You've Had Your Fun

Wake up in a bed with a red, red blanket.

Check the room.

Hotel?

No.

Nice--nice place.

The red blanket is soft.

The mirror across from you shows your hair properly mussed.

You had a nice time, but you didn’t overdo it.

Your eyes aren’t red.

Your breath tastes of gin and chocolate.

Your nails are getting long again, because you felt like quitting something, so you took down biting at them and you took up sleeping in the beds of strange men.

Not so strange.

A neighbor.

A man named…

Something Italian.

Better said with an accent.

You get out of bed.

You stand naked in a foreign room.

The foreign room of a foreign man, who, if you remember correctly, expressed to you last night that he will be in America for all of ten more days and he would like to see you again for all ten of them.

You are not a princess.

You feel for a crown and come back with only glitter from last night’s party.

Was it your birthday?

It was not your birthday, but you ordered a cake from the bakery downstairs.

The one run by the old man who doesn’t speak to his customers.

Some are turned off by it.

You enjoy the unforced transactions.

Money for a cake.

More money for something written with strawberry frosting.

A packet of glitter sold by the register, and you thought--

Why not?

Were you able to pay for all that without cutting into next month’s rent?

You don’t know.

How could you let so much slip through your short-term memory?

Out of the bed, and into the bathroom. It doesn’t look like a full bath. Could this be a guest bathroom? There’s no shower. Just a sink and a toilet. Is this man rich enough to have a bathroom without a bathtub in it?

Isn’t it strange how having less of something could make you think that someone might have more of something even better?

In this case, money.

Or in this case, one or two or five more bathrooms hidden throughout this apartment.

You’ve never set foot somewhere like this.

At the top of something.

You were always a below-the-ground floor kinda girl.

Third floor up was an improvement, and you’re proud of it, aren’t you?

But the only way you afforded it was by digging into the settlement money from the crash, and you had promised your mother you wouldn’t touch that unless it was an emergency.

Then again, who can spot an emergency these days?

Everything starts to look like an emergency when you’re waking up in the middle of the night with your bedroom window broken and several of your drawers upturned on the floor.

How did you sleep through that?

How could you sleep through that?

How is it that whoever broke in did everything a burglar does but steal anything?

And you sleeping in the bed the whole time.

Run the water in the sink.

Splash some on your face.

Rub off as much of last night’s make-up as you can.

Look for your clothes.

They’re not in the bedroom.

Just one show.

A high heel that pinches you so tightly you know when you put it on you only have an hour or two before it has to come off.

You must have known the night would end early, but why you knew that is anyone’s guess.

What is your last memory?

It’s of knocking on a door with no knob and no peephole and no way in.

So how are you here?

Where is here?

Your building?

The top of it?

Is that the puzzle the pieces create?

But there’s always one missing whenever you pull a stunt like this. Always something that leaves you feeling--not incomplete, but unfinished.

You’d rather be half done than short one piece, but that’s how it is.

How did you wind up in this bedroom with only one shoe on? Is that what you showed up in? The thought rides along the underside of your mind.

Touch your arms.

Your stomach.

Your lower back.

No bruises.

You had a feeling this was all on the up-and-up, as much as anything can be when the next day is so much a mystery, but you’ve woken up to that special kind of fire that sets off no alarms, and this isn’t it.

Anything that might have burned you has left no ash to signify its previous presence, and you find your honeycomb dress on the kitchen counter, along with your purse and your other shoe.

The kitchen is chrome.

It’s mirror to mirror but what reflects back are more mirrors.

Silver opportunities for food and coffee.

You don’t drink coffee, but you love the smell of it when it stays on past the morning.

Here there’s cooked meat and the ghost of a sizzle.

In the living room, the couch is dark brown leather with no pillows or comforts in sight.

See the hallway with more doors with no knobs and know that if you start walking that way, you’ll wind up lost until whoever lives here comes home and asks why you couldn’t take the hint.

Hold back from putting your shoes on just yet.

You’ve never had your bare feet on floors this cold.

Something gave you the impression a long time ago that poverty had you looking for warmth your whole life, while wealth didn’t require a fear of the chill.

People with resources aren’t afraid of emptiness.

Everything they have is kept just out of sight, but they always know it’s there, and so does everyone else.

You took a little extra of that settlement for old furniture and battered knick knacks and art you could cover the walls with that was unfocused and unnecessary, because you wanted to feel boxed in. A tight comfort. Something more than just snug and cozy.

The comfort of claustrophobia when you know that designing with absence would only remind you that the absence is not by design.

Put your shoes on.

Catch the view out of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looks down on--not out on--a city that’s seeing its eighth straight day of record-high air pollution. The candy carbon so bad you think you’re in a paused inferno. A hell that’s made its way up to heaven.

Better to go down where you know what’s what.

You’ve already made it three floors up, and soon, it’ll be four.

Then more.

But for now, you got a look at the top, and you know that it’s all about sinks and red blankets, but no way to wash yourself and nothing to jog your recollections.

Push on the door and it’ll open. No knobs required.

Try to go even higher next time.

A penthouse maybe.

A rooftop.

A private plan.

So high you’ll never be able to go back down.

Don’t make any plans just yet though, or you’ll be all plans and planning and no stepping stones. No next motion. No progress.

That’s how a girl can forget her own birthday.

Once you’re out in the hallway, wait quietly for the elevator, and when it opens, and a man steps out who looks familiar, resist the urge to meet his eye.

You’re leaving and he knows you’re leaving and there’s no need to say something clever, like ask why he didn’t offer to get you a coffee like the one he’s holding in his hand.

Don’t make him squirm just because you can.

After all--

You’ve had your fun.