The Progress of Sherlock Holmes

Hospital Corners

He’s asleep. His breathing has the rhythmic quality of unconsciousness; shallow, regular, quiet. Slight hiss as air is drawn in through his nose, huff as it slides back out. He’s on his side, his face away from the door, his knees bent and one arm tucked underneath the pillow. Asleep. A reversible condition, but I won’t wake him. Not yet, anyway. Not tonight. Someday, maybe.

(Maybe not.)

The door is partially open, as it often is. There’s plenty of room for me to stand here and watch. Can stand still for hours without making a sound. I know I can, I’ve done it. Repeatedly.

There remains not a single angle from, or condition under which, I would fail to recognise John Watson. Have made a careful study of him, from the length of his thighs and the shape of each of his toes to the dynamics of his gait. If John were kidnapped for any length of time (unable to commit to his regular grooming pattern): would be able to report the precise length of his hair, including facial. Could sketch the shape of his fingernails from memory. If handed a photograph in which John was hidden within a crowd with only his right shoulder visible: would be able to identify him (within fifteen seconds).

(A video; within ten.)

From here at the door, his back to me: the line of his shoulders almost entirely parallel to the stretched pattern of light through the window from the streetlamp outside. Cannot see his face. A pity. The image in my mind: never quite as good as the real thing.

Does he leave his door ajar like this on purpose? (Maybe he’s inviting me, teasing me, daring me.)

No, probably not. Nice thought, though. Too devious. Something I would do (not John). John doesn’t play that kind of subtle game. Feigning sleep behind a half-opened door in order to be watched, to be adored, to be desired quietly (and from a distance). Passive aggression isn’t hismodus operandi. No, the door is open because he wants to be awakened when something disturbing happens somewhere else in the flat in the middle of the night (not an unwarranted presumption). Not a special message to me. Something about cigars being cigars. Don’t remember how it goes. Deleted it ages ago. (John would remember.)

His bed: so neat. Obscene. Hospital corners on the sheets, on the woollen blanket Mrs Hudson left folded there for him months ago. Even the bedspread: hospital cornered within an inch of its life. Sitting there in the middle of the day (cross-legged, or curled up, or lying flat on my back) when John isn’t around: the edges often spring free. Can just sit there, breaking his hospital corners, thinking. Breathing. Leaving a mark on space and time.

Sometimes: lie there in his bed and stare up at the ceiling. Watch the pattern of lights from the window, following the cracks in the ceiling to their logical ends. Perfectly straight, perfectly smooth bed. Lie on the side John doesn’t sleep on, the right side. (John is left handed.) Lie there as if John is sleeping on the other side, perfectly occupying the space left there for a bed partner. (Do all left handed people sleep on the left side of the bed? Why would they?)

John never notices the bedspread sprung free at the corners when he comes home. The slightly disturbed lines of it. He’s never, as far as I am able to deduce (substantially far), managed to see that his bed has sprung apart a bit at the seams. That it’s been sat upon. Never made any appearance of recognising the telltale indentation my head leaves on the pillow. (So obvious. You can smell a person on cotton pillow cases. I know. I’ve done it. Repeatedly.)

Maybe he does notice. Underestimating him? Maybe he knows and approves, appreciates my small battles against the remains of his military habits. Though my original, far more likely, deduction is surely correct; he is an idiot. Simply doesn’t observe the signs that someone else, obviously his flatmate (who else would it be?), curls up in a foetal position on his outrageously neat bed in the afternoons (as a proxy for curling up next to object of his pathetic, adolescent, ridiculous, unrequited lust). For the best. Interpersonal relationships: really not my area. (Obviously.)