Exercise 1: The Reluctant I: Restlessness

I can see him through the glass doors at the back of the house. He lies sort of supine on the banquette, three quarters of his body sheathed in a blanket, his laptop open, the light of the screen tracing in midnight silver the lines of his face, the bridge of his nose, his naked eyes, his shoulders, the slight swell of his chest. The blanket moves as he breathes. How does the night sound to him, I wonder, from inside the walls of this house. Do the rhythmic sounds of the world reach him where he is? Has his memory relented, now that walls have saved him? Has he forgotten his dreams of blue. . .

A car passes on West 10th, climbing the hill slowly. He can tell the car's speed because of the way the gravel sounds under the weight of the its tires, and the beams of light moving through the slatted wooden blinds of the front windows cast shadows that creep languidly across walls, the things hanging there, and the black bathroom door opposite where he lies.

He shuts his laptop, which claps together with a slight noise, and resituates himself on the banquette so that he sits completely upright. With his arms hanging between his knees, he listens to the room, regarding with searching ears the sounds of air conditioning, perhaps of cobwebs and dust and a few dry leaves moving infintesimally within the space. Desperately, he wants to find something different about the night, something, something new to know about the room and the way it was at this particular hour.

He reaches behind himself to turn off a lamp that hangs from the bookcase there. He turns it back on.

"I'll never sleep," he whispers.

Resigned, he stands. Touching with the palms of his hands the small of his back, he stretches and wonders whether he ought to fold the throw beneath which he'd previously lain. He decides to gather it instead into the corner of the banquette, thinking there was something remarkable about the way it looked gathered there. Eric would appreciate this sort of beauty, he thought. And if Eric would appreciate how the trow gathered in the corner of the banquette, if he agreed it was beautiful that way, that there was some design element to the throw even when the throw had been little more than dropped in one spot, then it wouldn't matter if he didn't fold it.

Feeling neither appeased nor certain he'd made the right decision to leave the throw there, he walked slowly toward the bedroom door, careful not to step with too much weight on the unavoidable parts of the reclaimed wood floor he'd long ago identified as the sentients of the house, always on guard in the night to catch the sleepless and make known to all within those walls their shameful, secret movements.

"Let's try this again," he thought, opening the door, closing it behind him. From outside the room, the muffled noise of careful feet creeked in the beams of the floor as he tried unsuccessfully to spirit himself back into bed.