Mistwalker

ONE Grey

Someone out there is thinking about me.

I feel it, as surely as I feel the wrought-iron stairs shake beneath me. It’s a quickening, a bright silver sting that plays along my skin. It bites, it taunts. I measure my breath and hurry downstairs in spite of it. Or because of it. I don’t know anymore.

The brick walls around me weep, exhausted from keeping the elements outside, but it’s only fair. I’m exhausted too. I hold off a great deal more than wind and salt spray.

As ever, the table is set with linens and silver. As ever, the candles are lit. My prison is an elegant one. I don’t remember when that started to matter.

When I was alive, I hated shaving each morning. I hated vests and breakfast jackets, cuff links, tie tacks, looking presentable. Now they’re ritual. Acts I perform as if I could walk back into my world at any moment. And I can’t. I never will.

Not even if she is thinking about me.

Sinking into my chair, I tell myself very firmly: stop wondering about her. Her thoughts aren’t formed. They aren’t real yet. She’s not a possibility; this is not the end. And if I’ve learned one lesson in one hundred years, it is this: anticipation is poison.

So, instead, I consider the wrapped box at my place. It, too, is elegant—gold board, gold ribbon, a sprig of juniper berries for color. There’s a clockwork movement inside, the heart of a music box.

If I assemble it correctly, it’ll play the “Maple Leaf Rag.” Carved lovers will spin around each other; silk maple leaves will wave. A merry addition to my collection.

I put the gift aside. And between blinks, my plate fills with salt cod and cream. This is my least favorite breakfast, and it’s my fault I’m having it. Some girl and her unborn wishes distracted me, so I forgot to want baked apples and oatmeal. Or broiled tomatoes on toast. Or anything, really—birthday cake and shaved ice, cherries jubilee, Irish coffee and hot peppers.

Tomorrow, the gift box will have silk leaves in it, and galvanized casing nails so I can finish my music box. The day after, four new books on any subject, none of which matter, as long as I haven’t read them before. They’ll appear on my plate, then make way for my breakfast. This will happen again at noon and at five. Lunch and dinner.

They’re regular as the clock I built, a mechanical sun chasing the moon across its face. It never slows. It never stops. I hear it toll every hour of every day as it marks the minutes to the next meal, the next box filled with nearly anything I desire.

And it doesn’t matter that, lately, I let those boxes pile up in my study, unopened. Nor does it matter that I take one bite and wish my plates away. Sighing, I unfold my napkin and consider my silverware an enemy.

In the end, I’m afraid, it’s a curse to get everything you want.