(I don't mean to keep stringing this out, but I am already way over....)The Apartment
(July 2003)
“We were together for seven years” the artist repeated, his eyes gazing off at an unseen distance. “After the first year or so we got a nice apartment. Those were some great days. I kept hoping it would never end. There was a snowstorm once, we got way over a foot of snow, we didn’t get out of …….” The artist looked over at Ennis, and gave a little laugh. “We didn’t go outside for over three days” he said with a chuckle.
“You know, sometimes a person could be living the best days of their lives and not even know it. Not have a clue. But I did know” the artist continued. “I really did. I always wished there was a way to copy the special days on a Xerox machine, so you can take them out and look at them and repeat them over and over again, every time you need to.”
Ennis turned away from the artist. He could feel the tears grow in his eyes. How often he thought, “if only I’d known, if only I’d known.”
The artist picked up his tea cup. He took the one from Ennis too. He silently got up and went to make some more hot tea.
He came back to the table with the two hot cups. Ennis took one in his hands. The artist sat back down, and held on to the handle of his tea cup. “We had a real nice place, real nice. Friends from all over the city came over all the time. It almost was like a party every night. I didn’t always want to be around a lot of people. But those evenings, I always knew, that soon I’d be alone with him.” The artist took a sip of tea and sighed.
“Luckily, he came from a little money, we had real nice place. I could never have had it on my own. There even was a swimming pool, a big one in the basement.” All of a sudden the artist let out a loud laugh. Ennis was startled and looked up at him. “I just thought of the time, well, we had a little too much wine, and we went swimming in the early morning.” The artist laughed again. “We went swimming the natural way” he said, looking directly at Ennis. “We didn’t know it was the time the old ladies in the building had their daily swim.” The artist laughed again, his face suddenly looking like it was lit from the inside by the sun. Ennis smiled too.
But just as quickly as it came, the sun faded away. The darkness came back again.
“Yes, I wish I had a copy of those days, damn, I wish I did.”
Ennis closed his eyes. He wished that he did too.