Three Flights

August fifteenth. The bookshelf is up. I want that noted first, before anything else: the bookshelf is now standing against the wall on the third floor, exactly where Simone said it needed to go, and we are both alive.

I got the text on Sunday. 'Could use a hand Tuesday if you're free, just a few things.' I said yes because that is what you do, and also because I was genuinely free and I like Simone and I figured, fine, a few boxes, maybe a couple hours. What I did not fully account for was the bookshelf. The bookshelf is solid wood and it is large and it did not fit around the stairwell landing in any of the ways Simone initially proposed. We tried three orientations. On the fourth, it worked. I do not know how. I was mostly operating on adrenaline and the specific concentration of not dropping my end.

The moment before we deeply reconsidered our life choices.

By the time we got it upright against the wall we'd earned the floor. We just sat down there like that was the plan all along, backs against the shelf, legs out, finished. Simone said 'that's it, that's all I needed help with' in the exact flat tone of someone who knows she is going to owe someone something. I told her a coffee would cover it. She handed me water first, which was more useful.

Water. The answer is always water.

I've been thinking about the trail post from a few weeks ago, the one I wrote after letting the Fourth sit for three days before I had anything to say about it. This one I'm writing the same day, which might be a first, but there's not much lag when you're still sore. The apartment looked the same when I got home: windowsill, the collapsed bowl, the two photographs, Gerald with his trailing vine. Exactly the same. It was a relief, actually. Some days you want the thing that hasn't moved.