by Nessa Ordukhani (’25)
Abstract:
This is a short story about serial adulterer Walter Bangles. After getting thrown out of yet another window, Walter finds himself at a bar meditating on his loneliness and observing the people around him.
It falls under the category of DIY on both a thematic and methodological account. For the former, the story revolves around the characters themselves, far more so than any plot, and thus centers the “I” and the “individual” as its main subjects. Similarly, it also plays with “doing it to yourself” in that the characters are products of their own rash decisions and mistakes. Where they end up—well, they did it to themselves.
In terms of methodology, I wrote this story many years ago and my writing style has since changed immensely (and, importantly, improved immensely). In returning to this story, it was like facing my younger self: easy to criticize and supremely embarrassing, yet still something that I love. I wrote this ages ago, and though my feelings towards it have changed, I’m pleased with the opportunity to repurpose it and give it a chance at life. At the very least, I hope you will find it entertaining.
Walter Bangles has experienced defenestration exactly three times. The first time, he broke both his arms and lost his watch; the second time is happening right now; and the third will come at the end of this story.
The first instance was quick: a whir through the open window, a thud onto the ground, and then pain everywhere. It was late August, and the blazing sun had just set. The sky, made of embers and ashes, was a mural of burnt orange and black, and the road was slick from sprinkler run-off. As the last few rays of light disappeared beyond the horizon, a distant heat mirage turned cement into water.
He had made a wondrous sight: a flailing silhouette soaring through the second-story window like a man trying to fly, but upon landing on the lawn below, his brittle elbows snapped with a crunch, and his breath escaped him. Only short wheezes were left to rattle his ribcage, and as he contorted into himself on the damp grass, his arms throbbed.
Mud caked into his clothes, a yell rang out from the house behind him, and Walter groaned as the man who tossed him came barreling through the front door, Walter’s gold watch glinting in his hand. Florid with rage, the man thundered across the lawn towards Walter, who miraculously managed to scramble to his feet and limp away.
He had only just crossed the street, his arms dangling at his sides like noodles, when a car raced by, narrowly missing him. It swerved, the brakes screeched, and Walter thought he heard an impact, but he kept moving, his neck too sore to turn back. He spent the next few weeks with his arms squeezed into two sweaty casts.
This time is much slower. It is a winter evening, and as he hurtles toward the earth in a cloud of shattered glass, weightless for a brief, euphoric moment, he notices that on the second floor of the apartment building, someone is watching Jeopardy. He has just enough time to yell out “What is Jakarta?” before his stomach drops, and he makes his collision.
He crashes into a dry hedge and rolls onto the sidewalk, a motionless pile of tangled limbs. Had there been any passersby, they might have thought he was dead, but Walter is alone, his face pressed into the sidewalk as though an invisible boot is holding down the back of his head. Blood begins to spurt from the points of his elbows and the caps of his knobby knees, blooming like inkblots against the fabric of his clothes. The skin over his sinewy muscles is lacerated with shallow incisions made by the jagged edges of the window, and he feels narrow rivulets of blood sliding down his arms.
As the cement scrapes against his skin, he notices that he is in fact not alone: he is accompanied by a long trail of ants, marching along the sidewalk with crumbs braced against their backs. He had once read a book about ants as a child, and he recalls a teacher sharing that ants could hold up to fifty times their body weight. He wonders how they could possibly do that.
They die soundlessly under his feet as he stands, and he grimaces at the growing pain in his back. He is getting too old for defenestration, but he is also lucky this time; his joints ache, and his clothes are tattered and bloody, but aside from a ring finger that is slightly more crooked than usual, the damage is surface level.
Peering back through the broken window, he can just make out the shadowy outline of a middle finger. It is an image he has seen before. Angry husbands tend to appear wherever Walter Bangles goes, which is one of the more inconvenient side effects of sleeping with married women. So, there he stands, completely alone on the sidewalk and surrounded by broken glass, his shirt torn, his limbs bleeding, and his pants undone.
