Absolute Gentleman

Despite what my wife thinks, I spent only a short span of time marveling over the numerology associated with my sons’ birthdays. Most of the day I worked on the keys story. I added some stuff and put it all together into one piece.

—

Later, I suppose I had to admit that I got a bit of joy from it, this mystery of the keys. She would never know, as she left town soon after, in what was either a disappearance or just a bit of irony. Who can say? The point is that she’s gone.

She didn’t approach me about the keys. I offered them to her. I’m not sure why I offered both keys, because only one of them worked, and now that I think of it, how sinister it could have looked considering neither worked for her. In fact, I have this helpless feeling now that I can’t explain myself to her.

I had an extra set and they accessed a studio I had been given the use of, free of charge. Overcome with good-fortune and the enthusiasm of having such a place, I hardly use it at all. I would arrive soon after dropping the kids at school, put on a pot of coffee, and rub my hands together like I was actually going to get down to business and work.

Ever since I’d begun taking the medication, though, I haven’t had any idea what work is, actually. There’s no putting my finger on — wrapping my mind around, as it were — what, exactly, I was supposed to do while at the free studio.

The coffee takes five or six minutes to get ready, so that time could have been devoted, nearly entirely, to mapping out a plan of attack — a veritable blueprint for action. The space was conducive to this, too. There were white boards and cork board walls and enough paper to lay everything out neatly, pin plans to the walls, but just like always I’m perpetually getting ready to get ready.

There were things to turn on and repair, candles to light, perhaps if, at that particular moment, I craved a candle — or a scent — because candles aren’t right for every moment.

I offered the keys because I could, and it was a great place just to be. I made the joke that the bathrooms were “industrial looking” but that they were clean, although I never knew how clean they were. I had some knowledge that the bathrooms were clean at one time, that someone took an afternoon to scrub things. I remember there was a fresh coat of paint at some point. But when I told her things were clean, I had no real idea. Maybe I thought I’d clean it another time, before she had a chance to use the place. I handed her the keys on a day she visited the studio, so I knew she wouldn’t have to use the keys until, at least, the next day.

I may have falsely made the reader believe that my days consisted of nothing but dropping the kids at school and daycare, then arriving at the studio with the intention of working every day. The truth is that I have a job — that the studio is a luxury of sorts, and I can access the studio to work any day at any time, provided that my schedule is free of my job and familial obligations. I do not babysit our children because I am the father of these children. Any time I spend with them, no matter how monotonous it is, no matter how much it feels like a sentence, I am not the babysitter.

When you have such obligations, the days march behind one another, and unless you’re close, and your eyes haven’t crossed, vision hasn’t blurred, from lack of sleep, there’s no way to read the name tag to know what day it is.

Now, was that metaphor too drawn out? My idea was to make the days like soldiers marching for some reason, and soldiers have name tags, I think, and so I made the analogy hoping that the reader would understand the connection. Looking at the sentence now, I see that length isn’t a problem. If the metaphor is clear, the sentence length shouldn’t throw the reader off too much. I’m wondering, though, if the phrase “name tag” is a problem. Can the reader successfully make the connection between the days and soldiers without this pretentious metafictional explanation?

A few days pass in this fashion, and when my phone vibrated in my pocket, I wasn’t thinking about how many days had passed since I had given her the keys. In fact, I must have forgotten about the keys completely, as I never even recognized the number on the phone as hers.

“I need you to come down here…”

“I’m busy right now…in the middle of something. What’s wrong?”

“The keys don’t work.”

She was upset, which was a little surprising. They were keys, after all, and my thoughts could have floated toward one of two ways. They showed themselves like a multiple-choice answer in front of my eyes. Is she

a) a lunatic? or

b) severely disappointed by her inability to access the studio?

I didn’t make a choice, but instead thought about how well I must have sold her on the beauty and functionality of the studio, for her to think she could call me at work for this problem. It had been difficult for me to get many people excited about anything I had to offer.

“I went at five this morning,” she said. “I felt like an idiot.”

There was embarrassment too, apparently. I hadn’t accounted for the possible humiliation, although it sounds a little heavy-handed, of standing there for what she thought was a long time, trying to get the door open. There was also the fact that she must have planned this way ahead of time — that it became something that got her excited about her life at that particular moment. Plenty of people awaken at 5 A.M., but who arrives anywhere at 5 A.M.? This studio meant something to her.

Faces. Maybe the distinguishing characteristic of each solider and, in turn, each day, is in the physiognomy. Unless you are perceptive enough to recognize that which strays from the patterns of daily life — unless you get close enough to see the wrinkles in the faces — the days will pass by in a nondescript blur.

That afternoon I met her at the studio. Her hands were on her hips and she had a look that said, “You little rascal – so forgetful and careless in your varied and packed schedule. This is just like you. I bet you’re giving wrong keys all over the place.” She had the condescending smile, the head titled slightly; the only thing she was missing was the wagging finger, which I could have put in here because what do you know about this person, anyway?

I’ll say she had a crooked smile, one ruined by sprigs of dark Italian hair on the edges of her mouth. She loved getting mail, any kind of mail. A slip of paper with the letter ‘R’ on it would push her to ecstasy. She designed and executed ransom-note looking collages, daily, and for no special occasion. When she prepared her green tea, she steeped the tea with loose leaves, then drank the loose leaves with the water, oftentimes neglecting to remove them from her teeth afterward. She missed the husband who left her, her three sons away at boarding school or college. She’d have strange men over to her house to randomly move entire furniture settings from one room to the next. She once had a little writing desk in her bathroom.

All I could do was hate her. I didn’t make a habit out of carrying eight pounds of keys everywhere I went like I was some janitor or building superintendent. I have six keys on my ring; there was no way I gave her the wrong key. In fact I remember thinking I should not make a mistake and give this lunatic my house key, because she’d use it, just as a joke. She’s the kind of person who’d use it to make a point. She’d come crawling up the driveway in her rusty maroon two-door, dog hair covering the seats like fur. She’d knock, then put the key in and, surprisingly, open it smoothly on the first try, my wife and I stunned and frightened in our living room. She’d open the door in a way that told me she had planned it all along, that she might have even practiced a few times before pulling off what she thought was a hilarious and memorable gag on me.

“Give me the key,” I said to her. There are only two locks on the door of the studio: a deadbolt and the one on the doorknob. The deadbolt wasn’t engaged, wasn’t in place, didn’t breach the matching hole in the door frame. The deadbolt didn’t work. The key was meant for the doorknob lock, which made things even more mystifying. I put the key in the lock, turned it, without a jiggle or a trick, and opened the door.

She looked at me as if I had a trick key, hidden for this occasion. She ran her hands up my arms, one at a time. At first I thought it was just an excuse to touch me, that she might go down my pants next, but after seeing the serious creases in her forehead, I knew she was serious, and I let her continue. I owed this to her, what with her not being able to get into the studio and me having offered such an essential thing to her, personally. Her hands along my sides went from smooth strokes to pattings, as I thought she even realized this was getting a bit awkward, even for her.

“There’s nothing else,” I told her. “The keys work.”

She pushed me aside. “There’s something wrong with the lock then. There’s must be something stuck in there.” And she bent down, shuffled her feet a bit to get eye-level with the doorknob, and scrutinized it thoroughly. “I think I see something,” she said. I stepped in front of her and opened the door. The knob was now inside the studio, but she was still bent over, her eyes now looking at the ground in the doorway.