In that apartment I did a lot, and I don't mean when I was with her, I just mean when I was alone. I baked there. I made dinner there. I showered there. I watched movies there. Mostly, I was keeping warm there. But above all, what I remember was the light. I was using her desk, and the orange incandescent light contrasted sharply with the dimming blue light from the windows. It was late evening. I was sitting at her desk. A camera was behind me, and the shutter was released remotely by me, and only me, alone, in her apartment. The lens saw that contrast. The sad, almost funereal blue light from the dying day outside, a wintry day, so cold outside, and the isolated warmth of the apartment without any other light on. And there I was, a silhouette in the narrow darkness between the two lights, the cold light, the warm light. And my silhouette melted almost into the darkness that the two lights couldn't reach. I was writing. I was thinking. My mind was straying back and forth between similarly cold and warm ideas. I couldn't believe I was in that apartment. I was there, alone, alone with so many memories of "us", the opposite of alone. We did so much there, and now I was alone. It was New Year's Eve and I was waiting for something in the oven to finish before bringing it to a friend of mine. The smell of the roasting ribs brought some pleasantness to my senses, but still, I was swinging between the cold thought of my loneliness and the warm thoughts of the past, the cold thought of her absence, and the warm thoughts of her erstwhile smiles in that sofa not too far from where I was sitting.
It was so warm in the apartment. Free heat. I was making myself comfortable. I knew the place well, nearly every corner, even the patterns of the brick I would have recognized in a photograph. The warm thoughts of being accepted in someone's home, in her life, in her body, even in her thoughts. The cold thought that I was alone, sent out in the cold, freezing, shivering from fear of a permanent eviction, quaking with yearning for some extra layers of protection from the very person who caged me in my loneliness. And despite the smell of the roasting ribs, I could still smell her. Her scent was everywhere. Not just on her clothes, but her seat, her bedsheets, even in the kitchen. Everywhere.
The kitchen counter was cold, but by stroking its uneven surface the texture of the wood at the touch of my fingertips was making music of my memories as the strings do when stroked by a violin bow. I remembered us cooking together, talking, and the warmth of those thoughts sent shivers to my spine, ever so much lonelier.
And I wondered why she let me be here in her absence. Why was I evicted from her life and yet allowed the solitude of being in her apartment. Maybe a bit of torture, with all these warm, glowing thoughts of an isolated apartment when the reality of the outside, of the world, is a subzero chill in the waning last moments of a wintry end of the year.
