Creature by Amina Cain

When I first moved here, I lived in a friend’s room in a loft. I had never lived in a loft before, and it was strange to do so in such a quiet place. Downtown was unlike any downtown I had ever been in: its emptiness surprised me, but it was empty only of certain kinds of people. They were around, but they lived on the sidewalk and in tents. And stores and businesses existed, but not the kind tourists want to shop at. The month—August—was hot, the way I like weather to be, and in the evenings when it cooled down I rode my bike through the neighborhoods next to mine, and sometimes to a cornfield that someone had planted nearby. I would get off my bike and look at the plants, at the cobs of corn hidden in their pale green husks. I liked that the field was there, with the city’s buildings so close to it. I liked that I was there.
    Across the street from where I lived was a school of architecture, and the huge, dusty lot in front of the long building comforted me like the cornfield did. The building had once been a train station, and the friend whose room I was subletting had gone to this school. Even with all this comfort, though, I felt like a weird person. Sometimes in the loft I could barely hold my head up as I talked to people. I couldn’t look them in the eyes. I was happy, and settled in my new life, but I was also limp, and maybe still shell shocked by the anxiety I had regularly felt before moving. The people who lived in the loft had been there for a while, and I was an outsider who had come to stay in the empty room.
    In the living room area, several aloe plants sat on a table in front of large windows overlooking the school, and a motorcycle was parked in the corner. There were also several desks scattered around. Once in a while I sat at one of the desks to write, but mostly I worked in my bed.
    One night a guy who lived in a tent several blocks away from the loft said to me, “You don’t look like a confident person.” Was my lack of confidence apparent to people on the street? I didn’t feel limp when I was alone, when I was walking around the city. I felt good then.
    Summer extended itself into September and its sun was harsh and healing; evenings were extremely pleasurable. It’s said you can’t run away from your problems, and I knew that was true—I still had some problems, but others had completely disappeared. Some part of life was closed to me, but another part was open. I had nothing to do really, except go to yoga classes and the grocery store. Those things usually took a whole afternoon or evening, so in doing them I felt I had been out around the city, had accomplished something. And I liked doing them. The yoga studio was small and clean; and in the bathroom, instead of disposable paper towels, neatly folded washcloths were set out on a shelf. I had already lived an adult life in my old city; why was I now living a life so different from the one before?
    In the loft the walls didn’t reach the ceiling, so I was never alone. One of my housemates also studied architecture at the school across the street, the way my friend had, but did most of her work from home. Her room was right next to mine and I could hear her move around, even in her bed. Our other housemate left in the mornings and returned at night. When he was at home, he worked on drawings at one of the desks while wearing headphones. He also ate there, and watched things on his computer.
    Sometimes I talked on the phone, knowing my housemates could hear what I said. I talked about a project I was helping to organize in my old city, and I talked about how life was going for me in the new one. I wanted to advertise to my housemates that I had lived in a place where I had had a job, and also still had responsibilities, even if I had none where I was now living.
    During that time, I saw a movie about a woman who lived out of her car with her dog because she didn’t have any money, and then lost the dog while traveling through