She sang in the evenings and Liam dreamt a new face for her every night. An on-time evening bus placed Liam at home with enough light left for him to linger on the exterior stairwell, in hopes of a passing glimpse through her fourth story window. Her curtains were drawn most of the way, and deep green. Liam enjoyed the concerts while cooking Ramen noodles. He only listened from the kitchen, the room nearest to the central air vent, where her voice echoed through the piping and insulation--–– birthing a pure timbre whose resonance warmed Liam’s linoleum floor. To boil noodles, Liam set his gas range to its lowest setting and watched the pot intently since his barefoot symphonies ended once the water boiled. Liam’s pale, blue eyes dilated upon sight of steam. He sat on the countertop, looking over a cookbook opened to a pressed duck recipe. Liam did not particularly care for duck, but it took hours of uninterrupted preparation. She sang opera in Italian, and even though Liam couldn’t understand Italian, it was his favorite thing about her songs.
She stopped singing on cue to the tapping of wood soled shoes that spiraled and advanced up the building’s stairwell to Liam’s front door. Perturbed at the interruption, Liam used his first knuckles as a fulcrum to crack his neck to the side, and pivoted his head towards the front door, which was visible from the kitchen, to greet his roommate Spencer. Focused downward on his palm pilot, which lay in his left hand, and loosening his tie with his right hand, Spencer kicked the door closed behind him, and asked about the status of Liam’s lover that evening. Liam said she sounded good, but it wasn’t her best performance. Spencer walked into the living room and set his briefcase on the dusty brown recliner the two had found sitting on a south Mission Street curb. It fit into their decoration scheme because it was cheap. He tugged his shirttails out of his pants, briefly exposing a Chinese character tattoo on his right oblique. When Spencer turned to put his palm pilot in his briefcase, Liam examined himself and squeezed the roll of fat formed by sitting shoulders over hips and took another bite of noodles.
“How are the wedding plans coming along?” asked Spencer. “Did I miss her again tonight?” Liam had been aware of the girl for a week, but Spencer had yet to hear her sing.
Liam’s face was stoic, unaware Spencer asked him two questions. “I could always just walk on up there and ask for a cup of sugar or something. Right?”
“I don’t think people borrow sugar anymore. You’re not some non-threatening 80 year old woman,” Spencer said. Puffing his cheeks, Liam quietly let out the breath held from his inquiry. Spencer continued, “What are you going to borrow sugar for? You only cook noodles.”
“She probably doesn’t have sugar anyway. She’s probably on the Atkins diet.”
“Why would she be on the Atkins diet? Is she a large person?”
“I don’t know.”
“She probably is. Have you ever seen an opera singer that wasn’t fat?”
“I’ve never seen an opera singer,” Liam’s voice trailed off like a child caught in a lie. He retreated into his noodles.
Spencer flared his nostrils and brushed a few strands of hair behind his ear. “I just want you to think about this one, Lee. What you’re working with is a woman you’ve never seen, who is probably fat, and doesn’t bake. These aren’t winning characteristics. She’s probably old too. I feel like opera singers are old.”
“Ok, but they have to learn that voice thing, the approach, early in life. You can’t just start singing in Italian out of nowhere. Bel canto.”
“What?”
“Bel canto. It’s the clear singing technique for art music.”
“Is Borders having a sale again?”
“I’m just saying. Young opera singers have to exist. She could be 22.”
“She could be 42.”
Liam worked as a copy editor and didn’t mind his and Spencer’s form conversation about the girl upstairs. Neither Liam nor Spencer particularly enjoyed their jobs, so having generic conversations about the day was depressing; it was more interesting to talk about the girl. Liam enjoyed Spencer’s banter, and thought him jealous about the privacy of his concerts.
Finished with his dinner, Liam walked to the sink and opened the cabinet that hid the garbage bin. He crushed the Styrofoam bowl in his palm as if to make a virile statement, but succeeded only in soaking his hand in broth. He threw the pieces into the trash.
She resumed singing.
Spencer and Liam stood in profile, Liam’s clumsy beak outdone by Spencer’s straight, Roman nose. They gazed up at the whitewashed wooden ceiling. Cracked, cobwebbed and glorious, the individual imperfections swirled like constellations the more Liam’s focus distorted them. He wanted to ascend. He wanted her to know him. He knew that she would like him more than the violinist or oboist she was surely dating. Spencer’s face shifted from taut to fleshy and his mouth opened in time to her crescendo. Liam watched Spencer. He knew Spencer had become a believer. Liam smiled with recognition.
Both Liam and Spencer took a deep, barrel-chested, masculine breath to hide their infatuation. Liam hopped down onto the checkerboard kitchen floor. He resigned to humming.
“Something has to be done,” said Spencer. Liam wiped the lingering noodles onto his jeans, leaving a circular brush stroke of sodium on his pants.
