To Be Decided
“I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything. I want to tell you this story without having to be in it.”
To Be Decided
You are in a room.
It is a hotel room, it is plain, it is not the nicest place you have ever stayed at. The walls are powder blue and something about the two full length mirrors set on opposite corners of the room provokes discombobulation; you are too thin in one and too wide in the other. But you have the wrong idea right now. This is not a funhouse motel room to make your hairs stand on end; it is a beautiful room, really. Let me give you more. There is a generous balcony attached to the leftmost wall, accessed by sliding glass doors that have been tugged all the way open. There is a girl standing, leaning on the railing, and you can see her through the sheerest layer of curtains left halfdrawn by the rooms’ inhabitants. She is curlyhaired, maybe, tapping out ash on a seltzer can, maybe, admiring the yellow melting sousing the landscape, maybe. She has a great view because this room is on the tenth floor, something you can appreciate, too, because your room is on the third floor of a different tower that looks out at semi-scaffolded walkways and other such distasteful sights of construction. So this room, we now establish, is beautiful.
A breeze ruffles the curtains just slightly. Yellow drips off of the edges of the balcony and the shadows outside grow longer and darker and begin to blend into the rapidly darkening terrace floor. From your position on the rightmost bed (you chose to lounge here because you remain cooled by the aircon vent straight above), you are convinced that the edges of the curtain grazing the balcony floor are starting to tendril towards the girl. But you are not afraid, not even when your vision goes momentarily hazy, blurred by a flash of yellow that has crawled back up. That’s alright; it is that time of the afternoon where the sun can’t seem to decide whether or not to set, and you understand. Of course you understand. So you lose sight of the girl for a moment, but you are unafraid because you know how these things work; the curtains will only brush her ankles and whisper, at best, half a promise and nothing more. And she will not mind, this girl. She laughs at everything and that is a rare quality, this kind of joyfinding. So she will let out a bit of a peculiar, hiccuping titter, and you will smile to yourself and pretend like no one is watching you, like no one else has followed your line of sight to the curtains and witnessed them hesitate their touch, soak in the girl’s laugh, remove their tendrils and settle on the floor once again. Though you know someone has already seen.
The someone: at the foot of your bed is a boy ironing. You, reader, are settling in now, aren’t you? Maybe you see where this is going, maybe you don’t. Maybe that bit about the curtains and their tendrils made you think, What the fuck? I would never hallucinate something like that. Stay focused on the iron press though. Plonk, pshh, it goes. The boy has just turned his attention from the balcony and is now intent on straightening out the collar of his linen shirt, spread out on the ironing board. You know he is intent because he does that thing you are so familiar with: that mouth, thin, just slightly parted, sandy right brow pulled just a little bit further down than the left. A generic familiarity. The faces of this boy, the girl, the person in the shower running ambiently in the background have to remain blurred, you see, because this is a memory. It is your memory, to be specific, which means that you of course must keep some details for yourself. You have a habit of not being able to decide, either, what to share and what not, but this I will decide for you.
The tip of the iron press roves over and over the same crinkle. You ask the boy whether he has pressed the button to release more steam; the pucker occasioned by the furrow of his right brow deepens when he tells you that yes, it is working, the collar just won’t straighten. You stretch, bring your legs over the side of the bed, graze your toes on the cold tiles before hopping down and taking yourself over to inspect his work.
The linen sears. Your hand recoils momentarily; you don’t doubt that he has tried to get the collar right. You’re aware that there is nothing you can do here, that perhaps you should not have inquired about the state of his shirt. There are some things better left untouched by hands that have not yet become experts in mending.
But there is another version of this story where you don’t recoil. The curtains don’t graze or whisper or doubt the girl’s skin; your fingers grow fluorescently red against the linen and your gaze moves—move, Goddamnit, move—up his arm and locks onto his eyes, which stare down in earnest. Maybe these eyes are a benefit-of-the-doubt type of kind, honest, and green. Maybe they are a strip-you-to-the-soul edition of penetrating, slightly foxy, and blue, or maybe they are yours. Just yours. Pick a colour, reader. This is another memory. We will begin again.
You are in a room.
It is a hotel room, it is plain, it is not the nicest place you have ever stayed at. The walls are powder blue and the two full length mirrors set on opposite corners of the room shift in length and width, ostensibly in time with the indecisive movements of the sun.
But you have the wrong idea right now. This is not a funhouse motel room to make your hairs stand on end; it is a beautiful room, really. Let me give you more.
