Michael and Fernanda’s apartment at the top of a fifth floor building on the Upper East Side
by Michael Arthur Karpienski
Sept. 15, 2019
I rolled over on the bed with closed eyes and reached around my knees towards the loud bells chiming from my iPhone. It was somewhere at arms length, wrapped under the sheets and the comforter, the hard plastic case, which should never be lying on a place of rest, was between my fingers and thumb as I silenced the alarm.
“Fernanda, you awake?” I said and turned my neck around.
Mmm . . .
She was pressed firmly against me, her face buried between the pillow and the bed.
I took a deep breath, adjusting to my surroundings.
The sun was pouring into our little bedroom, red and orange, through a tiny slit, just wide enough for a ray of light to shine across the desk beside the window, while the comforter, wrapped around Fernanda, and the closed door at the foot of the bed, reflected even more light so that I had to close my eyes again.
No different than any other morning, the remaining four alarms were set to go off over the next ten minutes, in two minute intervals. I picked up the phone and deselected them. I was up now. I was getting out of bed. Right this second. So I could turn them off, right? That wasn’t too risky?
Not taking any chances, I kicked the gray sheets off my legs, then dropped my feet onto the rug, shaking my head.
Was this really the life I wanted? Working all day, being tired all evening, only to start over again morning after morning?
I stood up and stretched the curtains all the way open. And to be idiotic enough to believe that by living in New York this daily grind would somehow feel different? Easier, more romantic?
I shook my head again, self-hatred rising in my chest.
Before lingering any more on it, I stepped around the bed, opened the door and entered the bathroom on the right. Over the tub I twisted the shower knob left by a few degrees. Frigid water fell from the spout, first delicately and then with more intensity as the pressure increased. I reached my hand over the water, pulled open the little window to let in some light. Not waiting for the temperature to warm, I said fuck it, dropped my briefs and got in, feeling the cold droplets splash against my chest and my scalp and all of the blood in my body rush to my extremities.
Shit! Shit! Shit!!
This was becoming a routine. A shock I purposely endured the first minutes of the day, having developed the addiction to snooze as many times as I possibly could to avoid the inevitable; until I could hardly think straight, let alone speak, and the only method to scrub clean the grogginess was the freezing water technique.
And the freezing water did help.
For a while I stared out the little window. Several tall deciduous trees blocked the view. But beyond the green leaves, cars were parked on both sides of the street. I poured some soap in my hand, washed my hair and my body, skipped my teeth out of laziness. Shut off the water, got out and dried my hair with a damp towel, dropped it on the floor and stepped into the kitchen naked.
“Fernanda, time to wake up!” I said, looking back towards the bedroom. At the corner of the counter was a small coffee machine. I grabbed the pot from the day before, poured the dregs into a mug and threw it in the microwave.
SLAM. 45 seconds. Start.
I glanced back towards the bedroom down the hall, the door cracked ever so slightly. Just enough for Fernanda to lean forward, her eyes peering at me.
This was my wife, I thought, sleeping in again. I should be annoyed and frustrated, for she will be late two days in a row. Yet the look she produced, morning after morning, that of a child helplessly rising in the peaceful morning, not knowing what was happening around her – a natural stage of waking up which usually stays with a person for the first half-minute to three minutes – has a tendency of masking her countenance for half an hour, at the least, which strangely I adored. In such moments she resonated pureness, a feeling I had lost touch with, and there was a delicate strength she maintained in her slow and feeble movements, as if her sensitive state was absorbing too much of the world around her and she had to keep it all at bay, otherwise risked being overwhelmed by the endless stimuli that made for being alive. The noises in her ears were far louder than that which I could hear. The smells outside were far stronger than that which I could smell. And if we might see a beggar seated on a curb, such as walking back to our apartment after dinner some night, she would not only see the old man as I did, but see the heart that beat in the poor man’s chest, see the rotting purple flesh from a severe case of diabetes, which was a very dangerous business to get into in a city like New York that trains people, day after day, year after year, to walk past and see nothing at all.
Thinking these thoughts, I stepped across the wooden floor and put on a fresh pair of briefs I had lain on the lazy boy chair the night before. Next I stepped into the khaki chinos, followed by the blue J-Crew button up long-sleeve, which was Fernanda’s favorite.
“You seen my Clarks?” I said, knowing Fernanda was now onto her second phase in waking up. Checking her phone and studying it seriously, as though something dire was at stake.
She said nothing.
