Open Windows

8pm.

I get up. I make coffee. I sit at my small, wooden, table

I stare out the window that overlooks Downtown LA.

I can see the streetlights and the car lights and the lights illuminated from the office building. I can see people walking around. I often wonder what they talk about. What they think about. I write it down. These imagined conversations. I write them down with the hope that the dialogue turns into something bigger. Something more in-depth. A story worth telling.

9pm.

I am at the same wooden table. I am typing on my typewriter. It is old but it is good. Like me. Every once in a while, I look up and stare at the woman across from my building. She has been my muse for months now. She is currently walking around her apartment in a silk robe. She is drinking a glass of white wine. Every once in a while she sits and watches television. But mostly she paces, and drinks, and checks her phone every six seconds. I wonder what it is she wants. In the months I have been watching her, I have never seen another person there. So, I wonder who she checks her phone for. A boy, a girl, a parent, a job. I write it down. I write everything down. I imagine what it is she desires most. What it is she is waiting for. What it is she downs glass after glass of wine for.

10pm.

The woman is asleep. I type and gaze at the length of her body. The curve of her neck. I wonder how she would react if she knew she was being watched. I often question the choice of others to leave their windows open. Do they know that they’re inviting in the unknown? Do they know that their most intimate actions are on parade? That the things they do in secret, are no longer secret? Or maybe that’s the point. Maybe some people get off on living their life in public. Of knowing that someone else is watching. Witnessing. Being a witness to their otherwise mediocre existence. I can see how that would be enticing. To know that someone else knows who you are, or at least that you’re alive.

11pm

She has woken up. I watch as she leans her head over the couch and throws up all over her expensive-looking white carpet. I watch as she holds her head in her hands. As she wipes snot and tears from her face. I watch her get up and disappear into a hallway. She returns with paper towels and a vacuum. I watch her clean her mess. She doesn’t seem to notice that she has gotten some vomit on her robe. Her apartment is decorated with the cliché items of someone who thinks they are an intellectual. Portraits of abstract pencil drawings that look like the works of a kindergartner; lamps covered with scarves; books piled on the floor that I’m fairly certain she has never read. I have never seen her read. Pictures of who I’m assuming are photos of family and friends, can be seen at the edge of the hallway. I often wonder what they look like. What kind of people would be friends with her. Are they old friends or current? How long have her and her oldest friend known each other? Is she someone who can keep friends or does she swap them out like milk that has gone bad? Or is she the one that people cannot stand? Doe she cling to them with the hope that someone will eventually stick around? I write all of this down. All the hypotheticals. All the characters. All the different timelines of possibilities and the kind of person she could be.

12am

For the past hour she has gone between picking up her phone and calling someone and then hanging up immediately. She stares at her phone for several moments and then does it again. Between phone call attempts, she stares at the wall. Of all the nights I have watched her, this is the most fascinating. Most of the time she has a routine. She usually comes home around 8:30. A business satchel in one hand and a purse in the other. She dresses like an executive, adorned in earth colored pant suits. She comes home agitated, usually tossing her bags on the floor and immediately stripping off her blouse and bra to change into her silk robe. She doesn’t eat. She nibbles. She nibbles on crackers and avocados and bits of lettuce. She is like a rabbit. But she gorges herself on wine. On the weekends she is out later. She arrives around 1or 2am. She is usually stumbling inside, wearing tight skirts and halter tops and ridiculously high heels. She throws off her shoes and collapses in her comfy chair near the couch. The couch she barely uses. She leans her head back, smiling and I always desperately want to know what she’s thinking. What she did. Who she saw. What makes her smile. Was it the night she had? Is it just that she’s drunk? What. Is. It. I write furiously on these nights. I write all the things that she could be thinking, all the things she could have done, all the people she could have seen and kissed and danced with and ate with and had conversations with and shared dreams with.

But now.

Now she stares at the wall.

She stares at her phone.

She picks it up.

She dials.

She hangs up.

And I write.

I write.

I write.

1am

It is time for me to eat. I know I should leave my desk. Go outside. Before it’s too late. It never goes well if I don’t eat.

But I can’t take my eyes off her.

She isn’t doing anything.

She is just sitting and staring.

She’s even stopped looking at her phone.

What does she see on the walls?

What does she see in her head?

Or is she asleep with her eyes open?

Her phone rings.

I can hear it from where I am.

She jumps and stares at it.

Her face glows with a radiance I have never seen from her.

She answers it and goes into the hallway.

I bang my fist against the desk.

I want to hear.

Need to hear.

Need to at least see.

1:30am

I am at her window.

I can hear her voice from her hallway.

I have my pen and notepad and I am writing furiously.

She sounds happy.

Relieved.

She wants to know why the person on the other line took so long.

My skin begins to burn.

It is a summer night in June and the light is already breaking through the sky.

There is a man passed out near the dumpster below me.

I drop down to him.

I gorge myself.

8pm the next day.

I sit at my table. I drink my coffee. I stare out the window.

There is a man next to her.

He has his arm around her watching the television.

She is looking at him.

This is a man who is only in it for the short term.

I can tell by the way he looks. The way he sits next to her. The way his arm lays lazily against her. As if he’s only half trying.

I imagine all the ways he’ll give her crumbs to keep her satisfied.

I imagine how she’ll stay home on the weekends waiting for him to show up, waiting for him to call.

I imagine how it will all go down.

And what she’ll do when she finally realizes that he never meant to stick around.

And so I write.

And I write.

And I write.