At first, I simply wait, assuming that there will be a moment she will turn to look at me and relieve me of this incertitude, but as I watch her climb, getting farther away from me with each step, it becomes clear that this moment will not arrive. It takes a few more cycles of breathing and a few words said to myself in my mind to convince me, and I have to consciously unclench my jaw before I can begin my first steps, but eventually, I do come to the conclusion that I should follow. I make each step cautiously, each one just a little harder than the one before. Climbing up the staircase, the air escapes me little by little, as if I’m climbing up a mountain, trying to hold on to whatever little bit of oxygen is left. When I reach the top, I look down to the ground where I once stood, somewhat proud, but mostly scared of the height.

I don’t see her at first, but Saxa is standing to my left, in the middle of a doorway which I assume leads to her room. She has her hands tucked behind her back, pressing them into the frame. She deliberately clears her throat to get my attention, and when I turn to her, seeing that I’ve noticed her finally, she waves a raised palm like a butler directing me into the adjacent room.

I follow this command without hesitation, hitching my two thumbs into the straps on my backpack and willfully walking into the unknown like that fearless traveler I wish to be in this moment. “You can sit on the bed,” she says immediately as I clear the doorway, closing the door behind her. It latches closed effortlessly, barely making a sound as it does. It’s another of those luxuries of the home that I had never imagined, but I feel stupid for this. How could I not have? How could I have expected anything else from the Morstads than pure excellence? No detail to be forgotten, not even the bedroom doors, which must fit so seamlessly in their frames that they don’t even make a noise when they close – not like the doors of my home where the hinges are a little loose and the wood’s a little uneven on the sides, especially in the summer when the wood expands, so you have to pull upwards on the handle and give the door a good push with your shoulder to get it to fully close properly, making a rude thud as it does.

The room itself has only two colors: black and white. White walls with molding painted in a matte black color which trims the floors, the windows, and the ceiling. On the far side of the room, there’s a desk, white as the walls and standing on thin clear plastic legs, above which hangs a black and white painting of Audrey Hepburn smoking a cigarette through one of those holders they used back in her time. The floor is covered in a carpeting so rich and creamy it could have been mistaken for a sheet of melted marshmallows, and in the middle of this floor is her bed, piebald like a horse with sat on top of it a dozen or so pillows to match.

Saxa walks past me to the desk on the far wall, and I continue to stand, stagnant in my typical fashion, at my spot just by the door, watching as she bends down in front of it and reaches underneath to pull out a wire hanger which must have been intentionally placed there to keep someone else from opening the drawer.

“Well, come on,” she says, not even turning around to look at me. “Sit down.”

I see her open the drawer, which slides out gracefully now without the hanger in the way, but I can’t see what’s inside. What a shame to be so close to her, to witness her, almost able to touch her, to watch her as one of her secrets is played out just in front of me, and to still not be able to know what it is. Resigned, I lower my eyes to the floor.

Looking more closely at the carpet, I notice that it’s stained with little charcoal marks, and some of the fibers have been burnt together in places. How could I not have noticed until now that faint smell of lingering smoke and tobacco? When I look back up to Saxa, I see that she is busy opening the window, unlit cigarette already dangling from her lips. She perches herself on the sill of the window and pulls out a box of matches from her pocket. With a careful flick of her wrist, she glides a match across the side of the box, and there ignites a flame which she uses to light her cigarette.

I wonder if she's smoking the same ones as the crushed boxes from her car.

I think at least a minute passes before someone speaks. She drags on her cigarette, tapping out the ashes out the window. I expect when she blows out the smoke for her to do so out the window, too, but instead, she puffs it out in no particular direction. In whichever way her head is facing, that’s the direction in which the smoke goes, be that out of the window, towards her feet, into the main body of the room. Me, I just watch. While her eyes venture around herself, mine stay fixated on one spot – her. I don’t know what else I could look at – what else I’d want to look at. Every moment I spend in her presence, the more I feel tied to her, like I couldn’t leave if I tried. What would happen if I attempted to look away? Just the thought scares me. Would she disappear, or would I? Or would this room, this house, everything standing around and between us, until all that’s left is the two of us, wandering in an abyss with still nothing to say.

“So, tell me more.” It is her that breaks the silence first. Her eyes when she says this are looking at her toes, as she picks at one of them with her fingernails, cigarette now hanging off the fingertips of her right hand, dropping its last bits of ash onto the carpet.

“More of what?”

“Your story.”