There is a generous balcony attached to the leftmost wall, accessed by sliding glass doors that have been tugged all the way open. There is a girl standing, leaning on the railing, and you can see her through the sheerest layer of curtains left halfdrawn by the rooms’ inhabitants. She is curlyhaired, maybe, tapping out ash on a seltzer can, maybe, admiring the yellow melting sousing the landscape, maybe. She has a great view because this room is on the tenth floor—she turns a cheek to it, peers down at what is perhaps a single men’s sandal on the balcony floor.
Hey, no one’s wearing this out tonight! Closed toe shoes only! She tangoes with a piece of curtain for a moment before escaping from its grasp and lightly stumbling onto the cold, yellow-soused tile of the room. The sandal is raised in her grip. She laughs at its flaking, roughhoused state, the laugh something hiccupy, somewhere in between that of a baffled mother’s and a drunken eighteen year old’s. She heads straight to the bathroom where her boyfriend is crooning in the shower—sugar magnolia, blossoms bloomin, head’s all empty and I don’t care, saw my baby down by the river, knew she’d have to come up soon for air—and reiterates her declaration. From your bed, up against the wall shared by the bathroom, you hear him get louder—sweet blossom come on under the willow, we can have high times if you’ll abide—and her get more insistent despite the giggles—I’m serious, no flip flops tonight!—and, of course, him again, because he must have the last laugh—she’s got everything delightful, she’s got everything I need!
Reader, what do you feel now? Is it envy for this pair, this teenaged pair that shower-sings to the Grateful Dead and bickers over whether he can wear sandals to dinner? You were married, once. Or some version of it. Do you want this again? Be careful what you wish for.
Away from the noise to your right, your periphery registers a hand reflexively shooting into the air. It’s a boy, ironing at the foot of your bed, and he seems to have touched the freshly steamed linen of his shirt collar too soon. He tries once more, the tip of the iron press roving over the same crinkle again and again. You ask if he has pressed the button to release more steam; the pucker occasioned by the furrow of his right brow deepens when he tells you that yes, it is working, the collar just won’t straighten. You stretch, bring your legs over the side of the bed, graze your toes on the cold tiles before hopping down and taking yourself over to inspect his work.
The linen sears. Your hand recoils momentarily, and then you press it down again. You won’t say that you can’t fix it. You will not look up, not yet; just grab the handle of the iron and flatten the collar, release enough steam to soak the fabric thoroughly, and wiggle the press along the seams. When he lifts up the shirt and folds the collar back down, he will think you have uncovered the cure. He will be none the wiser that the hustle and bustle of your nights’ activities will not be the cause for the reappearance of the wrinkle later, but rather the malfunctioned seam of the collar itself. Placebo remedy, you think. What doesn’t kill him will make him stronger.
Of course, with those of a feebler conscience, perhaps you may feel that it would be better if he understood that there is something wrong with the material of the shirt itself. That there is something, perhaps a few items, not quite mendable here. For that lot of you, I provide a letter. In it, you purge more truth about your deceptions than just the collar.
Perhaps it would go something like this:
Dear ________ ,
I see your face in snow and sushi platters. Maybe now linen collars too. You’re a great deal too kind for me and I’m sorry. Maybe if you hadn’t stood there and implored me with your eyes, I would have been honest. Told you there’s no hope, truthfully. For the collar, I mean. But also, out on that walk, when the fall was becoming winter, and you laid all your cards on the table and told me you wanted that Grateful Dead, sandal-or-no-sandal kind of love. And knee deep in our sleds, when you kept swaying to the storm and begging the sky with your eyes to give you everything you wanted, which might have been me, at the time. I’m sorry for those times, too. For not picking a side enough (should I have told you that it would never, ever work? Or that I was ready, that you could be the one? Which would have been the worse lie?), but also for not taking some leap of faith, when I had the chance. Anyway, don’t be a stranger.
Love,
_____
You lift the shirt to display your handiwork; his face goes boyfully impish when he says, Perfect! and snatches the shirt but drags you along to him with it. You may want to tell him he’ll crinkle the shirt again, crushing it up against your two bodies like that, holding you so close. Don’t. You may be discomfited by those boundless eyes. That’s alright; look away, look at the ground. At your feet, you notice a sheer white. Ivory. Perhaps a setting sun trick on the tiles. No—a tendril. It curls a tip inwards unto itself, like coiling of sorts, then brushes a knuckle on your ankle. You are not afraid, not even when it’s begun to uncoil and then wrap again around your ankle, not even when it lifts up your foot to place it in front of your other. Something compels your other foot—perhaps another tendril—to lift its sole off the tile onto your tippy toes and raise you something like eye level to the boy. And finally, the back: like a breeze, like a breeze from that snowy night on sleds, you are propelled forwards. You get so close your eyes can see the spikes of dark green melanin in his irises before it all goes black.
WAKE up—there is a knock at the door.
Keep up the good work 👍
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