Michelle Reale

Corona

He palmed the key to her. At the same time he shook her hand to seal the deal. There would be no contract, he said. She could stay or she could go. ‘It’s the way we do things here. Easy like,’ he said. ‘West coast mentality,’ she thought. The shared kitchen he showed her was too bright. It made her eyes water. In the bathroom, sun was like a spotlight, with the mold on stage in magical shades of green.

She had a question or two. He shrugged his shoulders up to his ears and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He coughed, swung a bare foot across the floor. He offered to help her with her things. She waved him off with a smile. She strived to look capable, confident. She dragged one big black trash bag behind her. The house stood on an avenue that was noisy and shimmery with heat. She told herself she would get used to trees that looked like pineapples. She’d wear her sunglasses all day. She pressed her bare feet onto the hot pavement. She called it home.

She passed some of the others, all women, on the common stair. He drank hot, strong coffee each morning despite the heat. She sometimes would join him. They came out of so many doors and went God knows where. Some had smiles bright like lemon wedges. Most had none.

She watched him in the kitchen. She smiled over the rim of her ice water. He rolled the glowing tip of his cigarette ash into a sharpened point in the ashtray. She could see the slope of his shoulders, the shape of his head, backlit. Her skin was sticky with heat. ‘Life all around me,’ she thought and hugged herself like she was her very own child.

Later, she thought she heard the sound of mission bells breaking. The house heaved and shrugged. She let her body go and careened into walls. Down the hall she crouched outside his door. She slapped it hard with flat palms. She did not wait. She walked into his room and saw a woman with golden hair like a corona, lying on her side, her bottom half draped with a blanket like a shroud. She whimpered like an animal dreaming. A breast shaped like a bullet exposed itself. He walked quickly toward her at the door. He walked like he was dancing over the broken glass. She smelled his cigarette smoke.

The light coming in from the window was so bright. The shaking stopped. She laced her fingers over her eyes, peered through them.

“You are like a saint, I think,” he said.

She waited.

He hesitated and stroked her hair, dark, flat and dull, so unlike the woman who lay curled around herself, sad, but beautiful, her hair like a golden fleece spread around her on the floor.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It happens from time to time.”

She wondered whether he meant the woman, the tremor, or the sun. Always that goddamn sun.