Hot Apartment

Her eyes burst open. Her pupils grow in the dark. Beads, no pools, of sweat were sitting in reservoirs above her brows. Her cheeks are red, her neck is red, her chest is red. Her sheets are on the floor.

She turns towards her nightstand and reaches for a glass of water. She downs it so fast it is as if she opened her throat like a pelican. She sets the empty glass back on the table. She sifts her ass around a wet stain on the bed. She shimmies towards the end of the bed, sets her feet on the carpet, and pushes her weight off the bed and onto her feet. She walks towards a small AC box, stops right before it, bends down so her eyes match the level of a dial, and frowns. She places her fingers around the dial and twists, but the dial does not move. She sighs, turns back towards the bed, picks up a cellphone, and walks out of the room with the bed into a hallway.

In the hallway, she turns on a flashlight from the phone. She waves this light around as she drags her feet across the wooden floor. Squeaks projected from the floor as the friction between the wood and her bare foot mixes with sweat.

She arrives in the kitchen. She walks around a marble counter to stand in front of some off white cabinets. She switches the phone and flashlight to her left hand, and her right hand grasps for the nob—she pulls the cabinet door open. A wall of tall glasses glare in the light of her phone. She reaches for a glass and brings it to her kitchen sink where she fills it with water. Without moving from the sink, she sets the phone down and gulps this glass just like the last. She refills it, and redrinks half of it. She picks up the phone, turns around, sets the phone and the half empty glass on the marble counter. Her hands raise and then slam on the counter. The hands push across the counter and her body follows. She rests her left cheek against the counter and looks into the glass. Two minutes pass.

She rises from her place on the counter. Droplets of sweat rest around her former silhouette. She clutches the phone and waves the flashlight across the floor as she crosses another room. She grazes her fingers on the room’s furniture as she passes: a couch, a chair, a bookshelf. Next to the bookshelf, she sets the phone on a sidetable. Next to the sidetable, she pulls on a glass sliding door. It opens with a crunch. She stumbles out the door onto a balcony.

The air outside is hot, wet, and thick. She takes a deep breath as she presses her body against the guard rail on the edge of the balcony. Her eyes fixate on the city’s skyline and she drops her arms over the guard rail. She stands for minutes.

She paces. She returns to the railing. She drops her arms over the guard rail. She presses her arms closer to her body through the rail. Indented lines grow on the inside of her forearms as she presses harder. She slowly shifts her arms up and down the guardrail as she continues to apply pressure. Streaks of sweat are left behind as she removes her arms from the rail. She walks away from the rail and towards a pack of cigarettes resting on an outdoor table.

She picks up the pack and pulls out a cigarette. She rolls it between her thumb and index finger. She reaches for the lighter laying next to the cigarettes and fiddles with the sparkwheel. A flame appears, and she brings the cigarette up to her mouth while she drags the lighter to the end of the cigarette.

She inhales. She keeps inhaling. She inhales for seven seconds. She coughs as smoke explodes from her mouth. She leans over the guardrail and spits. The spit falls five stories. Then vomit falls five stories. She coughs and heaves leaning over the guard rail, holding the cigarette between her left handed fingers.

Her arms, tucked in against her chest as she spews off the balcony, push out, positioning her body upright. She wipes her mouth with the back of her right hand, ashes the cigarette in her left hand against the metal guard rail, and tosses it off the balcony. She shifts her hips and turns around.

She walks back towards the glass sliding door. This door leads her to the room with the couch, chair, and bookshelf. She grabs the phone on the sidetable before taking a seat on the couch and fanning her face with her hand. She drops her hand to spread against the seat. Her body folds inwards towards itself; her forearms hit the seat of the couch, the skin of her stomach touches the skin of her stomach, her torso tilts to her right, and her head hits the arm of the couch. Her eyelids, coated in sweat, flutter shut. Then they squeeze shut. She lays on the couch with her eyes squeezed shut for a while.

Assuming her goal was to sleep, the squeezing failed. After about seven minutes, her eyes slowly open again. She side eyes the ground, then the ceiling. Her eyes roll to the back of her head before she pushes herself back up to a seated position on the couch. She looks to her left, then right, then left again before her eyes fixate on a TV remote. Her fingers suffocate the remote as she firmly presses the power button with her thumb. There appears to only be cable on this television. She selects CBS, but she only watches this channel for a minute. She flips to Cartoon Network, but she only watches this channel for a minute before turning the TV off.

She stands again, phone in hand, waving the flashlight against the dark. She walks back into the kitchen and stands in front of the freezer. She sets the phone down, opens the freezer door, and pulls out a fifth of gin. Her face withers as she drinks straight from the bottle, about three shots worth. She retires the bottle to the counter without putting the cap on and power walks around the counter and out of the kitchen. The phone and the flashlight rest on the counter.

She walks down the hallway that leads to the room with the bed. She makes a pitstop into a room with a toilet and shower that offshoots this hallway. She turns the cold shower dial up and climbs into the tub. She sits, facing the shower head. She keeps sitting and staring at the opposite wall without washing her hair, face, or body. She sits for about six minutes before stumbling to a stand. She walks out of the shower, applies a bath towel around her body, and walks out of this room back into the hallway.

She follows the hallway into the room with the bed. She falls backwards into the bed and lets the towel slide off her body. She curls into a ‘C’ shape and shuts her eyes.