He considers returning the indecent gesture but decides against it. The man is already angry enough, and furthermore, Walter really had gotten the better end of the deal. As painful as it was to be launched from the window, the man’s wife—what was her name? Nancy? Martha? —was a firecracker in the sack. When they arrived at her apartment, he was in such an excited hurry that he didn’t even lock his car.
The sudden appearance of her sizable husband, fuming and yelling about how they were doing it next to his favorite cutting board, was a regrettable interruption. The man grabbed Walter by the collar, causing Nancy or Martha to shriek, and dragged him toward the window with brutish force. Although Walter tried to escape his firm grasp, he was simply too distracted by the foamy droplet of spittle growing at the corner of the man’s mouth to put in any real effort. As Walter soared through the air, he kept his arms in, tucked his head, and bent his knees in preparation. Sure enough, experience served him well, and he landed with minimal injuries.
Now, the winding contours of the neighborhood, its slinking alleyways and vacant front doors, are dark as pitch. Walter slouches and does his best to appear pathetic, but there is no one to offer him sympathy in this corner of the night, so he straightens resignedly under the desperate reverence of a streetlamp, a sputtering spotlight for this final, tragic act. He changes into a spare shirt from his car, but as he settles into the driver’s seat, he realizes that his keys are still in the apartment above. There is a chance that Mr. Nancy or Martha will toss them out if Walter asks, but it is a slight one, and Walter would rather come back the next day than interrupt whatever argument is brewing inside. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, he begins the long trek into the heart of the city, all the while whistling and picking out glass from his mangled forearms.
He wanders under the night sky for what feels like hours, unfamiliar with the neighborhood in which he has found himself. Lights from the city in the distance have washed out the stars, and he navigates the streets under the faint grace of the moon, shivering and tending to his numerous wounds with a spare napkin. Eventually, buildings grow taller, litter collects on the sidewalks, and conversations crescendo through the evening air.
Walter catches his reflection in a dark store window and sees the extent of his injuries. He is bloody enough to warrant alarm, making people stare and point, but not enough to earn him any concerned company. He likes to imagine though that the glances and whispers are because he looks ruggedly handsome, and he smiles at his vain reflection. After wiping a hand on his pants, he runs it through his greasy hair, and straightens his shirt, grasping at some elusive trace of dignity in his square chin and tired eyes before continuing his aimless meandering.
He stops at the first bar he sees: a nameless semi-basement in an old brick building with a slew of unintelligible neon signs in the window. It is dimly lit inside with refurbished Edison lamps hanging from the ceiling, and Walter watches as the glow of their orange wires makes shadows dance across the room. The maroon upholstery in the booths is weathered and cracked with age, and the air is humid with the stench of alcohol, but the bar is an oasis in the bleak evening. Pockets of people dance between the tables as the blare of the saxophone and the rattling of the piano keys fill the room with cheap improvisation. A couple sits in the corner smiling and gazing into each other’s eyes, and the drummer shoots yearning glances at their food. The bartender watches the clock as she absentmindedly cleans the same cup over and over again. And an old woman swathed in colorful scarves and jewelry sits alone at the bar, blowing across the top of an empty bottle.
Walter sits a few seats down from her. The people in the bar shoot him furtive glances, raking their eyes over his cuts and clothes. The saxophone player raises her eyebrows and exchanges glances with the drummer, but they play on, dutifully upholding the heavy mantle of merriment. Walter extends his credit card between two long fingers and orders from the bartender. She is distracted by the clock and does not seem to notice his ragged demeanor or bloody clothes, but just hands him his drink without a second glance. It burns the back of his throat, but he orders more, the pain from his aching limbs and bleeding wounds beginning to subside.
