RoseMarie London

All the Memories We Inhaled

The whistle wakes me. It's a tired sound. Sometimes I don't hear it. It is its consistency that renders it silent. Without realizing I count down. 10, 9, 8, 7...3, 2, 1. I'd had to yawn midway. Didn't miss a beat though. I may be just-awake and still drunk, I suspect, but I'm seldom without my sense of rhythm.

BOOM!

And for a split-second after, absolute quiet. Imagine. Midtown.

I found a fortune cookie beside my pillow. Out of context it's an odd looking contraption. A frightening little device, even. It doesn't outright look like something you'd put in your mouth for a tasty result. And what it signifies here, balancing on an abused pillow was somewhat irksome--lost time. How much? Hours or days? From what had I been left out?

Sitting up, I knead my blurry eyes and realize what it is is cigarette smoke hanging. The cookie begins to soften in my hand. I tweeze with two red fingernails the slip of paper; today my lucky numbers are 29, 8, 56, 34 and 15. What if the day is almost over? For more than half of it, I would not have known--are they still good tomorrow? What use is a fortune if these things are unclear. I heard the pop of the door lock.

"My sweet princess is awake." He moved from the bedroom doorway to cover me so quickly he could have had wings. He smelled stale but his flesh was smooth and warm. The skin under his eyes looked bruised but he kissed me like he loved me though his tongue was coated with a bitter narcotic. And he fucked me like he meant it.

While he slept I was left to wander the perimeter of our three rooms. If I wanted light I could sit on the edge of the marble bathtub underneath the recessed sun lamps. A different electrical switch entirely. I'd savor a cigarette there. Inhale a second time when the stream of smoke panned against the lighted mirror and rushed back in my face. If I was too hot I could press against the tall windows that faced 56th Street to cool. By now I knew the wax and wan of the traffic.

I'd finished off the last few exposures in his camera with the study of some lint trapped in a far corner of a baseboard molding. At the moment I'm standing on the ledge of heating vents affecting a cowboy stance, stalking the bank of life-cyclists in the posh health club across the asphalt canal. We are face to face through panes of glass. They sweat and I do not. They race toward ambition. I am sedentary defined. At first I must have looked odd but I think they're used to me now.

A little to the right is the deep crater. I'm on the 16th floor and can easily see over the tall plywood board barricades which block the sidewalk and force a snake of pedestrians into the street. The scattering of little men who cover it like worker ants have abandoned it for home, dirty and with ringing ears. They've left the gape not too well covered with bright blue tarp; it has begun to rain. Hear you tomorrow I think, when the demolition shall recommence. And for five more days after that. Five more days until Whiskey is gone again.

I was on the couch flipping through the pages of a Forbes magazine found under an easy chair, idly tallying the luxury car and diamond advertisements when the phone began to ring. I never answer the phone. And go to the door only when expecting someone invited. I'd had a shower and in the silence of my singular residence of this room, could smell the perfume of clean lose its strength to the waft from the pair of crusty Bloody Mary glasses not far away. The caller allowed the ringing to go on and on. It would be quiet only until the connection could be made again. The phone beside the bed had been turned off but I could hear the ringing in the bathroom and dining room and right beside my head. And then he picked it up. I didn't think he would. The phone had been nagging the same way about half an hour ago to no avail.

I heard him say hello, shift in the sheets, crumple the Newport soft pack and the sound of the twice-failing lighter. I heard the dark that surrounded him while all but my feet sat in a pool of light fourteen steps away. I heard him find me gone.

Whiskey was answering questions with grunts and half sentences. "She was here. I hope she hasn't left," he pronounced his first complete thought since waking.

Last night we had gone to a party alongside flashbulbs and tabloid TV cameras. I had a head ache even before my first celebratory drink. But I think the cause had been the confusion over what I should wear. When I thought I'd gotten it just right, Whiskey mistook my dress for a slip and patiently asked me to consider some other choice. I hadn't too much with me.

Something vague mingled with the nicotine at the ceiling. This whole genre of music was on the urge of defunct; a here and now that was destined to become the battle cry of tribute bands far and wide. It was a smidgin of boredom or perhaps this sweet flavor of melancholia which caused my momentary loss of balance and calm. I shouted across the full salon to someone I knew. Surprise and irritation at my caustic whoop caused Whiskey's eyebrows to merge. I immediately began to sulk. A wave of nausea connoting the clumsiness overcame me tasting a little like stale rum. And in between the empty flutes of champagne and the full, all dusted with gold glitter that clung to everyone and everything creating the illusion I suppose, that even the dullest in attendance were multi-faceted, my toes swollen with blood from the steep of toothpick heels, entreating me for a little kindness. I shifted my weight, and sulked.

I noticed that Whiskey too was finding tedium in all the forcibly happy, pretty party people. And although his wide smile was a sham it was nevertheless constant and remarkable while he crunched shoulders with other well-hung stars for this camera or that; Billboard, Pollstar, Album Network and even Cosmopolitan it would turn out. He began prodding me for the names to match familiar faces. I hoped my quick and subtle responses helped me repossess some of what I'd lost by my previous faux pas.

"I'll have another," I said hooking a flute with a pointer. Champagne was not necessarily my drink, but I was enjoying the act of plucking them from passing trays.

Well known for his generosity and endless energy, Whiskey was like the Pied Piper. Very quickly our suite filled to busting with after party congratulants, hangers on and sycophants; a heady mix. He at one point sent me to the hotel manager with a sweat sock heavy with the jewelry we didn't already have on and our passports. I took my time returning from my errand. In the elevator I neglected to choose my floor and was swept up to the spa. I dangled my feet in the deep end of the Olympic size pool until the chlorine and mould smell made the limited contents of my stomach too much a part of the moment. I returned to the suite wearing my stockings as a scarf. I'm not sure that anyone but Whiskey noticed. Whiskey noticed everything. He was a collector too.

For just a moment I recognized my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was trying desperately, to the point where tears of frustration painted my cheeks, to remove lipstick that was not there and had gone through an entire box of Kleenex before I could eventually be consoled. I vaguely perceived Whiskey's powerful arms beneath me and felt myself leave the floor. The sitting room was a colorful carousel. A little pretty, a little bit like a funhouse. Oh Rhett, I thought. Some unseen hand pulled my hair as I was being swept past.

*

Whiskey called out and coughed. Soundlessly I filled the bedroom doorway casting a slinky silhouette across him.

"You'd thought I'd gone?"

"I'd hoped not. Have you eaten?"

"Not a thing."

"Come on," he said. "Let's go downstairs so that housekeeping can clean up our mess."