Fantaise Artiste

Fantaise Artiste

short fiction by

Douglas Christian Larsen

She lies in bed long after the ceiling appears in the light of dawn. Her eyes, large and dark, stare at the gray ceiling, rarely blinking. Her face is pale and cold. Wind batters the apartment's one small window with a shuddering blast of dirty rain, but she does not acknowledge the cold and wet that wishes entry. She shifts to her side and stares beyond the window to the gray day birthing outside.

After many moments she pushes the blankets aside and climbs from bed, not looking at the ever-silent alarm cloc — - how long has it been since it has not sat quiet, unwound? She goes to the "kitchen" area to set the coffee machine alive. What is it, twenty steps from my bed to the kitchen? She hasn't fallen that far, counting the paces in her prison.

"Who are these silent pale people we call the dead?" she says aloud, for some reason misquoting Wilde, and smiles critically at the sound of her own voice. She lifts her pale hand to feel the icy glass of the window. Her fingers are lovely, slender and long.

"But I play the violin, and what does it matter what my fingers look like?" she says, and feels for a brief moment that she might wail. Her fingers? Lovely? More properly described, they are weak, skinny, scrawny, the fingers of a survivor of a concentration camp, or possibly someone who almost survived.

Moments later, in the shower — the tub is on the other side of the icebox and sink that comprises her kitchen, an old-fashioned tub with giant monster feet, with a plastic curtain that loops all the way about the tub — she stands with right arm across her breasts, hand resting between neck and shoulder, left hand gripping her anorectic-thin waist. The water is hot, soothing, loving upon the back of her neck. She could stay here forever. And as always, she stays many minutes more than her father would approve — many minutes more than the law proscribes. But her father is dead. And we're not under the law. And what a dumb thing to feel guilty about, she thinks, she feels, because I pay for this hot water and I have the right to enjoy it. This is the only part of the day when I feel like I know what happiness is. Still, the undeniable whisper of guilt is there, a thief, stealing away the heat from the water.

She dries and stands before the mirror in the "bathroom" — toilet on the other side of the tub, a tiny sink with an ancient oval of a mirror above. Brushes her teeth, teeth which are not pearly white but at least have no cavities. Moisturizes her face. Combs out the long dark hair that no man has put his fingers through in the last two years. Who am I kidding, she kids herself, her lips curling in a sneer, because no man has ever put his fingers through this hair, not in that way, not in the way she dreams about.

"Dance class at 10:00 a.m., lunch at noon, three hours at the café, then art class at the JC at 3:00 p.m., and finally my last three hours at the café," she litanies, checking the flesh beneath her eyes, seeing the lines there that should not be there until she has at least passed her thirtieth birthday.

Maybe I'll just go back to bed. Stay in bed. The whole day. Pull the clean sheets up around my neck and listen to the rain outside, and it won't be dirty rain, and I'll lie here and listen to the sound of the heater blowing. I won't go and see all the petty people. I'll lie here in bed and dream and maybe think over some things I haven't allowed myself to think about for all these years, and I'll pull out some memories that will hurt me and make me cry and I won't have to see anybody all day long.

She pulls her robe about her shoulders, walks to the kitchen, and pours herself coffee. She uses the cup which has been sitting in the sink rack for the last week — just rinse and dry, rinse and dry — but tomorrow, Friday, she'll get down a new cup, maybe the gold one. She sighs as she lifts the coffee to inhale its vapors. Good, strong coffee, dusky. Steam rises about her eyes and she smiles and then sips the coffee. A kind of happiness, she feels, but not like the hot water on the back of her neck first thing in the morning.

She takes her cup to the window and looks down at the streets. Buses lumbering seventeen floors below. Splashing water. Flickering headlights beaming through the gray day, it is now after 7:30 a.m., but when in this gray city don't we need our fake lights?

