n i n e
There’s a balcony in the apartment. There’s a kitchen too, and a bedroom and a bathroom. I know because I can see it all, standing in one place. It’s that small. It’s smaller than mine and Mikaela’s. It would probably take me seven steps to cross the entire length of the place.
The ceiling fan in the living room is rotating slowly. I watch it as Lola cradles the bag of groceries to her chest like a newborn child and carries it to a small wooden table that’s just big enough to accommodate two place mats, kept on the other end of the same room. There’s a wooden crate like the one we have at the apartment with a TV kept on top of it, and a set-top box on top of the TV. I look for the remotes. They’re kept next to the TV. They’re coated with a thick layer of dust. So is the TV screen.
I look at the walls. They’re a dull white, but there are random rectangles of a brighter white, like tan squares, only on a wall. But then again, I think, what good are pictures on the walls of the apartment of a blind man?
The couch is bare of any cushions. I like it. It’s not like our couch, depressingly decked up. At least here the couch is left to be just a couch, nothing else. There is no carpet or rug on the floor.
I walk to the middle of the room. Lola is examining the kitchenette. Her shorts are dripping water on the cold cement floor. She takes out a packet of ramen noodles that’s half-empty and tied clumsily with a rubber band. She looks at it critically for a few moments and then puts it back. Standing behind her, I can see that the other things the kitchenette contains are a jar of what looks like coffee powder, a packet of sugar, a can of whipped cream, a package of bread, a bottle of chilli tomato ketchup, a few ceramic mugs, a stack of two plates, and a cracked plastic glass with a few spoons and forks. It’s an odd combination of food. I wonder what he eats the bread with. Probably the whipped cream.
I realize that the guitar has stopped.
The balcony is just off the end of the apartment. It’s small enough just for two people to stand comfortably. A clothesline is hung across its length and on the end of it are hung two pairs of black boxers. In the middle of the balcony is kept a deep cane chair. Sitting on the chair is Dexter.
He has his bare feet up on the railing in front of him, ankles crossed. He’s draped all over his guitar, but now his hands hang loose, his head tipped back, his eyes closed. The view isn’t great anyway – all I can see is the apartments across the road. I stand in the doorway of the balcony, just looking at him as he hugs his guitar. He’s wearing a vest and tracks, nothing else. He has little curls of dark hair on the tops of his shoulders and on his feet and on the backs of his knuckles. His beard is still burgeoning fantastically. He’s stretched out in the shape of the chair, his fingers skimming the steel strings of his guitar, caressing them, but not forcibly enough to evoke a sound.
“Lola, I know you’re staring at me.”
He speaks. I blink because I seem to have forgotten how deep his voice is. His voice is like one of those voices you really listen to, you don’t just hear it, you listen to it. It reminds me of the time once in college when Mr. Meierhofer got us a recording of Philip Larkin’s reading of Church Going. I couldn’t think about anything else for days except the way he said someone would know, I don’t, although I’m not really thinking about the way Dexter says Lola, I know you’re staring at me, but it just reminds me of that time, for some reason.
“I can hear you talking to yourself, Dex!” Lola calls out from inside, and I hear the sound of the kitchenette cabinet closing. Then suddenly I feel her standing right beside me. “Evianna’s here, enjoying the view. Evianna, this is my brother, Dexter.”
