The Apartment: A Novel by Greg Baxter

Author:Greg Baxter [Baxter, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781455574780
Amazon: 1455574783
Publisher: Twelve
Published: 2013-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

But that isn’t right. It’s not what happened. I push the sheets off me. I’ve set the heat too high. My mouth is dry. I’ve had six weeks of uninterrupted sleep, and now I am awake and I’m not even tired. Each thought I have gets up on its own legs, grows arms, grips me, lifts me higher and higher into an awakened state, and marches me toward the morning, which is still hours away. I sit up, finally, turn the light on, and see the glass of water I set on the nightstand. I reach for it and drink it. It’s lukewarm. I get up and go to the thermostat, which is in the hallway. I turn on the light, and by the door are my boots, still wet, salt-stained, and dripping water on the floor. Above my boots my new coat hangs on a hook, and on the hook beside it I have hung my new scarf. I turn the light off, go into the kitchen, flick on a small lamp, pour myself another glass of water, boil the kettle, wait while it boils, standing in my T-shirt, pyjama bottoms and bare feet, drinking my glass of water and refilling it and drinking it and refilling it and drinking it. When the kettle is boiled I make some green tea. I let it sit while I go to the bathroom. I wash my hands and face and go back to the kitchen, crack the front window open to let cold air in, and smoke a cigarette at the kitchen table. And there, alone, in the subdued and satiny lamplight, I think, again, That did not happen. It had not happened. The man with the moustache had not thrown the cue ball. After Saskia potted her shot, and I shook hands with Manuela, the man simply quit without paying his debt, placed his stick against the wall, and drifted away, and the rest of the evening – at least the hour or so longer that Saskia and I spent there – passed strangely but without incident. How, I ask myself, had I remembered it as though it were real? How had my mind, even briefly, believed in it? I sit back down at the kitchen table and light another cigarette and let the false memory play out. It is corrupted now, but it still contains sensation: Manuela, hit between the shoulder blades, drops. She bunches her back up. Saskia bends down to help her. Janos and Zaid throw themselves on top of the man with the moustache, then more friends come along. They really give it to the guy. Saskia shouts at them to stop, not because she cares about the guy with the moustache, but because nobody is paying attention to Manuela, and she is badly hurt. She has gone pale. A group of people come inside from the smoking area, having heard the commotion, and more people from the front area, and I realize then that there

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