Boiling | Apartment 221

You killed her
The paint is still there. I can see it from my window.

It’s funny; I don’t remember being sad at first. I was seventeen then and all I can remember is an orange blur of anger and hatred. I hated her for messing up dad and I hated her for leaving us. You know, we didn’t even find her suicide note until almost two years had passed. I was a freshman at Princeton and was home for Christmas break when I found her letter folded up and shoved behind the front cover of an anthology of Poe. It was a sonnet. My mom was the only person pretentious enough to write a suicide sonnet. There was one stanza for me, one for my dad, one for her parents and two brothers, and the last couplet was for miscellaneous friends, family, and colleagues. She didn't leave a will. The stanza for me read:

My Troy, I will smile at you from above.

Your words are your gift and I wish you knew

Your life is meant for creation and love.

I only desire that you loved me too.

I think that was when the sad began. I had wasted so much time being mad at her for abandoning my family and ruining my father when I was the one responsible for her death because I never loved her enough. I killed her.

I wasn’t sad for long, though. The sad was like a summer rain shower that lasts for an hour or so and then disappears into the blue sky. I didn’t want to end up like my mother or father so I stopped thinking about them. I ignored everything that reminded me of my previous life.

I have always been very good at ignoring.

The problem with ignoring is that you can't really leave a top on a boiling pot of water without expecting it to overflow when your eyes are closed.

In the kitchen, my pot of water overflows while I look out my window at the graffiti. I rush to rip open the ramen packet so I can eat lunch before going to my first class at the community college.

Community college is just like high school. It doesn't even deserve the title "college." All the girls are trying too hard to move their hips when they walk and I can see the lines of make up along their chins where they tried to paint on new faces this morning. All the guys have spent hours making their hair look like they just got out of bed and their eyes have judgment instead of bags and shadows when they look at me, an almost-thirty-year-old, walking into B66, the Intro to Creative Writing classroom. I lower myself in slow motion onto the chair closest to the door and watch the glorified high school students parade in like a wave of swinging hips and artificial bed heads. Finally, a man about my age struts in wearing glasses too big for his face in his feeble effort to appear younger and hipper than he is. He looks at me, smiles, and nods, causing his snorkel-like spectacles to tumble off his nose and onto the floor in front of him. The girl closest to me snorts and covers her mouth to conceal her laughter. I look over to see that it is Lucia, the girl who dragged me to the bowling tournament the other week. She grins and flails her phalange spasms in some sort of enthusiastic wave. 

Kill me now. 

"Uh okay so we're going to-uh-get started now with-um-" The professor trails off and straightens his glasses. 

Of course I get a professor who cannot successfully complete a sentence.

"Right so the-uh-creative process is what we were-you know. Right. Yes. Okay. Now remember that I was explaining on Tuesday that to takes a lot of focus and-well-effort to come up with inspiration for a piece because-um-"

His presence is painful and he is completely wrong about everything that has come out of his unnaturally small mouth.

"Writers have to-like-actively investigate their environments to find-"

"That's not true." I couldn't help it.

The professor looks at me like I just stepped on his puppy.

"I'm-um-sorry? What?"

"The job of writers is to observe the world and write about their subjective observations. Not peel apart their surroundings looking for some bullshit to knead into prose."

"Sorry-uh-but-um-Mr. Holden is it? I don't-" His shaking fingers push his glasses up his nose.

"Do you know anything about writing or are you just some idiot they pulled in off the street to waste people's time?" I find myself standing in front of the class. "If you try to find inspiration, you will fail. You have to let inspiration find you. You know? Just like a watched pot never boils, a search for inspiration never succeeds."

The professor-I never bothered to learn his name-stands, stunned, opening and closing his tiny mouth like a goldfish. 

I storm out of the classroom, fire in my eyes, ready to request a transfer to advanced creative writing.

Blue | Apartment 221

My day starts early when I wake up having rolled off of the couch and slammed my head on one of the many loose floorboards in my apartment. Why am I not sleeping in by bed? Shit! Dad's here! I shuffle to the kitchen to make something that passes for breakfast. Breakfast seems like a lawyerly thing to do.

