Playing the Spoons

I make the superintendent open the door on Christmas. Derek has been missing for several days, neglecting to show up at parties with shrimp cocktail and artichoke dip. He missed the kid’s holiday concert. I just plainly missed him.

Last Monday was the last time I saw him. We ate cheap ice cream in his new apartment. He only had one bowl and two spoons. He scooped the fluffy pink and green ice cream into the bowl for me and onto the lid of the container for him.

“For experienced ice cream addicts,” he said pointing to his makeshift bowl.

“Don’t eat it all,” I playfully said. “I plan on coming by this weekend to finish it, Mr. Addict.”

I lit a cigarette with my final match and took bites between drags. “Where’s the ashtray?” I asked.

“Oh… you’re eating out of it. I washed it though,” he responded with perfect timing like we were in some Laurel and Hardy routine.

We listened to Johnny Cash and Nick Cave. Derek picked up his old Silvertone and played me a new song with no lyrics. His upright bass was standing in the corner. His new place had no rugs, only beige tiles with a few squares of blue haphazardly thrown in. It used to be a nursing home but now it was an apartment building for people with disabilities. The walls were toothpaste white. He had a single bed tucked in behind the bathroom door. Balled up in the corner was a tiny blue throw that shed bits of lint. I wondered how he stayed warm at night, but he liked to sleep in his wool overcoat, and the apartment air burned hot from skinny radiators nestled into the baseboards. This was his first place since we broke up last year. His first place that wasn’t under lock and key or supervised by nurses who watched him swallow his psych meds in paper cups. He finally had his own stove, which he used to light my cigarette.

“I hate electric stoves!” he said as he jammed the end of my cigarette onto the screaming red coil. It took forever to light, but he was patient despite the tremor in his hands. He wore a new western shirt, black with silver embroidery. It was the most elaborate in his collection, swirling figure eights melding into flowers with pearly buttons. His hair was shaggy, hanging awkwardly over his the rim of his square glasses.

On Christmas I wait as the Super takes the sluggish elevator to apartment 216. I wait in the lobby on a scratchy plaid chair. I had tried to visit Derek all weekend, looking up towards his window when he wouldn’t answer his door. All the other residents were jealous because he had a corner apartment with perfect sun, though he complained about the constant whir of the elevator. I saw that he had put up new chiffon curtains and houseplants lined the window sill, soaking up the highly coveted winter sun.

I wait on the stiff chairs, looking at the lobby phone that makes only outgoing calls. It looks like an old office phone, all beige and dingy with blackened marks from the countless residents who grip its plastic neck. The curly cord trails down like a tendril, brushing the red, thinning lobby carpet. I could see Derek sitting in this same spot, talking to me while his nervous foot kicked the cord, watching it swing back and forth. He was waiting for some money to get a cell phone so people could get in touch with him. I wanted to get in touch with him. It was Christmas, and he never came for the free coffee or crappy cookies.

In between the entry doors, the Super coaxes me in as residents funnel in and out with packages, sodas, and cigarettes.

“I’m sorry. He has passed,” he says as he stares at the entry rug covered with slush and sand. The whirlwind of time makes no sense, filling the following minutes with flashing blue lights and an incoherent phone call to his mother smothered in sobs. I hear the Super on the phone saying that he was sure Derek was dead. “He is green,” he tries to whisper to the police. I can hear my heart pounding in my head, saying no, saying that I just saw him, saying that he promised to leave some ice cream for me. I hear the blue and the red of the ambulance lights and the footsteps of paramedics with heavy black bags. The whir of the elevator. The gray gurney with squeaky wheels. The voices of the cops called out on Christmas asking me what happened, do I know what happened.

The cops find needles in his apartment. They find heroin. They find a tourniquet. They find only one of Derek’s two spoons lying next to his lifeless body all crumpled up on his new area rug he bought at Ikea. The other spoon is shining and polished, standing upright in the dish drainer, waiting for me like he promised.