stoop

I sat on the stone steps, rigid and cold. The precision of the night was photographic; a carefully wrought, richly detailed print. This night-image hung inky and low under a stucco arch, the arch stretching above me, above our entryway, like a caravan's canvas roof. It was here that I often obliged myself with a habitual smoke. And here I was: under a snake-bellied archway, itself murky and gray, and set before a city's scattered fire of far-off lights. Beside the crouching city-hill was a dark pool of bay, a hint of pale moon, and shadows of vessels unnamed. The whole thing was so wonderfully composed, carefully focused, well-framed and soothing.

The opening of this archway lay about five feet in front of my knees; that is, I could see straight ahead rather well through the end of this anteroom tunnel, but to either side, in the alley running perpendicular to our door, I could see nothing. And in turn I was hidden from view, perched in front of my house in this stone vestibule. Aligned as such I inhaled my miniature deaths, observing future travels, things far-off, and intrigues non-immediate.

So it was that the new neighbor, by all shadow-accounts a sensually lithe brunette (this last evident by the tight curls atop her shadow's billowy form, an unblonde attribute, at least in this town), remained entirely unseen, and blind to my self. In these nights of work-break repose, as I incrementally shed my mind-parcel's packing-straps, she often appeared (or, rather, approached) in the company of quiet winds and salt filled otter-barks. She abided by her inner patterns, pausing for a moment, then slowly turning the key-lock. A prolonged scrape-click. In coming, this was preceded by tantalizing footsteps, then her arrival, a second-long (perhaps two if she missed the key) shadow-play, her beauty jumping in and out of proportion, feeding my imagination. In her departures she was preceded only by the taste of smoke; her sudden sound at the door, the disengagement of doorknob steel, her alley-birth. Then the footsteps faded, until I couldn't discern between their individual patter and my own vivid memory.

Through these little encounters our relationship became solid, in a way. It was a relationship of potential. That I could simply shuffle down a couple of steps, and extend a hello – this was overwhelming. That I could sit on the curb itself during my puffing, so that an inevitable dialogue ensued – this was fascinating. Of course, these were both impossible branches of the tree, that is, they never occurred. But the fact that I imagined these branches, this made me shiver, made me smile, or made me swoon, depending on what I had eaten.

Tonight I sat in silence; the cigarette dangling unlit from my lips.

She would surface into my nightscape. This had been foretold, as I closed my own door, as I sat down; it was written in every move that I made. Just like the parrots in the park. Washington Square Park, that unlikely place for exotic birds, and the tattered bum that had summoned them. One day, sandwich in hand, the man whispered to me, "look at the parrots," and I looked up at the conspicuous birds, hundreds of them, bright green clusters of feathers in a tree. The air was in that moment filled with deafening squawks. Were they there before he mentioned them? Had I simply filtered them out? The parrots became my lunchtime distraction. A week later, the same man stood beneath the tree, arms in the air, and shouted, "I see you, my parrots, I see you." At this name-call they were completely actualized, no longer confined to illusion. They rose, en masse, from the tree, hundreds of birds darkening the sky, hovering over the park, and then they flew off to the horizon of their freedom. I never saw them again.

At my thought of the birds, of the mystical bum, of the things that had been and the things that would come, of all the fanciful truth in between, I heard a soft patter. This was her hall-walk, much subtler than her alley-step. In a second, the lock-click, in another, the door swing. The angle of her body, this time, prevented any shadow, but she cleared her throat and she closed the door, or she emulated the sound of a closing door, or I cleared my throat and she shut my eyes, or she left the door behind, swaying in the breeze. An instant later she was heading down the alley, away from my door, from my three sided room, always away. And I lit the smoke, inhaled destructed perfume, and enjoyed the night sky. After the cigarette breathed its last sigh I slowly stood up to return to my desk, to its small cone of light. And I carried with me the memory of her smile, her full lips, and her eyes, eyes that were, and always would be, only for me.