A chorus of laughter sounds from the doorway as a group of people stumble in. They are young, maybe in their mid-twenties or so, and as they make their way toward one of the booths, Walter cannot help but stare. A golden halo of light seems to encircle them, and he twists around to see if anyone else has noticed, but they have not. It is warm and dripping with a rich vitality that is familiar to him, like a distant memory just out of reach. They are ruddy-faced and shiny as coins, strong and eager to embrace the night. He turns away from them, only to be greeted by the warped reflection in his glass.
“Hi,” a voice calls out.
Walter whips his head in its direction, but the greeting is not for him. It is spoken to a younger man seated behind him, who embraces the speaker and dives into a loud conversation about how lovely she looks. Walter turns to order another drink, but the bartender has disappeared.
Leaning over the countertop, he finds her crouched down on her hands and knees. The floor must be filthy, he thinks. She begins to crawl toward the kitchen, the same cup as before gripped in her hand and scraping against the hardwood. When she enters the kitchen, she is just barely within Walter’s view, but through the round window on the door, he can see that the chef trips over her and drops his spatula. She has gone to ask if she can go home early, but the chef looks back at her with sweet, sympathetic eyes that seem to say, “No, it’s a busy night.” When she leaves the kitchen, the chef bends down to pick up the spatula and continues to cook with it. Walter frowns.
Back at her station, the bartender sighs and finally places the cup in the sink. Each time she looks up to survey the room, Walter cannot help but notice that she glances surreptitiously toward the group of young people and then quickly looks away. The pretense of boredom and nonchalance is painfully transparent in her downcast eyes and sucked-in cheeks as she cleans the countertop; it is sticky with a map of stains and scratches. She carefully stuffs her name tag into her apron, but Walter still catches “May” glinting off of it in gold font.
The group of young people finish a tournament of coin flipping to decide who will pay for drinks, and Samuel is the one who loses. He rolls his eyes and laughs as he walks to the bar; of course he has to pay for drinks––he always loses. He has inexplicably bad luck with coin flips. In fact, he has lost so many coin flips that he believes he may be a statistical anomaly. He wonders briefly if his friends have perhaps become aware of the fact and now use it to their advantage, but quickly dismisses the thought; they are not observant enough to draw the
conclusion. Besides, he does not mind paying this time. They have never been to this bar before, he likes talking to bartenders, and it is nice to be alone when the evening is so crowded, if only for a few seconds. As he weaves between the tables and chairs, his feet squeak against the floor, and the bassist frowns.
At the bar, the bloodied man stares at him, his expression clouded by exhaustion, or maybe just middle age, and Samuel tries to avoid eye contact. The man’s high cheekbones are bruised, he has cuts across his five o’clock shadow, and the pungent odor of iron and liquor hangs over him. Samuel holds his breath.
Compared to his friends, Samuel is rather stiff. Even when he smiles, there is something tight and restrained in his eyes. He possesses a tension of the shoulders that is strange for one so young, and a slight impertinence of the fingers that is only evident in how he taps them against the countertop, waiting for the bartender to see him. Walter thinks he recognizes the song the boy is tapping. He asks him what it is.
“It’s nothing,” says Samuel, “I’m tapping randomly. Can I get some help here please?” May nods but keeps her head down. She fills Samuel’s order and spills some of it in her haste, but he takes the drinks back to the table anyway. He does not recognize her. His friends grab their respective glasses and continue talking with energy and animation, but Samuel can still feel the bleeding man’s eyes on him, and he suddenly finds that he can no longer muster the same vivacity as the others.
His friends ignore his remote expression; it is how he always looks to them. He does not dress up for their themed parties. He spends Christmas lamenting the capitalist overtake of the holiday. And the last time they were all together, he left before they could finish dessert.
Samuel is excellent company for taking a walk in the morning or going to a coffee shop at night. He appreciates subtle humor and comfortable silence. But in this bar, and in this group that suddenly feels so large, he broods over his glass, sipping it gingerly and half listening to his friends as they talk and complain.
