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A Cold Space in May
By
Carly Anne West
Ethan liked things very cold. It wasn't that he preferred that temperatures drop for him, nor did he prefer the pain that came with drinking a chilly beverage, gnashing ice between his teeth. It was more that he liked things that were already cold, or cold when they shouldn't be. A piece of food not cooked to its center, for instance, earned his affection for its resistance to proper cooking. A cool pipe passing hot water attracted his fascination. A cold blanket enraptured him.
The fondness for cold might have begun in Ethan's childhood, one mostly located in Tucson, Arizona, and in a home in which cold could not find a resting spot. Heat was a large part of the culture, and one that drove many to a desperate longing for cold things. But that wasn't the case for Ethan. While it was true that he despised the heat like everyone else once he was old enough to complain about such things, when he was younger, it wasn't a hate for warmth that made him love the cool. It was the unexpected feel of it. Indeed, more than once his mother had sat him down for a talk after finding his blankets in the refrigerator, crammed and folded one atop another, poured into the spaces between the tomatoes and the eggs. A look communicating distress would spread across her face, and she would hold the blankets against her body while she told him it wasn't normal. Ethan would watch the blankets and fight the impulse to snatch them from her, forced to watch as she hoarded the cold for herself. She didn't understand, but she was certain of the source of the problem, located someplace in the area of an absent father, a man who had left when Ethan first began chilling his blankets. It was a habit she had never been able to break in him, and he simply became better at hiding the blankets. One rolled tightly behind the orange juice bottle, another folded into a tiny square and crammed into the butter cubby. It took his mother much longer to find those, and once he turned eighteen, Ethan left her with a solid kiss on the side of her head. He moved to the small island city of Alameda, California, a chunk of land floating densely in the San Francisco Bay. His first purchase in his brand new condominium was his very own refrigerator. The first box he unpacked was that containing his blankets.
Cold spaces weren't hard to come by in Ethan's new condominium. Aside from the more obvious choice of the refrigerator, there was also the corner of the bathroom floor beside the pedestal sink, the center of the living room closet floor, and the sofa's left arm, just in the dent of fabric that meets the cushion. He would often leave his front door cracked and his windows agape in an effort to welcome the ocean breeze and the coolness it promised to leave behind. His mother had made him promise to educate himself for at least four more years, and so Ethan chose to attend college online, opting to pay for the luxury of staying home and enjoying the privacy of his cold comfort. A similar motive in mind, he likewise endeavored to – and subsequently earned – a job allowing him to administer surveys by phone, most often from the comfort of his favorite sofa corner. Upon completion of his degree, Ethan realized that he had begun to grow tired of the cold from his condominium, and a search was shortly under way to find a new place with all new cold pockets in which to exist.
It was by genuine accident that Ethan happened upon the newest place he wished to reside. A walk in the cool ocean breeze only blocks from his now-warm condominium brought Ethan to the section of Alameda that boasted the island's most handsome homes. Victorian manors and rambling Tudors sprawled across the neatly kept yards of the neighborhood, and Ethan found that it fed his need for cold as he imagined the myriad of cool corners and patches he knew the homes of this neighborhood contained within their ostentatious walls. But on that particular day, Ethan found himself in the rare position to see beyond the ivy-encrusted iron gate of one such Victorian manor. Beyond its gate lay a miniature version of the manor, set back and to the side from its original parent model. Its door also stood open, and the inside revealed a dark, shadowed interior.
