"As" Virginia Woolf: Most Likely Something I'll Hate to Read in 2 Years

She came home that Tuesday night as she always did, taking the 6 pm bus, which, in the winter months, meant a cold and dark commute home. The lights in her apartment lobby greeted her with their familiar fluorescent golden glow, the elevator met her nostrils with the same stale smell of breath and musk from many different mouths and bodies occupying a small space for a short amount of time. Her key turned with a gentle deftness; the sound of the deadbolt retracting from the lock assured her that the door had indeed remained the way she had left it: locked. From 8am to 6:30pm, her possessions has been shut up and safe, and she walked through the door knowing there would be nothing unexpected waiting for her.

However, she had forgotten that another key had been made, months ago, and given, out of convenience's sake, to that other body who often found itself needing something that was in her appartment, something that had been forgotten, left in the morning after lingering too long in her arms, realizing he was late and, in his haste, leaving behind the leftover Chinese food from dinner the night before that he had planned to eat that afternoon for lunch. She would get a message on her phone at 11:30am and, smiling, she would roll her eyes, knowing that she could later expect to meet this body at the corner outside of her office to pass him the key. One day, she, for convenience's sake and because she trusted him, presented him with a key of his own. “For the next time you forget your lunch,” she said with a smirk as she held it out to him. His cheeks burned as he accepted the gift, at once embarrassed by and thankful for his tendency to always forget, when he saw her hair on the pillow beside him in the morning, those aspects of his daily routine that ought not to be forgotten. It was miraculous to him that she seemed the most lovely in her waking moments-- her morning breath was not stale, but raw, her eyes not empty of makeup but shining with rest. 

It was for these sleepy eyes that he used the gift-given key to let himself into her apartment at 5:55pm that Tuesday night, knowing she would be taking the bus soon, knowing that if he did it any earlier, the fresh, expensive fish might go bad. It was for these sleepy morning eyes, and because he hoped that he might see them every day for the rest of his waking mornings, he aligned the seaweed-wrapped spirals into the question he wanted to ask her-- in a way she would respect, in a way that would make her really consider the question, because of the gesture with which it was asked. He did not want the question to linger in the air between her ears and his mouth, air was too fickle and thin of a medium, it was too risky that way, he wanted to ask it in a way that guaranteed some sort of staying-power. In a nod to their Monday night tradition of dinner at Ocean China on the corner of Brodie and William Cannon, he laid out the words of the question on her kitchen table in her favorite rolls: Philadelphia and yellowfin tuna.

At 6pm, the moment she saw her bus round the corner and head to her stop, he was setting down the question mark; his fingers trembling with the pressure and urgency of perfection, he imagined her face the moment she would see it, and indeed, as it would be: stunned, happy and willing.