i went to look at a really promising apartment in the perfect neighborhood, almost as far West as you could get. the building was big, and wooden, but Flatiron-like: when I walked to the corner it wrapped right around, heading back almost in the same direction at a very acute angle.
it was colorfully colored, with big windows and big, like a city block.
i was to live on the second floor, but the whole thing was rabbitly warren like, and colorful. there were high ceilings and an infinite showering of sunlight on hard wooden floor. the ceilings were slanted up against the roofline. there was an elevator that i went to get in -- it wasn't so much a box as a concrete beam tied to ropes that jumped onto when the doors opened. it started falling when you hopped on -- i just barely stopped myself from falling after you.
you stopped it in time, and came back alright.
i took the stairs.
and discovered the most magical small office with a dark-blue tiled with gilded accessories water closet, with a matching, rainbow-mosaic water basin. the office next door had glass windows, and an antique wooden door with a delicate, intricately wrought brass handle (the lever type). in the bedroom next door, i was delighted to discover a fire escape just out the window, just like my first New York apartment, where I used to climb out to escape the oppressiveness of my tiny bedroom in the shared, oversubscribed apartment.
i climbed out to the roof, and then farther, onto a small spit-like platform to get a better look at the road and treetops, far below, and lost my nerve to come back from the edge. i sat there paralyzed, feeling the edges of the platform i was on (no side rails, of course) looming close in my subconscious and my muscles too weak with fear to get up or even start inching my way towards the window I had crawled out of in the first place. it was dumb, being stuck in a mental puzzle of 'what would it be like to fall' and too terrified to move, untrusting of my muscle's own, separate intentions. curiosity is a hell of a drug. i laid down, closed my eyes, and let the panic wash over me.
i made it back, eventually, after the wave subsided and i managed to forget to look down, and we explored the first floor where you, the realtor, lived and played on the staircase, knocking over the colorful pillows that had been stacked like stairs to reach the landing. you weren't too mad at my carelessness, just exasperated.
i woke up to a grey sky and the soft-shusshing sound that cold wind makes when it blows strongly against the plastic wrap I used to patch up the A/C vent a few weeks ago.
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