Devon has failed one of his exams and regrets going to graduate school. Frank crashed his sister’s car and now must pay for the damages. Casey’s family home has been broken into, and her parents plan to stay at a hotel that night. Bernice is working on a painting she wants to get exhibited at a museum. It is an abstract piece about sexism in the lumber industry.
From across the room, hidden behind the shadows of people milling about, Walter strains to listen to their conversation. The old woman next to him has fallen asleep with her thumb stuck in a bottle, and her snoring is so raucous that he can hardly hear the band, let alone the group’s conversation. The bottle on her finger hangs precariously off the countertop, and when it catches the light, it shines emerald green, like sea glass glimmering in the sand.
Walter hails the bartender again to order another drink. She looks ridiculous in her meek attempts to appear indifferent toward the group. She can’t be any older than them, but where they radiate a golden joy, she is empty, framed by nothing but the wall of bottles and glasses behind her. Walter pities her. Already drained of energy and vigor, she is pathetically young to be so vacant. He rests his chin on laced fingers and watches her shuffle back and forth across the bar. Sometimes she looks up and glances at the young group and then looks back down, her lips pursed, eyebrows furrowed. She struggles with a jar of olives, but she is too weak to open it. Walter does not offer to help. He pities her, but not enough to do anything about it.
After Samuel’s friends drain their drinks, they demand more. He returns to the bar, standing farther away from the bleeding man this time, and waits for the bartender to notice him. He continues to tap his fingers against the countertop in a pattern that Walter swears is familiar. He catches the young man’s eye and smiles.
Samuel frowns as the bleeding man bares his teeth, and glances at the bartender. Like blinds being lifted in a dark room, recognition dawns on him. May swears to herself.
“May?” Samuel asks.
She clears her throat. “Yes. Hi. Hello.”
In a single moment, they become flustered, and their cheeks grow red. May busies herself with the drink she is making, and Samuel looks to see if his friends have noticed her; they have not. He sighs. There was a time when they had been close. She would take walks with him in the morning, and they would go to coffee shops together at night. They enjoyed subtle humor and comfortable silence. She had once stayed up so late with him that they saw the sunset and the sunrise.
But she had disappeared one August evening, and like smoke on a windy day, whatever bond they shared evaporated in her wake. At first, Samuel was concerned, worried about what could have possibly happened to make her abandon everything, but then time went by, and she stopped returning his phone calls. He heard her flippant voicemail message, and he once saw her sister from a distance. He visited her social media pages and noticed that she had posted things. He convinced himself not to read them. As he sank deeper into his bitterness, the rest of the world moved on, and he was left behind.
Yet for some reason, as Samuel watches her red fingers scrub the same glass over and over again, clinging to even a modicum of anger seems impossible, and forgiveness feels like the most natural thing in the world. He opens his mouth to say something else, but no words come out.
“What’s his name?” Walter interjects, gesturing toward Samuel.
The moment of silence shattered, Samuel and May both stare at him. He raises his chin, looking at them expectantly from bleary, red eyes.
“My name is Samuel.”
“Not Sam,” May adds. Samuel smiles.
“I’m Walter.”
“Do you mind, sir?”
Walter holds up his hands in surrender and turns to watch the sleeping woman with the bottle. He scans her face. She has large nostrils, and the hairs strewn across her cheeks quiver when she breathes out. Her pores are cavernous and vast, and he imagines microscopic aliens hiding in them, like in the craters on the moon. The drummer hits the cymbals. Walter listens to Samuel and May.
“So, how have you been?” Samuel asks.
“Alright. Getting by.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you’re good. You disappeared without a word. I was really worried—we all were. Actually, why don’t I call them over? We can catch up.”
“N-no. I really shouldn’t. I’m working, you know. It’s a busy night. They need me focused.”
“Ah, okay.”
Samuel waves goodbye before stuffing his hand in his pocket and returning to the table. Walter watches him with a raised eyebrow and wonders if he has noticed that it is not, in fact, a busy night. At the end of the bar, the bottle has begun to slip off the old woman’s finger, inching slowly toward the floor.
