You were thinking, "Maybe there’s some solace in this loneliness," running your finger up and down the length of your trachea. It wouldn’t take much, though, to put your finger through your windpipe. Outside the window, yellow leaves ducked the wind, rising from the molten earth. Just yesterday there had been snow on the ground. If you can master the quiet and the still, there is a nobility in loneliness. If not, the poles are reversed and day will dance remonstrative dances, dressed in the robes of night. It is not that Time is against you, just that it has many things to do. There are apartment buildings in Istanbul which must come down, and flesh in Budapest waiting to fall from the bone. There are marriages in California whose seams await one final fray. The ice caps need to lose a little weight. If you can’t demonstrate your acumen; your mastery of your self, then Time must leave you to your own devices. It is neither cruel nor just. It simply is.

You were considering your options, gazing into your own eyes, consoling yourself. (I’ll never understand what service mirrors provide the desperate. You’re not the first to look at one in a pinch. Perhaps you hoped to see your conscience staring back?) You couldn’t expect Time to wait around. You hadn’t eaten in days. Why should Time waste itself on someone who can’t be bothered to feed himself? A baked potato? A fried chicken? How hard can it be? And port wine, for god’s sake? You know it turns your teeth black.

So the foundation shook. And you shimmied to your feet. You said your name once to the mirror. You watched your lips form the syllables. You watched your eyes sink in disbelief. The curtains turned back a handful of errant leaves. Chest out, the floor held fast against the bubbling ground. The whole house took up your cause. Perhaps there was hope yet. You turned from the mirror briskly. There was the refrigerator, where you’d left it. Beside it, the sink. The blood was gone. The clock you’d hung on the wall a minute and a half ago had held. Your feet began to itch and burn. You kicked off your shoes and plucked your socks. Your feet were scaly and smoldering, not to the eye, not to the touch, but from the inside. You thought "a pail of water." But you don’t own a pail, you use the kitchen garbage can for mopping. And, besides, the taking off your shoes and socks had offered some faint relief; liberating, cooling. So you disrobed. You glanced at the mirror again. Vanity. The long curvature of your ashen thighs, flesh which hadn’t seen the sun in months. Your belly, distended, beginning to draw toward the earth; prefiguring your eventual internment. You closed the closet door, mirror on the inside. Only a minute and a half had passed; a deep breath, a reverie. Yet a whole life had come and gone.

That thought; that breath you inhaled, exhaled. Poof!…you were there. You stood and you looked at you.. The closet door was still shut, the mirror out of sight. You were naked, both of you. Your embarrassment rose in a flush. Fiery golden embers whisked by on late afternoon breezes; the scent of alder. You retrieved your trousers. And you scurried to the closet for another pair. The mirror gave you nothing back. With gray slacks you turned to you, wearing jeans. You thought, "I haven’t clothes for two." It was panic talking. And Time sniggered maliciously. You thought of going outside, where now a sulphurous, bathing rain was pouring down, leaving puddles, the color of urine. "I have only one umbrella." And both you and you made a dash for the front door. You got there first and clutched the parasol to your chest like a baby doll. You breathed heavy. So did you. Wagner may have been playing. But you hadn’t touched the radio.

You had a sudden taste for salt. You dropped the umbrella. "To the cupboard!" A handful was not enough. So you inserted the spout in your snout and you sucked it all out. (By snout I mean mouth.) You each downed a quarter cup or more. Who would wear your glasses? Who would use your train pass? Should the census count you twice? Many questions. Is this what is meant when they say in Latin, "know thyself"? The thought of cannibalism briefly crossed your mind. It was the salt talking.

You remembered, suddenly, your walk home from the train that afternoon. They’d closed the office early, in deference to the holiday. It was not early enough, though, to beat the encroaching winter night. Each year, it seems, the darkness nudges itself a bit closer. There was a distant scent of wood fires. "No," you remembered saying, thinking that to accept the winter was to invite it in. You walked briskly and outdistanced the lighter-than-usual pack of commuters striding toward homes and apartments. You made a right, as usual, on Hermitage, cutting through the parking lot, lopping off a few degrees of city block. Out of the corner of your eye you had seen your shadow, walking beside you. But then, unexpectedly, there was a second shadow, only a stride or two behind and just as distinct as the first. Was someone, all of a sudden, behind you? You strained your eyes, milking your peripheral vision for a clue. You focused your hearing to pick up the patter or clomp of a footfall. "Why," you wondered, "is this person so close on my heels?"

Finally, you pivoted your head to glance back across your shoulder. There was no one there. You looked up. You were between two streetlights. The one ahead projected your shadow behind you and the one behind, ahead. A few steps further and the shadow in front began to weaken. Further still and the shadow behind drew even, matching you stride for stride, until it, in turn, moved ahead and another came slowly into focus behind. The phenomenon was nothing new. And, yet, for a moment, you’d taken your own shadow to be another’s.

"Am I under a similar spell now?" you wondered. You checked your pockets, hoping to find a ticket stub, a matchbook, a napkin with a phone number; something that would confirm your identity. You did the same; struck, perhaps, by the same instinct, or merely mimicking. Your pockets were empty. There was a tickle in your throat. The salt had left you parched and gagging. You stumbled to the bathroom and leaned over the basin. You caught a glimpse of yourself in the vanity. The gagging had blossomed into choking. You cupped your hands under the tap. You shlushed palms of water to your lips and lustily swallowed it. No relief. Your air pipe was pinched and twitching. There was a taste of metal; acidic, bitter.

Outside you went, expelling bags of bad air from your lungs. Flames nipped at your cuffs, yanking you downward. The air was so hot. It burned eye-sized holes in your breath. The choking persisted until, from under your tongue, you coughed up a coin. Beneath a Romanesque bust, framed by olive boughs or maybe stalks of wheat, appeared the words "Veritas Unum." And again, you were alone.

Chicago December, 1999

© 1999 Seth Kim-Cohen