Diminished

The next morning I felt like it was snowing straight through my ceiling. I could see the snowflakes fall by the edges of my vision and reach the floor and melt into miniscule, inconsequential droplets. I felt them rest on my forehead and stay for a while. Then they were vapor and I was alone until the next snowflakes came.

It was noon when I pulled myself out of bed. I didn’t know what the expected timetable was on recovering from the shock of killing someone. I expected I’d never again be the same. I thought of her in the bed with the other man. I felt jealous, then guilty for being jealous. I didn’t deserve anything. Not even the right to feel pain.

I studied myself in my bathroom mirror. I had stubble growing in that looked the slightest touch gray. I had eyebags and my cheeks were sullen and there were goosebumps running up and down my body.

My phone buzzed. It was Tessa.

“Hello?”

“Hey, there’s a file on your desk.”

“Alright.”

“I put it there because I expected you to be here. You’ve worked here for what, two weeks? And it feels like you’ve missed most of it.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t like to posture or threaten so I’ll be transparent: we need everyone we can get right now, and you’re good. Not great, but good. And good can be hard to find. So I’m not going to fire you, or issue you an official warning. But your pay’s going to reflect the work you do, alright?”

“I understand.”

“Am I being fair?”

“You are. I thought you were going to fire me.”

Her voice softened. “Listen, if there’s anything you need, let me know. I was a journalist before I was an advertiser. I can sense when something’s off.”

“Ok.”

She sighed. Then there was a click and I was alone again.

I looked out of my bathroom door towards the rest of my apartment. I looked at the fridge. I still didn’t trust it.

The grocery store did quite a lot to cool me down. The cucumbers and the zucchini were misted intermittently and I stood there and watched the mist fall and settle. There were a couple people who came by and took something. They’d take a zucchini and put it in their basket and leave. But I stood there and watched.

Then I was ready to go.

When I arrived home I threw away everything in my fridge and restocked it. Now I could trust it again. It was no longer a food poisoning risk. My apartment immediately felt more comfortable. I picked up Linda’s wine glass and washed it out in the sink. I pulled out a zucchini and began to chop it into bits and made myself a salad. I didn’t listen to music. I was still processing things and I didn’t want anything to interfere.

Then it was closer to evening. I looked for things to tidy in my living room. There was a large crate in the corner and it felt like an unresolved chord progression. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. So I unwrapped my upright bass and scrutinized it. There was some cellophane in between the strings and the fingerboard. I picked it all out and admired the thing. I’d bought it used seven years ago. I’d known it longer than I’d known her. It had been in the claustrophobic darkness of a crude wooden crate when I’d come home from killing someone. But it knew what I’d done. When I played it again it would know. We were good at communicating.

I stood behind it and wrapped one arm around its neck and the other around its body. I stood there and conjured that pianist’s song as though it were a mirage in a silent desert. I tapped my foot to catch the rhythm. Then I began to pluck.

My fingers moved of their own accord and I realized I’d been holding this side of myself within for weeks. How could I live without music? Was everything I’d done since moving here a lie? As the music coursed through me I understood that without this, without this, I was a shell that only vaguely resembled myself. This was the version of me she fell in love with. This was the version that wouldn’t kill a person. But to stay like this… would be a delusion.

When I’d finished I laid on the couch and saw the white cat outside my window on the fire escape. I remembered feeling like it had snowed this morning. In this moment the cat looked a lot like snow to me. I opened my window and let it in. Immediately it ran to the couch and leapt atop it and sat there flicking its tail. It was waiting for me. I took a seat and it snuggled on my lap. For some reason it all felt very natural.

It purred for a few minutes then it fell asleep.

I looked at my ugly carpet. For a moment I saw globs of brain matter, but then they were gone. I took a deep breath. I killed someone. But I also played the upright bass and there was a cat sleeping on my lap. Somewhere in between all of it was the real me. Now it was just a matter of finding myself amongst it all.