Another Wednesday night, another after dark walk of shame to the recycling bins beside the condo complex to get rid of a load of empty liquor bottles, beer cans and frozen pizza boxes. I flipped back the cover and was about to pick up my box, when the door I had just come through opened. Dominique, the lady who lives directly under me stepped out with a garbage bag in one hand and a small bin whose contents looked eerily similar to mine, just on a smaller scale.
I must have scared her, dropping her bin as she gasped, then exhaling when she realized I wasn't a street person raiding for cans.
"Jesus Jason, you scared the living daylights out of me!" she said, regaining her composure.
I bent down and started collecting the bottles and cardboard from the ground. "Sorry, Dominique, I didn't mean to frighten you."
She joined me in the cleanup. "I've told you before, call me Dom. I thought I was the only one trying to hide her evidence of Covid drinking in the shadows. Looks like you guys have been hitting the sauce too. Now I don't feel as bad," she said, nodding towards my bin.
I froze up and bowed my head a bit embarrassed. "Actually, worse, this is all me. Natalie left me a couple of months ago."
Dominique stood up. "Oh no, Jason. I'm sorry. I knew she went to look after her Mom at Christmas, but what happened?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but this was the first time I would be relating the tale to someone other than my family, and trying a couple of times, couldn't settle on a way to start and just exhaled. Dominique stepped in, and put her arms around my shoulders and pulled my head into her sweater. I'm 6'2" and Dom Is around 4'8", so with me still squatting, it was a comfortable fit. I realized it was the first time somebody had touched me in months.
"It's okay Jay. Don't. Let's get this cleaned up and get back inside." I nodded. We dumped he bins and headed inside. On the stairs she turned to me, "You are working from home right?" I had my own Online Content Consulting business, so while there was technically an office, it was just me and two employees who had been primarily remote even before the pandemic. With the way the economy was tanking, it wouldn't make much sense to hang onto a physical address much longer. I had room to redo the extra bedroom as a full office now that Natalie had cleared out all her things.
"Yeah. Trying to 9 to 5 it, but sometimes having work to do makes the evenings pass quicker" I replied.
"Mmhh. I'm remote too. After the first lock down, the lady who was the main purchaser for the Library retired early. I just go in on Thursday afternoons, for a team meeting and to do some faxing." Silence spread between us, like a picnic blanket floating to the ground after being shaken out. I was really out of shape as far as having in person conversations go. "Listen, Jason, I know I've only met you a few times, I knew Natalie better, but do you want to come up for a coffee or a tea and tell me what happened? It might feel good to talk it out. My place is more comfortable than on the ground in the alley." Dom raised one eyebrow as a physical question mark.
I thought it over and concluded that when Covid and the lock downs were finally over, it was a story that I was bound to have to repeat a few times. I might as well start close to home. "Sure, that would be nice. But I don't want to impose if you were headed off to bed soon..."
"Nope. I'm usually up for a couple of more hours. To be honest, I'm kind of jonesing for social interaction. But I promise to be a good listener." With that, she turned and started back up the stairs. I kept my head down, not wanting to get caught checking out her ass.
I had met Dom a few days after we moved into the building in the spring of 2018, so about two and a half years ago. Before that, I had only seen her from behind and mistook her for a teenager. Tiny, huge backpack, oversized beanie. She was actually in her mid-thirties, a Librarian and had an androgynous quality to her that her sense of style only reinforced. She had hazel/green eyes, jet black hair cut very short and never styled, small thin lips and a nose that was just a little too big in the tip and nostrils, looking out of place with the rest of her slight features. She had a habit of smiling closed lip while listening to you, and that could come off as annoying if you didn't pay attention to the fact that those green eyes were smiling too. Her dress code tended towards grunge/ goth. Lots of short black skirts with black tights or nylons, flannel shirts over t shirts, eye and lip make up always just enough to remind you she put in the effort, but not enough to make her look like she was on the hunt.
