Benched

December 13^th, 9:17 pm

I was leaving the office when I saw her.  Covered in newspaper, arm hanging limply over the bench, knees brought in tightly to her stomach.  I had never seen her there before.  I neared the bench slowly.  The steady rise and fall of the newspapers told me she was alive, and I relaxed a little.  I wondered whether I looked strange, standing over her, watching this homeless girl sleep.  I wondered how a girl who couldn’t possibly be over 25 could end up sleeping on a bench at the coldest time of year.  I wondered if I had left my office door unlocked.

December 13^th, 7:36 am

I have routines.  Every morning I perform these routines exactly the way I did the morning before.  If something is different, something is wrong.  On workdays I wake up at 7:00 am and make my bed.  I then use the bathroom, wash my hands, brush my teeth, floss, shave, apply deodorant, get dressed, comb my hair, water the balcony plants, eat breakfast, check the back door’s lock, check all rooms, gather my things, put on my shoes, and leave for work.  This sounds fairly normal.  And for someone other than me, it would be.  But, as with all true routines, they must be the same every day.  The exact same.

For instance (and to paraphrase):

I finish making my bed by 7:04, measuring the distance the sheets are from the ground (must be 1 foot on all sides) with a ruler I keep in the back right of my middle nightstand drawer, inches side face up.  I use the bathroom and time myself with a stopwatch, if I am off by thirty seconds of my normal time I must methodically go through what I ate the day before to see if anything had changed and may lead to further bowel disruptions.  I ponder this, of course, while continuing with my other actions.  I wash my hands with hot water and a drop of soap for five seconds (to avoid a burn) to kill any bacteria quickly and efficiently.  I brush my teeth starting with back lower left and ending with front upper right, making counterclockwise motions and then clockwise.  I move the floss back and forth between each tooth two and a half times.  I shave left cheek, left neck, left next-to-the-ear and repeat for the right side, then the chin and upper lip.  This takes 6 minutes.  Deodorant goes under left arm then right, back and forth under each three times.  I get my clothes ready the night before so it only takes 1-2 minutes (depending on if I have the pants with the frustrating button) to put on a shirt, a buttoned shirt, a pair of pants, a pair of socks, a scarf, and grab a coat.  I comb my hair after I am dressed to avoid having to perform the dreaded “re-do” of hair combing that might occur after putting on a shirt.  I water the plants left to right; there are five plants and each gets its own mental timer for how much water it needs (5 seconds, 7.5 seconds, 4 seconds, 5.5 seconds, 10.5 seconds).  My breakfast would seem like a complicated mathematical equation to most, so I will skip that process.  The back door lock must be turned horizontally to denote the locked position.  I quickly peer into each room (twice) and then gather my briefcase, keys, wallet, glasses, newspaper, put on my shoes (another complicated process) and leave for work,   locking the door, waiting ten seconds, unlocking the door, going back into the apartment with haste (to catch any intruder off guard), and then leaving the apartment for good.  I don’t know what I would do should there actually be an intruder, but I would worry all day if I did not check.

This all might sound a little odd to you.  Sometimes people think I’m odd.

December 13^th, 9:22 pm

I hadn’t, but it never hurts to check.

I returned to my previous position, hovering over the girl on the bench, wondering if I should do what most others seemed to be fond of doing and just continue with my life without giving her a second thought. 

December 13^th, 9:41 pm

I set out a mug of hot tea and a couple scones on my table in front of her.  If she noticed, she did not give any signs.  She was curled on the couch, face buried in the cushions, and I still had no idea as to what her voice sounded like.

This was not like me at all.  I was safe.  I was predictable.  I was uninteresting.  I had taken a strange homeless girl back to my apartment on a work day. 

December 14^th, 1:01 am

I couldn’t remember the last time I didn’t fall asleep within five minutes.  It was usually the ending to my routines; everything completed and organized, I could fall easily and instantly asleep.  I had now been lying awake for two and a half hours.  I had never been so familiar with my ceiling.

December 14^th, 1:39 am

I was no longer capable of blinking, it seemed.  The ceiling started to play a slideshow of the images in my head.  To keep sanity I got up to get some water.

