Bobby's Corner

Before you ask, yes, I live in the corner. Don’t you go judging me now, corners are prime real estate, thank you very much. They offer privacy, a good vantage point, and one wall at your back, so no one sneaks up on you. For a spider, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Hello, my name’s Bobby. Yes, that’s right, I said Bobby. You think spiders don’t have names? Of course we do. It floated to me unexpectedly one night while I was dangling upside down, which is when all the best ideas arrive.

I share my park side apartment with Ronald. Technically, I have to assume he believes it’s his apartment, but I like to think of it as ours. I have the corner and he has everything else. He’s an older man, a bachelor, the sort of man who buys his socks in bulk and talks to the pot of beans while it boils and he stirs it.

He wasn’t always like this. I know that because he tells himself stories while pacing the living room. Always the same old stories full of long ago Barcelona nights and women with exotic names. But those days are all well behind him now.

His life has the reliable rhythm of a pendulum. He wakes up at seven, coffee at three minutes past seven, online newspaper reading begins at seven-fifteen. And that is when the complaints begin like clock work. I like the routine. There’s comfort in his consistency.

For weeks I’ve built my webs in secret, slipping through the shadows at night, making sure never to draw his attention. In my experience, I have learned the hard way that humans don’t appreciate the artistry of web building. Destroying one is the greatest insult they can inflict. It says: “Your painstaking hours of mastery of your craft means nothing to me.” And since I like Ronald, well, I sort of pity him, maybe, but also like him, I’d rather not be insulted by him.

So I spun in silence, keeping to my corner. Watching for him, listening, and never interfering. Until the fateful night everything changed.

It was late, a little past midnight. Ronald was on his second glass of bourbon and staring at the guitar in the corner, a dusty relic of a younger self. His eyes were wet in the way that comes not from drink, but from memories that weigh more than the moment can bear. He whispered something about missing someone, then turned his gaze upward, toward me.

All 10 of our eyes met. He has two, so you do the math.

I froze. A spider can hold still for hours, but this was different. He was actually looking at me. Not past me, not through me, but at me.

And then he spoke.

“You there. Have you been watching me? You can see me?”

I nearly fell off my web.

Humans don’t talk to spiders. They shriek at us, squash us, or, in rare cases, trap us in a glass and toss us outside like dangerous criminals. But never this. No human has ever asked me a question, as if I existed in any capacity.

“Yes,” I blurted out, before reason could stop me. My voice was thin but clear, like a violin string plucked in the dark. “I can see you.”

Ronald blinked, then he stared at the bourbon in his hand. “Well,” he said, “that settles it. I’ve officially gone completely mad. Oh God, I’m going to end up in the funny farm!”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “Though I admit the bourbon you are drinking smells like it could cloud someone’s mind. It appears to pair excellently with your nightly brooding.”

He laughed. He actually laughed. An almost hoarse, surprised sound, like it felt out of place coming out him. “You’re a smart ass, aren’t you, you little thing.”

“Smart ass? Please. I’m witty. Occasionally philosophical. But I’ll settle for being labeled as cheeky if it comes with a pinch of respect.”

Ronald rubbed his eyes. “I’m talking to a spider.”

“And I’m talking to a man whose wardrobe consists entirely of beige sweaters, who wears bad colognes from the 90’s. Life is stranger than fiction.”

That was how it began.

After that night, we became companions, of a sort. I wouldn’t say friends, we weren’t sharing toothbrushes by any means, but there was a kinship, a thread between us as real as any web.

We talked in the quiet hours. He confessed things to me he hadn’t told anyone. The woman he almost married, the friend he let drift away, the songs he never wrote but still heard the lyrics perfectly in his head. His regrets piled like unopened letters.

And me? I gave him the wisdom of a creature who builds every night knowing it might be gone by morning. “A web can be destroyed in an instant,” I told him. “But that doesn’t make it any less worth weaving. And every web leaves a lasting imprint in you. You never forget the patterns. That’s why we never miss a chance to build them.”

He grew quiet at that, staring at the guitar. Finally he said sullenly, “You sound like her.”

“Her who?”

“Cecilia. She always said things like that. She believed every risk was worth taking.” He shook his head. “I thought I had time. Turns out I didn’t. But you never know that sort of thing until it’s too late.”

I let the silence sit, the way spiders do. We know the value of stillness.

“Tell me something, Bobby,” he said after a while. “What do you get out of all this? Talking to me?”

“Entertainment, mostly. You’re more interesting than the flies. And, I suppose I like keeping you company. Loneliness is heavy. Not just for you, but for me too. My cousins infest your next door neighbor’s ficus, but they’re pretty lousy as conversationalists.”

Ronald chuckled. “A spider feels sorry for me. That’s a new low I never expected to scratch the surface of.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I said I like you. Pity is just a side effect.”

He raised his glass in a toast. “To pity, then.”

“To pity,” I said, bowing my legs. “And beige sweaters that smell of Drakkar Noir cologne.”

Our talks continued, and became a habit. He read the online news aloud so I could share in his daily bouts of outrage. I critiqued his cooking. “Less salt, Ronald, you’re not embalming yourself.” He sang to me once, quietly, a half remembered song in Spanish that cracked on the high notes but carried all the ache of youthful emotion. He said he learned it from his mother who would sing it around the house.

I told him about webs, about the way every strand vibrates and hums with the faintest tremor. “It’s like holding the world’s nerves in your hands,” I said. “You feel everything. Every fly, every breeze. It’s exhausting, but it means as long as you are doing what you were made to do, you’re never truly alone. You are always connected. Though you’re not always sure what you’re connected to, or what for.”

“I used to feel like that when I played my guitar,” he said softly. “Like I was holding the world’s feelings and thoughts in the palm of my hand. But I stopped when people stopped listening.”

“Then play for yourself,” I said. “The world doesn’t always deserve to hear. But that doesn’t mean the song shouldn’t exist. Every muse yearns to be seen, and every song longs to be sung.”

He didn’t reply, but the next night, he tuned the guitar. The strings wailed with the strain of old age, but he strummed anyway. It was clumsy, yet beautiful.

Does this story end happily? Not exactly. Life is never that tidy. Webs don’t last forever. Neither do spiders, or men.

But for a while, for a brief, shimmering while, he saw me, and I saw him. Two lonely creatures in a small apartment, sharing the fragile gift of recognition.

If you can take anything from this, I suppose it’s just to say that if you ever spot a spider in your corner, don’t be so quick to squash him. Maybe he’s watching you. Maybe he understands.

And maybe, just maybe, he’s waiting for you to ask the question that changed everything.

“You can see me?”