Chapter Text
Pick a big city. You know, one of those cities where all the stories on the big screen happen, where the superhero saves the damsel and a few well-placed extras. Or the one where John Goodfellow’s family is kidnapped and he goes on a vengeful, yet honourable quest to save them. Or the everlasting boy meets girl, falls in love, complication waltzes in and twists the plot. The end of that one is almost always the same, there’s a happily-ever-after of some sort. These things happen in big fantastically romantic cities, after all, with parks full of old growth trees and historical buildings and postcard backdrops. A city with an unbelievable nightlife and beautiful people, a pulse that draws people in and holds them there, the promise of success and love and that life. Go ahead, pick one.
This isn’t that city. Oh, it might look like it: fantastic skyline, lights and landmarks recognized the world over. It might smell like it too, like coffee houses and expensive perfume, Italian leather handbags, sex wax and the salt of an ocean. It might even have a signpost just outside of it on every major highway welcoming you into that fabulous lifestyle you were seeking. And that sign sparked hope, didn’t it? Visions of greatness, because you were so sure – so positive – that everything would change once you got here.
Give it a month. Unless you’re one of those glass-half-full types, the eternal optimists, the ones who just take and take and take and can’t be struck down. One month. Because that’s the thing they don’t mention in the movies, the part where you spend your first week getting your bearings and the second dropping off your resumé, and the third waiting for the phone to ring. It’s that tense, quiet moment right before the movie starts where the studio and the distributor flash a computer animated logo, but before the star’s name shows up. The moment when the music gives you just a little taste of what’s to come.
It’s that fourth week that’s the kicker. That’s the week you owe your first rent payment on a flat you’d planned to vacate just as soon as the first sizable paycheck was in your sweaty palm, when you’ve done it, when you’re on your way. It’s the week when you discover you have twenty-seven dollars and twelve cents to your name and your security deposit was non-refundable. It’s when the people stop looking quite so beautiful when you see them from the stainless steel side of the counter at the cafe around the corner, refilling their coffee, cooking their eggs, wondering if anyone would notice if you ate the pancakes they didn’t even touch when you’re bussing their tables. The city stops looking like the postcard, and the smell is the warm bite of the evening’s last cigarette, mingled with the stench of the overflowing dumpster in the alley.
That’s when the romance dies. And do you want to know why? Because what happens in the movies is dealt out to a select few. Maybe they’re lucky. Maybe they’ve got a higher power in their favour, if that’s the sort of thing you believe in. Maybe they’ve got the whole world figured out and know how to manipulate the system, and they scoff at the rest of us who haven’t yet. I don’t know. The point is that while they live that life, the rest of us are on the sidelines trying our level best just to stand in their shadow.
There’s a man in the flat across the way. A woman lived there before him, young, pretty in her own way. She had brown hair that she dyed black with one of those store-bought kits. She danced to old-school Madonna in her pajamas. She played the cello like it was the release of her soul out the window, curling around the iron rungs of the fire escape and up into the stars. Sometimes I wonder if she made it, if she got to that life on the other side of this.
The man is sitting on the old couch that came with the flat, left by a couple a year ago and that the super never disposed of. Perhaps they’ve tacked another hundred to the rent over there and billed it as ‘furnished’. It wouldn’t surprise me.
The first week, he unpacked a few things from boxes. Standard things: a lamp, some clothes, a pillow and a ragged blanket that is now scrunched to one side of the couch. The guitar came out almost immediately, along with dozens of comp books, those quad-ruled kind with the mottled black and white covers. He’d strum a little, write something down, his mouth moving to words. I wanted to hear his voice, the notes, but the window was closed. He had that look they all have, that inner glow, that knowing little smile, the sparkle of what must be the physical manifestation of hope. It suited him.
Now he’s sat on that decrepit old couch and staring dully at the guitar as though it’s wronged him in some way. The guitar is resolute; it never leaned one way or the other.
I can see it when he wipes his nose with a knuckle, drawing knees in brown cords up close to his chest, folding in on himself. I watch as the particles of hope turn away from him, dissipate and leave him looking wrung and tired and old, maybe older than I think he is. He doesn’t see me crush out my smoke on the iron railing and mimic his pose, because I’ve been there, I understand the feeling pretty fucking well. This is the cold first night of his fourth week. I wish I could tell him that it’ll be fine, he’ll adjust. But the window is closed.
There’s a man in the flat across the way. He sits on his fire escape and smokes before he turns in, eleven PM on the dot, every night. It seems early for a lad his age. Twenties, I expect. His clothes say as much, jeans and band t-shirts, flannels and track bottoms. Maybe he has an early job. But he has one. Tomorrow I’ll head down to the factory district, see if I can’t get another short-lived spurt. That’s the way it always goes.
Oh, I’ve been here before. You forget this part though, the part after you’ve gathered up all your belongings and your courage and whatever you’ve got in savings and tried another city. Third time’s a charm, that’s what I told myself. Old wives tales. Or sayings. Shite you hear in songs written by the people who did make it.
The man on the fire escape watches me. To be fair, I think he watches the other windows as well. I wonder if he watches the window beside mine, where that couple argue all day and fuck all night. They have one of those ancient spring mattresses that groans if you turn over, so just imagine other activities. Doesn’t matter. I’m getting used to it now, like this old sofa that smells like corn flakes and mold in the cushion I keep my head away from, or the way the foam is disintegrating inside the cushions. I wouldn’t sleep on it if it weren’t the only thing I have to sleep on besides the floor.
I wouldn’t call it voyeurism. Not really. I’ve not caught him wanking or anything. He’s gone most of the day. He eats beans from the can and pot noodles and sandwiches from take away boxes. He reads a lot. He does laundry on the first Wednesday of the month, but only has enough clothes to fill one load. He doesn’t smoke in the flat, always opens the window and leans out of it, or climbs onto the grating of the fire escape.
There are constants you get used to after awhile. Sirens at night. The chink of change in other people’s pockets. The dull ache in your gut. The glow of that cigarette on the fire escape across the way. They become a routine, a familiar. I’d almost say comfortable, but most of them aren’t.
The routine is that cigarette on the balcony. He lights up and takes in the first drag, tilts back his head with eyes closed. He holds it for four seconds and then opens his eyes, looking at the sky. Can you see the stars in the city? A few, maybe, if the wind is blowing the smog away.
At first I wondered if he was making wishes. Silly, that. Wishing yourself somewhere else from where you are, it’s childish. I wondered then if he was childish enough to try. But no, I understand it now. The look is not future gazing; his eyes aren’t far away. They’re present. Here I am, they say, you’ve forgotten I was here.
I think maybe he’s just like me, a bloke stuck in limbo. Unable to move forward, unwilling to move back. It’s good to know I’m not the only one.