Issue 24

Isabella Rae Barrengos

My bedroom window served as a looking glass into my neighbor’s apartment on East Tenth. From my room, I could see into her kitchen, and from her kitchen, she could see into me. I never cared to notice this until one December when I caught her reading a book on the sill of her kitchen window. Her hair partially covered her face as she peered down, but I could tell she was laughing. A book had to be incredibly funny to laugh aloud like that. I couldn’t catch the title because her long fingers covered it. In fact, everything about her was long—fingers, nose, and these beautiful, arcing arms.

I had always thought this sort of staring was inappropriate and then I moved to New York. Everyone was a Peeping Tom in the city. Especially in East Village—views from our windows were just the buildings next door, the buildings across the street, the fire escapes out back. I had started freelancing full-time that year so I was home all day, watching my neighbors.

From my bathroom, I could see across the light well into apartment 8B’s kitchen. From my kitchen, I could look at the old couple across the street from me in their living room. And from my bedroom, I could see her leaning against the kitchen sill as she smiled at the last few pages of a book. To almost be done with a book was its own sort of heartbreak. And I suppose that’s what she was—a book I was nearly through with. By the time I met her, I was already at the last chapter, trying to drag it out, but also rushing through to see how it ended.

In the coming weeks, I found myself looking for her. I wanted to find her on that sill again, to know what she was reading. Maybe it was David Sedaris (he’d always made me laugh), or maybe she had a sick sense of humor and found the tragic death of Mr. Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre oddly funny. Or maybe we had completely different tastes and it was one of those fluffy poolside reads.

I didn’t catch her on the sill again. Instead, I found her cooking dinner, putting away groceries, doing her dishes. And in these strange hours of observation, I learned about her. She was a coffee drinker, but always cut herself off by noon—we must’ve read the same article about caffeine in the PM. She often ate dinner standing while she fussed on her laptop, and she soaked her dishes. She only drank on the weekends, and even then it was never more than two glasses.

And just as much as I watched her, I hoped that she was watching me. I knew I was invisible to her, but as I went about my routine, I liked to think she was looking at me. It made me get dressed, get undressed, make my bed with a newfound intention.

Most nights, after my shower, I would dance naked in my bedroom to get her attention. I wanted her to see the wet in my hair leak onto my back, my breasts rise and fall with my motion, the folds appear on my stomach as I bent over. And when I was feeling daring, I kicked my legs so she could catch flashes of my vagina if she looked closely. The same way I saw flashes of her face through her hair. It wasn’t enough for her to see me naked. I wanted her to see inside my body, to dissect it. I wanted so desperately for her to be my voyeur just as I was hers.

“You should ask her out,” one of my friends advised me, while the other warned me that a neighbor was tricky—“What if you wind up dating and then something goes horribly wrong—what if she cheats or you cheat—and then you’ll have to run into each other all the time?” My third friend reminded me of my real concern—“Have you ever gone down on a woman before?”

No, I hadn’t. And it terrified me. Perhaps it was the only reason I hadn’t tried it before. Yet I was so quick to tell everyone about my new heartbreak living next door to me—Elizabeth, or Rosalyn, or maybe something more unusual. I liked to think she had an old-fashioned name. It made her all the more unreachable.

There were days at a time when she would disappear—maybe she traveled for work. I’d grow angry with her then, realizing how deeply this stranger affected me and how unscathed she was in return. It was all very lopsided and embarrassing. And so I would think about asking her out—dream up ways we’d finally meet in person, without glass windows separating us.

I liked to think I’d run into her at the coffee shop around the corner on Second. She’d give me a funny look, trying to place me with my clothes on. And then she’d snap her fingers and say I must be her neighbor next door in the old brick building. She’d confess that she’d seen me dancing naked a few times. And I’d stop myself from telling her that it was for her, and just laugh as well. And she’d tell me she’d just gotten back from San Francisco on business and I’d tell her I’ve never been west of Kansas. Maybe she’d touch my arm. Maybe I’d pay for her coffee. Next we’d walk Uptown with no sense of time until suddenly we were at the park. So we’d decide to wander through the trees and—

I’d drown in all that fantasy for a moment before returning to where I really was: alone in my apartment, still not knowing her name or the book she was reading back in December.