"You should get some curtains in here — and rugs," she laughs, quietly, amused at the fact that she's talking out loud to herself, but not looking away from the window and the gray world beyond. "If I ever did bring someone up here they'd think I wasn't feminine. What kind of female walks around on bare wood floors? Windows uncovered so that any old jerk can peek in — of course, only bricks have a line of sight to enjoy by matchless beauty!"

When she notices her reflection hovering above the streets of the city she retreats into the "bedroom" area of her loft "apartment" — actually it is one room in what had long ago been a commercial building, and now is one room the size of a normal person's den, or maybe a family room slash dining room — still, as cramped and dark as this place is, she loves it, it is like herself, cramped and dark. As far as prisons go, this one was quite lovable. She starts grabbing clothes, shedding her robe, yanking everything on with an economy of movements. Just get it over with as soon as possible, that's the ticket. What a hodge-podge, crazy dresser you are, she thinks, donning delicate bra and panties that in no way go together, a beige baggy blouse she must have bought from the gypsies, her favorite fuzzy cowl-neck sweater that's purple for goodness' sake, her tightest pair of white cords and a black corduroy blazer to cover all. She sits on the bed to pull on her knee-high black leather boots — the tight fit of the boots outside her jeans, the spike heels — they make her feel sexy, ripe.

"As if it matters," she says beneath her breath and nearly bursts into laughter. She laughs, because she has no idea whatsoever if all these colors go together, the beiges and browns and blacks and lavendars — what, is she crazy or something? But that's just another supposedly feminine talent she lacks.

If she's going to catch the long transit bus she'll have to hurry. She dons her black suede fedora hat — supposedly waterproof but it's already limping and sagging after a year of use, slips into her long black raincoat, grabs her purse and nylon bag with all its books and dance stuff, and then she slams the door behind her, throwing the two deadbolts with separate keys.

Soaked and shivering, she just makes the transit after a two-block dash. At least I didn't fall. She nearly laughs and makes the mistake of making eye contact with the gray man seated across from her — she didn't mean to smile, but that near laugh looked like a smile, and like a boa constrictor going after a rat, he smiles back at her.

"God is going to punish us for the porn houses," he assures her, nodding. He says it as if it is a secret message, just between the two of them. He is Moses, and she is an ignorant Hebrew, sticking straw into the mud. She should be grateful, she really should.

"Thank you," she tells him and returns to watching the buildings flash by. A derelict up the aisle vomits, and further on a baby howls in protest against the gray world and all the proofs of the devil, the porn houses, the daily rapes, all the whatnots and whatevers. She sighs and settles down to survive the ride downtown. Nothing big, nothing major — just the same old bungfruit.

She forgets herself and begins humming Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major, softly, with her soul. As in the shower, but not quite as nice, she can just settle here, go invisible, watch the gray world pass the windows, and allow her mind to float free. Go invisible and think deep thoughts, or hide from the thoughts and all the depressions. Whatever or whatnot, who cares, really, who cares after all is said and done?

At ninety-third she hops off the transit and luckily clears a puddle oily with acid — that can't be good on the clothes, now can it? She dashes through the rain into the dilapidated building where she will spend two hours a day, six days a week. Here, in dance, she can forget — but differently than in the shower, or at the window with her coffee, or invisible on the transit. Here, it is in sweat and the pain of stretching muscles where she can almost go free. She doesn't have to think or worry or concentrate. All the things. Whether her neighbor is going to kick through the wall to rape her, because that happens almost every day (well, to other people it happens, not to her, at least not yet, knock on wood, maybe her own wooden head). Or whether something grotesque is hanging out of her nose, or if an asteroid is going to hit and wipe out another city — if it does, please God, let it be this city, and let me be awake when it happens.

Do I believe in Him, that One that I pray to? Do I really believe He is there? That He can hear me, or chooses to hear me? It's not hip to believe in Him. And you have to feel stupid believing in Him, don't you? Because there's more proof of a devil than there is of God. But stop, the thinking, don't let it in, all those thoughts, just dance. He's there, you know He is, that's how come you can go on, because if He wasn't there, what would be the use? It would all be meaningless. Yes, He's there, so just don't think, just watch the gray world pass by the murky wet glass.

