David comes out
of the kitchen and places a water pitcher on the table; I lean in to kiss him. “How
was cleaning?” he asks. “Ok, I guess, its money” I say. David looks in the
living room and then leans in and tells me that Anne will be joining us for
dinner tonight. Recently, every meal has
been with David’s aging roommate Anne. It is more than clear that she loves
David and thinks of herself as more than just a roommate. David asks me to get
Anne to the table, so I walk into the living room and tell her that dinner is
ready; she pushes herself off the couch and shuts off the television. She says
nothing to me as if I didn’t just speak.
Her feelings
towards me are clear as she shakes her head and clucks whenever I open my
mouth. She never comments about anything I say but always asks when I will be
going back to my own apartment. David reminds her that I will be moving in
tomorrow to live with them. Anne immediately clucks and shakes her head looking
down at her plate. Clearly she has a good thing going and I am ruining it by
being there. She can pretend she’s Mrs. David but not when I am right in front
of her reminding her that she’s not. David affectionately calls her Annie.
David’s
ex-boyfriend Randy lived with David and Anne, until six months ago when Randy broke
up with David. I think that it destroyed him and Anne had to talk him down off
a cliff. She doesn’t want that to happen again, at least that’s what David
tells me, is her reason for not liking me. Randy still lives in Albany several
blocks away and is working on getting a college degree in acting. So far I have never met Randy; he’s just a
voice on the phone to me. When he calls, David walks into the music room and
cuddles up with the phone, he is still trying to make sense of what happened
between them.
David’s house has
an open door policy for friends and during the day and people just hang out
there. Anne locks her door just to be “on the safe side,” and forbids anyone to
go into her room ever. Anne likes to read movie magazines, she likes to knit and
watch Entertainment Tonight and Wheel of Fortune at full volume, she has no
friends and never goes anywhere except to work. Dinner is fine and when it’s
done, Anne goes back to sitting on the couch; she will stay there for hours
watching television at a deafening level. I sit next to her on the couch as she
is trying to solve the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. Making small talk I ask her
what she does for work and she responds “This and that.” If I don’t talk to
her, she won’t talk to me but she will tell David everything that I do when
she’s around.
David signals me
to join him and I follow him to the back porch to hang out. All I have to do
the next day is pose for some art classes and meet David at my apartment on Jay
Street around 3pm to move out. We spend the rest of this evening drinking and
hanging out. I fall asleep in his arms.
The next day after
I finish posing for art class I take the bus back downtown from SUNY to meet
David. David’s car is sitting out in front of my apartment as I round the corner
I can see him listening to the radio and smoking a cigarette. David see’s me
and waves as I approach the car. He turns off the radio and opens the car door.
“Ready?” he asks me. “As ready as I will ever be,” I respond.
We walk up the
walkway and step under the stairs. I don’t see Roy or Tommy’s truck so I figure
that they are not home yet. I pull my house key out and put it into the lock.
For some reason my key won’t go in so I try it again. It still doesn’t work no
matter what I do so David tries it. “Hey!” David yells after about ten minutes
“It looks as if this lock has been changed.”
To be
continued…….
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.
No comments:
Post a Comment