Though

By Lewis Buzbee

It’s true I’ve stopped going out, it’s hard enough to walk to the mailbox on weekends.

Howard isn’t home yet, not that it would matter if he was, I mean get real, I don’t know him at all really. We only share a wall but I worry about Howard anyway. It’s late Friday night when he doesn’t work normally and I should be able to hear him, these walls are that thin that everything comes through.

O Howard.

It’s not that no, Howard’s older than me, tons, and I don’t see him much. It helps to have him here and his music playing, the only person I can claim to know in this entire complex.

Security of Serramonte is what it says on the gold patch on his arm, the first thing I saw when I met him the first time at Serramonte Mall before I found out he lived right here. No that wasn’t the first thing I saw, the first thing I saw was the way he stood there, that makes better sense. We talked a little then.

Then wah-lah he was here, right next door, we were both unlocking our doors at the same time and I said Security at Serramonte out loud because I had kind of memorized it.

Howard smiled and looked right at me, and As best I can is what he said and he still smiled. So now we talk here and there, even down at Serramonte where I sometimes go and we never forget to say hi and sometimes talk about things a little bit.

It’s usually rainy lately when Howard’s at work which is weird, it’s been that kind of winter. Tonight is even weirder because it’s not raining and Howard’s not supposed to work but he’s not here, working or not, and the sky is clear out the window with this big old wind coming up the hills from down by the bay.

I’ll pretty much be here all weekend, it’s just the way things are turning out right now and I’m being okay with all of it, it’d be nice to know that Howard was around.

The embarrassing thing is I’ll probably only do stupid stuff, I’m taking a lot of pictures of myself lately, selfies they call them. It’s like lately, I don’t know. I go to work, it doesn’t really matter what or where I do it, and then I stay home and the weekends are long, especially long, but not in a bad way necessarily, and I take a lot of pics of myself. It’s fun, sure, but it doesn’t really add up to anything and I don’t do a thing at all with them. I suppose I could say it’s just for me that I do it.

Yeah no see. The first time it was the phone which was new and so I tried it out, tried out everything, doing that thing everyone else does, and I took that shot of myself in the mirror with that flash of light in the corner kind of star-shaped. And there I was.

But I took that pic in the mirror in the front hall next to the front door where I check myself one last time before going out. The pic was good but there was something about it. It was what was in the background or wasn’t to be more precise, it was just the hallway wall, all white and texturey, I have no idea how they come up with that texture, all new complexes have it, and if I look real close it’s like the front of the moon and almost that color.

I didn’t like it. It was empty. Just me and the wall and the empty hall, it didn’t even show me the door, so I decided to change.

Now the pics are all over the place, in my bedroom, kitchen, living room, nook, sometimes in mirrors and sometimes just at arm’s length, but the best are in the bathroom mirror which is wide and high, and what makes these pics so good, especially the bathroom’s, is everything in the background that’s there, all the mess I don’t bother to clear up. It looks natural, right. Furniture and shoes and other pictures and wires and that glass statue of the dolphin that changes colors from yellow to purple and rides a big frozen wave.

But somehow the bathroom is best, right. The mess in here is the biggest, most obvious, all hair dryers and straighteners and towels and clothes on the floor, and the names of everything are backwards in the lens of the phone. The gold handrail of the shower and the frosted door of it which I also spend a lot of time on weekends behind.

It’s better for pics to have all this stuff back there, makes them look realer.

Not that I’m bad, I mean in a lot of ways I’m not bad at all, but the reality of the apartment makes everything pop, the pictures almost come to life, isn’t that what they say.

I always wear what I’m wearing right now, everything’s tight of course, it must be to show me off, but they’re, they’re just the things I wear when I’m not at work which are black yoga pants and a tiny tank, why not, no socks and some bracelets, and I play with my hair a lot in a lot of different ways, trying new things out. When I turn all around and take a picture of my back and me looking over my own shoulder at the mirror and the lens, the word on my butt is KNIP. Ha ha.

Tonight’s not working, the color of everything which I preview constantly is not at all right, maybe there’s something wrong with the phone though

there’s Howard now, he’s back, I wonder where he did go, was. Thank god I can hear him puttering and hanging up his clothes and settling, with any luck he’ll be here all night and I’ll be able to hear him, I listen.

There finally into his chair, the music already on and did I hear a beep from the kitchen, I’m pretty sure he’s eating and listening and doing what he does which is what everyone does anymore. He’s in for the night, done. I’m so happy, weird I know, to have him back, here, doing what I imagine everyone else is doing or does, eating and listening and staring at a screen and the pics of the world he finds there. He’s back, might stay all weekend and won’t even have to work.

Maybe it was that big old wind that’s out the window that messed up all the color in the pics in the bathroom mirror, or whatever it was, but now the colors are right again and pink is pink and the baby blue of my tank is really the blue it’s supposed to be, and O god my skin is perfect.

Just right, just perfect. I’m perfect, I see that now and then, but tonight it’s super perfect I am, and every curve and shadow of me is, who wouldn’t, how could they not, these are the best pics ever, I can’t believe it, all these selfies I’m taking with that fake shutter the phone makes, every single one of them is a perfect one suddenly.

I get it, I know. I’ll do something with them this time, I’ll post them, how could I not, send them out there, put them up.

One here, one here, one here, one there, and I don’t know if Howard will see them or not, I don’t think I care if he does, but he could see them, I mean we all know he’s looking at his screen, so there’s a chance he’ll see them out of all that’s out there, a long shot but still. I think I don’t care if he’ll see them but I hope he does stumble on them, I hope he does, that would be nice, wouldn’t it, and then.

No matter, it doesn’t really matter now, they’re out there somewhere, I’ve sent them out there. These things sometimes happen.

Lewis Buzbee is the author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, After the Gold Rush, Fliegelman’s Desire, and three award-winning books for younger readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, and Bridge of Time.  His newest book, Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom, will be published by Graywolf in 2014.