021.

“That’s why you dropped out of school.”

He opened his eyes to an admonishing television set. How long had he been out? The pillow was wet beside his mouth. His eyes were blurry with sleep and the plasma screen was scolding him in high definition.

“What are you talking about?” He reached for where he thought his glasses were. He remembered taking them off when his eyelids got too heavy and he decided to take a nap before starting work on his… There they were. On the floor now somehow.

“I’m not telling you again,” said the TV. Its voice had the brusque resonance of a process server handing him a subpoena. He’d already been judged and now he was half-awake on the couch wondering how things had suddenly become so formal.

“I was gonna start on it but…”

“Exactly. And that’s why I’m not going to tell you again.”

020.

“One tenant moved here from Chicago. It was too quiet at night so he put a giant ham radio in this corner. You could see him through the window in front of that microphone at all hours.”

They moved to the hallway.

“This is where the first telephone came in. A party line. The first call was from the hospital. The whole building learned about the accident that way. Pretty efficient, actually.”

The bedroom.

“One couple put their bed against this wall. Their first apartment together. Six months later he proposed to her there. He didn’t know she was two months pregnant and that’s why she said yes.”

The kitchen.

“Another tenant was inspired to write a novel right there, between where the refrigerator is now and this dividing wall, which was put in later."

He stopped the landlady there. “The rent’s five hundred?”

“On the first of the month.”

019.

Clouds float beneath him like the vaporous veil between vacation and home. The pilot's home could be a vacation to some but as he began the plane’s descent he imagined the entirety of the cabin would be feeling the first step back into the reality of their day-to-days and not the first step forward into their escape from it. He banked left and sliced the veil open with the tip of a wing, revealing the orderly map of farmland, business districts and cul-de-sacs.

Some days the sky felt like the river Styx and he was the ferryman.

018.

“This one’s my favorite,” I said, pointing to the alabaster statue of myself at age twenty. She made the soft, thoughtful grunt that signified disagreement just shy of enunciation. “Two hundred miles from home. ‘Home’ meaning less the longer I was away. Feet getting stronger beneath me. Chicago.”

“Schaumburg.”

“Close enough.”

“Not really.”

“Point taken.” We moved along and stopped in front of the statue of me at twenty-three. My face emptied. “I hate this one.”

“I don’t think you really looked like that.”

“Maybe. But that’s what it felt like.”

Her eyes surveyed the room, landing on an almost hidden doorway. “What’s in there?”

“Those are the statues of how other people see me. I never go in there.”

She took my hand and dragged me through the entryway.

“This one’s my favorite,” she smiled. The plaque on the pedestal read “Age Thirty-Five.”

I’d never seen it before.