Second Hand News

The late afternoon light is fading in Brooklyn. Cold air slips in from the spaces around the air conditioner; the cat's fur crackles with static electricity. The neighbors are kissing on the fire escape. In the area where our backyards all meet, there is a gray cloud; someone has burned their rice. My friend Ben and I are lying on my bed, looking up at the tin ceiling. He has made us cinnamon toast and we are balancing mugs of tea in the crooks of our elbows. On the way over, Ben passed a stack of Seventeen magazines out for recycling, and we are reading them now, flipping through pages which are still ice cold from being outside. I like the embarrassing stories, the tragic "it happened to me" narratives, the candy colors of everything. Ben is frowning his way through fall fashion spreads and skin care guides. It is a teenage sleepover scene, magazines and plates spread all over, Rumours playing softly in the background on repeat, my socks not matching. "The only thing missing is nail polish," I tell him.

As I'm starting to fall asleep, he begins the sad story of his friend E., whose boyfriend left the apartment they shared in October. All of the boyfriend's things remained there until December. Haunted relics gathering dust. Right before Christmas, he showed up suddenly, hand in hand with a friend of hers. The three of them stared at each other. In October, the friend had been the first to say, E. recalled, that the break-up was a good thing. Quietly, the boyfriend and friend packed up his stuff, while E. wept in the bathroom. "Then what happened?" I ask Ben. "That's it," he says. "That's the end."

It's an awful story. I should be cringing, frowning, shaking my head. But I start laughing. Ben stares. I am laughing and laughing, my tea sloshing dangerously in its cup. He starts to laugh too, hesitantly, then louder. He knows why he's laughing, and he doesn't. And then we are laughing hysterically, we can't stop, laughter crashes around the room. Magazines flutter to the floor. Ben looks up at the ceiling again. To no one in particular he says, "This is the most beautiful time of day in the winter. And the most tragic." He turns back to his magazine. I smile into my mug of tea. The last bit of sunset has caught the curtains, and for a moment, they are glowing. The room is flooded with these last little shreds of light. I reach over to turn the volume up. And then, suddenly, it's dark.


*Typed while listening to Jens Lekman.