{"id":1640,"date":"2019-09-24T00:03:31","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T00:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/?p=1640"},"modified":"2019-11-24T03:21:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-24T03:21:54","slug":"later-that-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/24\/later-that-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Monday morning commuters, crossing 1st Avenue and 87th Street, on the Upper East Side<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0by Michael Arthur Karpienski<\/h1>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Sept. 28, 2019<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I pushed open the heavy green door of my building and dropped onto the bottoms of my feet. The sun was blazing high in the blue sky, and the air, so thick and humid, droplets of sweat were already collecting across my back.<\/p>

Inside the right pocket of my chinos I felt keys and my wallet \u2013 check. I fished through my other pocket, which seemed light and almost empty – headphones, an eyeglasses cloth, a mound of lent at the bottom, near the seam, which felt like a cotton ball between my fingers.\u00a0<\/p>

But where was my phone?<\/p>

I patted both pockets again. Damn, I left it, I thought, but I couldn’t go off to work without it, could I?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

I yanked open the main door, then the second door in the mail room, rushed up five flights and pounded three times on our door.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cOpen up, it’s me!\u201d I said out of breath.<\/span><\/p>

From where I stood, I could hear a muffled motor, waving in and out, almost like a low flying airplane.\u00a0I put my ear to the door, concentrating on it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

It was a blow dryer.\u00a0<\/span>Fernanda was drying her hair.<\/span><\/p>

Annoyed by this, I fumbled through my pocket and found the rounded copper key for the top lock. Turned it left, after which I inserted the silver key a locksmith had made for us only a month before on the hottest day of the year. That afternoon Fernanda had asked me to assist her in carrying a bag of laundry up from the basement. It’s only towels, I had said, can’t you carry them this time? She shrugged and said no, that there were too many, plus I had forgotten about all of my socks. Reluctantly I acquiesced, threw on faded Adidas shorts and a grey t-shirt, s<\/span>he already had the keys, she assured me, so <\/span>I followed her into the basement with nothing but my dirty clothes on.\u00a0<\/span>After we tossed the warm clothes from the dryer into a blue Ikea bag, she began staring into space, not saying anything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

“What is it? What are you thinking?” I asked.<\/span><\/p>

She said nothing for a while, then I figured out that she had taken my office keys and not her own by mistake. Two hours later, the locksmith burst through the deadbolt on our door with a high-intensive drill, and\u00a0<\/span>I turned the key into the new lock counterclockwise, a month later, not without remembering all of this as t<\/span>he lock disengaged.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Fernanda jumped up in the bathroom. \u201cYou’re back!”\u00a0<\/p>

“Sorry, yes,” I said, holding open the door and scanning the living room.\u00a0<\/p>

She turned off the blow dryer, unplugged the cord from the wall and stowed it under the sink.\u00a0<\/span>“You really, really scared me. Did you forget something?”<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWhat does it look like?” I said, looking around the shoes by the door. “Have you seen my phone?\u201d I paused and glanced at her after I asked, for I was being curt with her, I suddenly realized, and taking it out on her the way I sometimes did, the urge to deflect my frustration, put it on someone other than myself, whomever was closest, actually, which usually amounted to her, was not something I wished to do but did anyway.<\/p>

Probably affected by my voice, she shook her head. Her look was serious, but then a subtle grin began at her cheeks, replacing her once tight skin with dimples, over which both sides of her mouth indented, with a curved line, while her brown eyes, previously large and full of defense, squinted and decreased in size, so much so they almost closed completely.<\/p>

\u201cI take that as a no?” I said, smiling with guilt. “Did I not leave it in the bed? Or did you move it?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI didn’t touch your phone, Michael,\u201d she said and left the bathroom.\u00a0<\/p>

“I’m not accusing you,” I said, and stepped into the bedroom. Nothing was on the desk, nothing on the floor. The bed was a disaster. Blankets and sheets lay in a pile so that I had to pull everything off, one by one, as if I was going to make it, which of course I was not.<\/span><\/p>

It wasn’t there either.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I trudged back into the kitchen as Fernanda was picking up her black Parsons bag. On the white desk was her blue and white scarf. She picked it up and tied it around her neck, avoiding my eyes the whole time.<\/p>

\u201cLook, I give up,” I said. “I\u2019ll go without it. It doesn’t matter.”<\/p>

“Stop being dramatic. Did you check that bag?\u00a0The one you just had. With the beans?\u201dShe stepped past me back into the bedroom.<\/span><\/p>

The bag was on the floor by the door. I had thrown it down when I entered.\u00a0I opened it and found the beans in the plastic grocery bag. Under it, beneath the Slice Literary Conference schedule, where I had received the tote two weeks before, lay a black moleskin with the phone wedged inside its pages.<\/span><\/p>

I pulled it out, hoping she didn’t notice.<\/span><\/p>

She shook her head, smiling. \u201cCome on . . . So you had it with you the whole time?”\u00a0<\/p>