Twenty minutes of bopping to rock, the old stuff, followed by a fast and modern jazz, ten minutes to breathe and sip at water, aerobics for twenty minutes, and rest for a few minutes, and her remaining time to float in classical music, classical dance, usually Mozart, her own dear Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

At noon she hurries to a little vegetarian shack to wolf down lettuce and onions and banana peppers and mustard in a thick piece of shepherd's bread — and what does it matter, the onions, the peppers, because she has no one to kiss, the oil and vinegar. By thirty after the hour she is at the little café nestled almost safely between a private library and a laundry. When she enters the slow girl is cleaning the tables and looks up to smile, and they nod to each other, and then she looks to where the slow girl is pointing.

Some fool, sitting out on the terrace. No one sits there, except maybe for a week of calm Non-Greenhouse Time in July when there is no rain, or at least not much rain, but then there is the sun and it can sting. And this fool is sitting out there, in the constant storm, shielded from the acid rain by only one of the weather-bashed umbrellas and a silly old-fashioned Fedora hat, the real kind, not like my plastic fedora.

"Who's that?" she asks.

"Some weirdo, I think," the slow girl says, settling down on the table she is pretending to clean, her large breasts melting across the surface of the table. She looks as if she is about to pass out, just go stone-cold unconscious on the round table.

"What's he doing?"

"Dunno."

She peers through the foggy windows and sees a young man, maybe not that young, sitting in the rain, huddled over something, shielding whatever it is from the storm. Maybe it is a notebook, a pad of paper, or a hot tamale he doesn't want to get wet. But he appears to be writing, so it must be a diary or a shopping list or laundry list or a hit list, maybe he's a hitman. Some fool, writing in the storm.

"The guy's like a clock. Here every day. Kind of cute. Don't talk much. About eight or so, every day. Comes in. Scribbles in them notebooks — sometimes red notebooks, sometimes blue notebooks, always scribbling. He's usually gone by now. Don't know why he's still here," she moans, almost as if she is having a bad nightmare and babbling in her sleep, but then she says something very bizarre indeed: "Maybe you're supposed to meet him or something."

She looks at the slow girl. The slow girl's eyes are heavy lidded, probably on something, as usual, and she's half smiling, and her eyes roll up to meet the girl's, and she smiles and says: "Sometimes he sits over there by the fireplace, when the rain turns to ice, or when it snows. I don't know why he likes to sit by the fireplace, that smelly old thing. He's probably a creep on the New Welfare or something. Looks like a bum."

The girl begins setting the tables, serving water to those just coming in, then mops the beads of moisture off the inside of the windows with a mop. She pauses to consider the man sitting outside, the only customer crazy enough to sit outside. He has a broad back, she sees. Kind of strange, she thinks, not really thinking about him, not really wondering at all, just allowing her thoughts to go freeflow, that's all, but weird that he'd sit outside like that, like he's afraid of the people in here. What kind of man is that?

She moves to the other side of the café where she gains a new perspective on the man outside. A nice masculine nose, she sees, viewing him now in profile. Handsome, it looks like, he is, that's what kind of man is that. Rugged. Big guy. Thick eyebrows. Dark hair beneath that old hat. Big hands. Doesn't like people. Maybe he's like me, maybe he's like me, wouldn't that be weird, he's been coming here all this time, and we've just been missing each other, until today, because for some reason he has sat out there in the rain longer than usual, what is so special about today? Does he have plans? Is he meeting someone? Is this is birthday? What is going to happen today?

