Unravel

When a phone rings at exactly seven-thirty a.m., on the dot, on a Saturday – it is probably safe to say that the caller had been sitting upright, phone in hand and eyes eagerly fixed on some sort of time telling device: the phone itself, cable box, radio alarm clock or anything else configured to our orbit around the sun; possibly as early as say seven twenty-seven a.m., waiting for time to tick down to it’s next round number. As it happens, such was the case when Brianna’s cell phone began simultaneously vibrating and blaring its ‘Sonar’ ring tone through the silence and fog of the early morning after, much to the chagrin of her present company.

Grossly disheveled and disoriented with a debilitating headache and nothing more than a bra and a ring on her slender body, Brianna finally awoke to the sound of the last ring before the caller was left to confer with her voice mail. She sat up in the bed and scanned all the unfamiliar items that made up her current surroundings, wading through the fleeting images of three hours prior. Some bottles and Styrofoam plates that had earlier appeared to be placed strategically – artistically even, on tables, bookcases and lazy boy’s had been bumped into and knocked over in the fray and now lay sparsely scattered all over the room among the keys, knapsacks, sneaker boxes, sneakers, DVD’s, and video games that had, prior to her arrival, once owned the floor all to themselves.

After failing to successfully put together a coherent string of events from last night or figure out why she was now alone, she became frantic, to the point that she had forgotten what had woken her up in the first place – until it woke her up for the second time.

“Shit! Where are my jeans? I need my jeans!” Brianna said, to no one in particular.

“What the fuck!?” Said someone in particular, groggily as he was sprawled out on the floor.

“I need my jeans! I can’t find them… all this shit on the floor!” The pain of yelling was no match for the panic that was quickly setting in.

“What is that noise?”

“My phone. It’s in my pocket. I need my fucking pants! I can’t see anything. You need to help me find them!” Brianna was rapidly becoming hysterical.

“I don’t know where your pants are. Follow the sound.” Greg rolled back over onto his stomach and tried to go back to sleep. The ringing had just stopped.

“I can’t get up! I’m naked! Could you please just get up off the floor and help me find my pants? Please!” The inside of Brianna’s skull was swirling.

“I’m on the floor because you wouldn’t let me sleep in my own goddamn bed. So if you think I’m gonna help you find your pants or your phone or whatever…”

Now weeping quite candidly, Brianna accepted that in this moment of crisis she was going to have to get a hold of her bearings and deal with this predicament all on her own. She stood up off of the bed, pulling the sheet that she was laying under with her and wrapped it twice around her body from underneath her armpits to her ankles, holding it together with her left hand in a bunched knot just above her breasts. Stepping clumsily over and around some debris on the ground, she went toward the door in search of a light switch. Halfway there, a glimpse from last night streaked across her memory and stopped her in mid step – all the clothes.

There was a huge pile of clothes at the foot of the bed when they came into the apartment last night (or early that morning, if you prefer) and in lieu of letting doubt or reason come into play in the matter at hand, quick and instinctive thinking led Greg to heaving the entire pile onto the floor on the right side of the bed in one broad stroke. Thus, that was where Greg had discarded the clothing that he was so hastily removing last night once they got onto the bed. And because Brianna was at the time, very much intoxicated, she had no other inclination than to do the same. Then came realization number two – access to light did not come from anywhere near the door. She remembered sitting still on the bed next to Greg while he undressed in the dark and then being bombarded with a light too bright for her hazy eyes, after he had finished with his own clothes and just before he attempted to remove her top. Now, with a vague idea of where a lamp might be located, Brianna turned slowly back toward the bed and scanned the area. Sure enough, she spotted a small pink, porcelain lamp with no shade on it, in the corner of a windowsill behind the bedpost. Before making a beeline to the lamp, she looked down at Greg on the floor who was more or less acting as the vertical line of a capital T, in connection with the horizontal line that was the foot of his own bed. When Brianna saw Greg neatly wrapped in a warm blanket she felt a strong impulse to kick him since she spent the entire night shivering under the same thin sheet that she was now using to cover her nakedness. There were other thoughts on Greg that came to mind as well but she purposely deflected them as they came, in order to remain on task.

