Robyn
lived alone in some rundown flat near Port Authority. I imagined a bare
room lit by a single, overhead bulb. Mattress on the floor. She got in
late one day and I asked her why on instant message. She said she’d been
in court fighting her landlord. It was one of those dreary, murky
disagreements—a dilapidated building, kept up on the cheap; she got fed
up, quit paying rent. He shut off her heat. So she’d taken a cold shower
and charged downtown to sue the bastard.
There
we were typing at each other, separated by the sculpture and the potted
ferns. I knew she was sitting over there at her cluttered desk. Typing
at me just as I typed back at her. Words and the spaces in between. I
had to admit I was drawn to her purple highlit hair and tired eyes, her
mania, her discombobulation. At the end of our exchange I asked her out
to dinner.
We
went to a chic French bistro on Park Ave. I don’t remember what we
talked about. Work. The people at work. We got in a cab together, after.
She laid her head on my lap with a sigh, playing it like she was too
drunk and tired to sit up. And maybe she was. But there
she was. Head heavy on my thigh. Her hair splayed over me, over my arm
and the vinyl seat. Purple strands glinted in the passing lamplight. I
could smell it—a warm and faintly bitter fragrance. The smell of an
unfamiliar woman. Why didn’t I kiss her? Why didn’t I touch her? I don’t
know why. But I didn’t. The cab pulled up on 43rd Street and she got
out. As we pulled away I watched as she hunched over the lock to her
building’s scuffed and dented metal door.