smiling hooks

alif

29.04.1995.
Amherst, Massachusetts.

          Sweet and sultry in the summer air, the clouds glowed as the sun set behind them and gave them a golden cloak to wear for a few golden minutes.

          When the last remnants of dusk were left lingering on the tree-and-infrastructure-stained horizon, and the sky was beckoning the world to the last final goodbye — that cooler, oft-ignored splash, of purple and spots of royal blue popping up on the stretchy canvas — I ceased my pacing around and paused against the back of a park bench, leaning one hand against it and pulling out a cigarette with the other. (An action that was so fluid and seamless, I could have been a life-long smoker, tarred lungs, husky, regal voice, a pretty French nonchalance in my speech that intimidated the listener without being rude, but my reality was not so climactic. I had only taken to messing around occasionally with rolled up tobacco under the influence of my most recent housemate. She did, to an eighty percent extent, fit the earlier description – only she was Italian, and not French, and to be perfectly honest, I don't see why it wouldn't work just as well.) The splintered, moist wood dug tiny daggers into my skin. I stood there and watched, still and observant, until the sun had set into the horizon and the crescent moon that had been smiling softly down for an hour had assumed a significance in the night sky enough to be worthy of attention. 

          How slow and languid and tepid I stood. How frozen in time. Once upon a time, I had thought myself capable of anything but.

          Around eight, with a desaturated navy sky above me, I made my way back to the apartment, traipsing cloud-like and slightly sleepy through the suburban traffic. The cigarette hung dully from my right hand, unlit, pure.

          The apartment was empty when I reached it. The lights flickered to life and I tossed the cigarette on the kitchen counter for later reference. It looked woefully out of place on the spotless surface - the place was tidied to a comfortable enough perfection. I blessed Vera inside my head. She was definitely the best housemate I had had to date, and had accordingly stuck around the longest. I remembered them all like items off a scribbled list on the fridge. They were almost half-remembered, dangerously close to being just faces – I wondered if Vera would one day be just a face. It seemed harsh to entertain the thought right then, so I shook it from my mind.

          (Perhaps she would not, though. Vera was too sorely real. She was loud and real and solid, tapped cigarette ash with fashionable flicks, quoted obscure European poetry to me – though she was hardly a literary soul – and breezed in and out of the apartment so often and yet so significantly, that when she was in the apartment with me we were three people; me, Vera, and Vera's Presence, and when she was not, there were two people; me and Vera's absence. It wasn't me that was obsessed with her though, even if the Absence-Presence thing makes it seem that way. There was a general consensus among everyone that knew Vera Iadanza that she would come with her own set of Absences and Presences and everyone who was fated to be around her was fated to be acquainted with them.)

          I turned on the radio and impatiently clicked through the stations, clicking over voice after static-filled voice of news anchors reciting high-pitched news scripts, and settled on a crackly rock song for background static ambience, before pulling out my desk chair and seating myself. I had intended to get some reading done before college resumed for the second half of the spring semester, followed immediately by finals, and I had not made much progress. So many of my days looked the same. I had found some new passion in the aimlessness of just walking around Amherst – and nothing varied, either, the same old route, same old routine, I often ended up merely staring at the sunset, watching the day come to a close in which I had not done much, said much or experienced much. The cigarette would be lit on some days, and not on others. This was the most interesting variable in my routines.