This
afternoon, when I arrived home after work, I noticed an envelope
sticking out of her mailbox. I knew I wasn’t supposed to take the
letter, but I pulled it out anyway. Today I really wanted her to feel
me, even though she didn’t know who I was. I held the envelope
against my cheek and placed a gentle kiss over the stamp, before
placing it back into her mailbox. After looking around for about a
minute, to make sure nobody had seen my actions, I turned away from
her building and walked towards my door. I owned a small house just
on the other side of the street of Layla's flat. She lived in that
apartment complex with 5 other families and had to go up to the third
floor whenever she came home.
My
life was generally uneventful. I was just a car insurance salesman.
People would refer to me as a car insurance agent or even a
financial adviser, who tries to determine how much coverage people's
situations warrant, to make people aware of risks and liabilities and
to basically charm and scare them simultaneously into eating off my
hands. I was fantastic at my job. People were easy to mind-twist. But
Layla was not. She did not own a car. Therefore, I couldn’t use my
job as a conversation topic, as I normally would to get people do to
something my way and think it was their idea in the first place.
Layla preferred to bike to work. Just the thought of driving to work
on a bike wearing my suit, was making me uncomfortable. My suit had
to look perfect, neatly pleated and sterile. Sweat, sports and a bike
would certainly demolish that image.
Just
like every day, when I came home from work, I placed my briefcase on
the dining table by the window. I would then pull the curtains aside,
open my briefcase to get a pen and paper, lock the briefcase again
and put it away into my bedroom closet. I would then sit at the
dining table and look out the window. After that, it was only a
matter of minutes until I would see it happening on the streets. And
there she was, riding her bike until her building lot and climbing
off of it, carrying her backpack on her one shoulder. She would tie
the bike down to a side post, move her backpack to her chest to
extract the keys from the front pocked. I stood up and tried so
communicate through my sight with her. Would she finally see me
today? I swallowed my breath for few seconds, when she turned around
to look over towards me. But her eyes once again didn’t meet mine.
She then unlocked the door of her building and disappeared in it.
I
sat down and did what I usually did after such a disappointing
moment. I began drawing her glance towards me on my paper. Just her
eyes and that glimmer of faith in them, that didn’t look into my
eyes once again. From time to time I looked up from my drawing,
because I could see her through the glass windows walking up the
stairs to the third floor of her building. And then she was
completely gone and I was left behind with just a drawing of her
beautiful eyes.
Her
eyes looked empty and sad. They had a shine to them, that was
desperate for some attention. I could have given her happiness, if
only she had let me. I looked at my skinny bone hands and realized
that I was not taking charge of our happiness. I was letting days go
by without doing anything at all about making our dreams finally come
true. This had to end.
I
was dragging dollars out of people's pockets to finance my own life
with them, and yet I was not acting upon my wisdom when it came to
Layla. Maybe the reason was that I had been a widower for such a long
time, that I got used to the loneliness. But Layla was nothing like
my ex-wife. She was attractive, young and full of life. I wanted her
in my life. I wanted her life. After five years the time had finally
come to take charge and to be brave.
Posted in: Creative,Short Story
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