The apartment door flung open, and hallway light poured in. Marie’s studio had learned the trick of only looking big when all the lights were off. With the flick of a switch, the truth of the very tiny space returned.
Laundry had made its way to every part of the floor. Shirts flung into probably-worn, maybe-worn, and definitely-worn piles. Socks that would never be paired again. Suits filled with every wrinkle in the known universe. Her bedsheets were twisted into ropes, decorative throw pillows on the floor, candy wrappers dotting her dark comforter like little stars.
She let her tote bag fall off in the middle of the chaos. The shoulders of her blazer slid off. Trousers unhooked, unzipped. The sudden cold of the room dusted her skin.
She stood in front of her small ornate mirror that didn’t match anything else in the room. The gold frame gave her a little confession booth to share her sins. She had added the gold paint using a spray can and the dumpsters out front as a work surface. The landlord asked if she was the one who had left the paint marks. “Definitely not,” she told him.
She pressed a thumb under one eye and then the other. The mascara smudge became smudge-ier. Not like she’d been crying, more like she was auditioning for some low-budget horror film where the ghost who haunted pre-war studio apartments hadn’t slept in weeks.
On the windowsill, between a dying succulent and a stack of unopened mail, Marie kept her altar. She wasn’t religious; she was just collecting small pieces of proof that she’d existed. That she was real.
A little laminated card of La Virgen de Guadalupe. The corners were soft from being felt too many times. A plastic cup that had once held a tea light and now held bobby pins. One tall prayer candle in a glass sleeve. The kind you could buy at any bodega in New York. And nearby on the ledge was a knife and five blackberries, as if her window were a set piece in a Frida Kahlo painting.
She didn’t light it daily. That would imply routine. Stability. A person with a real plan. Marie lit it when she felt the weight was becoming too much and she needed to nudge the universe in the right direction.
She found a lighter in the kitchen junk drawer, the one with a single takeout menu from the Chinese place down the street, and an expired MetroCard she refused to throw away out of superstition. It was the first card she bought upon arriving in New York City. It was good luck. Probably.
FLLLICK. The wick took a long second to light, then steadied. A small flame, trying to be brave in a city built to bully small things. Marie watched the light catch the glass, creating a small, beautiful corner in her studio apartment. The room didn’t change. Her day didn’t change. But the flame existed. That was something.
She put two fingers to her forehead, then her chest, then her shoulders. Just like her mom had taught her. Because if you didn’t know what to do, you did this.
“Por favor, Dios. Que todo salga bien,” she whispered to herself.
When her mother, Antoinette, had brought her to Phoenix, Marie was fourteen and angry in a quiet way that almost didn’t look like anger. Two suitcases. One backpack. A city that felt like a big, bright, hot punishment. They’d been scared and lonely at first, not in a way anyone could see, but in the small, constant way of not knowing where to go or where to put yourself.
Antoinette had lit candles in their apartment too. Not as a miracle request. As a declaration. We are still here. We still get to ask for things.
Across the room, in the kitchen, the fridge buzzed loudly. Inside, milk was aging into chunks, peaches were decorated with a thin green layer, and a jar of jam sat there in the back. Just taking up space. Behind all of it, a large lidded rectangle: the casserole. The thing brought by a well-meaning neighbor last week, after the fire alarm incident had woken her up at 4:30 am. The neighbor said she was cooking pierogies, but Marie suspected that might be code for meth.
She carefully slid the casserole out of the fridge and thunked it onto the counter. Popped the lid. One big, coagulated mass, with some elbow macaroni that added additional girth.
Drawer. Spoon. That overly large serving kind. The first bite was ice cold, but kinda good? The second bite was a mouthful of salt. In a definitely good way.
She slid down the cabinet until she was on the floor, knees up, casserole wedged between them. Like she was doing one of those old-fashioned exercises where you squeeze a hoop between your knees. The spoon clinked across the glass bottom as she enjoyed her dinner.
In the wall to her left, muffled conversation came in and out like the Coney Island tide. The building didn’t believe in privacy. If you were going to have a fight with your wife, it was everyone’s problem. Marie actually preferred it this way. Other lives as white noise meant hers could be static.
After consuming the casserole in the fashion of a slumped-over goblin, she dropped the spoon into the empty dish and crossed back over to the bed. On the way, she flicked the kitchen light off. The dark let the place enlarge itself again by a few forgiving inches.
She fell sideways onto the bed. Her phone, face down on the nightstand, called for her attention with little repetitive buzzes. She gave in very easily and unlocked her phone with 1234. A password someone would only dare use on their luggage.
Thumb. Swipe. The little red cartoon flame opened with its cute little animation. Tinder. Profiles came in and out with the quick swipe of her finger.
A man with a fish. You know the pose. A man standing in front of the sign for Zion National Park. She had hung off the chains at the Angels Landing hike, and it wasn’t a fond memory. A man in a suit with a tie so red he could be a congressman. He checked both “Christian” and “conservative” on his profile.
Left, right, left. The muscles remembered her dating preferences without her. The ones she paused on had the same face, all expressed in different places. Different universes. A baseball cap and a toddler, a freshly killed elk, a gym mirror selfie.
Bios did their elevator pitches with varying degrees of grammar.
“Six four if that matters.” (It kinda mattered.)
“Looking for my partner in crime.” (Okay, Clyde.)
“No drama.” (Sure, Jan.)
Marie had always been clear in saying she didn’t like Tinder. But, she did like the feeling of choice at your fingertips. It felt like control. Swipe enough, and you can trick the part of your brain that was exhausted into thinking it’s found the perfect mate.
A siren settled one street over, and the cops quieted down as they hopped out to harass a homeless man. She adjusted a pillow, sat up, tried a new position, then surrendered to a less-than-comfortable one.
Left, left, right. Him.
Joel’s face appeared on her screen. Not a professional headshot. A weird, casual image in Central Park shot from a low angle, probably by his daughter. Gross. A weird mix of photos in band t-shirts, unshaveness, and weekend light. The whole thing was jarring.
Hard pass. Left swipe. This was the end of it for tonight.
She had rules for situations like this, which basically meant she had a collection of stories she told about who she was. One of them was about not being the kind of woman who slept with someone at work. Another was about being the kind who refused loneliness and dressed up even if there was nowhere to go. The third was about not being predictable, even to herself. The rules worked best when they weren’t tested.
The phone now lay there, face down, buzzing once. Twice. A third time. Some app asking for attention. Or a human. Or a robot wearing a human’s name. She didn’t check.
In the wall, the conversation next door heated up. “WHO THE FUCK IS JESSICA!?” Then resolved. Must have been a family friend. Or an elderly coworker. The fridge made that weird reset sound. Somewhere in the building, a toilet flush really made a show of it.
On the windowsill, the prayer candle threw a thin line of light onto a stack of mail as if it were blessing her overdue water bill. Marie let her hand rest on her stomach and felt the solid, heavy casserole. She rolled over and closed her eyes. When you stand on the edge of a cliff…
If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.
Every Wednesday, Open Woods tracks the cultural moments worth paying attention to. Curated weekly for brands that want to move first.
Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.
Every Sunday, Above the Fold breaks down what’s running in advertising, what’s landing, and what’s a total disaster.
Photo Credit: Krišjānis Kazaks
lol.