Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

New, arrogant, confident strides against silvered hardwood floors. No worn slim-heeled cowboy boot, no rough tire-tread suburban kickers, no staccato stiletto caps mincing against the thirsty wood grain.

Do you forget this is Kitsilano? There are rules. Things go unspoken, are just known, need no explanation. You must drape, muffle, mute, silence your floors within ten days of occupancy. Thirty-four days of boot betrayal. I’ve counted.

And then you wonder why your key sticks in the lock. Three twists to the left, three twists to the right before it opens. Easy if the deadbolt would have told you the rules sooner, easy if you silenced your boots sooner, easy if your boots were soft Italian leather, easy if someone told you, easy if you listened to the floors beneath you.

It is your boots that betray you. Ten steps inside your apartment and then silence. The bottom of my closet is empty, shoes strewn about the bedroom. Each attempt failing to make exactly ten steps from my front door to silence. I manage only twelve steps. Perhaps your silence is not as deep as mine.

You walk in your boots like a dancer. Never does a heel touch. Only toes, calves, and thighs carry you ten steps forward to your moment of silence. To gather, to gather, to gather keys, cigarettes, a banana, cell phone, Fruitopia, a power bar, last night’s address, unread mail, last week’s garbage, tonight’s dinner invitation?

Can’t you hear their cries for you to stay home, to walk with arrogance and swagger, to noisily listen to their moans after suffering from so many years of muffled silence. Can’t you hear them tell you of the endless smothering of frayed, spotted carpet remnants, a great-aunt’s rag rug twisting the recently deceased great-uncles’ shirts into tight multi-coloured rags to sop up a sink’s overflow, bristling sisal mats scratching each tongue and groove, the lime-green shag dumpster find that slid three inches up each wall and slowly rotted and burned and ripped the finish until it peeled like the skin from a sunburned back.

I gather my blue velvet robe tight, twist the knotted belt around both hands. Your boots betray you. The deadbolt lets you turn it easily when you leave, a click of quick abandonment. I grab the small chrome beaded bathroom chain, yank my slatted blinds shut so quickly the shock flutters the neatly combed fringe of my rose Persian rug until its threads bleed red in the sudden midday darkness.

Your plunge down the stairs by two, one hand holding the wooden banister from the third to the second floor. I close my eyes to hear your muffled steps because you step on the outside of the stair treads knowing one misstep could nip and cut the threads in the middle of the rug.

You learned early the bannister’s brackets near the main floor were pulled from the plaster. You saw the bannister’s aching wound; perhaps you heard it too. Planing on the last few stairs, you bang the front door open. The quiet swish of the closing mechanism and the click of the front door latch. How long before it is safe, how long before your boots betray you again?

I kneel on my carpet, hastily comb the fringe through my fingers swallowing any temptation to roll back my carpet to betray my floors with the clomp of polished Oxfords, the squeak of rubber from three-striped runners that never saw the 10K walk they were purchased for, the hush of right right left left right gliding on leather soled dancing slippers, the slap of bedroom slippers worn at the heel walking the twelve steps from my front door to the silence in my room. I keep combing, start humming to block out the sighs of my floors aching to feel the smooth, moist soles of my feet just one time.

Your boots betray me. They tempt me to pry the window slats apart wide, to leave my fingerprints in the dust, to see you walk just once from this pock-bricked apartment building just two blocks from Kits Beach. To throw off my robe, slide into the new, black work boots at attention inside my front door. Black work boots that softly called to me in the store telling me that they would be gentle, especially the first time. Black work boots that travelled from their clumsy store box and sit on a new plush red carpet waiting for me to pull them on and twirl and dervish on every inch of my bare floors. Gentle, they say, leather soles which don’t mark, laces that wrap half way to my knee, heavy steed toes to keep me off my heels, like a dancer.

My hands are numb. I untwist my belt, walk to the window, inch a slat open and watch a small white dented convertible careen down the street, ignore the stop sign and race towards the Burrard Bridge. Has he heard the sound of your boots on the sidewalk and is chasing that sound?
I catch a glimpse of the driver’s thin hair standing upright in his haste, the sweat running from his underarms, the seatbelt pulling his muscle shirt so that one nipple pulses in the wind. But it is the driver’s scuffed sandals that make me snort, snap close my blind and turn into my room. As if such arrogant bravado could compare to even the sound of one step of your boots.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 at 7:03:49 AM and is filed under PENNED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.