For so long, the first thing I’d see in the morning was Gabby, her head against the pillow, and it was enough to complete the day. I didn’t need to look at anyone else or go anywhere else; I could simply go back to sleep. But whenever I woke and saw her, I thought I was still dreaming, so I’d get out of bed to prove the existence of the day.
One day, I woke up and wondered where we would go together, as if our waking had fused into one, our pairs of eyes reflecting themselves back. It was in this later stage that I knew we needed a change. Gabby agreed.
“We never go anywhere,” she said.
“We ride the bus all the time,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but we get off to look around, not actually buying anything, or we browse for hours to buy the cheapest item in the store.”
“We go to parks.”
“And they have grass and water and dogs running like mad. And let’s not forget the poop smells. Vague, aerosolized feces.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I asked.
Gabby laughed. “Calm down, Colton. I’m just saying that it would be nice to have somewhere we HAVE to go, or else we’d be missing something important.”
Our purpose for riding the bus would be, we decided, to see each other, bright and early, dark and late. We found a listing for an apartment that addressed our concerns. In the deteriorating economy, the city had gotten creative with building affordable housing. In this case, the landlord owned a “split unit,” which was two renovated breakrooms in buildings six miles apart from each other. We slept separately, but Gabby took the bus in the morning to greet me with the new day, and I visited her at night. We said hello, cuddled, and then went on our merry ways. It certainly seemed like a lot of travel for a brief stay, but that’s how we liked it—spicing things up, using distance as our shock to the heart.
Of course, this arrangement hinged on the fact that the bus drivers never checked if we had paid for a ticket, and we weren’t blocked from entering, so we could skip paying and nobody would be the wiser. Generally, Gabby and I paid to ride, but that was back when we were riding occasionally and with cheaper rent. We used this crisis of love, in other words, to justify our stiffing the metro, which made the bus all the more exciting.
There came a day, however, when a man wearing a neon-green vest entered the bus. He carried a tiny machine that he used to tap each passenger’s bus card. After doing so, he said, “You’re good” or “You didn’t pay,” writing the latter down for a citation. Apparently, the crumbling financial institutions required the metro to extract more money from the lowly masses. I watched the guy work his way down the aisle, anticipating his chastising me for stealing transit, but he hopped off midway, as if shaking down the elderly and the infirm at the front was satisfying enough.
I told Gabby all about this when I got to her half of our place.
“Maybe I can pick up a shift,” she said. “That should be enough to cover the buses.”
“Another shift? But you already work full time,” I said.
“Not a baker’s full time—that’s forty-eight hours. And if I go ‘full,’ Johanna says she will take me to the back room, with the wood-fire oven.”
“You wouldn’t be exhausted?”
“Colty, hon. The flame would keep me going.”
Gabby went full baker not too long after, but she immediately felt the toll of the extra eighth hour, which required her to work on Saturdays. She ate out more, cutting into the budget, and skipped seeing me on Saturdays and Sundays.
“I’ll come those mornings,” I said. “But you have to cook more during the week.”
“Why don’t you take another shift at the hotel?” she asked. “Then we’d be even again.”
“I’m in a basement all day, watching machines spin. One more shift and I’d be committed.”
“Committed…yeah, if only you could be that now…”
Not wanting to disappoint Gabby, I asked my boss Rene if I could work one more day. Because I showed any initiative, I was immediately promoted from Laundry Clerk II to Laundry Clerk V. My role was entirely different now. Instead of looking at the machines, I collected all the linens. And because of my pay increase, I didn’t have to work an extra shift.
“You will see things,” Rene warned me in his office. “But you need to act like a surgeon. Grab the sheets, the casings, the towels, and get out. You’re not here to interpret, to judge. These rooms aren’t people. And whatever the people do, that’s only for them to know.”
“What things?” I asked.
Rene wedged tobacco behind his bottom lip and sprayed Febreze on his feet. “Not everyone can live a blissful life at home, Colton. They need a second home. One is for reality, and the other is for fantasy. But even fantasy leaves its dirty traces behind. Fantasy has a grime that requires cleaning. You understand?”
“But what will I see?” I asked.
Rene spat a black rope of chew onto his desk. “You’ll see what you’ll see,” he said, wiping his spit up with a tissue.
Over the course of a week, this was what I saw: chairs turned over on the carpet; side-table drawers tucked into the sheets, labeled “Mommy” and “Daddy”; urine stains on the sheets; feces in the bed; blood smeared on the walls; lipstick kisses on the TV; a bucket of ice, now water, with a dozen fake nails floating around; diapers wrapped in towels crammed into the bathroom sink; mattresses stuffed into the tub, soaked with water; hamburgers with holes in their centers left on the toilet.
