Spooning by Darri Stephens

pockets.

    A
fter yet another particularly hellish day of
S&S
, Macie and I met for a few drinks. Taste, talk, sip, share, gulp, gossip, drain,drunk. Using each other as a crutch we stumbled back to our apartment. Juan was manning the door (well, the door next to our door). Juan was the most amicable of the doormen in the stately prewar high-rise next to our walk-up. He worked the oddest hours, had the brightest smile, listened to our endless babble and all the while minded his p's and q's better than the rest. He bowed as if we were about to enter the Plaza. We, of course, nodded to him grandly and waltzed (while hiccupping) into our building's stairwell. Up we went.
    We entered our apartment to soothing darkness. The dim light inside the place was calming compared to the city's night glare. I guess one would say that our apartment had an urban quality to it. You know, a quality like the kind you find in seedy B-movies. Outside the living room (and consequently the dining room/my bedroom view too) was a pulsating red sign declaring “Manhattan Motel.” The vertical sign was larger and higher than the five floors of the motel. But tonight, the red glare was sort of dim.
    “Home at last,” Macie collapsed on our too-short couch. “See, that Atkin's diet is working! I fit, I actually fit on our couch,” she mumbled before turning over and curling up for the night. I grabbed a drink of water in some random J. P. Morgan mug (Note to self: What a coincidence!), kicked off my shoes (marring the walls in the process), and headed to the bathroom. I finally realized as I sat on the toilet mid-pee that there was something missing.
    My soft butter yellow rug was missing from under my feet. It was probably my favorite item in our household. Lush, plush, and my favorite shade of yellow. Everyone knew not to dare wash the sacred bathroom rug. Did someone spill or drip? Maybe it was in one of the girls' hampers? Despite my dulledsenses and rationalizations, I felt my annoyance start to stir. I finished my business and ran back out into the living room.
    “Mace, Macie, the bathroom rug is gone!” I announced.
    “What?” she moaned grabbing a shearling pillow. Suddenly she sat upright. Clutched in her hand was the exact ABC Carpet & Home shearling pillow that we had wanted to buy for our apartment but that had been way out of our price range. The shearling pillow that did not belong in our apartment. The shearling pillow that knocked some sense into us—and made us realize that we were
not
in our humble apartment after all! The dimmed red light was not our “Manhattan Motel” sign, but the softly blinking clock light on the VCR. Macie had not shrunken her thighs; the couch was simply wider than ours, which meant that my favorite butter yellow bathroom rug was safely ensconced in our apartment. Where we had come in ready to wake the dead, we now snuck out as silently as 007. The plaque 2C shone on the door; 5C was our apartment number. We were three floors off.
    “Go!” We both sprinted up the stairs and collapsed into our apartment. I immediately ran to the bathroom and curled up on my snuggly rug. And it was there that I slept; slept spooning my snagged J. P. Morgan mug (not the man) the entire night.

    T
he next morning at S&S, hung over and during a brief reprieve from logging hell, I sat in front of my computer and tried to come up with some marvelous ideas for a Halloween costume. How is it that Halloween can stir such waves of excitement regardless of one's age? The discussions that surrounded what to dress up as carried the same weight as a discourse at an international summit. In New York, the wholemonth seemed to revolve around the childhood memories of autumnal Halloweens with wet leaves, chestnuts, mini candy bars, and winter jackets worn over costumes.
    It was our first Halloween in the city, and we all wanted it to be memorable.
    “We need to go above and beyond mere costumes,” declared Tara.
    “How are we going