The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
The back stairs were rickety and dusty; every step creaked and groaned
under us. At the top of the stairs was a wooden door with peeling grayish
paint and a lock that Joe picked in seconds.
Joe flicked the light switch, and by the sad glow of a bare bulb, we found
ourselves in an immense, wood-floored room with high, pressed-tin ceilings
and a fireplace across from the entrance. The room was about the size of the
bar downstairs, large enough so that it was clear it comprised the entire apartment.
It could have been grand, even elegant, but the floor had rotten
patches, the ceiling was stained, and the paint on the walls bubbled and
peeled away in flaps. There was no furniture at all; at the far side of the room,
several pipes protruded sadly and ineffectually from a back wall where something
(a stove? an oven? a range?) had apparently been ripped out. There was
no smell of gas, though, and the apartment was much colder than the bar
downstairs. Next to the absent stove was a door; Joe opened it onto a small
white bathroom.
“Least something’s clean,” he whispered.
“Why are we whispering?” I whispered.
He looked back at me with raised eyebrows and a tight, forbearing smile,
the same look his uncle gave students who made inappropriate jokes or
offered feeble but well-intentioned answers to his questions. The bathroom
was as empty as the rest of the apartment, as similarly devoid of specificity, as
though it had been scrubbed not just clean but blank. I turned to face the open
apartment through the door just as a car drove by playing a loud rock song.
Something in the way the wailing guitar’s notes skidded and flowed
downward reminded me of a passage from the cello music that Hannah had
played when we first met, a passage that I hadn’t even known I remembered,
and suddenly she rose up through my memory so sharply and immediately
that it physically hurt. The speed with which a couple of coincidental passing
notes conjured Hannah stunned me, and I felt as though I was on the
brink of understanding something important, when Joe tugged at my sleeve
and settled me back within myself.
“Nothing here. Bring prints guys, maybe they’ll find something, but looking
around, the place looks clean. Take a look at the tub,” he said with a half
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