"Troy."

I hadn't noticed that my dad's snores had ceased in my bedroom. I turn around to see him holding a stack of bills from the mail. Bills from the If I don't open them, they don't exist pile that usually stay under the radiator.

"Why are they addressed to Troy Holden at Apartment 221 of Dreamwood Terrace when you live in the penthouse?"

I freeze. Every sound seems louder. I swear I can hear the train whistling through the woods behind Dreamwood Terrace. I'm no damn actor and there's no point continuing this charade. I take a deep breath and tell him everything.

His face is like melting candle wax that sags and drips with disappointment and confusion. He is silent for three minutes and six seconds before he looks up and growls, "Well you better get a degree if you want to write for a living."

"Dad there's no way Princeton will let me back in to-"

"There's that community college down the street. You could-"

"There's no way I'm going to a fucking community-"

"Language Troy!"

"I am too good for a community college filled with idiots who can't even get into a real university!"

"Troy-"

"And I can't even afford air conditioning! How am I going to pay for-"

"I will pay for it."

I don't know what to say. Thank God my dad's phone rings and he answers. 

The candle wax melts even more. He puts the phone down."Robert jumped." I am clueless about how to respond. His face is completely expressionless.

"But you're Robert."

"Robert Smith. The other one." 

I'd heard my dad talk about the other Robert, his best friend. 

"Troy. I need to go. A nurse is picking me up"

I nod and open the door. He leaves without either of us saying anything else.

I sigh and run my hands through my hair, grabbing it in fists which pulls my forehead back until it hurts. I need a drink. I shove my feet into my blue socks worn at the soles and pull on the closest shoes. 

Walking down the street to O'Harley's, I stop dead. 

In the wall of the alley, blue graffiti reads "You killed her." 

My legs give out and I lean against the bricks, gasping for breath. I slide to the ground. "I didn't I didn't I didn't I didn't-" Some change lands at my feet. I glare up at the figure passing. "What the hell!? Do you think I'm a fucking hobo!? Are you literally so stupid that you-"Oh Christ.

Bonfire girl. Graveyard girl. Hope is the thing with feathers girl. Her eyes widen and threaten to spill.

"I am so sorry- I thought-" I start. Too late. She pivots on her heel and is gone. I am seriously the hugest asshole.

Turning to look into the window of the Sunny Side Up diner I see my undoubtedly homeless looking reflection. I haven't shaved in about a week and the stubble in coming in unevenly like a patchwork quilt. I have deep indigo circles under my eyes and I am pretty sure I smell like death. Now I really need a drink.

"Eleven in the morning's a little early for whiskey isn't it?" says Rick when I slump down at the bar.

I send daggers with my eyes and he raises his eyebrows and begins pouring.

After spending all my earnings from the past week on cheap booze I stumble out onto the sidewalk and into a woman with glassy orb eyes framed with wrinkles. She clasps my hand in both of hers and hisses, "It will open like a blooming tulip."

"Sorry-what will?"

"Your world. The you will realize that you are not the center of it."

I shake her off and walk to work at Christine's Cupcakes with my head down, not looking back, just like always.