“I guess so,” I said.\u00a0<\/p>

My face flushed red, not from embarrassment, but further anger at myself. I was tired of being groggy, rushing, always rushing to get to places on time. Now and then there would be a respite from the day to day grind, some happy moment and a drop of wine during dinner, from which all of it could be seen through that safe and merry distance that makes for absurdity and comedy – a distance through which I might see clearly all of the struggle and see it all justified, worthwhile even, due to the pleasant dinners Fernanda and I shared, which was the one thing I looked forward to during the entire day, but nevertheless no easy thing to remember in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>

No, it was as if my memory of the good which lies ahead in the day could not be accessed the first hour of the morning.<\/span><\/p>

Or maybe two hours.<\/span><\/p>

But I guess the only thing to do was shoulder on, and put up with doing what was right in front of you and not complaining about it, for that\u2019s what adults do. And I was an adult, had been one for a while, a true member of adulthood, with a steady job and a steady income, and if I felt I was reaching my fatigue threshold, I really wasn’t, because adult’s push through it, or else the adult is no longer an adult.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Fernanda and Michael's kitchen, viewed from the living room<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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“You ready, Fernanda? We might as well go together.\u201d<\/p>

She smiled as she studied herself in the mirror a final time. Then she applied Coco Mademoiselle Chanel to her neck, a scent, whose sole identity was connected to Fernanda, the perfume so different from all the rest, I felt, as if composed of not chemicals and herbs but her very cells and skin and long brown hair.<\/p>

\u201cCome on,\u201d I said. I was holding the door open and watching her do all of this slowly in her own world. \u201cWe have to go! Please.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cOK, OK, I am ready. Stop being cold with me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

She walked passed me not looking in my direction, which in turn made it seem like she was waiting on me the whole time, a trick all women knew how to employ, and which despite my awareness of it, still made me believe was somehow the truth, that I, yet again, was the reason we were late.<\/p>

\u201cLock the door,” she said, “I’ll hold the elevator.”<\/p>

\u201cRight,\u201d I said.<\/p>

Once I locked the second latch, I heard the beep of the elevator and jogged down the flight before it shut.<\/p>

“I’m here,” I said and jumped inside.\u00a0<\/p>

She pressed 1, the door slowly shut. And for half a minute we stared into our phones, not each other\u2019s eyes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Shit! An email notification from my manager appeared in Outlook. One new email:<\/p>

Michael, please see me at my desk when you arrive –<\/em><\/p>

Oh shit, shit . . . Did she somehow know I was late? And by me going to her desk at 10am confirm that I had only arrived at that time?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The elevator opened, Fernanda smiled to herself about something. I followed her to the doorway down the hall, self-absorbed in more trivial thoughts of work, thoughts that come and go, no one\u2019s life ever changed by it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The sun was brighter and higher up when we got outside. It was hotter too. I tugged hard at the ends of my cotton shirt.\u00a0<\/span>The blue fabric straightened out, then stuck to my sweaty back even more.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s 9:30, come on,” she said. She was walking down the sidewalk fast.<\/p>

I followed her and weaved around a tall woman in black sweatpants. She was walking a Mini-Schnauzer, grey and very old, who was smelling a trashcan beside a building on our left.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Trash cans outside of a residential building, along 87th Street<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u00a0<\/p>

We were nearing First Avenue, where we always parted ways to our separate subway stations.\u00a0Fernanda grabbed my hand and pulled me close.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cGet to work already, \u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>

I squeezed her hand back. \u201cI will, I will, it will be fine.\u201d<\/p>

She smiled calmly. It didn\u2019t make sense how she could be so calm when she was late, but at any rate it was what I needed to see on her face, and what helped me the most, and made me more prepared for what was to come.<\/p>

I was in love with her, absolutely in love, I thought, and whatever difficulty that might besiege me when I walked into the office, whatever surprises around the corner of the day, or the night, or the entire year, did not matter.\u00a0<\/p>

Nothing mattered.\u00a0Because she loved me too.<\/span><\/p>

Suddenly the crosswalk lit up, which meant it was my turn to run across the street.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cBye, Fernanda! Enjoy your day,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cBye, Babe! I love you!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

“I love you, too.”<\/p>

I held her in my arms, and kissed her full lips.<\/p>

After a while, we released from each other’s grip. The crosswalk sign changed from the white outline of a person to the anxiety-ridden countdown.\u00a0<\/p>

5. . . 4 . . . 3 . . .\u00a0<\/p>

I started across the asphalt in a jog, the tote bag swinging back and forth, until I reached a full sprint as the stop signal appeared, jumped onto the curb, and continued down the sidewalk weaving around more dog walkers and nannies pushing baby strollers.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this second installment, Michael absentmindedly leaves his phone in his bag while Fernanda continues getting ready for work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","style--link-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":282,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3091,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions\/3091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautifulbanality.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}