Long Term Parking - Part 7
Her apartment was dark and cold, it was winter, and her bed was piled with quilts, and the faint light from the street cast her bedroom in a sickly orange glow, which made them appear as zombies, as walking corpses. She didn’t mind. It was better than the honesty of a well-lighted place. He pulled his clothes off with more rapidity than if he had been on fire, then proceeded with hers, but his fumbling fingers seemed to have forgotten how to operate buttons and zippers, and seemed to have had no knowledge of intricacies of the delicate removal of a bra. She assisted. Once naked she opened the top drawer of a dresser, partially hidden in the shadows of a corner, then turned to the boy.
“Wear this.” She said.
She walked to the bed and climbed in under the thick warmth of her quilts onto her soft mattress, while he paced in the orange darkness, and she reached toward a spot on the wall, darker than its surroundings, and suddenly the room blazed with the searing light from bare bulb in the ceiling, and he smiled under the harsh brightness of interrogation, and he wore a pair of fine silk paisley boxer shorts. Purple. She told him to pace and spin and pose, then she snapped off the light and the room was black and they had sex and it was over and she lay quietly staring at the ceiling and he remained still.
“I had a boyfriend. Last summer.” She said. “He killed himself. Committed suicide.”
She listened to his footsteps as they crunched in the cold snow and watched his breath as it frosted the air under the street light, as he made his way hurriedly from her apartment, and he rounded the corner and was lost from sight.