Mail | Apartment 221

I got mail today for the first time in nine days. I used to love getting letters in the mail when I was younger. I loved the excitement and anticipation as my fat, pre-puberty fingers scrambled to rip open the envelope chrysalis that separated me from my destiny or whatever. These days letters usually mean bills or another notification from some literary journal thanking me for submitting writing and informing me that it will appear in next month's edition and I can expect a check in the mail within the next three weeks. The first letter is addressed to Troy Campbell Earnshaw Holden, my full name. It takes all my strength to rip open the envelope. The goddamned letter sealer must have overactive salivary glands.
"Mr. Holden, Thank you for sharing your work with us and for expressing your interest. We appreciate the chance to review these pieces, but won't be using them in the magazine. We wish you the best of luck placing them in other fine venues...." Disbelief feels like a sudden downpour of rain covering every inch of my body and multiplying in weight every millisecond. The weight seems to muddle every thought and image as it tries to drag me towards the ground. A rejection. I have never been rejected.
I hurl the letter across the room where it tumbles under the radiator. I will leave it there and ignore it into eternity. I am good at ignoring. I sit cross legged on the floor and pick up the second letter hoping that it will distract me from the first one. And it does. It's from my dad.
His team of therapists said that he should have a weekend away to come visit me and get him out of the hospital since apparently he's doing better. Of course, they say that he's doing better all the time, even when he's not. I continue to skim the page, "I hope that you will be comfortable with me staying in the guest room of your penthouse the weekend of the thirty-first unless you have engagements previously arranged..." Shit. Today is the thirtieth.
I need to create an escape plan or at least another network of lies before tomorrow.
I grab a piece of paper and dig in my pocket for my fountain pen to write out a list of potential game plans. I fumble around with my fingers, itching to feel that familiarly smooth-except-for-the-A.K.E.-of her initials-steel that is always in my right front pants pocket comforting me with the last physical connection I have to my mother. My dad and I got rid of all her other possessions after she died because his therapists said they were "triggering" for him. I didn't protest because I didn't want to remember my mom. I didn't want to be sad and end up like like my dad did-or like she did. I only asked for her fountain pen. I pull it out and write out a list of lie options to tell my dad.
1. I'm sick and highly contagious so he should wait for another weekend 
2. I have a new roommate to share the penthouse with me so there is no more spare bedroom space
3. I will be out of town doing lawyer things ( I need to think this one out a little bit more)
4. The penthouse is experiencing plumbing difficulties (or vermin?) so I have to temporarily stay in a loft on the second floor while the plumbers (or exterminators?) deal with it
I end up choosing option four and calling my dad to let him know. It looks like I will be sleeping on the couch tomorrow.
I decide to take a break to clear my mind by walking in the park by the community college.
Some stupid college kids are having a bonfire. Little fuckers. 
I start to feel a loose tension in the space right behind my stomach. It boils and the steam and pressure crawl up my throat. It's the feeling of a poem. I don't have time to move so I throw myself onto a bench and start scribbling. I feel someone sit next to me. I can feel that whoever it is is about to talk to me. Sneaking a peek, I catch a glimpse of the long blonde hair of someone who is clearly a female. I can feel the questions leaking out of her pores. Don't speak to me don't speak to me don't-
"What are you writing?"
Shit.
Maybe she's blind or visually impaired and can't see my notebook two feet from her face.
"A poem." Idiot.
I look at her and my breath stops short. Her eyes are the same eyes I see every morning in the mirror.
They are the eyes of someone who has lost another. You see, they have layers like a brussels sprout. You have to peel the outside off. The outside layer is cheerful and adventurous, the second is scared, the third is curious, the next few are smart and witty, but the yellowish inside of the brussels sprout is sad. 
Not with me though, I don't have the energy to have layers anymore. 
I don't even have the energy to come up with good similes or metaphors anymore. 
Brussels sprouts? What the hell?
Before she can ask me another question I make up some excuse about the diner or something and hurry off to finish my poem.
A little before nine while walking back to Dreamwood Terrace with my finished poem, I see bonfire girl walking to the graveyard from K. Rogers. I jog after her, meaning to apologize for being rude. I don't catch her in time. She jumps over the fence and squats in front of a small gravestone. I hear her talking. Is she on the phone? I walk along the fence to the corner where she is.
"...And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all..." She's reciting Dickinson to the grave.
She might have been annoying as hell but at least she has good taste.