Meanwhile, the room falls into a routine: the band plays a tune; people dance; Samuel gets more drinks; Walter continues to watch the young people––they are the loudest in the room.
He orders another drink, and as he speaks to May, he begins to wonder if he has in fact been to the bar before. Something about her is familiar. Her eyes are very distinctive; they are deep-set, and the whites are too yellow.
“Have I been here before?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
From the booth, Samuel sees them talking and wonders what May is saying. “Do you guys see the bartender?” he asks his friends. They nod. “It’s May.”
“May?”
“No way.”
“Should we say hi?”
“No. She ditched us—why would we want to talk to her?”
They crane their necks to catch a glimpse of her, and she can feel their eyes watching, prodding. There are snickers and laughs, hushes and sneers. Frank is happy to see her; Casey is not. Samuel notices May going rigid as they gape, and he draws into himself, regretting his brief stint as the group’s informant. They huddle back together, gossiping, prospecting. Remember when she made that joke? What about the time she came to that place with us? How could she just disappear without saying goodbye?
Walter is still trying to eavesdrop. He can hear snatches of their conversation, but it is mostly an unintelligible swamp of sounds. One of the girls notices him staring and smiles,
tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before looking away. Walter turns back to his drink and the trumpet player begins a deafening solo. The bottle is two-thirds of the way down the old woman’s finger. When she shifts in her seat, Walter watches wordlessly as the bottle slips off and shatters against the floor, small shards spreading like flames. May screams and clutches her chest, but almost everyone else is too distracted by the trumpet player to notice. She gets a broom and begins to clean up. Later, when Samuel asks her what happened, she will say it was nothing important.
The old woman has woken up. She apologizes and starts to leave, gathering her things with sheepish haste. Walter watches her as she walks past him. Her skin is wrinkled and dry; if he presses the pad of his finger to her cheek, it just might disintegrate. When she leaves, there is an impression left in her seat, as though a ghost is still seated.
“Who is that guy at the bar you keep talking to?” Casey asks Samuel.
“I don’t know him. He just keeps butting in.”
“He’s kind of cute.”
Samuel frowns. “He’s twice your age and his shirt looks like a Rorschach test.” “Don’t be so dramatic.”
Before Samuel can stop her, Casey stands and approaches Walter. His eyes are red-rimmed and bright, and his cheeks are hollow, but in his rough-hewn features, she makes out a skeleton of charm, traces of what must have once been a handsome young man. The hair at his temples has started to turn gray and his expression is critical; he reminds her of someone she can’t quite place.
Walter scans her from the side, and she smiles. She suspects someone like him will be eager for an opportunity to talk to a young woman such as herself. When he leans forward and speaks to her, her suspicions are confirmed. She likes his voice, the low, gruff tenor, and finds the reticent, jaded contempt in his pronunciation to be indicative of great depth.
Walter is amused by her. He can tell what she was thinking: that he is pathetic and sad but still brooding and mysterious in his bloodied clothes and strong brow. A tragic character in a tragic novel she has probably seen the movie of. She probably thinks that he needs some sort of help. What’s more, she probably thinks she can give it. He will let her continue to think this.
He does his best not to look the girl up and down overtly. She is petite, attractive in a pixie-like sort of way. Her eyes are lazy and big like a cow’s, and she has a small, loquacious mouth. When she closes her eyes to flutter her lashes, he sees that her eyelids are shiny, iridescent like abalone. She reminds him of himself when he was young: naïve, arrogant, and boldly convinced of her own unique import. The pianist hits a jagged note.
While they chat and Casey runs her toes up his leg, the rest of her friends want to leave. She tells them she will stay. She likes Walter; there is something sad and romantic about him.
“You work in sales? Fascinating.”
