NaNoWriMo 2009

  Here it is, the first installment of the novel. I apologize in advance for any spelling or grammatical errors or poor content as this will be written in haste. I think  I know i can make a whole story out of this Untitled as of now.

    ”Double check, the groceries are all there I even remembered the veggies for that salad your mom loves to make but never has the ingredients for, so fresh and hard to come by, and the bread unmade, in flour and yeast and everything else we already have, you’ll turn into a dough and rise and into the oven and the best bread I’ve ever had, and isn’t that a recipe of your mother’s too i think, at least it was out of the old faded yellow cookbook she keeps next to the plates there above the counter.” She looks through it all and I can see approval but it’s unvoiced as the contents of the bag are transferred to the refrigerator (those that need to be) and I stand in confusion and think, whether or not now is the right time to bring it up and whether or not there will ever be a right time for this considering everything. I almost take a step forward, my mind drawing me back in hesitation and I transfer my weight and lean against the stove now ( across the gap from the island to the oven) and my hip bumps against the burner and it clicks on, I lose my balance and make a grab for the dial and click it all the way on then off  “What are you doing? Come help me.” I make up my mind and say ok and settle on a compromise unloading the rest of the vegetables from the bag to her hands to mine, I work quietly and smilingly then as the kale is in the midst of us I bring it up, I decide to and I do except I didn’t phrase it smoothly or any of the ways I was thinking about, just Dora said you’re moving, just like that (with just a trace of emphasis on moving, none on Dora who I’d rather not we focus this conversation on but I know she’s thinking about it), and you stop but not before I have the kale so I have an excuse to look you in the eyes and then turn my back to the stove and you and the bag and spend more time than necessary arranging and placing and listening but I can’t waste anymore time and you still haven’t said anything so I turn back around and you’re staring at me with that look that I can’t place any meaning on but have it narrowed down to anger at my immaturity, confusion with the world and men, or astonished speculation at how… i don’t know.

    I told Dora this is what would happen I told her what a bad idea it was but I never came up with a better one and my back-up plan (which is actually my everyday plan) of letting things unfold letting life resolve of itself, was not working to the point of me being miserable and so I just had to make a decision. I told her, Dora that is, what am I supposed to do? I don’t remember if that’s actually what I said or not, I think I might have just said um or something similar. I was opening the door and stepping outside and she was fumbling with her keys her arms full with a box of something, books I think because one slid itself across the top of the worn covers and cascaded down her side the white pages flapping and settling by her yellow boots soaked from the rain. I move forward out my door to help her but she glances at me through wisps of her dark hair and shakes her head to let me know she’s alright and now she has the door open and the book picked up without spilling any more. Shifting the box to her other arm farther from me, stretching the grey sweater (I think she made herself since one of the many owls that circles and comprises the neckline is sorta loopy and wonky but which I love anyway) owls while moving through her door, she stopped and turned and balanced against the door frame calls my name and told me you were moving. You see what I mean now? Just that and I didn’t know what to say. “To where?” “To anywhere I suppose, does it really matter?” Then giving me one more long, meaningful look, with the eyebrows and everything, she turns and kicks the door shut behind her where it doesn’t quite close, bounces back and then snaps shut on it’s own (it seems like).

    I don’t think she likes me much, if she did I’d go and ask her why you’re moving, she knows I’m sure just won’t tell me. I shake my head and sigh even though there’s no one to see or hear me but I like to do things like that for myself, it adds some interest and drama to my life (as if I don’t have enough, probably never will). I’m on my way out but I’ve forgotten why at this point so I’m on my way back in after thinking and failing to remember, I tug the door knob and I guess i locked the door so I have to get my keys out, separate the one from the other and open the door (it’s not tough to get them confused the mailbox key is so much smaller) which I guess Dora heard or she was just rethinking but I see her back in the hallway leaning against the door frame again but this time without the box or the boots, some clean socks poking out from beneath the rolled cuffs of her jeans, she has a hand on her hip and as she brushes aside her hair as if to clear the way for the conversation she says it’s because of me didn’t I know that? Of course I know that and I tell her, “Then why did you even ask?” she says, which I didn’t but I might as well have asked it’s what I was thinking anyway. With her eyes rolling she turns on her heels back to her apartment and I need to say something, I have so many questions and don’t know what to do, but oh god I’m so slow at coming up with things to say and she only gave me about 3 seconds as it was, so i throw out a, “Dora, because…” then leave it trailing like there’s something more to that thought which there is but I don’t know what it is just yet, It catches her right as she was even with the threshold and it stops her, mercifully, but like i said this is as far as the plan goes and I think she knows it too because of the look I’m getting now; a lot of disbelief. Disbelief I share because the past few days and nights (mostly nights, when the sun trails down the sky and disappears behind the 2 stories of office concrete out my window where I can see the evening die, or catching the reflection off the plate glass while I’m working-mostly there I guess that’s where I usually am then-and the hopes of the light and day go, speaking to the sinking sun no don’t go please please slower please give me a bit more one more slower please and the dark rushes up from where I can’t see it coming and swallows it up before my thoughts are finished and the sun was holding me still perplexedly rooting me, the moon and night sets me free and then that’s when the disbelief comes) I think, “It’s because…” until the next morning.