Snow | Apartment 221

Snow is better than rain. It's like happy rain. Rain seems so angry while it dives and throws itself at the ground in a hurry like business people at the airport wearing their Armani ties and scowls. Snow is like the little children at the airport that are on their way to celebrate thanksgiving. Even though their parents tug them along with their hands that aren't preoccupied with carseats and diaper bags, the kids still toddle all over getting excited about automatically flushing toilets and those automated airport trash cans that compact the trash inside to make room for other trash. Snow takes its time on its way down from the sky and enjoys the view of the world at different heights.
My mom liked the snow too. On snow days when I was in elementary school she would buy packets of Kool-Aid and shake them out over the ground to write our names in the snow. Then we would race to see who could lick up their name the fastest. My dad's from Florida so he hated the cold. He would yell that we would get frostbite unless we came inside right away. He didn't really understand that you can't get frostbite when it's 34 degrees outside. But my mom and I would humor him and come inside to write limericks about winter. She always said that writing was the best way to remember. She said that a poem is like a fishing net that catches fish-but the fish were memories. I told her that I hated fish because they tasted like sewage and hotdogs were better.
So it's snowing today. There are three feet of snow outside of Dreamwood Terrace.
I watch the snowflakes outside my window serenely mosey their way through the air.
For a second it's like I revert to my childhood. The cupcake shop doesn't open for an hour so my brain shuts off and my body throws on a coat, grabs my keys, and sprints to K. Rogers to buy Kool-Aid powder. I get back to my apartment and the autopilot disengages. I look in the grocery bag clenched in my hand and see a bright red box of black cherry flavored Kool-Aid packets. "What a fucking waste of money" I growl to myself.
After helping Christine close up for the night I remember that I've been needing to run by the Sunny Side Up diner to get my toilet plunger back from Flo who borrowed it on Thursday. Walking down the block with snow flurries getting caught in my eyelashes, I run Auden's words through my mind "And death put down his book." Snow always makes me think of my mother. I get to the counter where this new employee-she looks like she's maybe in college?- is reading Slaughterhouse Five.
You know when you are thinking of something and then you want to say something else to someone but instead of saying what you want to say, you say what you were thinking? Yeah.
I meant to ask where Flo was but instead I quoted, "And death put down his book."
I am one panty-dropping bastard.
Before I embarrass myself further, I give up and walk out the door where the cold greets me with a stifling bear hug. And then that employee scurries out after me explaining that some speed dating thing is beginning and her shift is almost over and would I like to go bowling and did she mention her name was Lucia? It's like she's a film on fast forward. I hate bowling but Christ, her eyes are so blue they are painful to look at and I don't want to hurt her feelings-so I agree.
Damn it. I just wanted to get my plunger back.

Auden | Apartment 221

So my boss Magdalene Bitch fired me a few days ago. She said something about "dust complaints" or whatever. Essentially, because I am not tall enough to dust the top of the ceiling fan blades, I am not fit to clean any square inch of an apartment. Never mind the fact that I have scoured poop residue from both toilets in the penthouse for the past year and a half. Oh no, it's not like I have been splashed in the face with toilet water when I get really into my scrubbing. 

So while I'm looking for a job I decided that I should stick to the cleaning business since being a full time writer will not even pay for gas and people who drop out of college after their first year are not in very high demand in the job market. College professors are all idiots anyway. They are all teaching creative writing because they can't do it themselves. Poets like myself are better off without failed authors suffocating our creativity and imprisoning our inspiration. Anyway, now I am a dishwasher for Christine's Cupcake Palace or Christine's Cupcakes or whatever it is called. Miss Wright, my new boss has so many sticks up her ass. I don't know how many but I could build a hell of a bonfire out of them. 

Asking me to wash each dish four times in her psychotic way... 

I bet she doesn't even appreciate ee cummings. 

I can't even go to work today though since I woke up feeling disgusting. I meant to get my flu shot earlier in the season but whenever I go to the Minit Clinic there are thousands of screaming Doctor Brian fans. They're all women. They're all scantily clad. They're all oblivious to anything that isn't Doctor Brian. I wish I was Doctor Brian. 

