Chapter 14: Hallway Air Hit Face
My hand was still on the knob. It had been there a long time.
The metal was warm from my palm. Behind me the living room held its daylight, that even warm light from the windows that made the rug look softer than it was. I could feel it on the back of my calves, on the bare skin below the slit of my dress. In front of me the door was still closed. His agreement was behind me. He'd said okay. He hadn't moved.
I turned it.
The latch gave with a soft click, not a sharp one. I pulled. The seal broke and hallway air hit my face.
It was cool. Noticeably cool. The living room had been warm all afternoon, our breath and the sun through the windows and the tension heating it, and the hallway was building air, concrete and draft, maybe ten degrees cooler. It brushed my forehead and my chest where the dress was strapless and I breathed in without meaning to. It smelled like dust and old paint and someone's laundry detergent.
I didn't step right away. I looked left, into the little mirror we had hung by the door for checking before we left. I hadn't meant to check myself. But the angle caught the living room behind me. In the mirror I saw the far wall reflected. The flag still hung there, vertical in the upper right corner, next to the framed artwork and the table lamp. Its red was dull in the mirror's glass. It was the last time I'd see it from this side. I realized I'd been looking at that flag every day for two years and hadn't noticed it until today when it stayed so still while everything else moved.
"You can go," he said behind me. His voice was low. He hadn't moved closer.
I nodded. I couldn't tell if he saw it.
I stepped over the threshold. My bag shifted on my right shoulder and the gold chain strap clinked against the pendant of my necklace. Small sound. Loud in that quiet. My sandal caught for half a second on the metal strip between the wood floor and the concrete hallway, and then I was out. One foot, then the other. The hallway was narrower than I remembered, with that speckled gray floor and the mail carts against the wall.
I didn't slam the door. I held the edge of it with my fingertips and kept it from swinging. It stayed ajar, maybe six inches open, wedged on the air pressure. Warm air leaked out around it from the apartment. Cool air leaked in.
He was still inside. He didn't follow.
I turned my head just enough to see him in the gap. He stood where he'd been, back near the rug, his blue shirt with the sleeves still rolled, his hands at his sides now, empty. He wasn't reaching. His curly hair was messed from where he'd run his hand through it. He watched from the doorway but he didn't step into the door frame. He stayed a foot back, like the line mattered.
"I'll stay here a minute," he said.
I felt my shoulders drop. I hadn't known they were up. The chain on my bag settled again and I gripped the strap tight, my knuckles white, then loosened.
"Okay," I said. My voice sounded small in the hallway. It echoed a little.
Outside someone down the hall closed a door. A TV murmured through a wall. Normal sounds. The hallway light flickered once. I could hear my own breathing again, natural this time, not held.
I took another step away from the doorway, away from the warm light spilling out in a rectangle onto the hallway floor. My dress brushed my leg at the slit. The silver pendant rested cold against my skin where the hallway air had cooled it. I had keys in my other hand now. I closed my fist around them so they wouldn't jingle.
May you like
He didn't call me back. He didn't ask the question again. He just stood there in the doorway of the apartment that was still ours, with the flag and the lamp and the rug behind him, and let the door stay ajar.
I stood in the hall air and felt the separation happen, physical and simple. I was out. He was in.