    I struggle to communicate this to Dora and I see a look of resignation and maybe some pity replace the other one and she takes a few steps forward, “Look…” she says and I’m all ears believe me, “If this is so confusing to you, if it’s comprehension is so difficult,” ah it’s going to be like this is it? I know where it’s going and I don’t appreciate it or find it helpful and now shes close enough that I’m reminded how much I like that grey sweater on her and I can make out the crooked owl on the neckline, comprising the neckline, I wonder how long that took? “Maybe you need to rethink some things, like how you…” And with that she stops and blushes a little and looks down and I think she believes she went to far because we don’t know each other, really, so she turns and starts back to the apartment 207 that she shares with Dusty although I’m not sure whether Dusty is a boyfriend or a cat as I haven’t compiled enough evidence to really support either one of those claims (so i suppose he could be a dog or fish or something but Dora is more of a cat person), all I have to go by are a few vague comments of hers but if it were a cat wouldn’t she have named it Mr. Dusty Paws or Dusty… something like that, something more catlike, I almost call out to her and ask her how Dusty is but I stop myself and remember what she said and try to think about that as her door slams and mine is still open just a crack remember i was going back inside? I was going for some coffee that was it, a little break from this evening, which was a pretty good idea yes it was, so I close my door and head out into the night.

    I’m out in the night for all of 3 seconds when I come to conclusion that I was not intending to go for coffee, or perhaps I was but later and not at the time I ran into Dora with the books, but rather I was going to do some laundry, the ratiocination being tied to the empty laundry bag I’m gripping a little less tightly in my hand still. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not on some reality television show or famous with the paparazzi or anything because of moments like these, so it’s another sigh and glance up to the stars as I head back the other direction into the building towards the laundry room. By the time I pack up my clothes and take them back, dumping them onto the bed unfolded and warm, it’s time for coffee which was the right decision in the first place and so once more I’m out the door and down the hall and down the stairs slowly the first few then the night and the everything else catches up with me and my breaths come quicker and I clear the stairs one, two, three at a time like someone is behind me and with my feet quick and eyes bright i hit the door and I’m out and I probably should have been more careful because although the swinging metal door barely misses her (i mean just barely brushes her sweater) I have to catch myself and do a sort of pivot but I still give Dora a little bump while she’s texting on the patio there and walking too slow (in my defense). I say whoa or something, “What are you doing?” she says with a frown, and I tell her about the laundry and the coffee and I try to add some self-depreciation because we are not off to a great start this evening and the more conciliatory I can be the better. An she thought, she tells me, that I had gone back inside after we talked but obviously i didn’t, and I’m being so cheerful and I don’t know why, I don’t know why. I guess it’s doing it’s job though because she allows herself a little smile at everything (which you couldn’t even really help if you think about it, the last 20 minutes or so) and she’s disarmed, “Where are you going?” I ask not bothering to ask who she’s texting as if it wasn’t obvious enough, ” Funny, actually, I was in the mood for some hot chocolate, or something warm… I think it’s these rainy days that do it,” she adds. I nod and agree but don’t say anything because as an afterthought, almost right after the rainy day part, she tells me she left Dusty watching a movie. See? It’s things like this. I turn that over in my mind for a while then dismiss it as inconclusive. Dusty (cat) probably loves, as many cats do, watching movies and would be more than ok about being left at home instead of trekking through the rain to a coffee shop where he would not be welcome. Dusty (boy) also probably loves watching movies, as many guys do, and may or may not have been ok with being left behind in the apartment in lieu of trekking through the rain to a coffee shop where his presence would be neither welcomed nor scorned, merely attended to. So with Dusty (cat/boy) left behind I ask Dora which place she’s going and I’m going there too, it’s close enough to walk and the rain is slowing down or stopping, just a misting that you can’t really feel except barely when the wind blows and it tickles the back of your neck, so we start on the 4 blocks to the square together, and she puts on the coat she was holding, I didn’t mention that part, and pulls up the collar and buttons it up tight with her hands nestled deep into the pockets, with her boots scattering the puddles I am trying to avoid with my flip-flops, we talk about nothing and I realize again that I barely know her and I never have.