“You would think so.” As quick as an arrow, Walter’s voice has turned acerbic, suddenly thick with resentment for this girl and her faux-interest in his life. He tightens his grip around his drink, fighting the urge to throw it in her torpid face. She should go back to hers and leave him there alone. It would certainly be the wiser choice for both of them. He considers saying so, but then imagines how it must look to others: an old man scorned and abandoned by some girl he audaciously hit on in a bar. He doubts they will remember that she approached him. Then her foot slides further up his leg, and he gives her what is hopefully a very convincing, toothy smile.
Outside, Samuel and the rest debate where to go next, but then he glances back through the window of the bar and sees May’s foggy shadow mixing drinks. He tells his friends that he wants to stay. He wants to watch over Casey, he says, make sure she is safe. His friends think he’s swell and leave without him. As soon as they are out of sight, he rushes to the bar to find May. It is getting late, and he does not know when he will see her again.
She bites her cheeks when he says hello. “Hi. I thought you had gone.”
“I decided to stay. Do you want to have a drink with me?”
She looks at the door, then the clock, and then back at Samuel. Out of all his friends, she has always liked him best. He is funny, in a discreet way, and there is something kind and austere about him. She blushes thinking of the last time they saw each other. It was at a party. They both hated parties, but this one was better than usual because on the veranda, surrounded by potted plants and a vibrant sunset glimmer, he had tried to kiss her. She would have let him too, but before he could get close enough, she received an urgent phone call and had to make haste. He looks the same as he did then, maybe his hair is a bit longer, maybe he seems slightly more exhausted. Her shift is over.
“I don’t drink, but I’ll sit with you.”
A wall is between them at first, but whether it is the thrumming of the bass or the warmth of the room, it begins to crumble, and they find that it is easy to slip into old habits, into their old understanding.
Samuel has just celebrated his birthday. His brother is married now. He finally learned how to drive after putting it off for years. Red is still his favorite color. May is finishing her degree. She lives in a studio apartment on the west side of the city. She still bakes and plays violin. She adopted a cat even though she is allergic. She avoids the subject of her disappearance. Red is also her favorite color. When Walter glances at them, he thinks they look very right together, like a pair of warm autumn leaves settled in the grass.
He is brought back by Casey’s sharp laugh. She is quickly becoming smitten. She finds profundity in his empty eyes, and history in his bloody hands. She will later tell her friends that he was incomparably unique and had such a real perspective on things; she will lie about the truth and fabricate a romance of star-crossed lovers, fated to be denied. Her friends will smile and nod, and when her back is turned, they will exchange glances and roll eyes. As she gazes at him with that naive infatuation, he wonders which of their homes they will go to.
Midnight is long gone, as is Samuel’s mind. He cannot drive, in fact, he can barely walk, his head lolling loosely on his neck as May drags him to his feet. He does not have much tolerance for alcohol, she remembers that about him, but he is usually more careful about his drinking. She frowns at the idea that she may have prompted this uncharacteristic indulgence.
As they leave, Walter watches them. He cannot shake the feeling that he knows May from somewhere, knows her sunken, yellow eyes, but then the door closes behind them, and they escape into the night.
As May drives, Samuel mutters incoherent strings of words, a puddle of scrambled letters and thoughts, and tries to sing along with the radio. He has no keys, and she does not know where he lives, so she takes him home. Doing her best to keep quiet, she leads him up the stairs to her unit where he stumbles onto the couch and promptly falls asleep.
May laughs as he begins to snore. She laughs at how ludicrous the situation is, at how remarkable the powers of coincidence are, and at how surreal it is to see Samuel again. On the couch, his cheeks are illuminated by thin bars of white light streaming through the blinds. She steps across the dark room and sits on the floor facing him, leaning her head back against the table.
