Some things never make any sense. How could our house in Denver be so humid inside that the windows were covered in condensation? Outside the winter winds howled and snow piled up against our concrete steps. The big plate glass windows that looked out onto the street would flex and rattle in the metal sashes. The winter wind would whistle through the gaps in the frame, leaving a thick trail of ice where the warmth of the room met the bitter cold wind.
When I first moved into this building, there were only three other people living here. Mona had been there the longest. It might have been her mom's place before we all started filling the empty rooms. Mona liked to make lentil soup. Don't ask me why. She was a terrible cook, but someone must have told her once that she made a good lentil soup. It was as flavorless as dishwater. Maybe she was afraid of salt. The rank smell of simmering lentils melted into the deep cobwebs above the kitchen cabinets. I would have married her if she had just found an onion and some garlic to add to the soup... instead the lentils came between us.
There was other stuff too.
Like the chair. The big recliner that took up so much space in the living room that it had to block part of the passage into the kitchen so that there was room for it to lay back. The davenport had probably been left behind by Mona's folks. The textured upholstery made up for being the ugliest charcoal grey. The patterned whorls gave fingers something to do when pondering the meaning of life in an overheated, over-humid house. Tracing the buzzcut fuzz between the thin piping was like reading a roadmap left by a blind surrealist. The patterns didn't go anywhere but there was meaning, somewhere in there. Or it was just old.
Laying in the recliner, I could feel the oppressive humidity soak into the fabrics of the room. Curtains that hung over our large picture window, draped with a languid sag that resembled an overgrown bath towel. That locker-room funk was there too. Mingled with the ever present smell of lentils having been cooked into mush. No amount of cumin was going to save these scorched lentils. Their mush was scorched into the pan, week after week. The Brillo pad had done nothing to remove the charred scarring, instead leaving newer, deeper scars for the burned beans to dig into.
I felt bad for Mona. She wasn't a bad roommate. I just wish her membership to the co-op had been revoked.
I was thinking about the damp wet-sock smell that permeated our apartment on a long autumn afternoon. The fading light was trying to punch its way through our dirty picture window. The drapes held a momentary magical glow, like a saint dressed in a giant burgundy bathrobe. As the sun set further, the glow shifted and the shadows looked for places to settle in for the night.
As the lights in our apartment began to struggle against the thick dark, I found myself surprised by a new smell. Coming at me sideways, the smell was rank. For a moment I was pretty sure something had died. I hoped that the overpowering stench was coming from someone finally taking out the garbage. There was no one in the apartment with me. Just me, laying on the recliner, television on.... And the lentils simmering on and on.
Outside, the chill night air turned bitter and the winds picked up. Before long the howling winds started to rattle the big window. Hearing the high pitched screech of the autumn storm making its way through the tiny cracks in the window frame made the room feel suddenly cold. It wasn't long before the ice started to form along the bottom edge of the picture window. Soon the frost was creeping up the glass and playing checkers with the dust streaks and the cobwebs. No amount of cleaning could get the rime of filth off the window.
Bit by bit, the night pulled me further into that thick space between relaxed and dead-sleep. The television had given up on the news and had moved onto meaningless sitcoms that rhymed with the Toyota commercials that ran endlessly. By the time I was ready to roll myself into a ball in hopes of sliding into a deep sleep, the lights in the room had surrendered to the wet dark. More than anything else, I wanted to get up and pee before I fell too deep into sleep.
I rolled over, using the arm of the recliner to pull myself face up again. The foul stench smacked me in the face again. I knew it wasn't garbage. It wasn't the lentils this time either. It smelled like someone had opened a septic tank inside our living room.
Sitting upright, as much as I was able to, I found the source of the smell. The surgery had failed. The smell was my ostomy. The ostomy that saved my life. The colostomy that was just like my Aunt Lou. The shock and the fear rolled over me with wave after wave of nausea. Aunt Lou standing in the kitchen, mumbling something about making goulash for Eddie and the kids. The sound of her slapping cards over and over in succession as she played solitaire. But she wasn't there. The room was empty. The lentils were gone from the stove. Mona was busy trying to change my sheets after having soaked them for the third time tonight. She wanted to apologize for the cold air as she ran a sponge over my feverish forehead, but I could only hear broken bits about her son's time in the Navy. The fan in the room was pointed directly at the foot of my bed. The horrible heat was breaking as I slowly felt a calm chill settle into my body. Mona turned off the television and told me one more story about her son getting his first tattoo for crossing the equator. I held onto the soft blankets, as much as I could as the room folded itself into a rough envelope and sealed itself shut. The shrill incessant beeping couldn't overpower the rough winds, still bashing the window. Slowly, sleep hugged me and I let go.