It strikes her how lonely that man in the rain looks, and she feels overwhelmingly sad. This surprises her, very much, this feeling, any feeling, really. It has gotten to where she doesn't feel much for anyone or anything these days, only the grayness, the constant misty grayness about everything. She has a sudden image of them sitting together, me and that man out there in the rain, and she can imagine them touching fingers, looking into each other's eyes — it is like a dream, or more, like a vision, she can see into his eyes, and he's saying something to her, but she can't make out his words, but she sees it in his eyes, the thing she has dreamed about seeing in a man's eyes, a man like this — and she nearly goes out into the weather to say something to him. But what can she say? He would probably look at her as if she's insane.

There's nothing special about today. Nothing is going to happen. Just coincidence that he stayed later and I met him. But why do I feel like I must go to him, right now? Just go out and say: "Stop! Here I am. Look, it's not hopeless, is it?"

He glances up, a split second as he squints into the storm, and she inhales, it's like they're looking at each other and for an instant she thinks he is looking inside of her, seeing deep down to the true person she really is, but then she realizes he cannot see within the glass, it is in mirror mode, he is only seeing a reflection of the weather in the glass, he cannot see her, cannot feel her, cannot know her — he looks like the Big Bad Wolf in her old childhood books, only not bad. And he is handsome with full lips and lean cheeks with cheekbones jutting out, and he looks like a tigerman writing in the rain in his notebooks — either a red one or a blue one. She finds herself smiling, which is surprising indeed. When is the last time she really smiled? The tigerman, the Big Bad Wolf, and she can easily think up a reason to go out there and say something to him.

...yes, go out there now . . . go . . . don't dawdle . . . just take this chance, i'll never ask anything else of you — if you believe in me at all, you'll listen to me now and go, please, don't wait, this is your only chance...

Stupid, she thinks, turning her back on the man out in the storm, turning her back on the still small voice in her being. This is a world of fear, not one of love. That is for the kiddy books, love and all that, and in the kiddy books the Big Bad Wolf is very bad, and the pigs kill him. Yes, this is a world of pigs, and that is the wolf out there in the rain, and how could I ever talk to him? Just allow the pigs to kill him, you can't do anything else, really, can you imagine him in your prison? Looking at your window without curtains, your beautiful view of the ancient bricks? Can you imagine that man understanding your color blindness, your fashion blindness? What can you ever say to him, you can't talk to him, what could you say to him, what possible excuse could you ever find to talk to that weird man sitting in the acid rain?

She can get him some coffee! Of course! Why else is she a waitress if not to attend to people and provide their coffee? But when she returns with the coffee pot and her coat over her head to dash into the storm she sees that he is already on the street, diminishing in the storm, hands deep within the pockets of his leather jacket, looking lonely, so lonely, she thinks. She watches him walk down the street, head bent forward, dark hair sticking out wet beneath the silly old Fedora. It's not too late, the still small voice seems to say, because you can run after him, your coat is already over your head.

She feels, suddenly, that she is in love with that unknown man out there in the rain. She smiles, an ethereal smile, putting the coffee back on the burner, returning her raincoat to the peg by the door, thinking, how silly to feel like you love someone you never even met. What a thing to think about, running after a strange man in the rain, what ideas you are having. Maybe you're supposed to meet him or something — why had the slow girl said that? Then again, there is a reason everyone thinks of her as the "slow girl." Silly, she thinks, but still, her skin rises in cool shivers. Gooseflesh. Her mom used to call this feeling someone walking over your grave. She watches him even when he is gone from her sight. There's tomorrow, right? Don't be dumb. But no way are you going to tempt fate tomorrow, you can go crazy doing that, I'm going to follow my schedule, because there is sanity in the things I do, it keeps me together, it does, and just stop thinking. Clean those tables over there, and get that man's order, and sweep the floor, sweep, don't think, don't worry about that still small voice you have not heard in such a long time, and it was quiet now, quieter than it used to be, but stop it, now...

...the rain fell in a ring about his face, but he didn't notice the big dirty drops oozing off his hat. He watched his boots and the water splashing away from his heavy steps. His hands were balled into fists within his pockets. His face, cold and wet, was numb, as was his entire being.