She listens to his breath, even and slow, and when she is sure he is asleep, she stares at the ceiling and begins to whisper to him. She whispers of the phone call she received at the party. It was her sister, whose voice was purple with tears. She wanted May to come home, begged her because something terrible had happened and their father was on a rampage. She whispers to him that even though she had been drinking, she jumped into the car without a second thought. She whispers of how quickly she took the turn, how her vision was blurred and how the streetlight was burnt out, so even though the sun had only just set, she didn’t see her father running across the road, chasing a silhouette. She remembers the screech of the brakes and the shattering sound when he hit the windshield, an unearthly noise as the glass splintered into a web; she still hears it. She remembers the way he snapped like a twig, her father who never cried, her father who called her July, her father who ruffled her hair and kissed her forehead. His nails left bloody half-moons on his palm where he clutched a watch she did not recognize. She whispers of the way he rolled off the hood of her car onto the pavement, limply as though his bones had turned to liquid. She whispers of the way her family had to move because they couldn’t get the memory out of the asphalt. And finally, she apologizes for disappearing.
Then she curls into bed, pulls the covers to her chin, and cries. She has never spoken it out loud, never told a soul, but at the end of her story, when she lowered her head and looked back at Samuel, his eyes were open, gleaming at her with an unreadable expression.
While she is in bed and he lies on the couch, he listens to her shaky breaths, listens to the movement of sheets, and thinks that it is rather astounding that she works in a bar. Then he falls back asleep, his dreams a bleak world of shattered glass and missed moments on the veranda.
The next morning when they awaken, the night will feel like a million years ago, and the wall between them will be back. He will not be able to look at her the same way knowing that she is carrying this terrible secret like a weight shackled to her ankle. She will grasp for the understanding they once shared, but it will no longer be there; it could not withstand the hollow desperation she whispered into the night. They will share a hasty pot of coffee, and they will not address a thing. They will make small talk about the weather, and May will call him a cab. The atmosphere will be suffocating as they wait, and they will take turns opening their mouths to speak before choosing to say nothing. When the cab arrives, they will be strangers once more, and Samuel will leave. Some years into the future, when they are both equipped to give it another try, they may run into each other again, but in that moment, it will be a relief to escape the apartment.
As May spills her soul, Casey and Walter are only just leaving the bar. Neither has a car, so they begin the walk to her parents’ place where she says they will be unbothered. As drivers wisp by, leaving tunnels of wind behind them, she grasps his arm tightly. Her clinging is irritating, but Walter says nothing, because this way he can see down her shirt. His mind is hazy, and they saunter in long, looping circles, cackling under neon signs and sloppily touching lips. She is wearing raspberry lip balm.
They walk up the stairs and stumble into the apartment. It is freezing inside but Casey’s skin is warm. She pulls Walter through the living room and pushes him onto the sofa.
She pauses. “You’re getting blood on the carpet.”
Before he can respond, the lights flash on, and they are blinded. Casey squeals and jumps in the air. A familiar, fuming man stands in the hallway, and Walter’s jaw goes slack. He glances toward the kitchen and sees that his car keys are resting on the counter next to the man’s favorite cutting board. He lunges forward and grabs them just as the man’s thick fingers curl into a fist and rush toward his face. Blood fountains from his nose, and he tilts his head, so it doesn’t drip onto the carpet. The man grabs Walter by the collar for the second time that evening as blood, sticky and warm, spills down Walter’s neck onto the man’s hands. The man tears a tarp off the window, and from the exposed hole, the room is inundated with moonlight and frigid air. He lifts Walter, who is sputtering and spitting out blood, and tosses him out the window.
Walter misses the hedge this time, and hits the sidewalk, a limp ragdoll, a formless sack of flesh; his bones clatter against the cement like drumsticks on a snare. He struggles to get breaths out as pain blossoms in his leg; he is sure it is broken. He rolls onto his back, the blood from his nose pouring over his cheeks and caking into his hair. There are half-moons on his palm from his fingernails where he is tightly gripping the keys, and one of his teeth wiggles loose. The same line of ants that he once stepped on marches across the pavement, each still bracing a crumb against its back. If he ever manages to get up, he swears to god he will get laid.
Bio:
Nessa Ordukhani is a writer from Northern California. She despises the cold, likes cats and dogs equally, and always laughs at her own jokes.