Page 7 of Below the Shadow of the City

We turn the conversation back to more typical office gossip fodder, like the Finance Executive who’s sleeping with one of his Accounts Payable Managers. Not as interesting as our boss being a vampire, but at least it’s factual.

On my walk back to my apartment from the subway station I bypass my front door. It’s a beautifully perfect night, even the festering cynicism that had been rotting me from the inside out can acknowledge that. The day’s cloying humidity has all but fizzled away with a delightful breeze that’s just cool enough to spread goosebumps across my bare forearms.

I take out my headphones and listen, truly listen, to the sounds of the city. Distant traffic from the various bridges crossing the river, the rattling hum of the subway beneath me, tinny music playing from someone’s speaker in an apartment with an open window.

I approach Domino Park, just a few short blocks from my apartment, and stare at the sparkling skyscrapers on the other side of the water that are glittering and reflect on the river in a way that only the best artists could capture. The park is quiet, and if not for the view of lower Manhattan from the benches, you’d forget exactly where you are.

Staring at twinkling city lights and moving water muffle the continuous thoughts that tend to ping pong around my head, and I savor the precious few moments it lasts.

My eyes adjust to focus on the glowing red numbers on my nightstand. It’s just past two a.m. I’m supposed to be getting up for work in four hours. Sleep has escaped me entirely ever since I got back from my jaunt in the park tonight. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve shut my eyes and willed myself to rest only to reopen them five minutes later. The leaky faucet in the kitchen drips echo through the apartment. I can’t lay in this bed any longer, my legs restlessly twitch. Yellow street lights make my walls and faded cotton comforter look amber. I stretch across the mattress and stare at the ceiling, hoping that its popcorn texture will quiet my thoughts enough to make me rest.

It doesn’t work. Every light is too bright, every noise is too loud. I go through the list of methodologies I learned from some YouTube video when the insomnia had started back in January. There were simple tricks like counting and naming countries, getting up and stretching, changing positions in bed. Most nights one of the tools was my Golden Ticket to slumber. On nights none of them worked, I’d pick up one of the few books I have and re-read it until my eyelids grew heavy. I’ve cycled through every single option tonight, and I’m somehow less tired than I’d been when I started.

Logically, the only thing I can think to do now is my laundry. I figure if I have a straightforward, mindless task to focus on, then maybe I can bore myself into resting later. Though, later is looking suspiciously more like after daybreak. I’ve already planned on calling out of work, I can’t muscle through another strategy meeting or coordinate an expensive lunch order without getting sick to my stomach. The endless cycle and choreographed waltz has swiftly become the one thing I want to avoid. I remember the fantasies I used to have of monetizing my baking Instagram account, back when those dreams seemed logically within reach. I dreamt of paid sponsorships, brand collaborations, and maybe even my own cookbook. How quickly those flickers of possibility were stamped out into ashes.

Billie’s message has served as a small flint strike for those dreams, and it’s one of the many reasons I’m lying awake staring at the ceiling. Imposter syndrome and fear of failure cycle through my brain. Someone is handing me a dream on a silver platter and I’m too hesitant to accept it.

If I say yes, I have to dig deep and extract the parts of me that know how to bake and recipe test and be a fully functioning human.

If I say no?

Well, that’s the easier answer. I could forget I got the offer and carry on with my wallowing. My life wouldn’t change, for better or for worse. I’d be stagnant, I’d be frozen, but I wouldn’t face the possibility of failure. This isn’t a decision that’s supposed to be made at two in the morning.

For any rational person, it’s a “low risk, high reward” opportunity. Because truly, what did I have to lose? Still, there’s a cruel hissing voice in the back of my mind telling me that failing at this would just be another to add to my ever growing list of shortfalls. It’s silly. I know it’s silly. But once again, I go on autopilot and my nervous system makes the decisions for me. My fear is so loud it deafens out hope.

Methodically, I place my things in a cheap plastic basket with a broken handle. It’s been about five years since I promised myself that I’d buy a nicer, higher quality one. A lot happens in five years, procuring a new laundry basket is apparently not one of those things.

The laundry room sits in the basement of the building, and each time I have to go in there I’m grateful I only have to walk back up to the second floor. I’m careful to be quiet as I track through the hall to the stairs. The fluorescent lights illuminate the hallway as if it’s midday and not nearly the witching hour, and I forget for a second that everyone else in the building is likely asleep. I wind down the stairs, imagining I’m in a haunted castle holding an ancient text and a torch instead of a week’s worth of clothing loosely piled in a plastic bin.

