by Derek GRAY

I had to move to the couch when An­ge­la’s boyfriend re­turned from Madrid. It was red, and dot­ted with thou­sands of tiny pol­ka-dots. The pol­ka-dots were corn­flower blue.

“I’m so sor­ry,” An­gela said as we laid on her bed one last time, “his com­pa­ny’s send­ing him home ear­ly. I would­n’t have in­vit­ed you to stay if I’d thought he’d be back so soon.”

Kyle eyed me with sus­pi­cion, but An­gela was out­go­ing and kind, so a stranger on the de­van was­n’t un­prece­dent­ed. He was a soft-spo­ken data­base con­sul­tant; too vanil­la and agree­able to keep An­gela true.

It was a Tues­day when Kyle asked me to leave. The three of us were eat­ing sa­tay at the kitchen ta­ble. An­ge­la’s shoes were off and her right root was inch­ing up my leg. Kyle was meek but not a fool. He cleared his throat de­lib­er­ate­ly, locked eyes with An­gela for mo­ment, then turned to me and asked, with feigned cu­rios­i­ty, how the apart­ment hunt was go­ing; she’d been chas­tized, I’d been giv­en the im­plied warn­ing to scram.

That Thurs­day I moved in­to a base­ment apart­ment I spot­ted on CraigsList. My new room­mate need­ed a room­mate, fast. The week be­fore, she’d been forced to kick her broth­er out af­ter he’d had a psy­chot­ic break and tried to stab her. The apart­ment was damp and over-priced, and the bed in my ‘fur­nished room’ was re­al­ly a shod­dy couch, but I’d over­stayed my wel­come with Kyle, who was in­quir­ing about my search on the hour.

Filed under Non-Fiction on September 11th, 2004

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