castirongoldfish

Val’s eyes returned distractedly to the tap, where the water was bleeding rust, slowly turning clear. She ran her fingers through the ground-cold stream, imagining deep wells, sucking water like aquatic lungs beneath the frost line. Silly, she realized. There were no wells to be found in this city, only acres of pipe. But returning to her apartment after such a long absence, she could feel the rooms around her waking reluctantly. Like that first week at the cabin each year, lighting pilots, checking for burst pipes, listening to the creak and groan of thaw. So hard to wake a house, to wake anything long asleep.

She realized she had been staring at the bottle again. By now, it must have been there for at least a year, resting on its side in the gutter of the building next to hers. Val had no idea what month she had started watching it, idly, from her kitchen window. But it had become a routine, something to do while washing dishes in her little sink.

It was a Coke bottle, half full, probably pitched there by a neighborhood kid. It was ugly, out of place, as distracting as a sore. It bothered Val because it was litter. It blocked the gutter, trapping leaves in the fall, out of place on the roof of the plain brownstone. But these were also the reasons her eye kept finding it, half-seen though the dusty slats of her yellowing mini-blinds.

The thing that bothered Val most about the bottle was that it never changed. True, the paper label had long since fallen off, bleached by sun and rain, but the plastic still seemed solid, and the liquid inside still appeared to be soda. She had seen it freeze in jagged crystals, the cola expanding to fill almost the entire bottle. In mid-summer it had formed sweat, the pressure inside making the plastic bulge. She had expected to wake up one morning to find it burst, split open to the sun’s glare. And now, seeing it again, being home again, she felt almost dizzy.

What was left to ground her, now that everything had changed? Not this – certainly not this feeling that she could be standing here at any time, a month ago, six months ago, a year.

Shutting off the water and turning away, pot of tea forgotten, Val sat at the table in front of the pile of junk mail her super had thoughtfully saved for her. She already knew nothing here would really be for her. Nothing in this pile would care if she read it. The stack of glossy fliers and catalogs lay there muttering and shouting its colorful nonsense like the violent art of the brain-damaged, or poetry written during a migraine. After a moment’s hesitation, Val reached over and grabbed the empty trash can by the door, and the entire pile went in.

Shivering, holding her hands over a hissing radiator, Val thought about the cabin again. Long after her family had outgrown taking vacations together, she had brought Roger there for a weekend. She smiled to think about it. The first night, they hadn’t been able to figure out how to keep the wood stove burning without filling the place with smoke. It had turned out to be simple – the chain that pulled the flue open had come unhooked and was easily fixed the next day. But that night they could feel the cold seeping through the walls and floor and see their breath in the air.

Roger had joked at first about using body heat for warmth, both of them giggling, passing the bottle of cheap, sweet port they had brought back and forth. But an hour or so later, empty bottle discarded, they were fumbling beneath layers of sleeping bag, wool blanket and thermal wrap, as awkward and exciting as the back seat of a car. They both gasped at the shock of heat when skin finally found skin.

Afterwards, as they lay drowsy, Roger started to sing, half-mumbling, as if to himself. His voice was flat and muffled in the freezing air. He was in the habit of singing Val to sleep when he’d been drinking. Now, as he often did, he made his way through American Pie. Val wasn’t sure why he liked this song, so different from the music he usually listened to. She had the feeling something about the ballad style drew him. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that the song bothered her. Now, pressing her body against his, feeling their heat slowly leak through the blankets and be swallowed by the frigid air, she cringed every time he reached the refrain, “…singing this’ll be the day that I die”. Somehow, she slept. Twice during that long night, Val opened her eyes with a start and found herself in complete darkness, unsure what had woken her. Then, she would lay still, counting Roger’s heartbeats (so slow), waiting for morning.