Absent

Elaine paused at the door to her apartment, her hand holding the key still just in front of the lock. She listened. There, faintly, she could make out the crying of a cat. She turned and leaned over the staircase banister, but the cry was coming from nearer by. It sounded again, and she turned to her adjacent neighbor's door. All of the doors in the building were heavy, solid wood. The animal's cry was barely audible, but it was certainly coming from inside Mr. Gonzales' apartment. "Ah, hell." Elaine said, to noone in particular, and turning back, entered her apartment. She dropped her laundry bag heavily on the kitchen counter, removed her boots, and proceeded directly to the fire escape balcony. The window casing had warped over time, and it took some effort for her to raise it and climb out onto the escape. She stood and brushed rust smudge from her denim-clad knees. Mr G's window was open a few inches, and unlike Elaine's, opened without protest. She slipped inside, paying special attention not to knock over the binoculars that stood precariously perched on the window sill. She bumped into them all the same.

The binoculars clattered loudly to the floor and Elaine froze. She knew nobody had been in the apartment for months, but in the dusty stillness of Mr. G's apartment, the clatter was paralyzing. Remembering helself, Elaine slipped off the sill and padded sock-soft into Mr. G's diningroom. The walls were bare. She hadn't been inside more than a handful of times when she was helping Mr. G with his groceries, but each time she had been mesmerized by the explosions of color: large format prints of murals, framed textiles in fractaloid and kaleidescope pattern, stained-glass lampshades. The color had all bled away. Elaine stared at the burnt shadow, the rectangle of blue on the wall brighter than the rest, which had been protected from the sun for years. She looked around, and there were so many of them. Some ovals from Mr. G's relocated family portraits, too.

A handsome, if dilapidated, chair had somehow avoided relocation. It stood alone in the middle of the room, the threadbare uphostery and claw-ravaged legs pitiful and naked to observation where once they had projected dignity as parts of a venerable dining table. Dark circes stained the wood flooring here and there along the perimiter of the room, the only remaining marker's of Mr. G's garden. Reflexively, thinking of his former garden, Elaine breathed in deeply with her nose. No scent of blooming cacti, but the musty, stale funk of a disused apartment, and the faint smell of cat shit. "Right." she said, stepping through to the kitchen.

The kitchen was small but well-equipped with all the necessary appliances and utensils. On the counter sat a bowl of shriveled vegetables, once intended to be chopped and cooked. Elaine wondered at the negligence of the movers to have left something to spoil, but then, they hadn't been family. A collection of clay pots contained an assortment of herbs and spices, while a large window brought a heavy amber column of the afternoon sun into the room. Along the kitchen counter circles of crusty detritus, neatly alined, described where there had once been another small arrangement of succulents. Elaine remembered Mr. G's delight when she'd asked him about them, how hed summoned her briskly to the little cafe tabe in front of the window and pointed out with knobbly finger the differentiating shape to the leaf, explained the water conserving strategies of that particular species.

Elaine heard the cat again, and stepped into the bedroom. Mr. G's bed was still neat; Elaine could see the rumpled sheets where he had been laying when he was found, but the corners were pulled snug and the pillows set square. Elaine scanned the room for the can, and stepped around to the far side of the bed. Her foot caught on the corner of a coffee tabe, and looking down, Elaine saw the plants. They were all dead--it had been months since they were watered--but they were still beautiful. Tiny arching branches, a few fat low bubs, even the dessicated crepe paper of a few shriveled flowers. The plants were packed in tight to one another, as many as could be made to fit on the small table. Somehow, curled impossibly in the canyon beneath adjacent terraacotta pats, was the kitten.