Coexistence

Groping for the keys in your handbag, you notice the door is cracked open. There’s a particular smell coming out of the apartment. It’s pungent and painfully familiar. The aroma of failure and desperation. The air is heavy with the suffocating odor of dirty socks and boredom. You want to get away. The only resort you can afford is Drugville, Apathy, zip code-five big zeroes.

            Going in is never easy. There are piles of boxes on top of more boxes. Modern architecture on a dormant ground of buried demons. Furniture, electronics, crap, crap and beyond. Things you use for as long as the return policy allows. Get something, use it, return it, with the refund get something else, use it, return it and so on. The thing is it’s not as easy as it sounds. Nothing is. There’s a chart. Certain people, certain days, certain stores and then…rotate. Tanya produced it. The chart. She keeps track of the receipts, the deadlines and the rotation.

            You have all this fancy stuff poking out of your lifestyle. Not meant to fit in it.

            Boris is already gone. Everything else is very much the same. It’s a picture temporarily frozen in time. An ice sculpture on the beach. Your irreversible past entwined with your doomed future. Irra must’ve been looking for attention again. You can tell by the hospital jewelry around her wrists. You can tell by the blank nonchalant satisfaction in her eyes. The cigarette in her hand is the only thing burning. Katie Cleopatra is plucking hairs from his toes. You look at the silver toe ring and you think he must be happy now. Or at least at peace. Tanya is in the shower. You can hear the water running…she’s human after all. The door to her makeshift office, her sanctuary, is shut.

            You miss Boris now. Not in the way people miss other people. More like something’s been taken away from you. A piece of the only constant furniture around. Irra and Katie Cleopatra sitting on top of boxes. Not acknowledging the presence of one another. Not feeling obliged to.

            Tanya comes out of the bathroom trying to look tired or sick, or hung over. Trying to avoid answering questions. She turns her back on everyone and starts walking towards her room. Her wet hair leaving a trail of brunette drops on the floor.

            Groping for the keys in your handbag, you notice the door is cracked open.