But eventually, because it was New York—the smallest big city in the world—we ran into each other, nowhere near the coffee shop. I was at a friend’s gallery opening in Crown Heights. Not the fashionable kind of opening—they were handing out plastic cups of cheap white wine at this one, and it was primarily filled with older women wearing chunky jewelry who probably taught sculpture at the Y. A few homeless men had already swarmed the table of chips and salsa.

I was staring at a rudimentary oil painting of a young girl, wondering why some people wanted artwork of children hanging in their homes—I found it creepy. I turned to get a refill and saw a tall, unmissable figure standing across the room. It was difficult to recognize her without her choppy hair obstructing her face, without her spidery fingers laced around a paperback. But there she was, talking to an older man beside a nude sculpture. Her dark hair was smoothed around her oval face; a bit of mascara had dripped below her eyes on account of the February punishing us outside. An inch of her skin showed between her long skirt and heeled boots—she was paler than I thought she’d be south of her face.

Upon seeing her, I immediately turned away, stuck my eyes back to the painting of the child, and hunched my shoulders up so she wouldn’t see me. The exit was too clogged with passing refugees from the snow for me to escape. I heard unmistakable boot-steps behind me. I retreated further into the collar of my coat, hoping she wouldn’t notice me, wouldn’t recognize me, hadn’t caught me staring a moment ago. But she stopped directly beside me with a lot of presumption, as if I’d called her over.

“Are you the artist?”

Her question took me by surprise, as did her voice. It was higher and a bit slower than I’d imagined. She pointed to the painting of the little girl beside me in explanation. I confronted those strange doe eyes again and shook my head at her. I couldn’t comprehend her now that she was here, escaped from my imagination and my looking glass.

“Oh, sorry, I thought that since you were standing by it,” she trailed off.

“No.” But then I looked around to find that many artists were in fact standing by their work like children presenting their experiments at a science fair, including my dear friend. I wanted to say more, to show her I could be clever, so I added, “I don’t know why they do that.”

She laughed. I flat-lined. We looked at the painting in order to look at each other, the child’s eyes serving as a mediator between us.

“Are you interested in buying it?” I finally asked.

“Oh honestly no,” she shuttered, “but if you ask that old guy behind me, then yes. I told him I wanted to meet the artist. It was the only way to get out of the conversation.”

I was so excited that she’d confided in me. “Do you know him?”

“No.” And after a moment, “Only men can walk up to you and just assume you want to listen to them.”

There was something playful in her voice, but there was also resentment beneath it. I liked how she talked in these tricky layers.

“What brings you here?” I asked.

“It’s Thursday night.” She said this as if I asked why she was at church on a Sunday.

“You come here every week?”

“Not here. But I reserve Thursdays for art. I go all over. I’m on a mission to see every gallery in the city.”

“What’s been your favorite so far?”

“That’s difficult. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

These words were like penicillin to me. She’d get back to me on that, return to me, cure me of the abandonment I had felt whenever she left the city.

“What about you?” she asked, gesturing around us—what brought me to the gallery. I explained that a friend was in the show and pointed him out at the back where he was guarding his three still-lifes.

She smiled. “Oh good, I don’t have to lie to you, I actually liked his stuff.”

It was a relief to know now that I hadn’t made her up in my head. I had been terrified to meet her someday and discover we had nothing in common, that she was unbearable. But there was an understanding in how we talked. There was already so much between us merely because we’d both wound up at the same crappy art opening in the middle of Brooklyn. Did she recognize me? Was she just being polite? Then, she hit me—

“So not to be entirely creepy, but aren’t we neighbors?”