On the coffee table covered in old New York Times newspapers I had taken home from work was my leather Casio watch. I bent down and put it on, glancing at her again.
Did she not hear me? Or was she annoyed, like always, that I had to act like her father and pull her out of the bed?
“Fernanda, did you move my shoes?” I said again, approaching the doorway.
She looked up with a blank stare. “Huh?”
“My Clarks? I can’t find them anywhere.”
She paused and lowered her phone into the pillow on her lap. Her back was against the headboard, and her long brown hair was falling down both sides of her shoulders. She was lost in herself, I observed, and still in a dreamlike state. Her eyes casted a glance beyond me, beyond the living room, beyond the hot rays of the September morning that shone through the window. Beyond 87th Street, and beyond New York, beyond everything but Peru, more than likely.
A loud truck passed down the street, its tailgate thumping.
Fernanda said something, but I couldn’t hear.
“Sorry, what?” I said.
“I put them in the basket,” she said in a soft voice.
“Which basket? Where do we have baskets?”
She shook her head and looked down at her phone. “Under the standing desk, Michael. Remember? The big basket?”
I thought about it.
“Your smelly shoes were in the living room,” she said. “Stop leaving them on the floor. You were asleep and I tripped over them.”
“Sorry . . .”
Our apartment was too small to be reckless. She was right. We had to be as precise and deliberate in positioning each little object in our world, from our bags to our socks to our wine glasses, otherwise we wouldn’t survive in a 300 square foot apartment. Not both of us at least.
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
I yanked open the microwave door and pulled out the mug. It was steaming like fresh coffee, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I took a sip. It was completely stale. But it was better than nothing.
Between the two windows was the standing desk. I took a knee in front of it and pulled the large wicker basket out from the cubbyhole. Beneath two black umbrellas were my dessert boots, size 10.5, which I brought to the couch.
Once they were tied, I noticed on the counter the short story I had promised myself I would work on that morning. On top of it, the black pencil I used for line-edits. I had laid it all out the night before in my usual ambitious spirit. The sight of the work I did not do filled me with more self-disgust.
But this was the norm. This was the preface to every morning I endured the last days, weeks, months. It only got better as the day went on.
It always got better.
I got up and ran around the coffee table and opened the fridge. Inside was a large container of homemade beans Fernanda had showed me how to cook. I brought it to the counter and glanced at the clock.
9:10 a.m.
Damn!
We had about twenty plastic bags I had brought from work in a drawer. Fernanda got angry every time I took another from a grocery store or from the fruit stand outside our building. I was too American, I never thought about the environment, she said, which I supposed wasn’t completely inaccurate.
I grabbed a white bag and put the container of beans inside, slammed the drawer and approached the bedroom. Fernanda was dressed now. With her back to me, she was eying herself in the mirror with lipstick in her hand.
“It’s time for me to go,” I said.
She turned towards me, slowly. “Really? Already?”
I glanced at my watch. “Almost nine-fifteen. I’m going to be late.”
“OK. Go then. Did you pack your beans?”
I smiled and raised the bag into the air.
“Good. But can’t you put it in a bag or something? It looks bad.”
I looked at it. “Why? It’s in a bag.”
Grinning, she outlined her lips with red make-up. “You know what I mean. Get the tote. In my closet.”
I turned and opened the door across from the bathroom. A tote gifted to me by attending a literary conference was dangling next to her belts and hats, all of which hung from a shoe wrack that clanked and clattered each time she opened or shut her door, which was all the time it seemed.
I tossed the grocery bag inside it and faced her.
“Better?”
“So much.”
“So I’ll see you at seven, all right?”
So focused on her mascara, she leaned closer to the mirror, as if my question had challenged the line she was drawing.
I was standing in the doorframe, wishing I didn’t have to go to work, wishing to pause the moment, stretch it out somehow, for weren’t newlyweds supposed to be together for weeks and months and not just a few days? We were in that stage of our lives where everything should be opening up and bursting from the seams. And yet this apartment and this life we had chosen was paradoxically shrinking things down to job and rest, job and chores, job and to-do-lists, with only a moment or two for the occasional adventures, if we mustered up the energy.
She put the mascara away and looked up.
“Don’t you have to leave? What are you doing? ”
I paused, still looking at her. “Nothing,” I said, “I’m just tired.”
After we kissed, I opened the door and descended the stairs towards the street, the feeling of restlessness in my legs and my thighs each step I took.
interesting story, maybe post photos of you and your wife, so we can put faces to the story. Will make it more personable.