Apartment 5 (short story) (Patreon)

The upper deck cafeteria has the biggest windows. Facing out into the ill-lit glass-smudged depths of space. When we're in orbit around a planet, they raise the prices of all the food. Almost twice as much for a bowl of the rice pudding when we're in the pull. But on long haul days it's more reasonable. And, you have to buy something to sit.

Starmark Foods Company. It's the same on every ship. Just privatized garbage. But I love the rice pudding. No cinnamon. No raisins. Not too mushy. It is plain in a very satisfying way. It feels like the perfect accompaniment to sitting and watching the moon set on the pink edges of a marrow farming planet. It doesn't overwhelm any experience. It is one of the few joys left to me.

Plus there's a boy behind the counter I like to talk to. Or I convince myself I like to talk to him, anyway. When I'm in my room just passing time. I think, why not go and talk to the boy with those perfect shoulders?

So I go, and I say the stupidest things. I really love rice pudding. Real smooth flirting. "I really love rice pudding." I must have said that as many times as he's told me, "boy, you really love rice pudding!"

He says he's not allowed to sit with me on his break. I would have liked that, I think. He's almost ten years younger than me. But I really do want the company. A handsome man to pass the time with, once in a while. Especially on days like today, when the window is a wide open view of nothing. Empty passage.

Today I was sitting and focusing on every step of eating. Mindful pudding. Active engagement with my senses. I am here in the universe. This rice pudding is here. It doesn't care who I am or what I've done. It doesn't measure my worth by how much I've contributed to society or not. It is there for me just the same. I can count on rice pudding. It is real, and I feel more real for eating it.

The room around me started to murmur. Then to babble. Confusion and excitement in their voices. I don't want to be distracted. It's been such a long week. And I've scooped the perfect spoonful of rice pudding. I've flattened it by putting it in my mouth and pulling it out again with my lips held tight. That first bit of pudding was good, but the bite in the spoon is perfect now. The room was so loud now. So bright. Someone has un-tinted the windows almost entirely.

"It's always something," The counter boy says. He's standing beside me, looking out the window like everyone else. I was lost in my pudding, so it took me a moment to catch up.

Outside the window a shadow was passing close to our ship. Slowly. Very slowly. It wasn't a spaceship, though. It was an apartment building. An old, red brick apartment building, with a chunk of earth and mud at the bottom, weeds and roots and rebar and piping showing from underneath. It looked like it had been uprooted from a street in a small town, and just set adrift in the shipping lane beside us. The lights were on in some of the windows. There were shapes moving. Shadows on the walls. The front door was open. Mail had piled up on the floor inside.

There were Christmas lights on one of the balconies. And this dipshit is standing there shrugging his shoulders.

"It's always something, isn't it?" And I felt even more hopeless than before. There was an apartment building just floating beside our spaceship. No explanation. No conceivable reason it should, or could be there. And this kid was just shrugging. "It's always something." Bored, even.

It's always something? No it fucking isn't. It is hardly ever something. It's NEVER something. It's wake up, shower, dress, eat breakfast. Work your shift. Sit in the cafeteria just to be around people. Watch the stars go by.

It's pinch your pennies. Save up money. Save and save, so that I will be able to retire in four more years. I'll have enough money to flat-out buy a berth on one of the Triangles. Save and save so I can live out the rest of my life with even less to do. Filled with days that feel even emptier.

But the hopelessness is a feeling, not a fact. Maybe it will be like that, but maybe not. I have to remember - I'm not psychic. I can't confuse my fears for reality. I chose the Triangle for a reason. They'll have activities. There's gonna be routines and patterns to fall into there, too. It'll be a curated life. I feel like I don't know how to live anymore. Just how to stay alive. On the Triangle I can take cooking classes. I can finally learn how to play bridge. Maybe I will take piano lessons. I haven't taken piano lessons since I was twelve.

And they'll have a demographic population that will give me a chance at finding someone to talk to. Maybe not someone to love. I don't even know if I want that anymore. But someone real to talk to. Someone who will look out the window and see an apartment building float by, with a dead garden patio on the roof, and say, "What the fuck?" like an actual human being.

I wonder what the rent is like, in those apartments? Are utilities included? Are the walls paper thin? Can you hear the couple downstairs fighting all the time? Or fucking?

Are there rats?! Oh, imagine there are rats! And cockroaches. Life all around you. In the walls. The cupboards. Running for cover when you turn on the lights. I love rats. I love vermin and insects and people who let themselves look stupid. Who admit they've never seen an apartment building in space.

It's okay to not know things.

Imagine knowing everything. Imagine never being surprised. Imagine going back behind the counter to start switching the prices to "viewing" prices.

A man comes out on the balcony with the Christmas lights, stark naked. He waves at us with a big smile one his face, and then points down at his dick for everyone to see. That's gonna double the cost of rice pudding for the rest of the day. Just that one dick.

Some days it is worth getting out of bed. I have to remember that.