Everything ached. My legs felt like soggy spaghetti. Not even al dente spaghetti. My legs were the spaghetti that you leave in the pot too long and then remember to eat but then have leftovers and have to refrigerate to eat again tomorrow for lunch. I tried to toboggan out of my bed wrapped in my blanket cocoon and roll out of my bedroom but I ended up hitting my head on the floor that I really should carpet. Getting to the kitchen proved to be an ordeal from which I emerged bearing four bruises, a scrape (from that broken floorboard that I really should fix), and a desire to go back to bed. My mom used to say that a cup of tea, fresh air, and WH Auden could fix anything so I made myself a cup of tea (I hate tea; it tastes like dirt and water), put on some sorry excuse for pants (My sweatpants have more holes that a colander but it's unusually warm outside and I don't care what people think), grabbed a copy Look, Stranger! (My mom's favorite), and shuffled to my door. 

I don't care if I get other people sick. I will actually be helping them learn a lesson to get their flu shots in the future. Such a caring soul. 

One and a half steps outside and I am absorbed in Auden’s words. 

That later we, though parted then, 

May still recall these evenings when 

Fear gave his watch no look; 

The lion griefs loped from the shade 

And on our knees their muzzles laid, 

And Death put down his book. 

My mother’s favorite poem. She had the top corner of this page folded down so she could flip to ‘A Summer Night’ in cases of emergency. I run the backs of my fingers down the weathered (mom called it “well loved”) spine, careful not to disrupt the fragile bits of paper flaking off. A funeral bulletin falls out of its hiding place between the last page and the back cover. The picture of mom smiling on the cover reminds me that I haven’t opened this book since I read ‘A Summer Night’ at her funeral in 2003. 

I throw the bulletin into the next trash can I see.

Rain | Apartment 221

The day started with rain. The day ended with rain. I hate the rain.
I went to visit my dad today. The car wouldn't start. When it finally did I had to drive through damn Niagara falls just to get to the county mental hospital. The nurses say he's been doing better.
"He hasn't attempted suicide in over a month!" says this nurse. She is way too happy. Her eyes are too big and her teeth are too white. I don't know why she's caring for depressed old men who need to be babysitted in case they try to kill themselves when she should just quit and work as a Disney princess or something.
"Oh great" is my answer, what else am I going to say?
You know, when you're eighteen, young, tortured, and full of angst, girls think you're sexy when they find out that your mother slit her wrists and your father got checked into into a mental hospital afterwards because of repeated attempts at suicide. When they find out that you're an aspiring poet the girls pretty much throw themselves at you. They say they want to be your muse. Ten years later? Not the case. People just worry about you.
The nurse looks at me with a weak, pitying smile and escorts me to the common area where my dad sits, dilapidated, like a deflating balloon.
He asks how work is, as usual. "The lawyers at Barnum and Butler are treating you good, right?"
I don't correct him and tell him that it's "well" instead of "good." Instead I say "Oh yeah it's great. I'm feeling good about it all. I've had some interesting cases recently." Okay, yes I am lying. I've been lying. The nurses said not to bring up poetry and my dreams of being a writer because it reminds him of mom, she being a poet too. "And I bought the penthouse at Dreamwood Terrace," I add. "I love spending time there." This is not completely a lie. I do love spending time there, just not as a resident. I clean it. Yeah. I'm that bohemian starving poet stereotype that cleans the seventh floor penthouse while living in apartment 221, a shitty second floor loft. I've always wanted to be up at the top of the building on the sixth or seventh floor. I get six hours up there every three days and sometimes I pretend it's my apartment. I pretend that my diet consists of something other than ramen noodles and an occasional banana. Of course I can't tell dad any of this.
After lying to dad for about forty minutes and listening to him telling me that I am too skinny and I need a girlfriend for another twenty two, I fold myself into some origami figure to squeeze into the driver's seat of my 1986 Honda Accord. I am the only guy I know whose car is as old as he is. No wonder I don't have a girlfriend. My fountain pen in my pocket digs into my leg whenever I use the clutch.
I drive back through the rain to get home. God, I hate the rain.
I stopped hearing the rain outside at about six when I was cooking my ramen noodles for dinner. I looked out the window, hoping to see the sun. No sun. Only a foggy abyss of blech. An hour later the power goes out. I find my flashlight under the kitchen sink but it's out of batteries. Awesome. I go to sleep at seven forty one.
I am just drifting off when I hear the rain start again. Stupid rain.