         It takes me all of 3 blocks to think up of something to say or a way to start the get-to-know-you conversation but when I finally think i have something and practice it once or twice i my mind, then open my mouth and look over at her, she’s already lit up with something to say all over her face and I think she was just waiting for me to look in her direction instead of into the puddles and she asks me something about he rain and I answer and keep what I was going to say for a better time, so I wait and wait, a few more seconds then a car careens through the intersection as we approach the curb, a little faster than it should have been going, right as we get there. She and I shrink away from it into each other, not quite touching, but barely feeling each other’s prescence, comforted by it and the the smell of her hair reminds me of this one friend I had, in college i think, good memories as most of them are, a good friend; and the looks we give each other then, on the surface it’s about speeding cars and pedestrian woes and danger but there’s something else to it, it flashes for a second and I think I’m understanding something, above us the clouds have drifted and pulled apart revealing a few stars and as I look up I think i recognize them but can’t put them into a constellation, “Come on” Dora says and the cars have gone and the street is empty and glistens with the fresh rain, the reflective bright as glass puddles and the yellow white lines and dark textured asphalt that I hate to disturb as I walk into the reflection of the night and feel empowered and a rush of energy (the lights of a city on a dark night) so i stride ahead even with Dora although I’m not sure she notices but she does when I compliment her coat and ask where its from. She smiles now and digs her hands a little a little deeper into the pockets, shrugs her shoulders to push the collar up even higher around her ears and hugs herself in its warmth, which I envy (the warmth, not the her or the coat or anything) since I always misjudge the weather and the wind is cutting right through my t-shirt, which makes me a little angry that the weather is like this here since it’s not supposed to be and that keeps me warm enough, “Boston” she says, its from a little boutique there and she’s proud of it, a good find, she says, one of a kind vintage, and now I’m full of questions, so many I don’t know which ones to get out first but I manage with the Boston part and I find out that’s where she used to live, 3 years she says with a distance in her eyes, and I don’t know her well enough to tell whether the way she twist her mouth and moves her eyebrows and slowly walks the stairs to the coffee shop means it was good or bad or mediocre or heartbreaking or what, as we walk through the door someone is holding for us, a nice older lady that I smile at and thank and receive a smile typically reserved for couples young and in love of which we are only the former (the young, not the couples part) but i guess we give off that atmosphere.

       Dora… I think and can’t remember or have never know her last name so I ask while we’re waiting in line and she’s staring up at the board, and she gives me all three, “Dora Belle Emberson.” Wait for it, ” Dora Belle!” I exclaim then stop myself a little too late and the frown that crosses her face verifies that I just ruined my one chance at not appearing dopey, which I am. And she knows it too with the withering looks she gives me, i apologize with a you-get-that-all-the-time-huh? and tell her i think it’s a pretty name and turn to think about my order for a few moments of awkward silence until she walks up tot he counter, and the kid behind it with the stupid haircut, and orders a hot chocolate ahead of me. I ‘m listening, and she says for here, in a mug, and then she changes it to a mexican hot chocolate and apologizes for the trouble. I order and amerincano and don’t change it to anything, for here, and I get a plain white mug with the shop emblem on the side while Dora gets a neat handmade looking thing which I slightly resent and make a silent vow to bring my own next time (which I don’t, if you’re wondering, but Dora did because she didn’t like the way theirs fit in her hands, the little handle). We sit and I know it’s coming it has to be, and she looks at me and asks where my coat is, and laugh and say something but I’m thinking about what she said earlier about you moving and it’s bothering me too much to ignore now so I get it over with on my terms and after I answer I start the real conversation, “So she’s moving?” A sip of hot chocolate and a look over the rim of the cup from her dark eyes and shes not saying anything for now.