morning.
I crept upstairs to see if I could get her to read me some of what she
had written. I wanted to hear about snow and Central Park and our
first apartment. Our studio apartment on West 139th Street was the
shittiest, most broken place I had ever seen. We bought it straight out of
college. Nothing worked and I had no clue how to fix anything. The air
conditioner never breathed any breath of cool air, but the freezer door
never closed all the way, so in the summer we would sit in the kitchen
to cool down, playing made-up card games and betting our victories
against each other with money we didn’t have. During the winter, I ended
up taping the freezer door shut with duct tape and got into the habit of
putting her work clothes under the covers with us at night so they would
be warm when she had to get dressed in the morning. Winter eventually
faded into spring and we would throw the comforter in the closet and
just sleep between the sheets, so thankful for warmth. We would wake
up early and get up late, just lying in bed telling each other the bizarre
dreams we had the night before. When she would finally get up,