The Woman Across The Way - A Short

   There is a woman across the way who watches me from her window.  She tries to move about her apartment stealthily, but her actions are clumsy and uncoordinated.  Occasionally I’ll see the burning end of her cigarette as she watches me in the dark.  When I see this, I, too, light a cigarette and kill the lights.

   My apartment is modest in size, style, class, and just about everything else you can imagine.  There is nothing remarkable about it, but nothing offensive either.  It’s a studio of 500 square feet and provides just enough space to read my words and drink my drinks.  

   The woman’s apartment (though I’ve never seen it, of course) appears much larger.  She has two balconies, one on the east side of her building, the other on the north.  But, if memory serves me correctly, she has never utilized either.  She only watches me from her window, the east one, as her north window looks out on the river and all there is to see are brook trout and shipping vessels. 

   In the mornings, after the fog has lifted, I can see her silhouette in the window.  She stands there for hours.  I always expect to see her getting ready, throwing on some pressed skirt and strapping up her heels for work.  But I never do.  All I see is her outline and the cigarettes and those poor, unused balconies.

   In the afternoons she drops her Venetian blinds and disappears into places only she knows.  The sun beats on her building and turns the brick gold and I watch that personless window solemnly. 

   In the evenings, after the coffeepot has been cleared and the first cocktail has been downed, I see the Venetian blinds come up and the first of many cigarettes begin to burn.  As the day fades away, she’ll move about that apartment with those awkward intentions, disappearing within the shadows or hiding behind her Oriental dressing screen.  

   On one particular evening I let down my blinds before the day was gone.  But, after a fair amount of pacing, I peeked through its slits and I still saw that outline and I still saw that cigarette, but the woman seemed so far away.

   When the clock strikes eleven the woman disappears.  Her apartment turns black, chasing away those shadows, and I can no longer see that cigarette-smoking outline.  The wind rattles my windows and my blinds tap against the glass, and the night becomes so cold and so dark, and I wait for the sun to come up again.