3. Minimalist Sanctuaries
Chapter three
Minimalist Sanctuaries
Mandy
Sterling leaves for groceries, the door clicking loudly behind him with and suddenly the loft is quiet in the way only a warehouse, sized room can be.
Echoey, blank, the kind of quiet that makes you want to fill it with noise just to remind yourself you exist. I stand in the center of his living room in my pajama pants, my new fuzzy llama socks, and a borrowed sense of dignity, because that’s all I have left.
The air is cold on my ankles, and somewhere under the chemical undertone of cleaning spray and city dust, I still smell smoke.
It’s in my hair, in my skin, a souvenir from the morning’s fireworks.
Bowie, my traitorous odd eyed bastard, is already two rooms deep into his independent audit of the property.
He is a male calico, which happens in roughly one cat out of every three thousand, a statistic I have deployed at parties, on two separate dates, and once, memorably, at a dentist appointment.
He is genetically extraordinary and morally bankrupt.
He reappears briefly, looping along the baseboard with the air of a creative director silently judging someone else's layout choices, then disappears down the hall, tail upright, judgment engaged.
I envy him, a little. He has no existential baggage.
A floor is a floor, a window is a window, and if a home burns down, you simply move to the next viable shelter and never look back.
I try not to look back , but my brain is a hoarder of loss. So instead, I look around.
Sterling’s place is… honest. There are no design choices here, only practical decisions that, by accident or inertia, have a certain warmth.
The exposed brick is flaked with patches of white paint, like someone started a project and gave up halfway.
The windows are so tall they could double as suicide hazards, and in this warm morning light, the floor is all rectangles of sun and shadow, the boundaries so crisp I feel compelled to stay within them.
There’s a half-drunk coffee mug on the counter, left behind in the morning rush, black, chipped at the rim, with a faded fire department logo.
I wonder how many cups of coffee in this city are brewed and abandoned because someone had to be a hero on short notice.
The couch, oversized and sunken in the middle, is flanked by a low table stacked with paperbacks.
I read the spines out of reflex. All the usual disaster biographies, a beat-up copy of The Things They Carried, a graphic novel about arsonists, a medical reference for paramedics, and, inexplicably, a dog eared volume of Sylvia Plath.
I run my fingers over the stack, trailing the memory of old bookshops and the way my mother used to pronounce “literature” like it was both a diagnosis and a punishment.
Next to the books is a glass jar of keys, some of them rusted, some labeled in Sharpie locker, file, truck, home.
I wonder how many are from doors that no longer exist.
Above the couch, a trio of framed photographs.
They are not arranged with intention, just hammered in as if someone needed to cover a dent in the wall.
The first: Sterling and a half dozen other guys, all in turnout gear, faces streaked with soot and grinning like idiots, arms slung around each other’s necks as if there’s nothing in the world they can’t survive.
The second: Sterling in Army camouflage, so young it almost hurts to look at, the smile so determined it borders on defiance.
The third: me and him, summer barbecue, plastic cups and paper plates and sunburns.
My hair is longer, I’m wearing sunglasses and holding a corn dog like a microphone, and he’s next to me, the only person in the frame who seems aware of the camera, looking straight into it with that particular blend of amusement and concern he usually reserves for runaway shopping carts and street magicians.
I have no memory of this moment, which means it was probably one of the happy ones.
I step back, arms folded, not sure if I want to feel anything about these artifacts.
I fail spectacularly at not feeling anything.
I want to be grateful, or at least polite, but instead what I am is hollowed, out, like someone set off a controlled demolition in the middle of my chest and forgot to file the paperwork.
Bowie materializes at my ankle, inspects the carpet for ten seconds, and then launches himself onto the windowsill, where he proceeds to watch the street as if expecting it to apologize for the morning’s inconvenience. I leave him to his post.
The guest room is at the end of the hall, its door open, a little rectangle of white in a hallway that is otherwise all shadow.
I walk to it on autopilot, dragging my hand along the wall as I go.
