Risen From the Ashes

She sat in her car smoking cigarettes end to end, merely lighting a new one from the dying embers of the last. She smoked with the single-minded determination of a Monday morning quitter during the last hours of Sunday night. Even as she fumbled a fresh one from the rapidly emptying foil, her leg refused to cease its nervous fidgeting. Had she put forth every effort in her tense body to stop the frantic twitching, it would have been only moments before her ragged nails—chewed into the soft, pink quick—would have been tapping on the cracked leather steering wheel. The energy flooding her, born through a twisted mating between blackest fury and deepest hurt, was pulsing so deeply she couldn’t tell it apart from the pounding of her heart. Perhaps the fury had become one with her, parasitically feeding on her heart, her soul, on what made her human.

The air around her, perfumed with the decaying trash left to percolate in the late August night which slipped through her partially open window, mixed with the nearly impenetrable blanket of smoke that skipped almost gaily from the red tip of her cigarette. Her eyes were stinging, from the filthy haze filling her car or from the sting of bitter tears, she couldn’t tell. Her car was turned off, a necessity for a shadow who wanted no one to see or hear her. She knew what was going on behind the rain-pocked window of the bedroom that had become the singular point of her focus, the only thing besides smoke and fury that existed in the world. She wanted the weeping clouds to part, to reveal the harvest moon that hung, just hidden, behind the dark smudges on the sky, and could provide the light she so desperately craved. No light left within her; that had been extinguished. But she needed light to combat the dark; the dark that aided and abetted the sin being played out two stories above her searching, red-rimmed eyes.

She felt a nagging burn in her fingers, and looked down to find that the cigarette filter was nearly ash, and the fire was nesting against her skin. This barely registered with her. She simply drew out another and jammed it against the quarter inch stub left of the last, sending sparks dancing through the cramped and shadowy interior. For a moment she sat, almost comically, with one cigarette clinging to her dry, parted lips while another dangled from her fingers, spitting spiteful embers against her smooth hands. Her attention, however, was intent upon the window, where a fickle light played the whore against the cheap curtains, swaying and caressing it playfully before leaping away again.

“Move the lamp, you bastard,” she muttered, her normally soft voice hoarsened by acrid smoke and the tears that fell with the same constancy as the rain outside.

Almost as though he had heard her and decided to oblige her request, she saw the light becoming stronger, fiercer, brighter against the pale yellow curtains that she had bought at a second-hand store to brighten up his studio apartment. She had been so excited that day; the mere fact that he had allowed her to put them up felt like a sort of acceptance to her. Now they seemed to mock her, thrusting themselves at her, glorying in their role as the dividing barrier between the light within the walls and the dark within herself. She had known love inside that room and now she became acquainted with hate outside it.

She stared, she stared into the window until she was sure they could feel her gaze, no matter how wrapped up they were in each other. She looked away only when her eyes began to blur from strain. She allowed her gaze to wander, let it roam up the white brick building, shiny in some places from the dripping rivulets of rain and dark in others where the old paint had chipped away, revealing the deep green of a generation past. She looked down the alley that stretched in front her car, as barren and empty as she felt, except for a few overflowing garbage bins. She threw her cigarette out of the slivered opening at the top of the window and watched its arcing path until it sizzled out in a puddle of gravel-thickened water. Watching from afar was simply not enough for her anymore. She needed to know all of it, every wretched, gut-churning detail.

Her hand gripped the long silver door handle, surprisingly chilly despite the stagnant presence of late summer humidity. She stepped from the car, unfolding her long, lithe body, her ascent hitching a little as her cramped muscles struggled to loosen from their extended tenseness. She closed the door with all the silence and finesse of a burglar specializing in second-story work. The muggy mist made her feel that she was breathing something much thicker than air. She felt that she was smothering, like she was trying to take in breath through a hot, wet towel that was being forced against her nose and mouth. It was only a moment before she realized this trapped, breathless feeling had little to do with the heat, and much to do with her own sense of impending loss. She knew, as she stepped with unintentional grace from underneath the carnival-colored canopy that was dripping with rain, that once she had seen the tableau of betrayal she wouldn’t be able to forgive. Or forget.

After long hours in the confines of her car, untouched by either fresh air or the artificial cold of air-conditioning, her skin felt tight and dirty. Like she had been smeared with a thick slime that slithered across her skin. She wondered if she would ever feel clean and whole again, either physically or emotionally.

And yet, yet…at the first whisper of the soft rain against her parched skin, she faltered. Her steps slowed, slowed—and stopped. She stood, filled with hesitant wonder, as the rain continued to pour down on her, bringing with it a wayward breeze that was untainted by the garbage and abandoned essence of the alley. She lifted her face to the fresh droplets, bathing herself in this simple reminder of the particular and lovely quality of life which allows us to heal even when things are at their bleakest. To move through the cruel moments and emerge again into the remembered pleasure of being.

The hope and freedom that filled her played across her face; a frown of concentration, a smirk of amusement, and finally a grin of dawning realization. She looked back up at the window, and saw the shadowed thrust of breast and hip twining sinuousely around the angular lines of a male form, and her smile widened. She knew, now, that she was free. That she didn’t need to see anything more, confront anyone. She had confronted her own keening fear. And now she knew that sometimes it is the simple things--a single vision in the night-- that conquer the most complex. She needed no more than the liberation of understanding this.

She turned back toward her car, thinking that perhaps she would stop and get something to drink. Something cool and refreshing. Something to remove the lingering taste in her mouth. She gripped the outer handle of the car door, her touch now light and easy, and pulled it open. She dropped into the faded seat, sighing a bit in both relief and weariness. She closed the door, turned the key in the ignition, and nudged the volume of the music up a few notches. She flicked off the air conditioning that her fury had demanded on the drive over, but that now caused her distinct discomfort as the rain slicking her skin amplified the chilly breeze. Finally, she eased the car into drive, steering carefully around a few stray pieces of rubbish, and drove toward the mouth of the alley, which opened up onto the bustle of the corner at Broadway and 77th. As she drove steadily away, she reflected on her phoenix-like experience. She thought, yes, but she suffered no desire to glance into the rearview for a last glance of the garish yellow curtains or the dancing light in the apartment above.

She never saw the now-lone shadow that stepped into view of the window. She never knew that the end of her hurt and grief was the beginning of his.