I Was Wrong
If I thought the world had ended, I was wrong. I was habitually wrong about a lot of things. Like the time I thought I was having a heart attack, my pulse, a runaway freight train at 200 beats a minute, wouldn’t abate. They rushed me to an emergency room where the attending physician said it was time to stop my heart. Only for three-seconds, to interrupt the electric nerve current causing my tachycardia. I didn’t die, but something ethereal was pulled from the soles of my feet and slammed against the underside of my cranium, compressed there for what seemed an eternity. But my time wasn’t up, life blood filled back into my limbs. My heart, traitorous beast, sat defiant and petulant in my chest. That pulsing organ, nothing but a shill for some ring master, circus huckster, immutable Loki trickster.
The world might have ended then too, but I was wrong because the doctor ordered me back to my residence to recuperate. I hunched over my fourth floor apartment’s window frame. Up there, immune from sidewalk bacteria below, I looked down and watched like any self-absorbed mythical god. I found humanity barely more than a curiosity. I saw nothing more than haphazard life, wandering and staggering, their stitched-on shadows in tow. How surreal, the clumsy tango between flesh and shadow. They pass, stop, stoop, turn, pivot and hesitate, a comedic ballet for the amusement of those olympic voyeurs looking down. Funny how I thought the world had ended.
My thought passed. I turned my attention to my apartment door left ajar. I set my coffee cup onto a saucer and rubbed my eyes. I found it easy to sit and imagine all kinds of scenarios crossing that wood paneled portal. Once an annoying door-to-door solicitor was brutally mugged under the lonely potted ficus tree in the corner of the hallway next to apartment 4B. On New Year’s Eve, a gregarious party in apartment 4A spilled an inebriated couple into the hallway. A man in a wrinkled business suit tried to cop a cheap feel from a younger woman when he stumbled against her low cut blouse. Maniacal laughter erupted from her smeared lipstick as she pressed against him. None of it interested or motivated me into abandoning my fourth floor sanctuary.
At night, it was easy to recognize the Man-in-the-Moon lived in the glass building across the street. Every night he turned on a light in his apartment and there in the window loomed his face, like it was painted on a large, white helium balloon. The incandescent glow of room-light gave his face a yellowish tinge, especially around his eyes and smile. The Man-in-the-Moon's face always smiled as he peeked just above the window’s simple half valance. His head floated and bobbed carefree, like it wasn’t attached to anything. His constant, insipid grin annoyed me, like he'd hidden himself in that apartment, with no one the wiser�"except for me of course.
I don't know why he hid in that apartment. I’ve never seen any other occupants there. I tried not to let the Man-in-the-Moon see me looking at him, like a nosey voyeur, gawking, and spy spying. Sometimes I turn all my lights out and stand far back in the shadows of my room and leave my curtains wide open. I stand in the dark, in the archway to my kitchen and eat saltines smeared with peanut butter while I watch him. Regardless how I disguise myself, I know he’s aware of my attention. He keeps staring straight at me, smiling a fake, condescending smile. No matter where I move in my apartment, his eyes follow- he sees me and seems content somehow, knowing I’m watching him watch me.
The last day I thought the world had ended, a cigar store Indian Chief looked out from his balcony from the penthouse floor of the concrete condominium across from my building, and lit a fat stogie. A few balconies below the wooden cigar store chief was a man pretending to be a traveling businessman but displayed all the mannerisms of an industrial spy. All his vest buttons were camera’s or microphones. His cufflinks housed miniature smart computers. The spy tentatively leaned against his balcony wall with delicate hands curled and perched on the ledge like bird feet. He jutted his jaw over the edge, cocking his head as if trying to eavesdrop on muffled conversation. Several floors below him, the third floor of the building, lived a grandmother and her young granddaughter. The grandchild rested her chin in her small hand and let one arm dangle lazily over the ledge. The grandmother leaned over her granddaughter to look down at the street and her soft, ample bosom pressed motherly against the back of the girls head.
What arrested everyone’s attention and sent us all rushing to rubberneck, was an abrupt and deafening noise caused by a horrendous impact that rattled windows and gyrated flooring. The afternoon sky bled out a solar eclipse shadow. Nested below in the center of the street was a large impact crater. Yellow vapor smoldered from its depths. Bits of fine debris rained down like summer hail. Next to the pool sized depression was a scorched mail-carrier's bag, surrounded by a circle of charred envelops and black paper ash. I knew the world was certainly ending, but the wooden cigar store Indian left his balcony disinterested. The businessman snapped a hurried picture of the crater with his middle vest button and resumed packing his suitcase. The grandmother patted her grandchild on the head and ambled on sore feet into her kitchen to begin making supper. I witnessed the little girl linger. She fished a shiny copper penny from her dress pocket and dropped it into the raw, open crater below. She closed her eyes, made a wish and then spit into the hole for good luck.
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