sound coming though the usual clean silver grid'ed speaker, but there was something wrong with the speaker and he had the radio on anyway.
The cab stopped just when Maxwell was starting to remember something about strawberry ice cream. It seemed hard to see and he wasn't sure if it was the cold or the cab or the time but he reached into his pocket for the fare. The driver got out of the car. He walked around and opened Maxwell's door for him. "No," he said, "You're friends paid, maybe you don't remember but they did. Nice of them to see you off. Not every night I see that. Watch your step getting out it's sort of icy out here, you know. May slip."
Maxwell pushed a few bills into the driver's jacket pocket as he got out and slowly stood up. He was looking at the front of his apartment, and there was someone standing in the doorway. He shook the driver's hand, said good luck, and started walking. In that town at that time there were 'steps neighborhoods' and 'ramp neighborhoods.' And Maxwell had a winding wooden ramp that led up to his front door. It took him a minute or two to get to the door, and there was Jan. He could see she was squinting at him, but he couldn't see past that. Diagnostic, insightful and disapproving, cold, dark, late, day dreaming, or maybe it wasn't so clear to her either. She stepped out of the way and let him walk in. As he walked by he patted her on the head and she slapped his hand away.
"So," he said sitting down on a low kitchen counter, "How was the orange juice?"
"It was ok," she said. But he could see by her face, and the empty jug on the table, that it was at least a little better than 'ok.' "How'd it go tonight? You looks a little shaky," she said leaving and coming back a moment later with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Then she sat down on a low kitchen table.
"The people were nice… but,"
"One of those?"
"I don't know. I think I just need to get some sleep." He pulled his mittens off and stood up and walked over to the coat-tree and put the coat on the floor next to it, but the mittens he put on the little knobs, then he went back to the counter. When he held out his hand it looked like he'd spilled ink on it, but it wasn't ink.
"What's that from?" asked Jan.
"From this thing at these people's apartment. It was like this big stick just sticking out of the floor in their living room. I went over to see what it was, and like a magnet it jumped into my hand. I tried to put it down, but it just stuck. And I had to just carry it around with me during the night, as if it wasn't stuck to my hand. Then it kept sticking to other people, and we had to negotiate every time either one of us wanted to do anything. So this one time I tried to get it off, I remember because I was sitting on that red corduroy sofa you said you liked, and the more I pulled the more it started moving into my hand, until it was sticking right through my palm. And I said, 'I know this story,' so I stopped fussing with it. Beth even asked me if I wanted to keep it."
"What did you say?"
"I said I really wanted to but I knew she'd probably be so attached to it. I said she was crazy and begged her to get the thing off my arm, and she just looked at me."
"She just looked at you."
"Well, at first, then she went and got a glass of water and played with her dog."
"Right,"
"Yeah. I know."
"So how did you get it off?"
"They told me to sit in front of the speakers where there was music playing, and in a few minutes the thing just let go and stood there like it was listening to the music."
"Your eye lid's twitching, did you know that?"
"Yeah, I felt it in the cab."
She walked out of the room again and came back with a face cloth, took it over to the sink, let the water run to steaming hot and held the swatch under it for a bit, then brought it over to him, put it on the counter next to him, and went back to sitting on the table. "Heat might help."
"Right, right," he said, wrapping it around his sort of twisted hand. He looked at the wrap for a moment.
"Ready for bed?" she asked.
"Yeah, I feel like I could sleep for a month."
"How about five hours?" She said as she got up and went across to the hallway which lit up as she walked into it and then went into a room where she flipped a switch on.
"Sounds groovy," he said as he followed her through.
Attached to the bedroom was a sort of bathroom, and he went straight back for an abbreviated freshening up.
He stood in the doorway brushing his teeth and looking around the room. There were pillows and blankets all over the floor, with stuffed animals and paperback books and sketchpads here and there. There was a chessboard that had been knocked over a week ago, and the table was still on its side and the pieces were all unmoved on the floor. There were tubes of small sections of carpet from when they had thought about putting carpet down but hadn't gotten past the samples stage and hadn't even opened half the samples. Jan sat on the edge on the bed and let her feet dangle. Maxwell went back into the "bathroom" and semi-gargled and wet his face and turned off the light to the powder loo and then turned off the light to the bedroom. There were still a half a dozen very dim nightlights at various places around the room, so he could step over the books and pens and pawns and rooks. He walked up to the bed and stretched and blew on her bare feet, as she was still sitting on the edge, and then he crawled into the bottom bunk.
"Think your hand'll be ok?" she asked, as she slipped under an overstuffed comforter.
"I think I'm getting curious. Night."