“Oh yes, the both of you. I see, yes, that does make sense actually. That explains it then…” She trailed off into a handkerchief. She had been speaking more to it from the start. And trailed off from them into the apartment, of which they could see nothing, hanging in the doorframe, each aperch on a fake fern, there were two just outside her doorway. They lent some wetness to the air. The ferns, not Teodoro, or Teodoro. Actually they did as well. They lent some wetness to their air, the ferns, the fake ferns, they lent some wetness to their air. They lent some wetness to the chalk ambiance. Teodoro wished he had bothered to fill up his water bottle at the airport. Teodoro handed him his water bottle and he poured a sip. A miracle it made it that stretch in the air. One of them is germaphobic, the other considerate. Teodoro rustled his fern. Not while packing back his water bottle, just so something could be said. It did not have much to mutter. There were no bugs for chatter either. Teodoro’s fern did have a spider, he was cautious of the far fronds on which the arachnid home was knit. Had to be bugs here somewhere. Had to be something for them to drink. Had to be bugs here somewhere. Or to have been. Spider might’ve lived too fast. Dug the ground dry. Happens with hunting sometimes. Unsustainable practice even for animals. Humans being animals. And other animals too. Still had to have water somewhere, for the hunted bugs to have been. Unless that was what had happened. Ground dug dry by some shovel and other intruding gumption. The spider the innocent, innocent to nature, victim. Drying alive on the cobs that lent the concept of the humid to a never-dead geometry that made pyramids of pyramids and pipettes. Flat pyramids, well, there was a little bit of depth, a little dimension left, no life, but definitely some dimension. And some life. The spider. He saw it move. Be careful expending energy in the drought. Unsustainable practice, movement, even for animals. And for non-animals. Humans staying animals. And moving. Not Teodoro or Teodoro, they’d moved, they weren’t moving. But they had moved. From there to here. They’d moved when there had been water. And now they were not moving. And there was no water, best as they could tell. Except there was water, and they readily knew. Teodoro could feel its weight along his backpack. And there was water, as they readily knew. There was no drought, just dryness. It’s different. It is. It was. It also is. And also this is an apartment building. There must be water somewhere. The rent was not cheap. Teodoro had looked it up. Cost to buy was not either. Teodoro had looked it up. Nobody confirmed there was running water. But at the right price point. Even then at least some buyers, probably a renter or two too, bothered to check. Some people are simply diligent. Others are thirsty. Teodoro is. Teodoro is too. He took his water bottle out of his backpack. Cautious of the spider. Teodoro floated a sip. Teodoro took a sip. The backpack made its way back to his second shoulder. Again with the water bottle. And now slightly lighter. They are both still thirsty. But rationing. That is efficient. Efficient occupants likely check if utilities are included in the rent. Buyers in the maintenance. Or better yet the inefficient ones. Maybe that is an irrelevant element to categorize who confirmed the running water. Teodoro is not sure. Teodoro is not buying. Teodoro is not renting. They are standing. By the ferns. The ferns that give the cavern hallway, it really should be better lit, there seems to be some art, there is imagery on the wallpaper, equally avuncular, and they can hardly make out any of it some slightly more present ambiance. But a dark hall is efficient, until it is inefficient, until it is dangerous. It is not dangerous at present, it is efficient to their activity. Nobody walks. They stand. Outside the hall, inside the apartment, she walks, it sounds like. They wait. That is what they have been up to.
“Where?” They hear. After the footsteps. “Oh, dear. Do come in boys.” They enter. This could be dangerous. Not for odd reasons. It’s just dark. That’s why they can’t see inside. The geometry is not obscurantist, nor the topology, nor the geography. Just the light. Or its verbotence. “Apologies, just, you both, and”-“I thought”-“it’s”-“you see, you two”. They still did not, they’d hardly come in. They did not hear either. Well, they hear some, and hear words dashed off into that same handkerchief. It and she equally verklempft. It growing more so. She no less. Until it was a saturated rumple. And then it no more so. And she still no less. But no less no less. Sadness isn’t transitory that way. Sniffles aren’t either, our mighty olfaction. Maybe it all is. It’s also autoproductive. Sound has its own transitory properties. And inhibitions. That’s why neither had exactly heard her. Well, they did hear bits. And pieces. Most of them actually. Better it was bits and pieces left out and a whole with jagged fragment holes that they had heard. Not that it mattered much. They could see all they needed to know. Except they could not, of course. It was dark. Though slightly less so around the corner, so much for cooperative geography. Light leaked in from behind soft curtains. It is the middle of the afternoon.
