≡ high windows ≡

He returns and stops before the door. A glass pane shows a stark varnished wooden stairwell and another door at the top, with a light bulb dangling from a long, frayed cord. A place Mac has seen before.
Tonight is the night.
After two long rounds of knocking he hears movement upon the joisted floor. The top door opens. A woman looks down the stairs with a total lack of expression and closes the door again. Five minutes of steady knocking produces her once more. When she reaches the bottom of the stairs to unlatch the outer door she does not appear to be angry. "I aint working tonight," she remarks, trudging back up the stairs.
There is a soiled-clothing odor to the squat carpetings of the living room. Two lamps sit upon very low end tables. The upper regions of the room are distant, dark. Mac eases down onto the couch. The woman goes directly through a curtained doorway. Everything is old in the way anything two generations past is old. A small black and white TV is on, the sound replaced by a nearby portable radio turned low. An uncurtained window opens to the back, away from the street, a black sketch of tree leaves and strangled stars.
In the back room there is incense burning in service of various odors. "Look, there's some technical difficulties. You understand that, don't you Mac?" Her voice is almost soft, somewhere in it a schoolteacher's tone. With Mac this seems somehow necessary. "Your mother ever explain to you about girls?"
He looks at her a moment. "Uh, yeah. I got a sister."
"Specifically?"
"Uh. Different equipment?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"That's sort of the point of why I'm here."
She asks for the money. Mac stands up pronto. "That's a big tip," she says. "Did I imply more than I meant to?"
She folds the bill, writes a time and date on a slip and hands it to Mac.
When he returns, the place is empty. Totally.