Spencer marched out of the kitchen and through the breakfast nook to his bedroom. He returned a few moments later with a CD playing clock radio, a CD binder and a crooked grin. Not stopping to explain himself, he glanced around the kitchen for a few seconds before he made a go at the toaster. He unplugged the toaster with his greatest dramatic flair, accenting it with a flick of the end of the cord. He plugged in the clock radio and reached for the CD binder without even stopping to reset the clock.
Liam poised his lips to stop the appropriation of his fantasy. He cocked his head to the side and opened his palms to Spencer.
“OK, I’ve got two CD’s I think will work,” Spencer said excitedly.
“Work?”
“Yeah, to lure her down here. She gets our attention with music, we’ll get hers with music.”
“That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard” Liam said. How had he not thought of something so simple? The idea made too much sense to compose an excuse. The only hope now was for Spencer’s CD case to be filled with atrocious music, kryptonic to the refined sensibilities of an opera singer. If this ridiculous idea worked, and she came down the stairs to see them, everything would be ruined.
“So I’ve Porgy and Bess (which he mispronounced Pour-gee) or Mozart? I’m a big fan of Gershwin, and it’s opera.”
Liam was shocked. “You think you know a person. Where did you get those CD’s?”
“I have taste, man.” Spencer said in a tone to convince himself most of all.
“You know Porgy and Bess isn’t opera, right? I mean not like her,” he pointed upwards half-condescendingly. “It was, like, minstrel music. White dudes, burned cork, the kind of stuff that spawns bad Spike Lee movies.” Liam tried hard to sound cordial. “And Mozart had serious problems.” At least that’s what he had heard.
In the time it took to lightly bite down on his tongue and tap his front tooth with his index finger, Spencer refined his argument. “That’s perfect. We’ll use Mozart. We’ll go for a sort of tortured artist approach. She’ll like that”
All the ready-made, angry responses collided in Liam’s mouth and merged. “I was the one who wanted sugar, I don’t like old women, and now you think there is a we?” She was his secret girlfriend.
Spencer didn’t have a defense, so he turned on Mozart. Liam feared that his opera singer was about to leave him for his roommate.
Spencer cranked up the volume knob.
“Can you still hear her? Is she still singing?” Liam asked.
“I don’t know, but she knows we’re here now.”
For the first time, Liam left the kitchen before the girl upstairs finished her set. Indignant, he stomped to his room, but couldn’t draw Spencer’s attention. From his room he couldn’t hear the girl singing, only the deliberate and full tone of the cello playing on Spencer’s CD.
The next morning, Spencer’s closed door made Liam feel better about walking to the kitchen in penguin boxer shorts, scratching his stomach. Not that Liam would have bothered to put on pants, he simply felt more comfortable with his level of nakedness when there were no witnesses to it. Liam started Sunday mornings with the New York Times. He was never up on current events, yet read every Sunday edition. The bulk of it impressed, challenged and fascinated Liam and he felt obligated to subscribe. That day, he would read the arts and book review section so when he met her, he would be capable of elevated conversation. They would meet. He would recognize her and he would be able to say, what do you think of so-and-so the author? He would know which singers to laud; perhaps he could even apply “tour-de-force” to a deserving performance as if he could afford the ticket.
When Liam opened his front door he did not see his newspaper on the doormat, instead he met Spencer, who was out of breath and wearing a bathrobe.
“So you saw who stole my paper, but couldn’t catch them?”
Spencer lips formed words, but did not speak; his eyes went up and to right, searching for the exact right word. “No.”
“Do you know where my paper is?”
An identical delay. “Yes.”
Liam rested his hand on the doorframe, which blocked Spencer’s view of the apartment. “And…”
Spencer spoke very deliberately, “The man who lives in the apartment upstairs has it, because I threw it at him.” Spencer mimicked a backhanded throwing motion. “For a diversion to escape the awkwardness.”
“So you went upstairs?” Liam pulled his hand away from the doorframe and back to his side. Spencer brushed past him and into the kitchen. Liam stood frozen, still looking outward to the hall. Which question to ask first? He ratcheted his fingers hard enough to feel strain in his forearm, came back into the apartment and sat in the recliner.
“I’m gonna make eggs. Want some Lee?”
“No, I’m all right. You know you have to tell me this story, right?”
Spencer turned off the stove, set down the two unbroken eggs, and stepped into the living room. He dropped down onto the red, cotton couch, which sat armrest to armrest with the recliner. Both Spencer and Liam looked forward at the TV, though it was not turned on.
Spencer explained that he picked up the newspaper as a conversation starter, a prop. He was going to say that the delivery boy left the paper on the wrong doorstep, but when a scruffy, forty-something man answered the knock, he panicked, threw the newspaper and scurried down the stairs to safety.
Liam started to tap the coffee table with his right hand at an even pace. Watching his fingertips, while he thought of what to say, forced his heel to involuntarily drive against the carpet on the second and fourth coffee-table-beat, which in turn spurred a syncopated clicking of his tongue.