I feigned confusion for a moment as if being caught in a lie I was still trying to sell, “Yes, that’s right we are.”

She went on, “I think I’ve seen you leaving the building before.”

“Have you seen me in my bedroom?” What a horrible thing to ask. I realized she might not have even known that we could see into each other’s units.

“Yes,” she said, and I then realized maybe she’d seen more, everything all along. Had she watched my private performances? Did she know they were for her?

“You’re a very good dancer.”

I laughed properly this time, in relief, in nerves, in fear. And she laughed with me. So maybe we could blame it on the close quarters of New York. I could go along with this lie, that I danced naked in my room without realizing I had an audience. And she had no idea it was for her.

“Well you’re a very good cook.”

She looked at me flat—I’d never seen a face go so free of expression all at once. Had I gone too far? Was she horrified to learn that I’d watched her make yellow curry the other night?

“I’ll have to cook for you sometime.” She leaned in close. There was something subjective about the word “cook” in this, as if she were leaving it up to me to replace “cook” with anything else I wanted from her.

So we did have an understanding. I’d never been hit on by a woman so blatantly. Though, I’d probably started it, dancing naked for her these past three months. That was about as obvious as come-ons could get. But it was like seeing a dream in waking hours—I was horrified to watch her fulfill the very things I’d been imagining since December.

There at the opening, while she leaned in to let me smell the lavender perfume staining her long neck, it became very real and clinical. I felt more naked in front of her in my coat and wool tights than I ever did dancing for her in the evenings. I once again remembered that I’d never eaten out a woman, and I couldn’t possibly do it to her my first time because I wouldn’t be any good. And she deserved good, and she’d look at me with disgust, and I’d have to move to the West Side to avoid her forever.

I left the opening early. A few of us had plans to take our artist friend out to dinner afterward, but I didn’t want to risk getting back to my apartment at the same time as her. I got home by nine—in the winter, that felt like midnight—and closed my shades. In a strange repeal, I hid from the voyeur I’d longed for, now that I knew she was watching. As it turned out, we don’t always want what we want.

My shades remained closed all through February. I was still curious about her—was she reading again, what did she make for dinner? But now I feared her. And it wasn’t until the drawl of mid-March that I saw her again as I was leaving my apartment. She was on her way in, wearing a bright green coat and a baseball cap to keep the rain off her face. She saw me first, otherwise I would’ve rushed back inside to avoid her.

“My dancing neighbor,” she pointed at me, speaking with such familiarity and play that for a moment, I forgot my fear of her. “I haven’t seen you very much lately,” she went on.

“I’ve been busy.” I couldn’t look at her.

“Not hiding?”

“Maybe both.” Still couldn’t look at her.

“Busy and hiding,” she repeated back to me. She clearly didn’t waste time on small talk—I liked her efficiency.

“I’m Ella, by the way.” I took a step toward her and finally looked beneath the bill of her baseball cap. I felt naked again, my coat turning to tissue paper in the rain. I think I wanted her to know my name so if I protested or evaded her anymore, she could strip me all the same, beckon me back with that four-letter intimacy: E-L-L-A.

Instead, she waved her hand dismissively. “It’s alright, Ella, I get ‘busy and hiding.’” She retreated with these words as if to forgive me of any misread signals. She robbed me of my penicillin dose right there on the stoop. Would she be abandoning me after all?

“Just don’t feel like you need to close your shades,” she said. “I promise I won’t look.”

My penicillin was returned just like that. But she wrecked me with her words. They were these obvious and beautiful flirtations that I simply wasn’t ready for. Like I was a beggar and she a polished diamond.

Yet, that night I opened my shades after my shower, coerced by my looking glass or her long nose beneath that cap or maybe the dust mites in the air. I began to dance—wet hair splashing against back, stomach folding, vagina peaking out in flashes. I paused to look out the window, which had fogged up from my movement.

