Tonight was the night she first noticed that his enormous bedroom windows had never wore curtains for as long as he lived there. Or, for at least as long as she'd been coming over; which wasn't very long at all. She could feel the rotten springs digging into her exposed spine, but she had been visiting frequently enough to know how to jostle them back into the depth of the stuffing with a simple wiggle of her butt; which caused the ashes from her joint to flake onto the sheets.
"Will you quit wiggling around like that please? Every time you do, I lose it" He huffed into her forehead.
" Well then maybe you should get a new mattress. This one is about to implode on us". She grumbled back into his chest.
He put his enormous hand on her face to signal her to shut up. She bit one of his fingers, so he slapped her across the face.
"Can you hit a little harder next time, please?" She spit on floor and took another swig of whiskey out of the bottle. More ashes accumulated between her breasts.
"You're fucking disgusting". He clasped his hand around her throat as he continued to pump away at her.
Boredom clouds the mind. She allowed her head to loll to the left, and out of the way of his dripping chest. There, the buildings stared back at her.
Halves of living rooms, cut outs of bedrooms, key-holes of kitchens stared right through his part of the microcosm back at them. She was disgusted at how they watched. Her body feigned interest in what he was doing to her, but her mind remained outside. The lights in the surrounding buildings flicked to the beat of the Stones album that he put on every time before they started this charade.
One woman folded laundry. Another dried dishes. A man beat his wife. A son did his homework. Two younger lovers in a loft on the 18th floor. A widow illuminated by QVC on the 25th. A teenager fresh out of the shower, blow-drying her hair in the penthouse. Just a bunch of ants in their farm. Waiting for their food to be deposited and heat lamp to turn on. Continuing to mull about mundanely until they get what they want, only to complain some more.
She felt him flop on her and she let out a squeal. He killed the joint she had allow to burn between her fingertips, finished the rest of her whiskey, rolled over and passed out. After a few minutes of laying in his sweat and filth she sat up. Pulled her hair back into a bun and got dressed.
The needle of the turntable thudded along as she proceeded to pull on her jacket, and walk over to his dresser. She opened the sock drawer and rummaged around until she found what she was looking for. His money jar. She took enough to cover the whiskey and some quarters for the bus. Wrapping it back up in a pair-less red tube sock, she placed it back in the same position she found it and closed the drawer.
Tippy-toeing back to the bed, she leaned over and kissed him on the head. Her hand grasped his expensive watch on the bedside table, and she wondered how much she could get for it.
As she held the brass knob to return the room to its original state, she took one last look over her shoulder at the galaxy of windows she was temporarily leaving behind. The sight made her wonder how the starry night sky made people feel as insignificant as she did then.
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