Stepping over Greg and then accidentally into the heap of clothes that she was looking for, Brianna stretched her body forward toward the windowsill, reaching for the switch on the lamp – unsuccessfully. The option to simply step over the clothes and be well within reach of the lamp was there and available but she had a distinct feeling that if she did, she would encounter something that she wasn’t quite ready to deal with. So she climbed back onto the bed and inch wormed herself up toward the bedpost, reaching around it to push the switch at the base of the bulb, which illuminated the room with seventy-five watts of dull orange light. She had anticipated that the light would wake Greg a second time which would mean she’d have to hear his voice again. But as soon as she flicked the switch, she turned to where he was and although she couldn’t actually see him from her view atop the bed, she didn’t hear his voice or any movement at all. After confirming that Greg was still dormant, she turned to her right and looked down at the pile of clothes, where from this position, obstacle one was plainly visible: A lavender Trojan condom wrapper lying between Brianna and her jeans which were hanging down the side of Laundry Mountain. The sight of it froze her briefly but she immediately snapped back into TCB mode by sliding off the bed and scooping her pants up, all while fully convincing herself that the wrapper was no longer visible.

Brianna pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jeans like it was a child in a burning building, but once she had it in her hands she thought about where she was and what she was doing and put it back where she found it before any ill-advised dialing could take place. She dropped the sheet to the floor and started putting her pants on when she re-realized that she did not have on her underwear. Whether it was her repulsion to the idea that she had just spent the night in Greg’s bed completely exposed and unprotected, the anxiety that she had been just barely keeping below the surface now pushing its way through, or simply the after affects of a night of excessive drinking, Brianna began to feel sick and very nearly vomited but managed to suppress it just in time. She gathered herself together, again, and began a new hunt; this time for her missing panties.

While sifting through Greg’s dirty clothes, from her peripheral view she saw him start to move underneath his blanket. He lifted himself from the waist up, resting his weight on his right elbow and watched her for a moment through squinted eyes as she ignored him and continued her search.

“Are you going through my pockets?”

“What?!” Brianna replied, blatantly offended.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m looking for my underwear so I can get the fuck out of here.”

“Well they’re not in my laundry.” He said, sneeringly.

Brianna stopped what she was doing completely and stared at him with contempt and disdain all over her face.

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“Do you have my panties?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake...”

“You do have them. You’re disgusting! What do you do, collect them!?”

“Would you just leave… please?”

“I’m not leaving until you give me back my panties,” She balled up one of his T-shirts and hurled it at him. “you fucking pervert!”

“Well we can split the rent then because I don’t know where the hell your panties are.”

Brianna let out a nasty grumble of an “Ugh!” from the pit of her stomach and conceded to the fact that she just wasn’t going to be getting her panties back unless she looked in every drawer, under every article of dirty clothing and in the crevices between and behind every object in the room; none of which she had time for. She still had a phone call to make. A phone call which was so important and so urgent, that as much as she hated even the concept of what she was about to do; she did it. And she did it without any hint of indecision or hesitation. She sat back down on the side of the bed and put her jeans on, two legs at a time, sans underwear. Had her T-shirt not been in plain view from where she sat, she may very well have walked out without it, and with complete disregard for the consequences. Once she got her sneakers on and tied she was almost immediately at the door deciphering the lock configuration. But before she set her second foot out of Greg’s studio and into the hallway she had an overwhelming urge, which she did indulge, to twist her head back into the apartment and scream “Fuck You Craig!” so that her voice filled every square inch of the entire apartment, slamming the door behind her. After only a few steps toward the staircase Brianna heard a voice come through the walls that wasn’t all too clear but very audible still, yell something that could have only been meant for her ears.

“That’s not my name!”

And it almost made her cry again as there was undoubtedly, a smile attached to the declaration.

****

Outside, Brianna wearily took a seat on the first step of the cement stoop in front of Greg’s building. The month was April and while the day before had been almost unseasonably warm, the ensuing morning was decidedly cooler and rather gray. She was already exhausted, more mentally than physically, though to say that her body was ill prepared to be up and running after only three hours of sleep, succeeding four hours of persistent drinking would be a considerable understatement. For just short of a full minute she sat with her elbows on her spread knees, holding her face in her hands, just now becoming aware of the blinding headache she was suffering from. Then, with the last squirt of energy she could muster, Brianna slid her hands away from her face against the sides of her head, pushing her straight black hair to the back and then let it fall as she went into her pocket for her phone. She side stepped the missed calls list by hitting the cancel button, just to avoid seeing the name that would inevitably come up twice at the top of it. The whole time she spent trying to get out of Greg’s apartment, she half subconsciously and half intentionally (if you happen to believe this is something achievable by the average person) focused exclusively on what she was doing and ignoring the “Why” entirely. Adrian’s name and face were only vaguely present to her and that was only because she knew it was him who had called in the first place. Faced with the reality of actually having to hear his voice and hold a conversation with him, she choked. Again she closed the phone and dropped her head into her hands, this time repeatedly pushing her tousled hair away from and then letting it fall back over her face, which was quickly becoming as pale as her brown skin would allow.