Enough light to see the room, enough light to see her clean her nose, just enough light to catch a strange band of green tint that stains the wrist attached to the hand with which she dries her face, her dry face. No streaks to her makeup. If she wears makeup. Not enough light to know that. Enough light to think it, for Teodoro, based upon the layout of the living room. Never enough light to see such thoughts, which if Teodoro could see and did see he would say to Teodoro, “you see everyone, hates women. Teodoro hates women, we got a certified women-hater here, Teodoro, hater of women”. He would say it if they were alone. He would say it if he could hear the thoughts, since he can’t see them. He would have heard the thoughts if they were alone. Teodoro would have said the thought, out loud, if they were alone. Except he would not, since he would not have had the thought. Here he has the thought. And Teodoro the inclination to proclaim his brother a vulgarian. Teodoro has the same, for Teodoro, his brother the boor. The who bore so deep into their wordlessness to know what his brother the vulgarian was thinking from the simple implication of the way it was not said. The way it was not fit for polite company. Not like this company. Company of her now waiting for them with her clean face, dry in the notional light. Who Teodoro thinks could plausibly be wearing makeup. And who Teodoro has taken no stance on regarding that, because he is not a misogynist, or is one better suited to taking stances on his brother, on the matters of men. Or because each needs to stop not taking stances and start taking regard of the room. Unless that's what Teodoro is doing, unless that’s why Teodoro thought it. Thought her less a person for makeup qua woman than a person for makeup qua what could be made of the interior design. He could hardly see the couch between her and them while it remains lost behind a table best understood by the whirlpool ornamenture that supports its surface. Still he could feel the couch’s texture without seeing it. Feel it without touching it. Tendrils to match the tablelegs, viticultural gold infringing on a crown ocean. Teodoro would call it embossed knowing it not but enjoying a bit of wrongness especially when the tone did tell some sense of the texture. Except he was not looking enough at the couch to feel it. Or the table. Hard to say what he was looking at. Not regarding much. Sort of looking at her. Thinking Teodoro had thoughts. Sort of guessing at what those might be. Sort of guessing at why it was so dark. And why there was light coming in from the east as well. So bright there. So dark here. It would send it all algow wherever light was able to forget its way in. At least until it entropized in the salt mine. He really was thirsty. Teodoro considered, between considerations, asking her for a glass of water. The couch had made him thirsty. Teodoro considered taking out his water bottle. But there might be something to hit. He does have elbows. And he thinks it rude to overly regard the room. The same way his brother thought it rude to ask for water. Better to let her offer. She must offer eventually. When she offers coffee. Teodoro thought that is when he can check the room to swing his backpack elbows at joints because the coffee would make him thirsty. Eventually Teodoro will be able to ask for water. Or at least to try the restroom, because there must be one, price point and all, and steal from the faucet as if it was a long hand wash. Teodoro is considerate. Teodoro is germaphobic. Assuming she made any offers. Assuming there is running water.
“Want any tea?” They assented. “And do come sit.” They did as offered.
She departed, somewhere behind them, another room just off the entrance hall. Presumably the kitchen, though all the doors on offer had been closed. And Teodoro felt the couch. Not embossed but that’s the sound it exhorted. Up close he could see the weavings exact to his expectations, give or take some fuzziness on the details of its aurum braids. How to know exactly what they would look like. Hemp cords hiding the highest fineness in their folds, spirals and cloven overlays. A litany of sheetbends afloating a frozen ocean.
“Here we-” She muttered, her words choked. She had not been gone enough. They heard the tea tray racket on the aforementioned table now behind them, where she had set the drinks down to redress her clenched expression with a napkin come from the kitchen or the tray or her pocket or elsewhere or had been lying in wait for any number of small matter emergencies. That napkin, then crumpled, found its way to the tea tray, then to the coffee table, by way of the tray. There is a coffee table. A low one, hardly for sipping, between the couch and where she had been standing earlier and was now standing again, if closer to the table, since she has just set down the tray, and there wasn’t enough room for her to do that on their side of that table, not to mention that it would have a been a very forthright course of action to do that exactly. Much too physical. This more respectfully distant.
