ten- Nothingness (part one)

“One flight down, there’s a song on low…”

Chloe sits on her balcony, sipping warm green tea.  The clean air of downtown Portland carries, from the floor below, Norah Jones playing on a small stereo near an open bedroom window.  She can barely make out voices.  Two men live beneath her.  She always thought they were roommates.  The flirty lightness in their sing-along and the small shallow giggling implies intimacy in isolation.  The lights off, the doors closed, surrounded by slow jazzy serenading; it’s easy to imagine nothing exists on the other side of your open window.

With every sip her tea loses its warmth; a peevish phenomenon that would normally send her flying to the microwave.  She sits back on her wrought-iron chair.  She swallows the rest of the cold tea and trades it for a cell phone sleeping atop the wrought-iron table.  She thumbs it awake and reads, again, the telling text message that had her grasping for air on the balcony minutes earlier.

“and your mind just picked up on the sound… now you know, you’re wrong…”

Inside her apartment she hears the intercom buzzing.  Chloe knows who it is.  She walks to the screen on her wall and sees Nick’s head, distorted and disproportioned by the fishbowl view of the surveillance camera.  She sighs that he still looks cute, charmingly and interestingly.  She holds down the button and watches him smile as he enters.

“because it drifts like smoke…”

“I left my phone on your bed.”  Nick grins from the other side of Chloe’s front door.  Chloe reaches out to him, the phone flat on her shaking palm.  The look she gives is akin to the one she gave when he left: underhanded, proud, ‘I knew you’d come back’.  Nick doesn’t notice the limpness of her upper lip, her trembling hand, the tear tracks freshly laid on her high cheekbones.  He takes the phone, running his thumb along the length of her hand, wrist to nail.

“Thanks.”  He turns away towards the elevator then stops and looks back.

“Lunch tomorrow?  How ‘bout The Original?”  Chloe shakes her head, feigning a playful sour face.  She remembers weeks earlier with Henry.

“Ok.  How ‘bout Rock Bottom on Morrison?”  She nods approvingly.  Nick, content, steps into the elevator.  Chloe closes the door before he can turn around.

“and it’s been there, playing all along…”

Her back against the tall matte-black door, she slides down to the shining hardwood.  Her knees holding up her elbows, her elbows holding up her hands, her hands holding up her heavy head, she can’t stop thinking about the text.  She can’t help but feel confused, injured, and afraid.

“now you know…”

When she closes her eyes she can see the small square screen illuminated white.  It was a text from a girl named Audrey.

“Nick I need to speak 2 U about Henry.  Meet me @ my aprtmnt.”

“now you know…”

photo1:http://www.flickr.com/photos/congaman/ / CC BY 2.0
photo2:http://www.flickr.com/photos/benny_lin/ / CC BY 2.0