IV        A Door In The Floor

            It was almost like she could feel her floorboards move.  The worst problem was that she couldn’t tell the difference between the downstairs neighbour’s noise someone called music or the fact that the pipe had broken again and water was likely gushing between her feet.  Either way, at some point, she might fall through which, at this point, might be a blessing.

            Margaret just sat in her favourite chair, inherited from the garbage heap that seemed to never disappear outside of her picture window, two floors off the ground.  It was a navy blue plush velvet chair, cushiony all around, the type of chair you never have to leave with pockets on either side holding her remotes for her TV and VCR and reading books on the other side.  A tall reading lamp stood behind looking over her, watching every word she read, every picture she saw.  Tonight, however, she was neither reading nor watching TV.  Tonight she sat in her chair, a drawing book in her lap, pencils and charcoal furiously capturing her anguish in the form of elaborate vision streaming out of her head.

            She loved this time of day, the creative time when the ideas flowed out of her like a watering can bringing life to plants.  They grew more complicated and intricate if she stayed in her spot long enough, no distractions, no worries.  She had long blocked out the sound and eventual death by soggy floors.  As the day drifted into night, she got depressed, uneasy with the coming day, with returning to work, with leaving her sanctuary behind.  It was a long part of the day for her, the sun getting more orange, the sky changing into the most brilliant purples and blues that her creative well dried up and she was left to ponder in her chair.

            That pondering was quickly interrupted by the phone.  “Hello?”

            “We need to come into your apartment ASAP.  We have Niagara Falls coming into the apartment below.  Are you having any problems with your taps?”  The landlord was an eastern European man who thought that Communism got a bad wrap from all the bleeding hearts of the western civilization. This man was often complained to, but had the reaction speed of a dead rat.

            “Well maybe the kitchen tap that I reported, oh, four months ago.  Or maybe the bathroom tap that I reported, oh, six months ago.  Other than that, I don’t have any tap problems.”

            “I don’t want to hear about it.  Oh geez, this is gonna cost me a fortune!”

            “I’m sorry, but you have to do something about this.  If the pipes are not fixed, it could cause lots of damage.”

            “Well it’s gonna have to wait.  I’ve got too much going on.”

            “My floor could cave in!”

            “Well I’m sure it could cave just under you.”

            “Sorry?”

            “Well look in the mirror, lady.  You ain’t a feather pillow.”

            Suddenly, Margaret shrank to within an inch of the floor, so small that even the dust particles swept over her.  She could barely utter a sound, her throat drying up instantly, all moisture sapped away.  She wanted to scream, to yell and kick something, but nothing moved within her besides a quiet shake that resonated throughout her body.

            “You still there?  Well nothing is happening today, so don’t get your blubber in a ripple.  I’ll send someone over tomorrow.”

            “I . . . I won’t be here.  I’m at work.”

            “Good, then all the happier. Bye.”

            The landlord hung up, not waiting for her faint goodbye.  Why could she not say anything to him?  Why could she not defend herself?  She sat in her chair for a few minutes longer, trying to find a little safety in her spot.  She couldn’t though and about twenty minutes passed before she walked into her bedroom, looking at her unmade bed, not a usual sight for someone so meticulous about details.  Clothes were lying on the floor, shoes disorganized under the bed. 

            Looking away from clutter, her eyes caught her reflection in the mirror that was positioned above her dresser.  She stared there for second then felt the stomach that she had ever since she was a little girl.  She was not a small girl, even a pretty one; even she saw that and apparently so did her landlord.  Usually pictures of friends circled a dresser like hers, a gift of her mother when she moved out on her own.  It had been her grandmothers, a grand piece of furniture brought over from the old world.  It was large and at the same time empty of any sense of sentimentality.  She looked at herself with a disdain and then slid under the sheets of her bed.

            At this moment, she closed her eyes and a sudden image entered her head.  The room began to shake beneath her, the floor opening up like a door, but not into the apartment below.  It was opening into a field of green grass, of fluorescent colours and shapes she had never seen before.  Her bed fell into this void of colour and she fell with it, floating along the border of the air and the ground.

            Suddenly her eyes opened up and she realized that she had fallen asleep, the time now two in the morning.  She lay in the bed still thinking about all the colours and shapes.  She quickly looked over the side of the bed to make sure that she was where she was supposed to be.  Safely, her bed was still sitting on her floor, not gone through the hole that was soon to be fixed.  Hopefully.

            Everything was safe.  She was safe.  Or was she?  Suddenly she got the strange feeling that she was not where she was supposed to be.  She would not close her eyes again that night.