The Phone Booth

For the first time, the city felt cold. The warm light painting faces inside the cozy little bars no longer reached me. I didn’t look in with the same warmth that lives in a father’s eyes, but as if I were one of them. Yet, it was me standing out here in the cold, apart from my kin. This was a night where it was impossible to get drunk. The more my throat burned, the clearer my thoughts became—but a kind of duality hung over the pitch-black words flying around in my head; a part of me didn’t believe them, I knew better, after all, but today I was weak. Today’s blue sky had embraced and stained me in its color.

I shuddered at the thought and trudged on. The biting cold forced my trembling hands down into the silk pockets of my coat.

What a damn joke.

I looked like a president who’d shaken off his security detail, even though it had been just fifteen minutes since I’d taken out the cardboard trash. I still didn’t feel nearly refined enough to do something as simple as that.

The asphalt behind me rumbled, but it wasn’t the garbage truck I’d hoped would tape me to the freezing ground with the help of my coat. Just some fitness fanatic running from his problems at home. Jogging pants—I’d bet all I have, he’s worn them fewer than five times. The poor guy wasn’t dressed well enough to make it to the kitchen, let alone here.

I strolled on with my fine, click-clacking shoes until I found the perfect spot to drag along my melancholy and its other –colics. Here, only the shapes playing tricks on my eyes could see me in my stately splendor.

“Cheers,” my hoarse voice called into the night. And in this talkative moment, I continued:

“See you in my nightmares. This one’s for you, Pesta—you’ve figured out a way to stay, even after I wake up.”

The road stretched onward, and the streets grew darker. Even if I didn’t find a light at the end of the tunnel—the phone booth was damn dark—I found just that: a phone booth.

It had been years since these were in use. I remember a few old booths here and there that still worked, even though they were outdated then. This one had been packed with books, turned into a little “take one, leave one” library.

My eyes settled, and I opened the booth, leaving the door ajar. Maybe I was afraid Pesta wouldn’t follow me in, or maybe I’d developed such claustrophobia that I’d pass out among Horst and Nesbø’s mixed works.

One book found its way into the skewed angle of my gaze, spinning around the shelves my white-knuckled hands clung to: “The Underwater Mystery” by none other than Horst. It struck a chord—after all, I had a phone booth’s worth of water over my own head.