My landlord could not have done a better job of making our basement look like it was ripped straight from a haunted house. The laundry basket sits in the curve of my hip as I shuffle anxiously through the dimly lit hallway. The second I had opened the door, I was accosted by the smell of mildew that felt centuries old. I half expect to see some stalactites jutting out from the concrete. Stale air lingers as I maneuver through the halls like a ghost. One crossing my path would be inevitable.

A flickering lightbulb hanging from a chain is my homing beacon to the laundry room. It’s so perfectly creepy that most modern horror directors would call it tacky, almost too on the nose. I glance over my shoulder, an action I do every time I’m in here. There’s always a lingering feeling that I’m being watched, despite the fact that I’ve never seen anyone else in this room. Maybe they all have in-unit machines, or maybe the laundromat a block over is cheaper. I never mind, less competition for me.

“Shit, shit, shit,” a muffled masculine voice mutters as I approach the door. There’s a clanging sound from the other side, almost like the washing machines themselves are tipping over into each other. I pause briefly. Some unsavory individual could have wandered into the laundry room, a thought that didn’t occur to me until this exact moment. I hesitate before stepping in and clutch the expired pepper spray dangling from my keys. There’s a good chance it’ll be utterly useless if I do come across a deranged person. Because only a deranged person would be in the laundry room at two in the morning.

I swing the door open and a quick flash of movement disappears into the barely ajar door on the other side of the laundry room. In the four years I’ve lived here, not once has that door been anything but locked. I’d assumed it was a storage room or the landlord’s sex dungeon. Something very obviously off limits.

“Hello?” I call out after the voice. Heavy footsteps sound like they’re retreating down a hallway. A cold draft blows into the laundry room from the mystery door.

“You left the door open, asshole,” I mutter under my breath. I remain in the doorway of what I had previously thought was the only entrance to this room. There’s a silent beat as I pause to see if any ghouls are about to jump out at me.

Footsteps approach the open door, then it slams shut. Loudly. My curiosity is piqued, but certainly not enough to go open the door and investigate. Maybe a braver woman would check things out for herself, but I’m not her.

A load of laundry spins clumsily in one of the washing machines. A basket has been haphazardly tossed aside and is now upside down on the floor. The footsteps have long retreated, and the laundry room is still, save for the churning of the outdated appliance. I step across the black and white checkered floor and place my things in the only other open machine. Maybe my building shares a laundry room with the adjacent one, it wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibilities that some cheapskate landlords wanted to save the money on building one in their own building.

Or maybe it is a ghost, a little voice nags in the back of my mind. I shake off the thought, I’m logical, to a fault. If ghosts were real someone would have actually proven it by now. And Zak Bagans and his weekly Ghost Adventures definitely don’t count.

I think little of this subtle weirdness. Instead opting to settle onto the metal folding chair in the corner and pull out the book I tossed into my basket to kill time. The shiny cover and pseudo-inspirational title mocks me. It’s required reading for work, someone on the leadership team insisted. I’d blame Ralph but I’d like to think he is slightly better than the type to encourage that kind of superficial synergy-promoting nonsense. A decade out of school I expected I wouldn’t have assignments like this. My thumb flips through the pages, paragraphs about how active listening leads to active leading ramble on, and I quickly grow bored. Maybe I should read this to fall asleep.

I make a mental note to make a trip to an actual bookstore soon. My bookshelves are occupied by more tchotchkes I’ve picked up at various flea markets and cookbooks than any true literary material. I chuckle to myself at the thought. What have I become? Someone who will stock my shelves with the likes of Dostoevsky and Kafka and Hunter S. Thompson just to seem like one of the typical cerebral types who flock to Brooklyn?

Most of the books in the apartment were Perrie’s. The empty shelves mock me daily with the visual reminder of her absence. We’d spent nights on opposite ends of the couch in comfortable silence with her face tucked into a book and myself crouched over my laptop either reading fanfiction or on Tumblr.

The door opens again, barely a crack, then swiftly shuts with a thud. The stranger is avoiding coming back in here, for some reason.

I decide to speak to them, taking the risk that they’re merely the same brand of crazy that I am. “You can come in, your stuff’s done.” I speak flatly. They’re probably harmless, but I still play with the nozzle of the pepper spray, just in case.

“Nah, I’ll just come back,” a deep masculine voice nervously explains through the steel door. He may think I’m the crazy one. He might be right.