And there she was on the sill.

It was like her image could pass directly through the fog unencumbered. She was not reading a book, but closing her eyes with her forehead pressed up against the pane. Maybe she’d been watching me and looked down so she wasn’t caught breaking her promise. I waited for her to look up (flat-lining again when she did), and for whatever reason, I traced the word “sorry” on my fogged up window. The word—backwards from my view but forwards from hers—only lasted a few moments before dripping away like rain.

When I saw her again the following week in the coffee shop on Second after all, she pulled me aside and said briskly, “Don’t ever apologize to me, or to anyone for that matter.” I felt like her apprentice in that moment, latching onto these lessons of worth and shame she’d clearly already learned. I wanted her to teach me more, adopt me, show me where to put my fingers. I asked her to come over that night, taken up by a quick certainty (or perhaps desperation) like a fever breaking.

She asked for my apartment number—8A. She nodded, rested a hand on my shoulder, and let it drip down the side of my arm like that word “sorry” had dripped down my window. She made her intentions clear in this motion, so nothing could be misread again. I wanted to run, lock my doors, give her the wrong apartment number so she would never come. But then she walked away with her coffee before I could say anything.

And it wasn’t until afterward, late into the evening as she and I rested naked on top of my sheets, that she asked me if I’d done that with a woman before. The question was out of courtesy because I was sure she knew I hadn’t. I told her no. She turned over on her stomach and smiled at me—it was the same smile she gave that book in December.

She asked me if I liked it and must’ve seen the answer in my face, and my neck, and between my toes. I felt shivery and exposed, but I was settled. My whole body was quiet, like my pulse was an unnecessary thing now. I lay deep into my sheets until I wondered if I’d disappear inside them. I wouldn’t mind this as long as she joined me.

“Who was your first?” I thought to ask.

“Some girl at camp—I’m a cliché. What about yours?”

“Well, you.”

“No, before me. There’s always someone.”

“No women.”

“Yes, women. I’m not the first one you’ve looked at, I can guarantee that much.”

I looked at her and then the ceiling. All I could see was her on the sill with that book in hand. But I tried to think behind that, before it. Everything seemed gray now, like a dream I’d woken from and was struggling to remember. Something returned to me from long before I was having sex or doing anything for that matter. I thought back to my wife from the second grade.

“What is it?” she asked.

So I told her about Gianna Fisher.

Gianna was my best friend growing up—she lived by the tennis courts fifteen minutes away from me. We decided to get married when we were seven because we loved each other and we hadn’t learned there were different sorts of love yet. My mother officiated the ceremony in our backyard and we dined with our stuffed animals on the side deck for the reception. Our classmates told us about that word “lesbian” and we were happy to use it, adopt it for our own purposes. We’d hold hands at lunch; we built a fort in my living room and kissed beneath the propped-up couch cushions. It was a quick thing—the same goodnight kiss I gave my mother back then.

And when Gianna moved away and I grew up, I discarded these memories, discarded our vows and turned my attention to the boys in class and all of their cruelties. So why had I returned to this memory of Gianna now? Didn’t we all have these childhood loves free of sex? Or was it some sort of foreshadowing that brought me here?

“Gianna,” she repeated. “Pretty name.”

“Pretty girl.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“No idea, never checked.” I confessed that I’d hardly remembered Gianna until just then.

She rested her head on my collarbone and kissed my breast. And I found myself tracing patterns in her short hair with my pointer finger the way I’d traced “sorry” on my window. We were nearly asleep when I asked my last question.

“What was that book you were reading on your sill last December?”

“Jane Eyre.”

So I was right all along. About more than I gave myself credit. I loved our understanding. I’d been preparing for twenty years, having first been initiated in my second-grade wedding vows. I read the last chapter of the book slowly, to make it last, but also in a rush for the ending. It was as sweet and heartbreaking as a disappearing apology on a fogged-up window.