I touch the duvet, which is clean and smells faintly of lemon.
The floor is cold. The walls are bare. For a second, I can almost imagine I am just visiting, that this is some weirdly austere Airbnb, and that in a day or two I’ll pack up and go back to my own perfectly ordinary studio apartment, my books and my art supplies and my ancient electric kettle all exactly where I left them.
But I’m not going back, not for a while. Not ever.
I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, and look around the room like a defendant surveying a holding cell. I try to summon gratitude, but all I get is a distant echo of my own voice, a dry hum that could be either thank you or I’m sorry or something less articulate.
I am so tired. I want to lie down, to let the bed swallow me, to sleep through the next few weeks and wake up in a timeline where nothing ever caught fire.
But, the need for a shower hits with the urgency of a medical crisis.
I last washed… honestly, I can’t remember when, which is answer enough.
Right now, my skin is upholstered in cold sweat, old coffee, and a chemical layer of incinerated drywall, and there’s a distinct chance that if I don’t fix it, the filth will become my new baseline.
The bathroom is three steps from the guest room and, praise be, the towels are stacked in neat, inviting rolls on a shelf by the door.
No sign of prior guests’ hair clinging to the tiles.
No mildew. Just a bar of soap and the subtle, manly grandeur of Sterling’s taste in toiletries.
I peel off my pajamas, half-expecting them to crumble into ash, and step into the shower.
For a second, I am suspicious of the water pressure; I’ve been hurt before, by the trickle of ancient pipes in every apartment I’ve ever rented.
But then I turn the handle and the jet nearly concusses me.
I want to weep. I want to write a thank you note to the city’s municipal water board.
This is not a shower, this is a full-scale detoxification event. It is thunder. It is baptism.
The shampoo is in an unbranded bottle, but the scent is instantly familiar, cedar, pine, something like mountain air, which is probably just a chemical designed in a lab to appeal to the fragile egos of men who buy artisanal soap.
Whatever, it works. I lather and rinse and repeat until my hair stops feeling like a biohazard, and then just stand there, letting the hot water blast the grime and the last eight to ten or so hours out of my brain.
I lose track of time. It might be minutes, it might be a calendar year.
It’s only when the mirror outside the shower fogs so thoroughly that it no longer reflects my outline that I remember I am a guest in someone else’s home, and that running up their utility bill is not a great way to say thank you.
I turn off the water, wring my hair out, and step onto the bathmat.
I am clean, and for the first time since sunrise, also acutely naked.
The towel is luxurious, thick enough to serve as a weighted blanket, and as I wrap it around my body, I allow myself precisely one second of feeling safe and cared for.
Then I remember my pajamas. Which are soaked in tragedy and not exactly a wearable option for a squeaky clean body.
I have exactly zero alternative outfits, unless I count the t-shirt I slept in, and that is, let’s be honest, more sweat than cotton at this point.
I stand there, dripping, staring at my reflection in the fogged mirror.
My hair is an angry tangle, my eyes are red, and there’s a stripe of bruise on my left shin I had not previously noticed.
I weigh my options. Could towel, dash to the guest room.
Could wrap myself in toilet paper like a mummy and pray Sterling doesn’t have a Ring camera in the hall. Or… I could wear his clothes.
The thought is mortifying for a moment before I realize that this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve worn his clothes.
I used to steal his hoodies all the time so really this is no different right?
I listen for signs of life in the rest of the loft, but all I hear is the vague, industrial hum of the A/C and Bowie’s intermittent paw thumps as he tests the structural integrity of the furniture.
Fine. This is an emergency. I cinch the towel and make my move.
Sterling’s room is the next door down. It’s much like the rest of his place, utilitarian, but not sterile.
The bed is neatly made, the sheets a navy blue that’s probably not forgiving of stains.
There’s a single nightstand with a lamp and a charging cord for every conceivable device.
Above the bed, a framed map of the city, fire stations and old train lines traced in fading red.
On the dresser: a tray for keys and coins, a bottle of cologne, a wristwatch with a cracked face.