Spencer diffused the silence. “Boyfriend, husband. Has to be. Typical is what it is. All the good, classy ones are taken which leaves only the skanks for guys like us.”
Liam didn’t like being bunched with Spencer. “Yeah. It’s not fair man.”
“Yeah Lee, women suck. They suuuuck.” Spencer turned and faced Liam. “I’m sorry I went up there Liam, I am. I just figured nothing was going to happen otherwise.”
“You don’t know that,” Liam said in a calm tone. “I can think of a bunch of ways where it could.”
“Well, that was one of the ways,” said Spencer.
“No it wasn’t. That’s not how it’s supposed to go. Stupid lies about a newspaper,” Liam’s voice cracked. “It just doesn’t fit––”
“But it did happen that way, so maybe you’re just wrong idea about what fits and what doesn’t.” Spencer bit down on the inside of his lip and winced. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. But look at it this way, I’ve failed, so now the door is open for you.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Spencer.”
“Listen to yourself. Even if you did meet her, she wouldn’t be the girl you listen to every night. You know?”
Liam put his hands on both armrests, “I guess.” He lifted himself up and walked towards his bedroom.
“You know I’m right,” Spencer said.
Liam turned around back into the living room. He moved to in front of the TV. “Just because I don’t have a plan doesn’t mean… it doesn’t mean… you know what I mean.” He shook his hand with each false point of emphasis. “I mean, I just don’t know where to start.”
“How about some pants, and then maybe some eggs,” Spencer said.
“What?” Liam had forgotten that he was delivering his defining lecture in his underwear. Spencer’s cheeks were swelling, holding back laughter. Liam looked down to see his bare chest, legs and the elastic band of his boxer shorts desperately hanging on to his protruding love handles for support. He let out a quick burst of air and smiled. Liam preferred the laughter to his stumbling explanation and turned back to his room. He scooped a pair of mesh shorts off the floor with his foot, and picked his cleanest dirty shirt off the rim of his laundry basket. He slid into flip-flops.
“You seen my wallet Spencer?” Liam said as he wandered, searching between his room and the living room.
“Sorry man, no idea.”
Now clothed, Liam poked his head into the kitchen. “You got a buck or two I can borrow? I’m just going to go down to the corner newsstand and grab a Sunday edition.”
“I’ve got a five on top of the TV.”
“Thanks.”
Liam bounded out of the apartment, through the interior hallway and down the stairwell. He skipped two steps at a time as he descended. The stairs he hit, he hit hard and without grace, each stair letting out a creak of pain. In the main lobby, he made quick eye contact with the security camera before he stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Liam’s eyes scanned to find the newsstand, but hesitated on a homeless man who was leaning against a fire hydrant, two paces to Liam’s right. The man raised a paper coffee cup in his gloved handed to Liam. “Spare some change?” The man gestured to his dog, a mutt wearing a red bandana. Liam didn’t respond. “God bless you,” the man said.
“When I get change,” Liam said.
Liam jogged to the newsstand. It was still early morning, and Liam’s open toed shoes were not warm enough. Once in line at the newsstand, he stepped in place like someone waiting in line at a bathroom, so he could keep his feet warm. There was a family of four buying a map of the city, which the mother paid for with three dollars out of her fanny pack. Liam kept stepping.
The family turned around and bumped into Liam. They apologized, he apologized and he slid up to the plywood tabletop counter. The woman behind the counter was in her early thirties and had blonde hair. Her nametag said Lucia, which struck Liam as a sign. It was a prima donna name. He tried to picture her singing opera. “A copy of the New York Times please.” He visualized her living upstairs on the fourth story, behind the green curtains, even with the middle aged man. While Liam was straining for meaning, Lucia snatched the five-dollar note out of his hand and made change in her apron pockets. That wasn’t poetic, it was everyday; she couldn’t be the girl upstairs. Still, before he left, he asked her, “Do you sing opera?” She chuckled and said she didn’t sing except for birthdays. Liam laughed in response and left the rest of Spencer’s five dollars in her tip jar.
Liam could only skip one stair at a time going upwards, which he did, even though it winded him. He stopped at his floor, the third, and leaned on the black, metal cast banister to catch his breath. He made three strides towards the fourth floor and ran into a woman at the turn in the stair flight. She had auburn hair and green eyes and wore khaki pants and a form fitting blue v-neck sweater, which matched the color of the plastic newspaper bag in her left hand.
“Any chance you’re Liam Cross?” She held out the Times newspaper bag and pointed to the subscriber address on the bottom right, just above where it read all the news that’s fit to print.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Some deranged weirdo stole your newspaper and threw it at my husband this morning. I thought I’d bring it back.”
“Thanks,” Liam piled the Times she gave him on top of the one he just bought.
“Ok then. Enjoy that.” She started back upstairs.
“I love you,” Liam shouted louder than he expected.
With her back already to Liam, she turned her shoulders and said, “It’s only a newspaper.”
Liam let her go.