I had been alive for a few decades. I had browsed the web plenty. And yet, I knew very little of people, it seemed. Everyone had filthy desires, but they were kept hidden in the second home. Thankfully, for Gabby and me, we were each other’s hidden desire. When one of us visited the other, we were inside the second home.
Or was it that the second home was when we were alone?
This thought came to me when Gabby skipped several of her bus rides because she was too tired from work.
One evening at Gabby’s, I asked her about it.
“What gives? I thought the flame would keep you going.”
“Sorry, Colty. Every time I pull a scorched ball of dough out of the oven, Johanna shakes her head. I thought I’d catch on faster, but I realize now that I’ve been babied with toasters, microwaves, and electric ovens.”
“Are you not coming over anymore, then?”
“Well, now that you mention it…I think it would be best if I stayed here during training. Once I’m done, I’ll have a regular schedule. I may even make enough so you can work less. Speaking of which, how is the upstairs treating you?”
“I’ve seen things…”
I told Rene the same thing in our weekly meeting.
“You’re doing well, Colton,” he said. “The fact that you do the job at all means you’re overachieving. But, what’s this? The rooms are getting to you?”
“Well, I’m in a relationship,” I said.
“Oh…have you had…the visions?”
“…yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I swing the door open,” I explained. “And what I see is Gabby stretched out on the bed, candles lying around her like in some pagan ritual. She jolts up, knocking the candles onto the floor, catching the place on fire.”
Rene nodded solemnly and pulled a box of Oreos out of a cabinet. He twisted one apart and set the two pieces on his desk. He repeated this process until his desk was covered with rows of bare and creamy cookie halves.
“I want you to stay upstairs,” Rene finally said. “Stop seeing things. Not a single person is in these rooms.”
For a while, I followed Rene’s advice. I saw nothing. I put my head down and did the work. During this time, Gabby sent me dough pics, but as the bread looked less like the dark side of the moon and more like its opposite, the texts decreased, then stopped. I was eventually left to my own devices.
One day, I entered a hotel room in which candle wax had been dripped all over the sheets. I knew that Gabby hadn’t been there, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of whatever mess was left in this room, as well as all the others, judging it, interpreting it, which only made “the visions” worse. Now Gabby was on a bed, surrounded by candles, covered in an enormous loaf of rustic bread, and the wood-fire oven was perched over her. She didn’t even try to get up. Instead, she invited me to watch, to see that the second home was indeed each of us alone.
Soon, I went into a frenzy, linking every soiled linen to Gabby. I thought for sure I’d have to quit, or maybe get fired, but then something else happened. I walked into a room where a woman was tucked into the bed, fast asleep.
At first, I assumed the woman was asleep, but because she looked so still, so calm on her back, I started questioning things. Was she asleep? Or was she dead? Had I walked into a crime scene? The check-out time was hours ago, and the receptionist would have noticed if someone hadn’t left.
I ran into the hall, but nobody else was around, and there was no yellow tape anywhere, so I reentered the room.
The place looked almost no different from its original state. Chairs were pushed under the table. The TV remotes were lined up on the desk. The chocolate mints were resting in their wrappers on the side table. The toilet paper was hanging with a tri-corner fold at its end. The only disturbance was that the woman was lying in the bed.
Was she real? Or perhaps a doll?
I stood next to her and saw that she was breathing faintly, so I poked her a few times, then shook her shoulders.
“Hello?” I said. “Hell-o?” H-E-L-L-O!”
The woman’s eyes opened very, very slowly. Eventually, she looked at me as if she had known me, or maybe as if she had anticipated this wake-up call.
“What day is it?” she asked, groggily. I got her some water, which she gulped down.
“Friday,” I told her.
The woman grinned, then smiled widely. “I can’t believe I’ve done it,” she said.
“Done what?”
“I’ve slept for five days straight. I could never do that at home.”
“Where do you live?”
“Down the street. It’s my husband…he snores so loudly, and sometimes he walks around at night, and he takes the sheets, and he fiddles with the windows. I love him with all my heart, but as you can see, I needed some rest.”
“You’re not having an affair?” I asked.
The woman laughed. “Heavens, no! Not unless dreaming is cheating.”
“I suppose not…”
For so long after that moment, the first thing I’d see in the morning was my other pillow, vacant and bare, and it was enough to ruin the day. Whenever possible, I refused to do anything else; I’d simply fall back to sleep to prove the existence of dreams.
One day, I woke up and wondered when Gabby and I would lie together again, as if our dreaming had fused into one, our pairs of eyes staring into the abyss of each other’s lids. It was in this late stage that I knew we needed a change. Gabby agreed.