Ethan had less than a second to decide, his opportunity of movement without detection miniscule in his mind. He darted past the open gates and fled past the manor to the miniature home, swinging the door mostly closed behind him. He found a cold patch immediately, in the furthest, darkest corner of the tiny cottage, and there he crouched, his body drinking the coolness like a fish gulping water through swollen lips. His eyes adjusted painfully to the change from bright to dark, and once they had adjusted, he allowed them to survey his surroundings. The space was bigger on the inside than it had appeared externally. Though no distinct room existed, partial partitions mimicking walls did stand from floor to ceiling, the smooth coolness providing a pleasant accompaniment to the genuine wood floors below Ethan's sandaled feet. His nearly six foot frame – bowed and bent to touch as much of the wall to his skin as possible – did not fit easily in all of the spaces. He did, however, locate a corner behind a partition and below a slant of the ceiling that appeared to imitate what would be the bottom of a staircase had stairs existed in this smaller representation of the manor. So long was that particular partition, in fact, that Ethan was able to spread his legs in front of him and lean against the slant of the wall behind him, reclining his body into the optimum position to absorb the greatest amount of cold. Ethan knew he should worry. This was not his space. He was not invited, nor was he welcome. He could be found, and when that happened, he would be sent away, perhaps even by force. But it was the beginning of May, and time was running out. The days ahead would be warm, and the cool places to rest dwindled and shriveled in the sun before him.
Ethan awoke to a thump. It was dark all around him, and the coolness of the floors and the walls had given way to a bitter chill that could only mean it was nighttime. Darkness blanketed him in what might have been comfortable anonymity if he hadn't been so startled by his disorientation followed closely by fear of discovery. The darkness seemed to amplify the noise in the small cottage, and Ethan willed his heart to beat softer, lest its thumping be heard by the space's new inhabitant. He listened as the sound of feet shuffling on bare wood moved closer toward his resting place. His heart beat louder in defiance, and he bit the tip of his tongue and sucked in his breath. The shuffling moved further away, then closer, then further again, and finally came to a rest somewhere between Ethan and the door to the cottage. His heart, by this time fatigued, labored to beat beneath his sternum, and Ethan released his tongue long enough to suck in a fresh breath. As his lungs took air, he heard a quiet humming, a tune that seemed familiar to him, but one he could not place.
The humming voice sounded child-like, and he felt that made sense. The miniature version of the manor was likely a child's playhouse, though one more grand than he had ever had growing up. Tucson's weather was not conducive to outdoor play that did not include water. Materials were prone to drying and splintering or melting under the intensity of the sun, singeing the skin and teaching children harsh lessons about heat. It was unpleasant. But the San Francisco Bay provided optimal play weather, and thus an optimal place to construct such a magnificent play space. Indeed it had lured Ethan.
The child's voice was that of a girl, Ethan guessed possibly eight or nine, but no more than ten years old. She was young enough to sneak out of the comfort of her home in the middle of the night and resume play under the cloak of darkness, her child's mind not yet old enough to register the danger of such a move. Ethan knew he was intruding now. His need for a cool space had led him to encroach upon another's need, and if discovered, perception of such an action would never be understood. Ethan would be seen as an intruder, a predator. He squeezed his eyes tightly and watched from behind his eyelids as white washed over dark and speckled like granite to black once again. He pulled his breath slowly, his lungs aching for more rapid satisfaction. He needed her to leave so that he could leave as well. His cool space had become frigid cold, the girl having left the door open to let in the night's chill, probably for the slightest bit of light provided by the moon. Play, after all, could not be achieved without at least some light.
She continued to hum, occasionally allowing the hum to turn to words, but still none Ethan could associate with a song he knew. He suspected she might be making the words up as she went, and he admired her courage to do so. Something about her solitary play satisfied him. He could hear her moving things around, possibly props smuggled from her room before her midnight escape to her cottage. Ethan imagined from the sound of them as she moved them across the floorboards that they were dishes, likely plastic. He listened as they collided against each other with dull clicks as she stacked and arranged them in what was probably a tea setting. He found it surprising that girls really did engage in tea parties, that this was not mythical play perpetuated by cliché.
Suddenly the cottage went silent, and Ethan captured his breath as he strained to hear the girl resume her play. She did not, and Ethan had the overwhelming sense that he was now engaged in a battle of silence with the girl, each willing the other to make the first noise leading to discovery. She did not make him wait long.
"How long have you been there?"
Ethan blinked into the dark, his brain assessing the possibility that she was speaking to an imaginary tea party guest, not him. He knew that this was not true, but felt it necessary to at least entertain the option.
