He closed his eyes as the plane lifted it's nose then it's ass off the ground. The plane, above frost-bitten weeds and snow, rushed on towards New York, his home of sorts.
The girl sitting to his right sneaked a glance; he could feel it. Perhaps she was curious as to his clutching hand on their shared armrest, or maybe she was just looking, as people do.
He leaned forward to close the shade, as they said to do, but it would not budge an inch and he struggled before accepting it. It would be a few more hours till his feet touched down and his life began again. How long had he been gone? A week. Had anything changed? Probably not.
He worried a lot--the sorts of worries an older woman, long widowed, might have: would he be alone when he died and would they find him, his eyes gone raisiny and his mouth agape...
He looked out the window.
One green field was there, just then, those trees they use for Christmas trees and he only knew as that, as "Christmas trees." Why didn't he know the other name, another shame.
Landing, he stood when everyone else did, to wait as everyone else did. Frustration.
His apartment on the southern side of Houston, pronounced house-ton for some unknown reason, belonged to some young-ish Hispanic woman and her child. He just squatted in one of the rooms mostly ignored. The lower east side had once, he had heard, been another world, where men in long black coats had bbq's in the street and women walked at their own peril. He liked that--made him forget his own poor-then-rich-then-poor past, made him feel, somehow, in touch with New York. The city was still somewhat new to him, though less foreign than he had been lead to believe.
It was December 29th or 30th, he wasn't sure, and it was getting darker. His roommate gone, he was alone. He breathed in the smell of the radiator which always ran, no matter how he pulled at the knob. He had worried he would comes one to a charred curtain, or worse to nothing but his roommate, her baby screaming, shaking her head at him, denouncing him for having left that fucking curtain so close to the radiator, hasn't he known what would happen? She cursed a lot. Her kid screamed a lot.
Someone was shouting at a phone next door, explaining about something he had done, to someone who was clearly unable to hear.
The man sat on the edge of his twin bed, his long legs reached almost to the shelves on the other wall, the room was so small. He picked up his phone and checked his messages; no one yet. He knew he wouldn't worry for a few hours, he didn't feel ignored or unwanted until around 8, usually.
Time passed.
He checked his phone again. A girl friend wanted to know what was happening that night. He checked his Facebook, hoping there was something to share.
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