At least on the balcony, there’s a breeze. The soap and brush and bucket from when I scrubbed these ancient patio furniture this afternoon still sweats in the corner, beneath the vine creeping across the wrought iron, losing its grip on the decrepit French windows. Those awful windows, single paned and warped, that let out all the heat in the winter and leave no place for an air-conditioner in the summer. Her sandaled feet, clad in the gladiator style of several summers ago (that I teased her so mercilessly for following), rest on the railing, nestled into a niche of bare wrought-iron amidst the august greenery. She’s been drinking the white wine I’ll only buy a bottle at a time.
“I won’t display alcohol like it’s a prize,” I’ve been known to say, over wine-racks at flea markets and bazaars.
“Its not a liquor cabinet,” she’d tease,” its vino!”
The glass still hangs tenuously from her slender fingers, just a breathe from the brick. Her nails are painted an ice-like blue and I can’t tell if her eyes are open behind her sunglasses. Her head is tilted gently back, at rest and her face is creaseless in a near smile. The breeze remains faithful. A favorite t-shirt, washed and re-washed to near-gossamer, wraps across her stomach, crinkling here and there with deep breaths.
A train rolls by as I mutely take my seat beside her placid sea of composure and the bell cuts over the din of work-a-day traffic. Beneath us, 10 or 15 feet, an army of joggers and students and young mothers march their discordant parade route of the late day. It is the heavy golden hour of cinematographer dreams, and warm in that way only the late summer can be. Warm and heavy and somniferous, like the atmosphere is decompressing us (and school children, most of all) for the ascent into autumn, we retreat from the brick oven of the apartment. Salad for dinner and day-old bread with oil and vinegar linger unattended between us on a low, wobbly table decorated with a spotty mosaic of a rose or some such thing. We’ll nibble at our meal eventually, when she feels like talking and I’ll mostly listen and eat more bread than salad.
Her breathing pauses ever-so-briefly and I look, expecting her words.
“How come I’m never ready for August?” she exhales, in mock frustration.
She laughs that easy laugh of youth and smiles at me, shielded in the blank owl-eyes of her sunglasses. I reach across, leaning my chair perilously on two legs, and swipe her wine glass carefully. She reaches out for the lost item, faux-pout on her lips. I switch the glass to my right hand to keep it from her reach.
“ I’ll open a bottle of red when it gets dark,” I say, taking her hand in mine. We fold our fingers together and she resumes her perfect relaxation, as though I’d dropped a stone in a pond and the ripples had diffused themselves, to be forgotten for always.
I squint against the golden glow to catch in my view the slightest part of her lips at her breath and the throb of pulse in her regal neck, trying to make a memory in the materiality of the life she shares with me.
Blessedly, the breeze remains faithful, propelled to us by a storm the french windows will not survive.
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