The Brook

I am sitting on a small walkway between two houses. The back doors of each face me, their shiny brass knobs and square covered windows stand still, motionless.  It is a narrow five foot space of cracked cement, an old walkway covered in a tiny layer of moss. The green is thickest on the sides, creeping up from the dark moist earth like a premonition, as if to remind me that soon all of man’s ingenuity will be covered in a thicket of leaves and mushrooms. 
The cement is cool and moist, ten degrees colder than the air gently floating by me. The space is shielded from the sun directly by a set of worn, slumping wooden stairs and a tiny square landing. The staircase starts a few feet from the backdoor on my left and leads swiftly, without any meandering, to the second story, where another door, this one without a window stands closed. 
Only narrow bits of sunlight reach the short walkway between the houses, and though the space is not covered in warmth, the light is bright. 
I am sitting outside on the concrete, my legs and bottom quite chilled by the temperature of the ground.  The door to my right, three feet away, is a faded blue. There are yellow spots along the edges of the door, created by time and salt and elements with complex symbols. The wooden planks on the exterior of the house are a very pale yellow, almost white. Large strips of paint are gone, revealing a spotted gray wood battered by the ocean air.  Opposite the blue door is another house, this one with a new coat of thick beige paint and shiny veneer. 
On one side of the walkway is a running brook.  It emerges from a depressed bit of earth just below the cement, travels above ground for three feet, then disappears into the earth once again. Along the edges of the flowing water, which trickles gently over smooth stones the size of large hands, are tender stalks of green foliage. There are leaves with wide heart-shaped leaves that search upwards for the sun. Beside them are small white flowers on thin single stems sprouting from the brook. Dark colored moss verging on black grows over the sides of the rocks lapping against the water. 
Wedged into one of the green stalks is a tiny brown incense stick.  A thin stream of white-gray smoke wafts upwards, dancing like the branches of an old oak tree in constant movement- curling, jagged lines, beautiful ballerina swirls that leave the scent of amber.
The air around me is alive and full.  Cool and moist.  I breath it in deeply, inhaling thick, nutrient filled earth.

Massage Room

I am in a narrow rectangular room with one closed door off to the side. The small space resembles a log cabin or sauna. The walls are all made from thick pieces of wood. They are still cherry brown and unfinished and smell faintly of the forest they came from. The long back wall and two narrow sides are without windows. They are uncluttered and alight with shadows cast by the single white candle in every corner.
The center of the room is taken up by a row of tall massage tables. They are placed one next to the other without any gap between them. They nearly fill the space. There is just a two foot periphery on every side of them. The padded tables are covered in crisp, sun-smelling white sheets that look orange in the glowing candlelight. They too, seem alive with the constant dance of flame shadows.
The front-wall is made of wood, made of the same cherry hued tree as the others in the room. It is differentiated by a series of five windows that look out onto a cemented patio.
The windows are three feet high and two feet wide. They are spaced four feet apart. Outside I can see a collection of simple metal chairs. The chairs are not facing the windows directly. They are turned to the right, as though the few dozen people sitting in them are awaiting an entertainer perpendicular to the small room.
But all the spectators are turned towards the windows, towards me. Their dark eyes, lit by the florescent overhead lighting that hangs from the ceiling of the outdoor patio and the lit street lamps outside, search through the barrier of the thin glass pane, looking for us inside.
The men in the crowd have thick, dark mustaches and wear top hats. Their suits are cleaned and pressed and gray. There are a few little girls in the crowd wearing dresses with lacy frills at the collar and hem. Despite their child-like dresses, they look just as austere as their mothers, who sit silently with pale faces that reveal no emotion or curiosity, though their heads are all turned towards the windows.
There are twelve massage tables in the room. Each of them is occupied by a young woman. Their torsos are bare and their pelvises are covered with a folded white sheet that also appears to be orange.
I am standing in the center of the room behind the massage tables wearing a sheer white camisole that only gives the illusion of a shirt, my nipples are dark and evident and poking through the fabric. I am massaging a blond woman who lays face up on the table. Her eyes are closed and I run my hands over her firm stomach, feeling her ribs just beneath the skin’s surface.
Each woman on the table is being massaged by someone. I am aware of the crowd outside sitting several dozen feet away from the windows, all of them looking for a peek into the massage room. I don’t look towards them. I am aware of the women beside me and the others on the tables, but I put all my energy into the movement of my hands. I am so focused on my hands that all external shapes fade into the walls and blend seamlessly into candlelight.