Respectful of what? They were not sure. That they hardly knew one another, Teodoro thought. Or the nature of the little relationship they had, Teodoro thought. They are the same, in essence.
The tea was yellowed white, the tray a blurry mirror, the crumpled napkin sought to unfurl itself and did, it inched. A sort of stop motion. Long exposure, as seen in the gouged fabric creases. Teodoro considered removing it, but to acknowledge she had left it there would be so very rude. For her part, Teodoro was watching her, she sat down, there were two chairs opposite the couch, across from the coffee table. They did not look meant for sitting. She sat in the one on the left. From the perspective of Teodoro, and Teodoro. And from there she waited their opinion on the scene.
Teodoro took a sip of tea. It tasted like milk.
Teodoro felt the curvature of his glass. It was unrelenting.
“It was the hoarding. He, he-” she left the chair, it wept, and scoured her open armoire, off to the side of the room, for the tissue box that was sitting right there, right a shelf below the one she was sweeping her drape sleeves across, leaving them again to an assessment when they were yet to comment on the last on the last. They did, nonetheless, assess, not comment, that’s not their business no matter what she wanted to leave them up to. What she wanted to leave them up to was not much their business either anymore than what they were to do when left floating on their own airflows. Here, where the air lay dead a late summer’s dusk, they were to assess, without comment, with response only where it was required. So that is what they did, they assessed, without comment, because here it was not required. So they saw her shadow, where here everything is a shadow in that specific way conditioned by circumstances where there are no shadows leave scant hazes met at low-end gradients of non-pitch stifled light that reduce the shadow to the shaped spectrum it is even when can hide its inspecific intensity in the sunlight. And it is here she awked, stretched, searching, awaiting the hidden lower layer the tailfeathers are yet to address though Teodoro has come to question how her personal curtainry has pulled off this particular failure to be inevitably on top of what Teodoro has truly only assumed she is looking for on the basis of her haste and the half-gutteral noise that she rushed to its conclusion as she got up. Teodoro thought it was a bit funny that for how dark this room is they could see the tissue box she is ignoring as if it were under a spotlight. There were those whispers from behind her real curtains. Might be dancing at the right angles. The room was not covered in glass, not by any stretch, best as he could see there were a few ornamental objects on the armoire, what looked to be a sacred plate, but not much more glass than the cups they are sitting with and Teodoro is sipping from and Teodoro isn’t sipping from. Not much matter for reflecting light past those and the tray they were on, but still the whole room did have that sort of dust-covered sheen that would let sneaking escapees from one or other prism leak the odd junctures to convenient revelations. Like a tissue box that possibly they really could see better than she did. Not that he was about to mention any of this. Nor Teodoro the notion that she might be crying. Those are none of their businesses.
And anyway she did find the tissue box and brought it back to sit where the chair wept again and the tissue box came to sit without emotion on the coffee table near the tray which at that moment had exactly one mug on it while Teodoro held his mug as if he might sip. A tissue box sitting with its contents still untouched. So maybe they were wrong about all of that anyway.
She also had in her hand, a better explanation for the length of the revelation at the armoire, a paper with impressions of use on its blank side, and then Teodoro had to think hand scribbled text on the other, the side that then would not be blank. Teodoro was busy feeling little heat come off his mug, so much for absorbing the condensation, unless the warmth was wicked away as quick as the uncondensed water. No vapors for a personal revelation. For that he’d have to wait, with Teodoro, for her to tell them something, something that might be related to the paper she was holding that now he noticed was not a tissue. Not that she should need notes. This was her brother after all.