How do people feel, he wondered. Or do they, really, does anybody, he wondered. He searched his memory for some recollection, some stray thought of how it must have felt to have feelings — wow, a truly sensitive kind of guy, he thought, a sardonic grin crumpling his face into a balled fist. Failure. Coward. Loser. Capitulator. Defeatist. Wimp. Fool.

So. You are a coward. Isn't that true? Never would have guessed it, but should have known it, really. A coward. Isn't that how people describe people like you, guys who go this way? Yes. Me and this big yellow stripe I wear on my back beneath my jacket. His head was heavy, as if the rain were inside, not out here in the storm. The rain and the cold and gray were inside him. God, oh God, what a mess, why have You forsaken me? Or why did You let me forsake You? Would You have created this world? This gray world? Or if it once was Eden, how did You let it get to this place? And why am I here in this place? If I am a coward, You must have made me so. Programmed me for this route that I take today, on this special day.

If I believed in God, would I choose this path, this route? Of course not, but then again, how long has it been since I believed in Him? Are there people who still believe in Him? Are there people who can still feel? Feel anything at all? Idiots. But I am an idiot, right? I am the idiot. The fool hath said in his heart that there is no god. How do I still remember that stuff? Forget it. Stop thinking. But damn, he could never stop thinking, he could never close his mind, because it kept going, kept churning, and it wore him out, it wore him down, grinding him down like a knife on a never-ending wheel, burning the candle at both ends, burning brighter, brighter. Stop. This is the end. End. The end.

My cession. End. No epithet. No last notes. No great swan song nor swell of Mozart Requiem. Nothing. Like the grayness of the world. Gray. My life. Nothing ironic, not there, in my life. Just gray. No white. No black. Comme çi, comme ça.

Without need to check or look up he made a right turn down a little alley and then a left turn at its end. His eyebrows were low over his eyes, his hat pulled down low, too low, and anyone who saw him at that moment would have thought the moisture on his face was just rain, the red-rimmed eyes nothing more than another reaction to the acid that drizzled from the sky. His pale face was only a product of the sunless sky, correct?

But none were near to look, to notice, or wonder. No one was there to see.

He spoke something. Some garbled, self-pitying platitude. He jerked, thinking that someone had just spoken to him, then laughed when he saw that he was alone and it was only his own mouth that had spoken. Speaking to walls, isn't that what people like him did? Wander the streets chattering to themselves? He was alone. Then again, that was as it should be, because wasn't he a loner? Isn't this the life he had chosen for himself?

Thunder, far off, rumbled. At least there was life in the sky, electric, flashing light upon the world. The thunder echoed and rolled.

"That's a sound I like," the man said, then pulled his hat even lower over his eyes, his head sinking even deeper into his chest.

If anyone were close and looking at him they would have seen that he was weeping. But nobody was there.

His boots splashed and he felt nothing more than a lumbering automaton plodding through the wet gray world. He reached the stairs leading up to his modest flat and he started taking the steps, climbing slowly, then gaining speed —

— and suddenly he is moving swiftly, taking the steps with grace and ease, two at a time, three at a time, moving up the many steps in the power of a younger self, and he is nearly smiling as he reaches his door, leaping four steps at a time, humming one of those sad new songs that the boy plays on the piano, as he produces three keys to unlock his doors, and possibly there is sky above the rain and warmth beneath the cold —

— but by the time he has pulled back the third deadbolt and the door creaks open his smile is gone, because he is home, and this is where it will happen, my life, he thinks, it is a gray world, the absence of my life, this is no life, and the Russian said that without God everything is permissible, that Karamazov idiot, everything is okay to do even this thing, this terrible thing, and this is all it can be, what I've been moving toward since I became a man in this world. Since I became a coward in this world. Beaten down by society. Because no man is an island, but some are mud puddles. Did Ayn Rand really ever exist, or was she somebody's figment, like my figment, the dear figment I never met, my dream artist, my dancer, she of the piano fingers?

