Winter Evening
It is 7.35 PM on a Wednesday. K lies restlessly asleep beside me. The futon we are on has heavy wooden arms that curl out from the purple mattress like the crest of a wave. (It is a futon that will not long be with us: any day now we will trade up to a sofa, and it will regain its right and true identity as a college woman’s furniture. I am sure it has felt out-of-place with us the past five years, despite the small apartments we have inhabited and the perpetual transitoriness of our lives. Has it resented us for keeping regular hours? Did its loathing increase when we bought a kitchen table and began eating dinner there?) Bingley lies curled up on her chest, and Jane lies across my arm, a heavy enough weight to cut off the blood circulation to my wrist and make it difficult to type. (I’d hate to meet the man who could cast off such a creature as Jane. His heart would be so cold his blood would skitter, not pulse, from artery to vein.) And Newton lies restlessly on a blanket by the television, which is off. His own restlessness is despondency and boredom. Not only is he shut inside all day while we are at work, on winter days such as we have had lately, when the temperatures are near zero degrees Fahrenheit and the wind chills are so severe they make your skin hurt, neither of us get as much exercise as we would like. It is too cold to run in the mornings, too cold to walk far in the evenings, too overwhelming to make it even for a few minutes to the park. I am as restless as he, ready to get out in the world, ice and snow and poor traction be damned so long as I can work up enough breath that the icicles will cover all of my beard and what sweat I do work up will freeze, a fine film of salt and water waiting for exposure to the dry air of the furnace to reveal itself for what it is.
Things are quiet tonight.
