L (and Things Come Apart) Read Free

ceiling, Henry watched the slow rotation of the fan, assigning a season for each blade, a year for each rotation. As the stranger continued Henry focused on him, intent on the centre of his eye.

4
    HE HEARS HIS WIFE AND GUESTS LAUGHING. The clink of a glass. Wine spilling into a glass. Laughter. Voices. He listens only to the music; he drowns their voices and turns his eyes to the woman sitting across from him. She stares back at him with the gaze of one waiting to be recognized.

5
    ON THE SECOND FLOOR, ABOVE THE CAFÉ , there was a flat. Henry had intended to keep it vacant, but it was now occupied by a woman who had passed through his door the night of a storm enquiring about the empty place she had seen from a room across the street. It had appeared to him that she may well have spent every moment in that evening’s downpour and when he’d eyed the bag on the floor behind her, he looked to the ceiling. “It’s a small room with a bathroom. It was my father’s room once. The mattress is long so it should be okay for you.” She followed his eyes to the ceiling, shrugged her shoulders and said it sounded fine. Henry removed the key from his key ring and introduced himself.
    She kept her hands in her pockets, smiled and said her name. “L.”
    Henry led L to the back where a door opened on to a staircase. There was another entrance he told her, at the side of the building, up the iron stairwell. He brought her up the stairs, slid the key in the lock and led her inside. “As you can see the fridge is in the closet. The door was removed a long time ago to make room for it. The bathroom is on the right.”
    He wasn’t sure what to tell her. Prints of old paintings. An empty wicker basket. Old grains in old glass jars. The room was as it was. The kitchen was too small for the two of them. He pointed to an open cupboard and some plates and told her if there was anything she needed she was welcome to it downstairs.
    L ran her fingers along the wall. The colour was deep, the walls textured. She placed her bag on a wooden bench extending from the wall beneath the window. She looked in the small mirror above the armoire. Ropes of wet mascara anchored to her cheeks, pulling her eyelids closed. The room was wider, the ceilings higher than she imagined from the dark tenement across the street where she’d stood not long ago. She unrolled the blinds, walked slowly to the bathroom, and tested the light.
    â€œIt’s broken,” Henry said, “but there’s a large candle, which should be fine.” White tiles, a white toilet and a white porcelain sink. “That’s the bath. It takes a long time to fill but it’s a good size.” He squeezed into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, reassuring her that the plumbing was at least intact. L smiled faintly, indicating to Henry with a nod of her own that she approved of the flat and his generosity, and that she would like to stay. She did not say for how long, but considering the days spent among strangers, Henry was glad to see this new face, glad that he had been of some use. She towelled off the remains of her make-up, thanked Henry and closed the door for three days.
    When he returned to the ground floor, he could hear the floor creak as she walked slowly around the upstairs flat. He imagined a heavy cat acquainting itself with every corner of its new surroundings. But the creaking did not last long. Directly above him is where her bed lay, and that is where the footsteps stopped.

6
    FOR THREE DAYS IT RAINED BOTH OUTSIDE AND IN. His neglect to repair the iron pipes caused the bad weather to make its way inside. For those who complained Henry offered only the fact that pipes do not stand a chance against a force that crumbles mountains and this way, at least, the plants stayed watered. He kept plants in many corners and laid others strategically beneath the places where water fell through the widening cracks overhead,