"Are you a grown-up?"
Her voice was deeper than he had expected, almost as though her age was merely a formality that disguised her knowledge.
"Aren't you going to talk to me?"
Ethan wondered at the deepness of her voice, the spot of warmth it seemed to create in the otherwise frigid cottage. It was a new sensation. Her question should have sounded innocent, but it had a richness to it that hinted toward suspicion, and that would lead to fear if he didn't answer her. He could no longer escape without detection, and he knew he would have to say something.
"I'm not sure what to say," he said, wondering why his voice sounded younger than hers.
"Were you playing in here?" she asked, somehow managing to inquire without a tone of judgment. Perhaps, thought Ethan, she was too young to understand the implication of his answering affirmatively. But she had sounded more sophisticated than that, and he didn't believe her to be naïve.
"Not exactly," he mumbled, deciding that ambiguity might be the best course for his answers.
"Were you looking for something?" she asked, and Ethan thought it sounded more like a statement than a question, like she had already decided that this was the correct assessment. So certain was he that he did not feel the need to answer. But she surprised him by demanding a response anyway.
"Did you hear me?"
"Yes," he said quickly. "Yes, I did. And yes I was." He thought his voice sounded defensive, but he didn't mean for it to be, and he told himself to be more careful the next time he answered.
"Oh," she said, and rather than ask him what he was looking for, she began humming again, moving her plastic dishes around on the floor as though she had never confronted the stranger in her cottage.
Ethan worked his jaw up and down, hoping the exercise would conjure something he could say to her. He felt it was rude to discontinue the conversation, and he wondered if she expected him to pick it up again. But she sounded content in her play, and he surprised himself by feeling offended.
Before he could think of more conversation to share, he heard the dishes clacking together and the puffing sound of muffled plastic hitting the bottom of perhaps a cloth sack. She had stopped humming again, and he heard her feet shuffling away toward the door. She was leaving him as abruptly as she had interrupted him. Ethan watched as the cottage got slightly brighter, and he knew that she had swung the door wide in preparation of her departure. But she bid him farewell with a parting thought.
"Whatever it was, you're not going to find it tonight. It's too dark in there. It's cold. I'm going back to bed."
The door swung shut and Ethan listened to her feet padding the grass, the night swallowing her footsteps into silence.
Ethan had to climb the iron gate to leave the yard of the manor, and his chest loosened only after he had traveled several blocks from the property without pursuit by angry parents or watchful neighbors. He made it home by way of the light from the stars not obscured by the standard Bay fog, and upon entering his condominium, he should have felt relieved. Instead he was restless. He felt he had been cheated of his satisfaction in some way, as though the time he spent in the cottage had not had an opportunity to finish. Ethan searched his home for comfort, some chilled patch in a sea of heat, but all he found was cold. He went to bed anxious, and for the rest of the night, he searched the area beneath his covers for the coldest spot he could find. His legs moved in his sleep, and he awoke the next morning sore and exhausted.
The sun streamed through his windows, covering the areas of the floor in their usual patterns. Ethan knew exactly which spots would be warmed and which spots the sun would neglect to heat. He could safely resume his routine, leaving behind the dissatisfaction of the previous day and continuing to seek out and dwell in cool surroundings, tired of them as he knew he was. He brought his phone and his computer to his usual working areas in the living room and prepared to begin another day. But just as he lifted the receiver to make his first phone call, a cloud swept over the sun, blocking all of the warmth from the neighboring patch of floor next to his seat. He watched as the color drained from the wood of the floor and felt overcome by the cold that surrounded him. He knew the feeling would pass. It always did, and it usually made the ensuing chill that much more gratifying. But this time, he could not deny the sense of loss he experienced as the cloud hid the sun. When the sun had broken free once again, Ethan paused for a moment to recover, wondering at why it took him longer to find his next move. The spot on the floor next to him brightened, and instead of basking in the cold of the space he was in, he moved his hand to the floor under the sun. It felt warm but cool all at once.
Copyright © 2007 Carly Anne West
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