One Page #37

In the event of an emergency please extinguish the cat and save the photographs. All else can go. In fact, it would be a relief. There is too much around here, I trip and fall my way down the hall and it is dark so I can’t see where I am going. There is so much stuff around here, but no light bulbs to replace the one that burnt out and so I keep on tripping each time I go up and down the hallway. The rooms are mostly blocked off now. Doors have been closed as if they can be denied their existence because no one can see in. But the sky can see in, and the trees and the sun, so the rooms must still exist somehow. Just not in our consciousness. The photographs are in a box right next to the back door. It is as if we are all expecting the house to spontaneously combust, and we want to be prepared. And we are prepared. We nearly have our suitcases packed and ready to go. Our hands instinctively reaching for the handles, prepared to grab and run. But so far we are at ten sunny days and not a hint of flame. Even wavering cigarette butts and random acts of lighters flickering don’t send this house to its rightful position of ash and charred wood and melted windows. It is no use. It seems indestructible and we are wildly disappointed. The air is too clean and we long for plumes of smoke, rising and tumbling out over the river and into the city where people would look out their windows and wonder what was happening upstream and whether everyone was all right. But they would turn back to their newspapers or their quiet dinners, and would never find out aside from a possible mention in the city papers the next day. But it would be so small, just a sentence, and so easy to miss. Most people would. The cat was white and he shed everywhere, especially on my black shirts. He seemed to mostly ignore me until I was wearing black, which was often, and then he would follow me begging for attention and pressing his nose deeply into my thigh so hard he would nock my legs over and I would nearly fall off the bed where I was lying, scheming, and hoping for rain. Lightening would do. Lightening starts fires. I instinctively looked to the sky as if my thinking about lightening would make it appear in a glorious thunderstorm headed directly for our house alone. But the sky was blue and fading to black as evening approached. I could already imagine its sparkling starlit deepness with not a cloud to shroud the moon. I glowered and turned back to my book. I had almost been dozing off, but was trying to catch myself. I flicked cigarette ash to the floor and a moment later looked over the edge of the bed to see if small flames were lapping. They weren’t. I read on. The night grew darker, clearer.