Staring out onto the sidewalk in front of her, Brianna tried creating a rough sketch of the dialogue that the two of them might share when she did call, but was unsuccessful due to the scent of an oncoming early morning shower being an immense distraction to her train of thought. She found herself staring absently down at the feet of people passing by Greg’s apartment building when with remarkably undesirable timing; her phone went off while she held it in the basket of her two hands. It startled her so much that the initial feeling of vibration shook her entire body and caused her to drop the phone two steps beneath her. It also initiated a temporary bout of memory loss because she immediately picked it up, opened it and eagerly put it to her right ear. She was so rattled in fact, that she forgot proper procedure as a phone call recipient and said nothing as she waited with bated breath for a voice to pass through to her ear that might soothe her nerves.

“Bri?”

“Yeah…” Brianna said, relieved.

“Oh, okay. Did I wake you up? I called you twice earlier too.”

“I was asleep. I woke up a few minutes ago. I was just about to call you.”

“Oh… You okay?”

“Why?”

“You didn’t say anything when you picked up the phone. Did you get any sleep?”

“No! You didn’t call me last night!”

“I know, I – “

“Why didn’t you call me?! Do you know how long I waited for you? You said every day, seven o’clock and before you go to sleep. Every day!”

“Would you let me tell you, please?” Adrian said with a chuckle. He always found her mom-like worrying amusing.

“What were you doing?”

“Its not that I was doing something – “

“Really?”

“Yes ‘really’. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me is that I sat with the phone in my hand for three hours waiting for you to call.” In reality it was closer to three and a half. “But whatever, go ahead and tell your story.”

“If you mean ‘story’ as in ‘lie’ then it’s not a story. I’m telling you what happened.”

“Okay… sorry. Go ahead, babe.” She suddenly felt strange about questioning him but would not acknowledge the natural audacity of it.

“I couldn’t make any calls. My phone was picking up all kinds of different networks and I didn’t wanna make a long distance call on my cousin’s phone.”

She paused before she responded; giving him the opportunity to add anything he may have forgotten.

“You sure that’s it? ‘Cause you called me the first day when you got there…”

“No, you’re right. I was shooting dope and having too much wild sex to make a ten minute phone call.”

“Adrian…”

Brianna got up off of the stoop and started walking to the end of the block, squinting while she looked for a street sign that would tell her where exactly she was.

“We went to a party at his friend’s house in a whole ‘nother town. I couldn’t get reception there. Okay?”

“A party? And what’d you do at the party?”

“Shut up already and tell me you missed me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Bri, somebody left me a voice mail last night that was five seconds long. All I could here was breathing and a TV in the background. You wouldn’t happen to know who that was would you?”

She took a second to read the two green street signs (5^th street and 2^nd avenue) at the corner of which she stood before answering his question.

“I was listening to the radio; not watching TV.”

“So you stayed home all night listening to the radio and thinking about me?” Brianna could tell he was smiling to himself.

“Yeah.” She said slowly, not feeling as bad about the lie as she would have had the words come out of her own mouth instead of his.

“You sound like you’re outside.”

The way his words came out was completely pedestrian yet they stopped Brianna cold as she made her way to the 6 train at Astor Place.

“Yeah, I am.”

“…Why?”

“I’m going to the store.” She replied, much too defensively for a line of questioning that was purely out of curiosity.

“At 7:50 in the morning?”

“Yes at 7:50 in the morning. What the hell? I need to get something.”

“What are you getting, breakfast?”

“Pads, Adrian. I’m getting pads.”

“Jesus, you could’ve just lied.”

Neither of them spoke for the next several seconds.

“Babe, when are you coming home?” Brianna said, with longing in her inflection of the words “when” and “home”.

“You know when I’m coming back.”

“Yeah, but what time; Daytime or night?”

“Either late afternoon or night. I doubt Tavian is gonna get up early enough to get me back by morning. That should give you enough time to get whoever you have over there out of my bed.”

“Stop talking like that.” Her heart skipped and beat rapidly but only briefly. “Can you try to get him to get up early, please?”

“Why, I thought you didn’t miss me?”

“Because I wanna make you breakfast and have it waiting for you when you get upstairs.” Brianna felt very pleased with herself at the advent of this spur of the moment idea.