What a lot of nonsense Ayn Rand wrote. She must have been just another figment of the Machine, to keep people going. Stinking Machine. Trash, everything that came out of it was trash.

He stepped into the small apartment. He listened. Not a sound. He threw his jacket over the coat tree and kicked off his soggy boots. After he locked the door he went quickly to the fireplace and shut the damper. Hurried into the kitchen, opened the oven, blew out the little blue pilot, switched on the gas, and then stood there, looking about him, trying to make certain everything was how he wanted it to be. It was. Except, he could use some coffee, even if it were instant. He put some water in a kettle and set it on the stove — time enough and more than enough time for a cup of coffee before I leave this place for good.

...you don't have to, you know, because you haven't given me a chance, have you? in that deep place, you still yearn for me, don't you? today, you can have me, and the gifts i have ready to give you, real gifts, not figments, so don't do it, give me a chance, just hold off for one more day, go to the café tomorrow, stay late, just like you did today, just one more day? before you leave this place for good, follow my will, just one last time, for good, for good, for good...

For good. Did he even know what he was talking about any more?

In his bedroom he pulled a high-collar sweater from his closet and pushed his frozen feet into his favorite slippers. By the time he returned the smell of gas was strong, but his water was boiling and he made himself a cup of extra strong instant and went back into the tiny living room.

A voice was trying to get through to him, but he didn't believe in that stuff any more, because how could he? He sat in his black leather recliner and thumbed across his collection of favorite old authors, the Hugos and Goldmans, Dumas and Brontës, Irvings and Beagles.

It's Hemingway he wants to read now, but which one. The Sun Also Rises was always one of his favorites, but then again there is Moveable Feast, and there! Yes, fitting, so fitting, he seizes the posthumously published Islands in the Stream, considering his choice to be oddly appropriate.

He opens to the part where Hudson is lying on the beach, exhausted from sleepless days of pursuing the U-boat sailors, and he is dreaming of his first wife, looking back across the wasteland of many failed marriages, and seeing his three dead sons who are somehow alive once more, just dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, and maybe that's how it will be with me, he thinks lingeringly, but no, he knows how it is, how it really is, there's no coming back, there's no second chances, when you make your choice you've made your choice, and that is what he has done, yes sir when your hand finds something to do, well by George do it with all your might! It's too late now, to late for me now, even though that voice is still trying to get through, but fainter now, faintly, faintly flows the dreams, lying on the beach, on the warm sand, I'm just dreaming, sweetly dreaming, sweet dreams...

And maybe he is Hudson, right now, dreaming, maybe he's not here in this modest flat sitting in his black leather recliner and maybe he is lying on the beach thinking about his lost life and his lost chances and he knows the coffee is getting cold but for some reason he has no strength to reach out and take it, the cup of coffee, his throat is strangely dry, and he could use that coffee, but this weakness, what is it, where am I, but no, he is not dreaming, but no, but no, because he hears the boy downstairs playing the piano — what a good kid, that boy, the man thinks, sad, but I should have said something to him, I should have talked to him, because I always sensed he is like me, or is it I am like you, no, he is, he is, what am I thinking, asleep, I'm dreaming, said something to him, we never talked, but it was written in the stars, no choice in the matter I have no choice, talk to him, predestination, across time, across space, sheesh I'm dreaming about saying something to the boy, but no, that would be mean, it's best this way. Sighing, heavy, so heavy now, he listens to the boy playing the piano...

...the boy is playing Fantaise Artiste from the Frances Joan opera, the comedy wherein a lonely man seeks his woman of dreams, ever destined to meet ambitious airheads and those already eaten by the grayness. The empty ones, the gray ones. The boy knows that the artist upstairs likes such things. He thinks about the man upstairs and feels a wave of what might be love flow through him, because the man upstairs is his hero, a rugged individualist so at odds with this society, a man larger than life, like no one he has ever met, because there is no one like the writer in the world, not any longer...

...go up there, right now, he thinks, go up and talk to him, don't go to work tonight, no, go up there, have a cup of joe with him, right now...

