Do you feel it?

He kissed her white neck. She sighed. He stroked her blond hair, and whispered in her ear. Gently her earlobe came between his teeth. Her downed skin melted into his chipped incisor.

'I have to work.'

'No,' she said.

The sun had set. The room was cast in shadow; the only light came from the TV, where black and white figures moved in a '60s dreamland, in silence. He got up from the single bed, and looked at her pale, naked body.

'You're beautiful.'

She stretched like a cat. Her small breasts winked at the ceiling. She laughed. She had perfect white teeth.

'Why are you laughing?'

'What's the rush?'

'I have to work.'

'I have to work... Can't you feel it?'

'Feel what?'

'The night, the city, the silence. The tension. Like the world is poised on a knife edge. What will you do?'

'I am going to work.'

She smiled to herself and looked out the window.

'How old are you?'

'You know how old I am.'

She opened the window, and leant out. The man buttoned his trousers, and put on a shirt. He tied his shoe laces slowly.

'It's warm this evening.'

'Yes,' he said.

He looked through the window. He didn't see the grey pigeon perched on the fire-escape steps, or the silhouetted figure moving, framed, in the opposite building. He didn't feel what she claimed to feel. He recognised her words as recounts of adolescent dreams of hope. Tonight he felt disconnected. He pined for pure cold or pure heat or pure ecstasy. He longed for the intense closeness he had felt only minutes before, but this invariably dissipated as he reached his carnal climax; the clinical, rehearsed intimacy that followed was for her benefit alone.

'Goodbye.'

'Work hard,' she said. 'Work hard tonight, for something. And maybe you can take me to the movies tomorrow.' She laughed once more.

He stepped out the apartment door, closing it behind him. He looked at the opposite door, number forty-three. His fists were clenched. He called the elevator, and rode to the ground floor. He exited the apartment block, and stood on the sidewalk. A car pulled up on the opposite side of the road. The window was wound slightly down. A dark figure moved behind the glass. A song was playing:

"It seems they cannot leave their dream,
There's something moving in the sidewalk steam...
Wonder women draw your blinds -
Don't look at me, I'm not your kind.
Something inside me has just begun..."

The window wound up. The car pulled off. The man looked at the blank sky, and walked down an alley, to the back of the apartment block. Dumpsters surrounded him, as he stood at the base of the fire escape, looking up.

'My friend,' he said, as a rat scuttled into a drainpipe. 'Why do you run?'

He shut his eyes, and removed his shirt. His body was dark, in the darkness. He removed his shoes, trousers and socks. Finally, laughing, he removed his underwear. For a moment he looked at his ankles, confused, before removing the lace from his right shoe. Again, he laughed. It was nearly two feet in length. He grasped it by both ends, and snapped it taut three times. He began to ascend the steps of the fire escape. In his chest he could feel an insidious pressure, as if a seed were germinating just beneath his skin.

'Do I feel it?' he said.

He had passed the fifth floor. A breeze touched his naked body.

'The night. The darkness. Do I feel it?'

He reached the back door of his apartment. Through the window he could see the pale woman lying on his bed. She had pulled the covers up to her waist. Her eyes were shut. He looked at her breasts, her shoulders, her neck, so white, and at the shoe lace in his hand. Finally he broke his gaze, and, in perfect silence, slowly opened the unlocked door.


[Word count: 666]