While my Sofia was clearing the table, I said something to Tanya about her eyes. Tanya liked it when people talked about her eyes. I compared her eyes to something beautiful, like a red-tailed hawk or the trumpet of the archangel Gabriel. She told me to go on, so I said something about her legs, said they were like the delicate trunk of a shapely willow tree. This is when I put my arm around her and kissed her neck and slipped my hand inside her dress. I think she moaned and told me to stop it. I asked what was wrong with her. I asked her, What can we do? and this is when she stuck me with a butter knife. She made a big production of calling out my name and saying, How could you?
My Sofia was in the kitchen doing the dishes and dancing a tarantella. She always danced a tarantella when she did the dishes. After she heard what Tanya said, she came running in from the kitchen and asked how could I over and over.
By this time, Tanya was storming out the front door and slamming it behind her. The way she looked in that sundress, it was always a pleasure to watch her storm out a door.
I think I told my Sofia it was a misunderstanding and that I didn’t mean it, that there was nothing to it, that I got too much sun and then I think I said something about Teddy the cripple. This is when she told me to get out, that I wasn’t Tanya’s idea of a handsome man, that she never wanted to see me again.
My Sofia had said this to me before, that she never wanted to see me again.
Still, this was the last time I saw any of those people.
Like most, I am human and do all of the human things. I shave and shower and feed myself regularly, every day, if I can manage it. I sometimes like to slip my hand into the dresses of good-looking women. This does not make me horrible. I also look out of windows and blink my eyes. I wait for people to come back, for someone to walk up the walk, under a parasol. I hold doors open for people. I say please and thank you.
I look out the window and see people coming to and fro or I imagine this. None of them are my Sofia or Tanya. Not even Teddy the cripple limps by in my imagination.
I think about addressing the ones I do see from my window, announcing to them that they are horrible people, saying that they should’ve moved away or died like everyone else, like my Sofia or Tanya, that they should stop talking about what happened, that I shouldn’t be the subject of gossip and insinuations, but what will become of me then, how will I be remembered the world over, my good name ruined, besmirched, and for what purpose and to what end? I think about my legacy and those few who surround me here. I see my reflection in the window, and yes, I want to kiss myself.
My Sofia would kiss me square on the mouth at a moment’s notice if given even half a chance, if she were even half-alive and had half a heart left inside her.
Let me make myself clear. The streets are almost always empty. I look out the window and I blink my eyes. I see nothing, no one, almost always. These days the silence coming from outside is disquieting, which is funny, now that I think of it, how silence can be disquieting. Once in a great long while I’ll see someone or imagine such. Most of the time it’s my Sofia or Tanya. When you don’t see anyone for a long while, your mind can play tricks. I guess this has gone on for a while now, not seeing anyone out the window and my mind playing tricks. It’s hard to know how long. I didn’t mark the date when everyone left, but when I look in the mirror, I see new wrinkles and a cluster of gray hairs.
When everyone who didn’t die comes back, I’m sure they will have trouble recognizing me, what with the wrinkles and gray hair.
The one who won’t have any trouble recognizing me is my Sofia. My Sofia would know me anywhere, I’m almost sure. At night we would sometimes sit on a sofa together. I would watch something on television and she would watch me watch the television. When I asked her why, she said it was because I was fascinated. I asked her if she meant fascinating and she said no.
We were happy then.
So she would know how the hair drapes across my face, obscuring half of it.
I remember the night before she ran away with Teddy. This was the same night I tried to make love to Tanya at the dinner table.
All of us talked about what was happening, what life was like then, how everything had changed, how so many of us were dying.
We wanted to figure out what exactly was happening and why.
None of us could come up with a workable theory.
I TOLD MY FRIEND I was about to sleep with his sister. I told him to sit tight.
Outside, the world was in motion and I watched it from a fourth-story window. From there I could see almost everything. From there I could see the earth and the structures built upon it. I could see people and animals and how everyone conducted themselves in broad daylight.
From there I could hasten my demise should I finally choose to do so.
