9.25.2012

Notes from Under Floorboards

Jim takes a break from his one-man engagement party in the bowels of his bachelor's bathroom. While reaching for a fresh roll of toilet paper in the vanity he notices a chink of light coming from down below. "Funny," he snorts into the sink as he scrubs his hands under scalding hot water as though they owe him money. Very few people, let alone body parts, owe Jim any money. That end of the bargain isn't in his blood.

It comes as no surprise that the couch is as he left it. A half-empty mug dies on the second-hand coffee table that he rescued from the dumpster. Multiple servings of his favorite concoction of Canadian whiskey and flat ginger ale have been beckoning him for most of the evening, but none of them have scratched the itch. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome. Jim's a repeater, as original as he'd like to think he is.

Two maraschino cherries await him at the bottom of the glass, not that he needs additional motivation to lessen the liquid's level. He'd also never admit to being an alcoholic. "That requires drinking every night," he tells himself. Years later it will come out that Jim was a lot of things he never claimed to be; some good, some bad, some best left to be determined by his Maker. Self-evaluation: the hardest glance during brushing ones teeth. Vampires, the only immortal lovers, have worked it into their contract to be invisible in mirrors. There's method to their madness. There's merit to their claim. Jim managed to avoid his reflection while taking his bathroom break, but now that he's back on his sofa he's safe; only it's not more sitting and sipping that Jim wants. Another vice is calling his name. The cocktail's left to fester as the door locks shut behind him.

He lights up on his stoop, leans against the wall, turns his head, sees a spider, and jumps. An owl-like twist of the neck is employed as he inspects his surroundings to make sure no one noticed. They didn't. They don't. Jim blows a lungful of smoke at the spider. It doesn't move-- a trooper; a realist. A few nights ago Jim took a cigarette lighter to the spider's relative, but that was when his neighbor was joining him for a puff. There's no one to impress now. Jim's mostly at peace, at least on the outside. He gives the arachnid another gust of second-hand smoke and ponders the possibility of its appreciation for the rush. Maybe he likes it like I used to, Jim thinks.

But no golden silence can last more than a moment. Jim's is interrupted by the tell-tale timbre of female laughter coming from the lot on the other side of Main Street; attractive women with the nerve to have fun so late on a Sunday. "But they're allowed to," says a voice in Jim's head. "And I'm supposed to stand here on my portion of rented real estate," the voice says, this time through the butt of a menthol cigarette. Passers by heading to the restaurant on the ground floor of Jim's apartment building often look at him as though he's trespassing by being in front of his doorway. Two weeks ago, days before giving birth to a child he wished had been his, an old flame and her new husband strolled down his block of sidewalk, saw him smoking his post-commute Marlboro, and settled for the eatery immediately accesible since it wouldn't require crossing his path even though no one goes to that establishment. He didn't have his words picked, but the adrenaline dumped in his stomach made him rest assured that they would've been perfect. It was a moment meant for Bogart. Nothing bitter. Nothing nasty. Just a simple "How d'ya do?" from one exhaling human to another-- the way it should've been six years ago when Jim still had a go of it. He held himself more tightly than usual that night, but didn't succumb to sobbing. His skull would not allow it. He's a man of contemplation before a bleeding heart.

They're all getting married now; all of them at once, a barrage. Does the three months' salary engagement ring rule still apply in this economy? Jim assumes it doesn't, though he's not known for social graces. Still, he'd like to get off easy-- the way he used to; the way those girls on the other side of the street will pretend to later on that night. But betrothal isn't in his cards anymore, not with the hand of Aces and Eights he's haphazardly dealt himself since the age of eighteen. Jim would have an easier time selling ice skates to a paraplegic.

The smell of burning cotton alerts him that his smoke break is over. He flicks a half-burnt filter at a storm drain, goes wide right.

Once back inside he heads to the bathroom, swats the lightswitch, reaches for the toilet paper in the cabinet below the sink, and is distracted by a light coming from a missing sliver of wood in the floor. "Funny," Jim croaks as he rubs off the first three layers of skin cells from his hands, red like steaming lobsters, in the comfort of the left handle's heat.

And he's right, maybe for the first time of the night, for the man with the blessed hex of seeing humor in the macabre lives in the basement apartment.

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