BY KIRK JOHNSON Her breath steamed on the fire escape and for a moment, she considered going back through the window to take a coat from the pile on the bed, but decided against it. Glimpsed through the warped and dirty glass, the piled coats appeared a sleeping beast, its body humped and shaggy astride the bed. She’d tiptoed past it once in the triangle of light from the cracked door, carefully closed, not because she was afraid it would reveal her absence to the other partygoers, but rather because on some instinctual, ancestral level, she’d seen the humped pile of coats for what it was, a predator at rest. And so, despite her visible breath, she did not duck back through the window, instead closing it behind her, careful not to cause a clatter, no thought given to how she would get back inside. It didn’t matter, she was free now. Free from the conversations about children and vacation plans and the pickleball league and that new show that you just had to watch. Down below, a car honked and another answered, herd creatures of plastic and metal and glass. Not for the first time, she wished for a cigarette. Not for the first time, she regretted her outfit’s lack of pockets, sleeves. What was it about tattoos that made people feel free to handle her like an unusual item discovered in the produce department, something appraised for purchase. The light changed, tinting the street green. There came the revving of engines and, of course, more honking. Looking up, seeking stars, she found none, just an underlit void, tinged green, now yellow and then, not long after, red. She exhaled for want of a cigarette, like she’d done as a girl on those autumn mornings at the bus stop, her foot prints clear across the frosty lawn. Her breath did not curl like smoke, it lacked the lazy, phantasmal life created by the alchemy of inhaling combusted tobacco. It reminded her too much of herself, her frosty breath; there and gone, visible for so short a time before dissipating into dark. No. 148
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