“There were times when he told me everything. There were times,” She folded the letter and left it to the table, for them, or some sense of posterity. One more warm stain clean in each night. “But then so much time accumulates, so much accumulates, so much it overflowed, that's what it was, sorry, for you” she got up once again and the chair debated relief and purpose for a third term. They both considered the letter. They guessed it yellowed, similar to the milk. Teodoro fancy yellow. Teodoro weathered yellow. He was a hoarder. But that could be a credit to either of them. They didn’t touch it, a sensible way to check the tree rings. That proved a credit to them as well when she came back with a folder that sounded laminated red. It could only be filled with papers that were definitively white, which they were, Teodoro saw when he went to rifle. “Wait.” He did. So did Teodoro, again considering his tea. Which was now noticeably cold and more noticeably still present. He was ready to risk her not really looking at this. “It must be cold by now I’ll go get some more to freshen it up. The milk’s still simmering.” “Wait.” She sat back down instead. Teodoro thought this time the chair elected preference. Teodoro did not think about testing his milk. “Not here,” He closed the folder and they both stared at her. "I don't want any of what might take away what I have, what I can still keep of him, keep forever." It was the first time she was looking at them. “wait”, this one sounded for herself. She got up again, and the chair consterned, and came back fast, and the chair consterned, just from over by a different dresser right next to them, and she was testing a tissue in her fingers.
“None of that, I just said I would pass it along, unimportant, none of it. I almost don’t want to give them away, something of his, that and this and well.” She started laughing and her face became cracked plaster. “It is so silly to say, so, so, you know.” She unfurled to crow the sunset. An oil hour. “It’s not as if I need any of the gold, or. The notes, in there,” she fluttered to the folder, Teodoro is still holding it. Teodoro is not holding his tea, she forgot amid this next pondstream quiver. “Someone might find them interesting. If you would not, so unimportant to you”, again under a tissue air flowed out her nose, “but it is something, and there’s so much of that, so much for the trashmen.” For the second time she looked at them. “So much, so little. It’s all hers anyway. And I have all I have. That’s how she deserves it”. And again she was considering the folder, and for a second the letter. Teodoro still did not know if that was supposed to be theirs too. Teodoro wondered why if it wasn’t she wanted them to know about it. “So many more memories.” and a sigh, a deflation. “So much it overflows. That is what she deserves. I just want to remember him.”
Again, standing, again, the chair inquiring, into itself, into the meaning of life. In time the tea has gotten no closer to frozen and the room is neither darker nor lighter than it was at the outset. That is what Teodoro thinks. That is what Teodoro thinks. And still she begins gathering. Stumbles a bit at the tea tray, so does the napkin. She must have underestimated how small a mouth he had. At least the napkin did not escape. If she was insulted, or embarrassed, or startled, though neither really suspected she could be that last one at so little an unpredicted hinge, she little let on. All she let was escape a hiccup. And that was long after she had uprighted herself. Not that the sun had changed enough to notice. When she was back from what still could only be the kitchen where possibly milk was still simmering she decided to stand between the chairs and rest a hand on each of them. A way to say she was done sitting. The chairs had nothing to say about this. Teodoro and Teodoro also had nothing to say about this. She was looking at them for a third time. Teodoro was thinking about whether they were going to take the folder. He was not holding it anymore. Teodoro was thinking about whether they needed to take the letter. He preferred his not holding anything.
She blew her nose again. She had another tissue.
“Do take it. By the way. Nothing interesting. Don’t bother with it yourself. Leave it when you meet her, or if she's not there just lend it to her memories.”
She guided them through the doorway, turns out Teodoro didn’t shut it, and made stalagmites at its frame. They weren’t sure how much she watched them through the left fern walk the length to the elevator. It was strange to check, in case she was watching. Or dangerous, in the dark. There wasn’t much to trip on when they came in, but you never know what might have changed. Never know what you might miss, until you do.
There had not been any more for her to say. Other than, “well, thank you boys, you’re going to, you’re going to do right by…” and she lost interest. She did not this time have a tissue. Teodoro looked around to offer her one. She was already holding the tray with the napkin. They got the messages they needed and made to leave, for now at least. If they needed further details after when they rebreached the elevator and exited the building they could call, or email. The building does have electricity, so it seems. Or she has quite an impressive collection of batteries, so it would be. But they doubted that would happen, should it all go as it may. Or, should it not. Come what may she’d hear from them, or come what may she won’t, they would not say they know. Come what does they heard the elevator trundle. Actually it must have electricity.
On the rattle down to ground Teodoro did not look in the folder and Teodoro rubbed his hands along his pockets and it hit him that he believes she was supposed to give them a set of keys.