Apartment

I am standing in the kitchen of a small apartment. I am leaning against the cool metal siding of a stainless steel sink embedded in a long white Formica countertop. The sink is clean and shiny, all remnants of past meals and dishes have long ago been scrubbed, dried and put in their spots behind white painted cupboards.
There is a window behind the sink. A crystal clear single-pane window that is uncluttered by curtains or shades. In perfect view is the gray cement rooftop of a tall red brick building across the street. It is so close I could jump from the window onto its sun-baked roof.
Two men sit on the cement, looking at each other, blocking the sun from their eyes with the aid of their cupped hands. Sunlight covers their legs and arms, brushing their already tanned skin. Just behind them are two wooden patio chairs which they have ignored, worn but well maintained red wood that lets off waves of glimmering heat.
Along the edges of the rooftop are red and pink geraniums in evenly spaced wide terracotta pots. The colorful petals are illuminated like stained glass, glowing in the afternoon light.
The sunlight streaming into the kitchen has taken on a pale blue color, verging on ice. The few appliances on the countertop are muted and fuzzy, seeming almost ghostly in shape and color.
To my right is a man. I can’t see his face, though I can see that his hair is dark and short, his skin is olive and tan. He wears red running shorts that reach his knees and a long white T-shirt that is baggy and slightly wrinkled. His eyes are fixed on the roof, at the two men sitting on the cement rooftop, on the one in red running shorts and a baggy white T-shirt.
Down the hallway from the kitchen is an open sliding glass door. A warm, yet slightly cool breeze blows through the open doorway. The wind plays with my hair. A black dog runs in circles on the balcony, barking excitedly in intervals to things I cannot see. The balcony is a mixture of sunlight and speckled shade. Any view from the high-rise apartment is blocked by tall, leafy trees and the thick interweaving vines that wrap around their boughs.

Mirror in the Garage

The interior of an old garage smells faintly of old wood and earth. The air is cool and damp although soft light still filters in from the row of windows on the very top of the garage door. The cement floor is cold. It is a pale gray color which is free of any oil spots or spider carcasses or balls of dust and hair. It is a large square space that is filled only with half a dozen white washing machines and an old couch which is a few feet away from being in the center of the space. The couch is facing one of the walls. There are no shelves of built-in wood cabinets. No boxes, no resting cars. The walls are covered in white drywall. The couch is long enough for three people to sit comfortably. But it is a stern couch that lacks comfort and padding. The sides have a thin layer of stuffing, but it is not fluffy or good for resting a head. It is somber and very straight. It does not invite a nap. The upholstery is tan. It is made of many woven little strings in varying hues of brown, beige and tan fibers that combine to form a tweed fabric. There are two people on the couch. They sit close, revealing their intimate knowledge of each other’s bodies. There is a young woman, she is slender and has shoulder length brown hair that is mostly straight but has a few waves. The man, who has his arm draped around her comfortably, has a black beard and long black hair that is pulled behind him in a pony tail. He has a black hat on with a short wide bill, the kind of hat made popular by leftist-guerillas in the tropics of Central America. He has a t-shirt that is almost hidden by a black jeans jacket, but left-leaning political messages sprout from the semi-visible garment. Both their eyes are fixed on the doorway five feet away from them. The door connects to the neighbor’s house. The door has a mirror attached to it and they see their reflection. Him, with his hat. Her, with her big brown eyes. They look into the mirror, but not only does their reflection greet them, but they see a portly woman. She is in the mirror, she is behind the door which is actually not covered in reflective glass, but tinted glass. She is motionless and staring at them. She has short blond hair and large breasts. Her wide stomach is covered in the fabric of her patterned apron. The couple looks into the glass and see her, they see the living room which stands behind her. She stares at them, at the couple sitting on a couch in a white garage.

The Hidden Room

The exterior of the imposing apartment building looks just like an oversized cinder block. It is large and sterile and bleak, its façade devoid of any feature or embellishment. It is clean and gray and practical, a building to live in, nothing more. No craftsmanship to admire, nothing added besides the necessities; the angles of the apartment building are sharp and hard, 90 degrees protrude with the practicality of an iron fist. It’s bare bones architecture, humorless and without emotion. It simply is a block, a square implanted within the soil and erected on the stretch of cold land without nostalgia or sentimentality. On each of the seven floors, there are simple square windows every 10 feet.
On ground level, there is a single metal door that leads in and out…either outside to the silent streets of a gray midmorning, or inside, in to the dark, cold palace of practicality.
Within the building is the hidden unpractical, the one great flourish of the architect who screamed silently into his plans and burst forth with a glimmer of possibility. It is the hidden room, the room of quiet existence, masked from observation on the ground floor by a wall that hides its entrance. Behind the thin façade of cinderblock is a large, two level room built halfway above the earth and partly within the cold soil. Spanning the entire length of the room, from end to end, is a narrow flight of stairs made from a shiny blend of cement and crushed rock. Upstairs, (the level above ground) is a single twin sized bed and a red velvet loveseat with curved wooden arm rests beside it. Twenty feet from the bed is a single wooden desk with a single wooden straight backed chair pushed into it. Upon the desk is a wrought iron lamp without a lampshade or light bulb and a single piece of clean white paper and a pencil laying beside it.
Downstairs, the part of the room submerged within the earth, there are six wooden dressers filled with clothes clustered in the center of the room. Within the dressers are men’s slacks and button up black shirts, there are clothes for little girls, pink party dresses and small white socks. There is a sequined evening gown and a stained apron and an entire drawer of silk lingerie and lacy brassieres. There is no division or organization within the drawers or dressers between sex or age, all the clothes are mixed up and wrinkled…socks next to shirts next to fur coats. Scattered next to the dressers and piled in heaps upon the cement floor are more clothes. Polo shirts and Batman underpants and silk pajamas and cotton T-shirts. All the clothes are clean, but wrinkled. On the second floor of the room (the ground floor of the apartment building), there are two windows that open directly to the gray sidewalk above.
A single daisy pokes its yellow from the space in between two large slabs of cement, the flower stands like a survivor of color in the square frame of the window. The light in the room comes solely from the two windows which casts the space in a bluish hue that is accentuated by the cement flooring.