As They Should Be

Between paragraphs my mind wandered far enough, only, to recognize the brilliance of story, and how he must of felt as he wrote it. I wondered if I would ever feel that or if I would even know, while I was writing, how truly amazing a story was, or could be. I finished the story and held the closed book in my hand—my pointer finger hugging the inside of the spine to keep the place—for a while I thought about the writing and imagined him sitting over his computer in a Japanese café sipping on an Americana—or whatever the Japanese equivalent of an Americana was—as he looked over his shoulder at anyone who might be eavesdropping while he sat wandering who might relate to this story: if he was, in fact, able to picture me laying on my bed in the late evening with a hot cuppa tea reading his story and having to stop reading every couple of sentences to acknowledge how beautifully written it was. I opened the book again and starred at the name of the next story and wandered whether I had the patience to continue reading or if my mind would now begin to flutter off too far to read anything beyond the first page, or have to read every paragraph an aggregate number of times. Instead, I returned the bookmark to the book and closed it then set it next to me on the bed. I laid my head on the pillow and thought for a moment—this time about nothing, really—my thoughts had been freed from my own consciousness. I took my glasses off and—following my movements in my head as if writing them down—set them on the table next to my bed, I closed my eyes as I tried to retrace my conscious thoughts, hoping that I might make them mine again. I couldn’t. I was able to focus, only, on the sounds of cars driving by outside my window, the irregular prattle of the wind attacking the thin glass paneling of my window, the pipes in the walls settling and heavy footsteps moving closer and then past my door. I didn’t want to admit it to myself but I was waiting—waiting for the subtle vibration my phone would make before the screen shows signs of life and the disclaimer of a text arriving. There was grey and black ash scattered on the table next to me, and on the floor below the table; the ash that fell freely from the coal when I tapped it against the metal frame of the hookah. I felt my lungs and imagined the smoke caressing the organic sac before being exhaled into the room just moments before. My tea sits—cold—on the table, next to my glasses. I went to the kitchen to boil more water. Still the cars speed by sounding like metallic waves that never break but instead they fade away into someone else’s consciousness. I am grateful, I don’t know where the thought came from—the thought of gratitude—it had just replaced the muffled noises as they rolled into one distinct distraction. I am not worried or uncertain or feeling guilty for lying in my bed fully clothed while the light still reflects off of the overcast of the false spring outside, I am content; and I am also still waiting. The pipes settle again this time in each of the walls enclosing me as if in sequence like an order of things as they should be. I sip at my cold tea and remember the girl, earlier at the café: she took a phone call and left her partner sitting inside as he leaned back against the wall his full beard and long hair reminding me of something but I couldn’t remember what. Outside, while on the phone, she paced from one column to another, each time that she had reached the other column she stopped and leaned for a moment, as if she would stay, but she didn’t, she walked quickly to the other and again, she leaned. As she paced I had my head buried in my book, but after reading a passage I would sip, twice, at my hot chai and again watched the girl pacing. Now as she stopped at a column she kicked at it with the heel and then the toe of her light brown leather laced high top shoes then moved on to the next, also kicking at it. She wore sunglasses. She was wearing them inside before she left to take the call as well, I never saw her eyes. Her partner was on the phone now, too. I got up to leave. I opened my eyes and stretched my legs as far towards the end of the bed as I could. I was still waiting for the subtle vibration of my phone; any minute now, any minute, I told myself but I don’t know that I really believed it. There’s a plaque on my wall: “Some people walk in the rain while others just get wet,” if by rain they mean life and by wet they mean drown, then I know exactly what they mean. It’s getting colder and I remember my tea, and the boiled water on the stove. All of a sudden it is dark and the cars seem more like waves even then before. I want to blow the ash off the table, but only because I cannot think of anything else to do; and the idea of having to clean the grey ash off of a white carpet in the morning did not appeal to me. I think about the text I just sent and the warm exploding desire to get a response and since there is no response I begin to make up reasons for it: I tell myself that this is how it should be—quiet, and still—there is only the feeling of and there is nothing to go along with it, my thoughts have all been dissolved; exhaled like—or with—the smoke in my room, evanescing into corners, flowing out from the thin glass paneling of my window, under the bed and through the walls upsetting the pipes between the rooms. I tell myself that everything is as it should be; and I am still waiting. I close my eyes again and before too long I realize that I am dreaming, lucidly: I am on an island, I’ve never been on this island before. I know that I am creating it from one moment to the next. I’m sure that the island is the creation of my unconscious but still, while I’m on the island, I play a role as if dictated by the same illusioned laws that manipulate my reality. The dream is too bizaar to describe. I was accompanied by a woman. She had platinum blonde hair that was cut below her chin, her skin was fair and her features were gentle and kind; we kissed, often. In the morning I would not be able to recall her name, but I would miss her. I would still feel her presence, though she would be only a fantasy that I had imagined. Struggling with the loss of—even, just— an impression of someone is comfortless, and dispiriting. I’ll pick up the book again and read it through, to the end; then I will lay in my bed and stare up at the ceiling and wonder if I will ever write anything as beautiful.