His fingers, pale and long, caress the old stained keys. He has his eyes turned to the window and the clouds there, then lifts his hands away from the piano. He wonders if the man has been listening. Fantaise is more than fantasy, it is a dream come to life. The man often turns off his classical discs when the boy plays the piano. He has often desired to meet and talk to the man, about his writings which are pointless in this world and yet ideally artistic, beautiful, unlike the images the Machine produces, where and when the brain channel waves do all the work for you, and you do none of the work — and the man still reads the old-time authors too, the kind in skin bindings with the thin slices of the old-time trees — amazing, when you thought about it, what the world used to be like. The boy actually read one the writer's books on the E-vid and did not understand hardly a word, but still, he sensed something, didn't he? He has always desired to talk to the writer about it, and the other books.

And somehow the man upstairs is like that, a product of a previous time, a previous, older strength; a previous, older breath. The boy has fantasized about talking with the man, his secret mentor, discussing books and music and thoughts and politics and all that interesting stuff, but he has never been brave enough to approach the man — maybe tonight he will, finally, go upstairs and knock on his door. But right now he is late to his Uni-State job. He is a clerk in the Education-Req Division, but it is only a job assigned to him, he could have taken it or left it or at any time he can take it or leave it. What he really wants to do is play his music, but why play music which will never come close to anything as intricate and perfect as what the Machine produces? Even Fantaise Artiste was forgotten today, no one played it any more, no one stroked it, there was no love for such amazing works of spirit; no one believed in true love...

The boy pulls on his raincoat and exits into the gray world, locking his door with four separate keys. Going down the steps he promises he will visit the writer tonight. You have to take chances in this gray world, he thinks, and I vow that I'm finally going to talk to him, tonight. I say yes to the voice in my head, that still small voice, but not now, I have other things to do, the important things. My fun can wait. Just a little while, only a matter of hours.

But late that night on returning with a paper carafe of coffee the boy perceives a chemical smell — or a gaseous scent — outside the man's apartment. He finally knocks on the writer's door, but nobody comes, and after resting his head against the old wooden door for who knows how long, breathing in the gas, maybe he'll stay here forever, breathing in the writer's solution, but no, he must return to his music, and when he finally leaves he notifies a passing patrol about what he thinks has happened upstairs, then retreats to his own small apartment, his own modest lair.

He would never follow. The writer was a coward. But what could the boy believe in this world? What was left to hope in? There was no hope. He'd play his music, for a while longer, he could play his music, and distantly know what happiness might be.

He sits at the piano and places his fingers tenderly, lovingly upon the keys, but he cannot think of what to play. Somehow, it seems inappropriate. He should have skipped his job tonight, he thinks, he should have gone upstairs instead, or last night, or any of the two years before since he first saw the writer. My mentor. My dear mentor, I love you. And will I follow your path, your route, as well? Would we meet over there? I wish I could have asked you about those things. But maybe tomorrow. But no, there is no tomorrow, is there?

* * *

She lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. Colors seem to swirl across the once-gray ceiling. A smile, a new thing inside her, warms her face, bubbling up all about her. What is this thing inside of me, is it hope? Isn't that impossible, though, that I have hope? Her eyes, slightly moist, crinkling at the corners, smile with her being. Tonight, before coming home, she purchased new curtains for the one window, and they add a certain touch to her home, yes, her home not her prison, and a bright throw rug for the floor at the foot of her bed. It is bright red with sparks of blue through it, her fine and cozy throw rug on the floor.

And tomorrow — tomorrow, she can hardly wait for it to come, because she has decided, daringly, that she will skip most of her appointments tomorrow and visit the café a few hours early. She will be bold, she promises, because this life might not be much, but I saw something today when I dreamed about looking into his eyes, and I felt something — no, I FEEL something, when I see his lips moving, in my imagination. What will he say to me?

I feel. I can still feel.

And it feels wonderful.