….there was definitely someone there, in Mr. Pruitt’s apartment. I haven’t imagined it, I know I haven’t. I may have lost my sleep, but I haven’t lost my mind. Not yet, anyway.
…what do I care, anyway? If he wants to burn his place to the ground, the old geezer, let him. What’s it to me? A candle that close to the window, with the drapes brushing in and out of the flame, that’s a fire hazard if I ever saw one. He could at least have been smoking, go to hell in style, you know? But no, what he goes and does is light a damned candle, of all things. As if that’s gonna save that little shriveled moldy prune he has for a soul. Yeah. Fat chance. I can’t even drink my tea in peace, someone’s gotta call the fire squad, since we’re the only ones awake at this hour. Damn it.
I’ve gone and done a thing today, you’ll say I’ve lost my marbles. Hell, and you’d even be right. I went out to refill my meds and get some more tea from that shop where the lovely lady packs it in pretty little bags with a cute ribbon bow on top….and I suddenly thought of the candle. Of that single stupid candle in Mr. Pruitt’s window at 1.45 in the dead of the night, and it seemed so…sad all of a sudden. Like it was the last living star in a dying galaxy. Like it was the fading pulse of a patient sunken so deep into a coma that they can’t even beg the doctor not to pull the plug… Or maybe nothing like that, and I’m just as stupid as he is, but at any rate, it seemed indecent that I should let it burn alone. So tonight I’m gonna light one of my own. I bought one of those big, two-wick ones, ha, like I’m made out of money, I wouldn’t be caught dead with those flimsy little teaspoon flowery wax-toys youngsters are so fond of these days.
It will go well with my night cuppa, I guess. At least there’s that.
I haven’t slept at all last night, not even the two to three hours my brain is merciful enough to allow me well towards the sunrise. At first I kept watch. The green digits of the clock flickered flickered flickered their slow torture as the hum of the ever-swarming humans above and below me came to a rest. I don’t know what I was waiting for, was I reluctantly counting the hours until the first glimmer of that infuriating, obstinate breach of the darkness – because there’s a special kind of darkness now that does not simply descent gradually and politely, with the sort of watercolor transparency of the summer nights. No, in the winter the darkness is solid, leaden in its collapse, dragging the slab of sleep over the world awaiting it like an avanpremiere death – I must be immortal by now.
And I had thought myself to be the only one.
I wonder if that’s why I resent it so much, that impudent little thing, that malformed firefly, that splinter in the great paw of the night – solitary cathedral. I had imagined myself priestess, Sisyphus, Atlas, holding the sacred weight of the darkness on my shoulders slumped in my creaky, rickety chair. And me, one more shadow, standing against the nothing growling at my window with only a warm cup of chamomille tea as a weapon.
…I almost missed it. I wasn’t sleeping, surely not, but there can be only so much vigilence before you have to blink. Blink. A flutter of the drapes. A hand in the dark. A face at the window. And that light… oh, that light…
My hands, clasped as they were around the dragon-heat of the mug, remembered to move long before I did. I had feared I would drop the match – my fingers were steady. The flame licked the wicks of my own candle, tentatively at first, ravenous a second later, as if sinking its teeth into the first meal after a time of starvation. I watched it burn, the light growing, dancing, gently coaxing away the shadows I had thought to be invincible, only to reveal hungrier ones hidden in corners. But those did not draw near, they just stood there, mesmerized as I was by the miracle – so much power in that miniature blaze. Oh, Prometheus….
Long after it went out, I sat there, in my creaky rickety charir by the window, and the air smelled warm.
But I still lit the candle.
That damned, infuriating, pretentious, obstinately spectacular candle….
During the day, I found myself looking forward to this moment, where the gates of the night would open and I’d step foot in this sanctuary for two. His light, and mine. Elias, that’s his name, Elias Pruitt. It’s not one of the hinges of the universe, but when you share a light with someone, when two hands push away the same darkness, you have to at least know his name. It really doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know mine…
Because I have a light now. Something worth waiting for. In my creaky, rickety chair by the window, with my chamomille tea that I secretly smile into, I am looking forward to that time of the night, so randomly chosen, where two candles talk to each other in a space so mundane as an alleyway between two buildings in a dusty city.
A flutter of the drapes. A hand in the dark. A face at the window. And mine, in perfect sync, like turning the pages of the same book and looking up, lost in thought, at the same scene. The light is tiny, if only the shadow of a glow, yet it feels like a doorway. Does he even know what a doorway is? Does he know what it feels like to reach with trembling fingers towards this place where the breath of light moves over you like a baptism, like a benediction, and you stay still, so still that you don’t even dare blink… until it draws itself back, leaving a vague but distinct taste of elsewhere on your lips?...
…He knows. I could see him at the window, eyes closed, hands clasped behind his back, standing in the same doorway. And I love him for that.
…there was another candle tonight, at the second floor. And another, at the fifth. It seems the light is contagious –
– and I guess it’s the same for hope.
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