We have always greeted each other warmly and made small talk, but never got into anything resembling a conversation. Once in a while, Natalie would be a bit later getting home from work and would say she had bumped into Dom in the hallway and talked for a bit. They always talked comfortably with each other, just that Natalie wasn't really the type to make friends easily. Acquaintances yes, friends not really. She never had that gang of girls that she went out with, or the bff to go to dinners with. She just didn't forge relationships like that.
As we entered her apartment, I was surprised by the decor of her living space. I guess, in my mind I had been expecting band posters, maybe a gaming system, maybe a cat habitat. Instead, from the kitchen and into the main living area, everything tastefully decorated in earth tones, different shades of brown to accentuate the shelving units containing many plants and of course, more books. No cheap Ikea stuff here. Even all the shelving units were real wood, stained and varnished. There was no formal dining area, I assumed she just used the breakfast bar stools. The sofas were big and brown, of an older style, but looked to not be too worn, and also comfy as hell. They faced each other, about six feet apart with four end tables flanking them, and a coffee table almost as long as the sofas between them.
"Wow. This is really nice, Dominique. Those built-ins are stunning," I said, marveling at how this felt like a home not a condo.
"Yeah. My Dad and brother are both carpenters, so they fixed me up with those as a housewarming present. There are more in the office. I have a problem letting go of books, as you can tell." She moved to the kitchen. "Coffee, tea, hot chocolate?" she asked plugging in the kettle.
"What are you having?"
"I was thinking a Chai?"
"Sounds good. Thank you." I made my way to the living room and perused the bookshelves. Bigger format and huge tomes on the bottom reference and cookbooks center stage, with paperbacks and novels up top.
"So how did it go for Natalie's Mom? It was colon cancer, right?" Dom asked, pulling mugs out of a drawer and dropping tea bags into them.
"Yeah. She found out just before Christmas last year. Natalie headed out to help look after her through her chemo treatments. She's doing well last I heard. I talked to Natalie a couple of weeks ago".
"Has she been out there the whole time?"
"She came back in July when the airfares went back down to pack up her stuff. Just for two days", I said then pointed to one of the sofas letting her take her choice (everyone has a favorite). She motioned to the one closest to the kitchen and I took a seat, as she poured the water into the mugs.
Dominique came around and set a tea down on the coffee table in front of me and hers at the other end, sitting beside me I subconsciously slid all the way to the arm.
Dom slid into her corner, lifted her legs up onto the sofa, and pulled her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs. "Okay. So? What happened in between. I mean I live underneath you, I never heard any arguing or drama."
"No, there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. The first couple of weeks after she went to Cali, we would talk every two days and message a couple of times a day. Once her mom started treatment, it slowed down to a message a day and a quick call every five days. I chalked it up to the long days of treatment, stress and the time difference. She had taken a two month leave of absence at work. So, by the first week of February, I called her to ask her when she was going to be back. She was evasive. She didn't know if her Mom was strong enough for her to leave just yet, they were waiting on follow up appointments, she would have to see. I texted her to wish her a happy St. Valentines the morning of the 14th but didn't get a reply or a call by the time I went to sleep. The next day all I got was a 'you too' reply. I felt something was off so I called her." I took a sip of my tea. Mmmhhh. "Thank you. Great choice. This is wonderful." She smiled and tried hers.
"I asked her what was going on and she told me that she was really down and that seeing her mom so frail and fragile had brought up a lot of memories of when she was a kid and her Mom had struggled with depression after her Dad had left. She said she couldn't wait for her mom to get her strength back and be her old self again. I told her I loved her and that we should try to talk in person, like on camera more often. That talking through things might be good for her. She said maybe and then wrapped up the call saying she was exhausted."
"Well the skypes never really happened, back to text excuses that she was tired then Covid hit in March. The same week a letter from work had showed up for Nat. I told her about it and asked if she wanted me to open it. She said no, she had already dealt with it by email. I asked her what she had 'dealt with' and she told me she had extended her leave by two more months. I was shocked. She hadn't discussed it or mentioned it to me."
"How did that make you feel?" Dom asked, brows knotted, sympathetic.
"It hurt. I asked her when she was going to let me know. There was a long silence. Then she dropped the bomb. She told me she didn't know if she was coming back. I was completely blindsided. I asked her what the hell she was talking about."
