Vladimir Nabokov in Bed
He lays there, his legs like logs, charged and heavy, like a box too big to be of any help with moving the library. He has taken a sleeping pill, but that does nothing for his mind, only making his body feel detached and flat, like a ream of paper. He had spent the day pitying himself. His wife pitied him too, but she is beautiful and a work of art. She is in all manner a beautiful matter.
He pities himself further, knowing when he dies he will be killing her too, taking her with him, leaving nothing but the paper and sweaters and pairs of pants, all folded carefully and kept in the closet.
Calling Home
I live in this room that I call home. I do not have a landline, so I can never really call home. No one would pick up if I did, and if someone did, I wouldn’t want to go home anyway, out of fear of who was there.
Once a week I call my old home, the one where I grew up, where the people I’ve known the longest live with each other.
Once a week I spend an hour clouding up my heart, my home.
Affections Gone Awry
Apt 2B
I had told him I loved him right before he had cut his hand while making dinner. It was a deep cut, and he yelped, frantically asking me where I kept the towels. I quickly ran to my towel drawer, and pulled one out, not a white one though, and handed it to him. He was making sounds like he was slurping spaghetti through tight lips.
I can already see blood blossom out from the towel. I had wished I had handed him my red kitchen towel but it was already dirty and in the laundry hamper, making my already dirty clothes smell like shrimp.
I asked him if he needed to go to the emergency room. He said he didn’t know.
I had always thought that you knew when something was an emergency or not, that it was something that didn’t need a name, just an action, a something you don’t normally have.
Apt 15B
The woman came back from the wedding with her name-card, some polaroids and cookies wrapped with a napkin in her purse. She had said little to anyone other than Oh, it was a lovely ceremony! and The Bride’s side. She hadn’t eaten her salmon, having had heard that it was bad for you, and she likes to take care of herself.
When she got home, she put her purse down on the kitchen table. She flipped through the mail. There was a letter from her sister, but she didn’t open it.
She walked into the living room where her husband sat watching some sort of investigation happening on TV. There were seven empty beer bottles sitting on the table in front of him. He looked at her and sniffed the snot back up into his nose.
“Oh, it was a lovely ceremony!” she said to him, glancing back to the direction of the bedroom.
Apt 9B
When I got home that night, he told me Mom had called and that she sounded nervous and concerned. You should probably call her soon, he said.
I had had a long day and just wanted to take a bath. But I picked up the phone instead.
“Hi, Mom? Tyler said you called.”
She told me how for the past two weeks, the migrant workers working on the house next door had been watching her. She said they watched her take her showers, towel off, watched her eat her breakfast in the breakfast nook. She said she once caught two of them jerking off in the bushes while she watched her shows.
She said she had told her neighbor, multiple times, but nothing was ever done about it. Should she call the police? Some other form of government?
I told her she was probably just imagining all that. Nobody could see into her bathroom on the second floor from the ground anyway. I told her to shut the blinds, if it made her feel better.
“Oh, you’re talking crazy! You know how I like the natural light!”
“No, Mom, you’re talking crazy. Now go shut the blinds and just shut up.”
I stayed on the phone in silence with her for the next 45 minutes before being the first to hang up.
Apt 7B
The baby wouldn’t stop crying so I put a pillow over it to muffle the sound and soon the crying stopped and so did the baby.
Apt 11B
The two of us live in apartment 11B. That’s one 1 for each of us, tied down to the second letter of the alphabet. 1 + 1 = b, where b = 2. This all seems so obvious to me, but people usually just say “11B” without any further comment. I always mention that B is the second story of the building, but the first one with residences. There is no apartment 11A.
This was meant to be our “starter” apartment. We’ve been here for eight years.
My husband often says “I’m a married man” and I like that he does, but often get concerned when he puts a “But” before it.
And after dinner we always retire to the living room where we each pull out books and begin reading. I usually put mine down first, and stare at him reading until a smile creeps over my lips and I begin to show some teeth.
He will always look up, put his own book down, and smile back, showing his own teeth to me.
And is there anything more frightening than two people sitting in a room, in silence, smiling at one another?
Two Misfortunes
i.
I could go as far to say that he acted foolish, but I won’t. I won’t say how stupid it was for him to think that he could get away with it, or how impossible it would be to even assume that no one was watching. I could say that there are things, yes, that I do that could be construed as foolish, but nothing I have ever done could possibly compare to what he did, the foolish thing, but that would be comparing apples to orangutans.
But he is foolish, always was, and now he has to deal with that fact and whatever life he has coming to him.
ii.
He took the wrong road. She said he would, from the get-go, that there are too many to choose from and now they were on the bad one, the one with rocks and holes and so many curves that make her jittery and unable to concentrate. She told him this would happen back when they were getting gas, potato chips and water. He says he knows where he is going, he’s been on this road before, and it’s not as bad as it seems.
She says it feels like hell.
He turns down a different road to shut her up, which ends up being worse than the one they were on. A third detour deepens the desire to stop driving and walk.
She says that they’re lost and she’s she’s feeling lonely.
He stops the car and looks straight ahead. He follows the lines of the road into the horizon where other roads bend and merge with one another like some kind of frightful dance. He says he doesn’t know what she wants him to do, there are so many awful roads in the country. Why not just stay on this one, see where it goes?
Don’t Mean, Be
This story is about three people, two adults and a child. It doesn’t matter what their names are, or what they look like. It has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
My wife and I are each doing our own thing in the same room. There is a CD playing Joni Mitchell which my wife likes and I like my wife so I let her listen to it.
Our son comes barreling through the doorway wearing his blanket around him like a cape.
“This lady sounds crazy and stupid!” he says to us, stopping right in front of the speakers.
“Don’t be mean,” I say. “She’s a gifted artist.”
Our son makes a frowny-face and stomps over to his mother.
“Can I have some juice?”
“Yes you can. You know where it is.”
He throws his hands up in the air with a loud exaggerated sigh, dropping his blanket near my wife’s feet. He trudges off to the kitchen.
My wife leans down to pick up his blanket, folding it neatly and setting it on the coffee table.
“That boy needs to learn some manners,” I say.
“He’s seven. He’s fine,” she says.
I don’t tell my wife that I agree with our son.
We take turns doing what we were doing before.
