10:52 am

The car exuded this smell and it wasn't clear where the smell was coming from. Exhaust pipes were outside. His face was inside. His nose maybe smelled the air conditioning vent gone foul from some seclusion in a cave-like parking condition, tainted with a seed of someone's airborne mucus or a bacterium or just plain old mold. Who knew about the origins of car stink?

He better be paying attention now. Sudden braking almost plowed him into a station wagon of eighties-make, done over with Star Wars decals. The original series. A peeling Vader sticker glared at his errant eyes.

No time like the present to pay attention.

He saw, in the distance, that her house still stood. The terrace had been covered over with a long elastic tarp, the sort for circuses or fumigation, or off-season. From this span, the wooden shingles burned faint yellow in the daylight-savings sunset.

The driveway was empty.

He turned slowly, hunched down in his seat a little. His eyes couldn't help but look towards the mailbox...its flag unraised, of course. But it used to stand upright like a red soldier. A little curved off to one side, a soldier with a limp. The metal was peeling off its dark black paint.

Slow parking, idling up to the overgrown bushes. A gentle application of the parking brake.

Soon he had already found himself wandering in the front door. At some point previous, the key, the smashing of the window, the covert operation. The smell was similar. Was it the smell of abandonment? But it happened even with items unabandoned, like his car. Was it the smell of spiritual abandonment? That faint biological taint? Did it know, when it spread its wings, how people had already departed?

Fourteen steps up the old carpet, kicking up small puffs of dust. He held the staircase's railing, smooth, grooved. The paintings used to greet him at the top of these stairs - one of the piazza, one of the big bowl of fruit with a single fly perched on it. She always called them reproductions, and at that age he had misunderstood and thought they were somehow birthed by another set of paintings. He saw living still-lifes, mysterious pieces of art haunted by their own purpose. He had named them Father and Mother, a long line in a family tree of paintings that had extended perhaps as far back as grandma herself.

If he sat in that big fruit bowl, next to the single fly, he would be able to rest his arms on the giant pear and his legs on the cushioned bunch of grapes, and rest his ear close, and they would speak to him. They would tell him of the whole family line, of the original story. The parts grandma never told.

The parts about grandpa.

Of course, this is how the world of children goes.

The wall was bare, now.

At the top of the stairs, he ran his hand over the old plaster. His fingers left a small smudge. The streak was a small line, a brief curl.

He continued down the hall on auto-pilot. Before long he was back in the room at the farthest end, and he closed the door behind him. He crept to the far corner, the barren wood floor, where the bed used to stand. An electric blanket underneath had its own nest of wires and purred its own heat, and under that protection he'd sleep a magical sleep. Eyes further and further away.

He laid down on the bare wood, curled in a small ball.

He smelled the floor. Full grain. Dust crept in his nose.

He sneezed, again and again.

He wiped his own nose, and tucked himself in.

He laid there, for a while. Maybe the rest of the day. Then he got up, brushed the dust off his shirt and pants. He centered his glasses on his head, wiped them clean.

He descended the stairs, locked the door.

And he drove away.


11:12 am