“Really? Why, did you break something?” Adrian said, laughing at his own joke.

“No! I’m being serious. If you’re not gonna get here in the morning then get here at night so I can make you dinner.”

“What brought all this on? You’ve never cooked me anything… ever.”

Brianna had just turned the corner on St. Marks Place when rain started drizzling on her unintentionally unkempt hairdo.

“Shit.” She whispered to herself.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh… so did you forget to give Goldie water or something? Because…”

“No! As a matter of fact I even washed your sheets and mopped your kitchen floor.” She didn’t really but she was planning to when she got back to his apartment. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” A strange feeling overtook her chest and middle region once those words left her lips.

“Alright then, I stand corrected. So where did all this come from? All the mopping and what not.”

“When you come back we have to make things new.”

Adrian mulled this over for a moment.

“Make things new? What do you mean? Like, keep things fresh?”

“Yeah something like that.”

She caught a random and rather aggressive chill throughout her body and wondered what would have happened had it come mid-sentence.

“I didn’t know things weren’t fresh.”

Instantly Brianna sensed the noticeable drop off of enthusiasm in his voice. She had just gotten across the street to where the subway station was and instead of getting off the phone as she had planned to, she decided to wait outside the shelter to the stairs until their conversation had come to a proper conclusion. She started to lean against the side of the shelter until wetness seeped through the back of her shirt and she sluggishly peeled herself off, standing upright with one hand in her pocket and her head on a slow swivel, as if looking for something, anything that would save her.

“No babe, that’s not what I meant. I just mean…” she was unable to hide the fatigue in her voice any longer. “I just meant that I want things to be… even better. You know?”

“Yeah, I think I know what you mean.” His confidence seemed to have been somewhat restored.

“Nothing’s wrong, okay?” She said to him, soft as snow.

“No, I know. I know.”

“Babe it’s raining on me. I’m gonna go inside the store okay?”

“You’ve been standing outside this whole time?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I could’ve just called you when you got back upstairs.”

“I know but I’m gonna go back to sleep when I get upstairs. And I wanted to talk to you.”

“Alright, so just call me later then.”

“No, go and have fun with Tavian. Just call me sometime before I go to sleep tonight, please. I get nervous when you don’t call and I start to think things.”

“Alright. I will.”

“I love you A-Dre.”

“Love you too.”

****

Brianna closed her phone and trotted down the stairs into the station. She walked a little more toward the end of the platform so she would be at the back of the train because that’s where the exit was at 103^rd street. When the train came and the doors opened, the car was relatively empty since it was only about eight o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. She sat in the double seat in the corner, by herself, all the way home. Sometime after passing 28^th street she fell into a gripping sleep, which she never ever did on the subway, and did not wake up until the train was pulling out from 86^th street. Shortly after leaving 96^th she got up out of her seat and stood at the doors until they opened at 103^rd, where she got off and made a mad dash to Adrian’s apartment on 106^th and 2^nd.

When she got to the front of the building there was an elderly woman whom Brianna had seen on Adrian’s floor before, with a little blue shopping cart full of laundry and detergent trying to get through the door on her own. Brianna pulled the door open so that the woman could push her cart through freely and the woman turned to her with a beautifully aged smile and thanked her with a nod. Brianna started to tell the woman to enjoy her day but was pretty sure she didn’t speak English and kept the thought to herself.

Once in the elevator she was finally completely alone. She backed into a corner and sank just a little as she leaned on the wall but that was as far as she went in terms of taking advantage of her long awaited solitude. Stepping out of the elevator she hurried down the hall toward 7D and started to go into her pocket for the keys when she realized just then that she couldn’t remember feeling them pressing against her upper thigh since she got dressed this morning. She launched her hands as far down as she could into her tight pockets anyway but felt nothing. She stuck her right index finger into the fifth pocket of her jeans and then shoved both hands into her back pockets even though that was the most illogical place for anyone to ever hold their keys, especially jeans as tight as the ones she was wearing. And after she checked there, she checked both hip pockets again, to no avail.

Brianna pulled her hands out of her pockets, flung them up almost parallel to her shoulders, and let them drop down slapping against her thighs. Almost immediately she raised them back up to her head and ran both hands through her hair, grabbing hold of a bunch of it as she turned her back to the door, slammed into it and slid down to the ground. She had planned on waiting until she’d gotten into the shower but since that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, it was right there in the hallway, in front of Adrian’s door, crouched down almost into a fetal position that she began to cry – an unrelenting, unabashed, hyperventilating sort of cry.