Was the fight important? Not really. The most important thing about it, Dwayne thought, was the fact of its repetition: that it had been the fifth and largest fight in the last week and a half or so…
A feeling of dread was growing within Dwayne, deep down, like a snarl of root snaking through his lower intestine. Doubt about the future. Dread about this girl, his fiancé, who he was so entangled with. Who he didn’t like himself around.
“Well why don’t you fucking die, then?!” he’d shouted, before slamming the door. Now the words brought absolute dread out of him, absolute sick shame, like a black billow of cloud billowing up from his colon into his stomach, through his esophagus, out his arms, pooling in his shoulders and wrists, and shooting out his hands like black magic.
It was a cold winter’s night and he had left without gloves or a hat. That’s what he always did when the argument ramped up with Shirrel. After he screamed or slammed something with his fists or kicked a wall, he jumped into an automatic routine: grabbing socks from his sock drawer (weeping, snuffling), grabbing shoes from the closet, grabbing a coat, pulling on pants if necessary, and going to the door, saying goodbye, I love you, or something, and disappearing to cool off.
This time as he’d gotten to the door she’d shouted “Dwayne, you make me want to die!” She’d sounded like a banshee or a small rich woman’s puppy: voice high and whining and nasal. It was horrible to hear and it had felt like a slap, or perhaps the voice had wrapped around his throat to strangle him, and the only way to get the voice off his throat was to shout something back. So what had come out was, “Why don’t you fucking die then?!” Then out the door sobbing, down the stairs, were the neighbors listening?, four flights, and out onto the streets of the Upper West Side where the cold air hit him like a slap to the face.
He’d had to stop sobbing quite so much as he’d walked because there were other people out. All of this, and before 8pm? Impressive. He laughed at himself unconvincingly, and then he was at the Hudson river, where he rested his arms on the rail above the overlook onto Riverside Park, and laid his upper arms on the rail, and slumped his head, and cried.
Twenty minutes of that and he’d had enough. He stood up straight and put his headphones in. He should text Shirrell he knew, he felt awful, no one should shout that at someone especially not someone they loved. But, she had to text him first. She had been beyond the pail. Beyond the pail. Whatever the fuck that expression meant and wherever it came from.
Breathing deeply, Dwayne shoved his hands to the bottom of his coat pockets and walked. Luckily, he had snatched his headphones, and he put them in his ears now. He put on Beck, Sea Change, and walked, wondering where he was, who he was, and how he could be so cruel, but really wondering, how had he gotten himself into this mess? And why?
He walked like that for some time when his cellphone buzzed. He pulled it out. Seeing Shirrel’s name on the lockscreen was a relief. He unlocked the phone. Shirrel had written a few words.
Sorry, Dwayne. Come back.
He was sorry too, and he was all ready to type it into the phone when his attention was caught by a light. And a tinkle of piano music. He looked up.
In his revery he had wandered all the way down 59th street, skirting the bottom of the park, and then had started walking up the east side. Now he found himself at 68th, nearly at FDR drive, as close to the East River as one could go on foot. A block of tenement buildings stretched out before him. In the window of one, he saw a blue light. It had caught the peripheral of his vision and he heard the sound of the tinkling piano. The window was slightly open. It sounded like a party: mingled, pleasant voices drifting down to the street. Next to the tenement was a wrought iron gate. The gate was open, inviting, leading to a dark path that went under the building towards what looked like a small parking lot in back or somesuch.
Dwayne never would have gone down the path if that lantern hadn’t been hung out, the one with the warm, fireplace light, illuminating the walkway. It seemed to say, come in. Dreams are made here. What that meant Dwayne didn’t know, but he felt surprisingly calm as he passed through the gate and down the dark passageway under the building.
Blue Notes 