Monday or Tuesday

Lying on elbows, her hands folded in front, marking with a pencil, the book lays flat on the bed in front of her—her mind elsewhere. In few moments, colours started filling in her head from her dream last night. There stood a mint coloured wall with a white door in the middle, golden rimmed. The door opened to a moss-green ocean, like the water of ponds. She tucked her toes into the sand, it was warm; white shells were pricking her sole as she walked towards the ocean that lined the horizon with nothing else to speck the monochrome sight; the sky was pond coloured too—It was dawn maybe, she thought in hindsight—Looking back she found to have lost her footprints on the sand to the winds—the door was gone too.

It has always been mares for her, ones that come in sleep. It has always been the ones with open eyes she preferred thus. Rolling on her back as her elbows hurt bad now, she heard a thud-plop: the book has slipped onto the floor. She stretched up to look if the pages were not folded. No, it landed safely, as if someone has only forgotten it there. She let it be there, as her hand won’t reach down without having her to move forward.

They were quarrelling again. They are new in the building opposite to her bedroom. Their daughters with their toddler children were visiting when the lockdown was announced. They had to quarantine together, which in a few days got apparent, they didn’t appreciate much.

She doesn’t know how much of the room is visible through the glass windows from outside. But the half curtains were drawn on, so she felt comfortable enough and took off her dress. The humidity has been hitting eighty percent in the past week, making it impossible to not sweat being dressed. She doesn’t own lingeries she could flaunt, she thought looking at herself on the mirror opposite, nor those sleeveless-backless dresses she keeps saved on Instagram. She has only bought clothes when her mother visits and ends up only buying the ones for work every time, with a dozen other bags full of home necessities. 

The quarrelling has stopped. She now hears the humming of her neighbour from the apartment adjacent to hers, the hum is swaying to and fro as he moves among the rooms. He too was quarantining alone. It makes her tense every time she thinks of it, he is so young after all, at most in his early 20s.

When she came here four years ago, she had recently left her five year job at a primary school and moved to the city as a high school teacher. Her parents arranged everything in a week for her to get settled and stayed there for a month to make her get acquainted with everything and everyone around. Yet in that first month she only got to know his name, as he would barely be at home, unlike her who can only be dragged out of her room by work.

The only other family living on that floor was a mother and her then 7 year old daughter, Gloria. They had been her saviour throughout, more so in this lockdown. It was through them she got to know that he is doing his graduation in Psychology and works in a bookshop in the evenings on workdays and throughout weekends. She has never worked all through her student life but the one thing she would have chosen to do was work in a library or a bookshop.

Next day she made sure to not get lazy and visit that bookshop after work. It was more of a thrift bookstore with a little rack by the counter of new releases. It became a ritual for her after that to visit the bookshop at least once a week. That day she had her first book haul after coming to the city and they ended up spending the night talking over books with Gloria and her mother. After he left saying he has assignments to complete, Gloria confessed their thoughts how she never thought he talks so much.

The day she came back to the city from home after a month of quarantine as her school was reopening with online classes, he came to tell her that he is glad she is back. He hadn’t been able to go back home as like everyone else he had no presumption about the absolute lockdown. They didn’t have any contact that month, as none of the adults on that floor were good at talking on the phone or texting. The whole thread of conversation was knitted by Gloria who made sure to update each one of them about the other two.

He now entered the room adjacent to her bedroom, the humming coming through the wall to which both of their beds were adjoined to. She recognized the humming now and along she hummed. It was the Da da da dat da dat da of You'll be back from the Hamilton play. They pulled an all-night at her apartment the day the play got released on Disney plus―that was the 100th day of lockdown. The hum now rose into the lyrics. Gloria with her mother joined in from their rooms and they all ended up singing all the three songs of King George.

The days nowadays have been lapping into each other like waves receding the shore. Only these spurs of silences ending into a communal harmony keeping the days ends tied to one's existence.