December 14^th, 1:40 am

I passed behind the couch.  I was hesitant to look down, as if my doing so might offend her.  I filled a glass with water, slowly, to not make any noise.

December 14^th, 1:42 am

As I walked back down the hall I noticed that she had turned over.  The moonlight now shone on her face.  I stopped for a moment.  She was beautiful.  There was a beautiful girl in my apartment.  There was a girl in my apartment.

December 14^th, 1:48 am

There was no chance of sleep.  The image of her face, gently brightened by the moonlight, glowing, would not empty from my mind.  I had only seen her for a moment, but I felt like I was still with her, over her…next to her.  I imagined her opening her eyes, the soft moonlight reflecting off her irises.  She smiles and looks up at me.  I smile back and offer my hand.  She squeezes it, but does not look away.

December 14^th, 2:12 am

My imagined realities were starting to behave like memories.  I replayed them over and over until they had seemingly rooted themselves somewhere in my past, as real as any memory I had ever had.

She looked up at me and smiled.  As the moonlight shone into her eyes, my life with her appeared before me. 

The marvelous streets of Paris dazzled below us.  We twirled and dipped and as we danced we spoke in awe of how we were caught between two starry nights, one below us and one above us, the cosmos opening up to reveal its twinkling beauty.  We laughed and spun and skipped and embraced and looked over the

Bow of the ship, watching the clouds swim by, slim showers of sunlight breaking through to set the ocean on fire with sparks of light, tumbling with the waves and crashing against our vessel.  The sky darkened with time and we retreated inside the small cabin of the boat.  We held each other as the world around us was churned into a stormy chaos, and as I looked into her eyes I felt safe and complete, a stark contrast to what existed beyond the hull

Of the plane sunk and rose with each bump in the air, taking my stomach with it.  I stood looking out above the earth, small colored patches and squares sailing by, thousands of feet below me.  I gripped my pack tightly, afraid to let go.  But then she kissed me and I looked at her and her smile lifted my worries and I dropped

Into the water, a pillar of bubbles engulfing me as I went under, afraid and mystified of this new world that had formed before my eyes.  The painter of the sea had not forgotten anything from his pallet.  Coral the color of cherry blossoms and honey waved before us and I took her hand as violet jellies surrounded us and a ray glided passed, riding a gentle current into the distant blue.  We descended into the

Night sky, leaving trails of stardust in their wake.  We toasted with red wine atop the hill, watching the stars come falling down.  It was the universe’s show just for the two of us.  I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine.  I held her hand and we kissed and the world came alive with streaming lights from space.     

December 14^th, 7:00 am

Reality hit me hard.  It punched a pit in my stomach as my alarm clock shouted again and again.  It was Tuesday.  In reality, I had work on Tuesday.  In reality, I worked in an office.

7:01 am

I was never angry in the morning.  I accepted my morning rituals as inevitabilities.  I knew work was something that would not change, and that I could not avoid. 

But something had altered in my mind, some dusty gear had started to turn and set in motion the awakening of the other gears surrounding it.  I had seen the life I truly desired; a life someone, somewhere was probably living while I worked in an office Monday through Friday.

I looked at my bed, the covers in disarray, hanging off all sides at terribly uneven distances from the ground.  At 7:02 every morning I opened the middle drawer of my nightstand, withdrew the ruler, and methodically made/measured every part of my bed.

7:02 am

I stare at my messy bed, the only reminder of the places my dreams had taken me.

7:03 am

I leave the room, smiling.

Everything that blooms starts out as something small.  A change, a slight shift in a pattern could cause the spark that lights someone’s world on fire. 

There was no one to say that, weeks from now, I wouldn’t find myself on a sailboat in the middle of a storm, holding the love of my life tightly in my arms while the boat swayed around us.  There was no one to say that she wasn’t on my couch right now, at this very moment, gently waking to the sounds of my creaking floorboards as I padded down the hallway to say, “Good morning, I hope you slept well, what is your name?”

The couch was empty.  The room was empty.  My periphery caught the bowl on the counter in which I kept necessities for leaving the apartment.  My wallet was gone.