When Sad Isn't Blue

Every night, I sleep under an aura of soft green light. It seeps in through the bedroom window of my basement apartment and casts everything in a verdant glow. I can never get the Venetian blinds to hang straight. Invariably, one end droops past the corner of the window, while the other end I can’t get to descend no matter how I pull on the collection of connective cords.

The light comes from the traffic signal on the street corner. It’s a regular traffic light during the day. But around ten at night, it stays green, unless a car approaches the intersection on the cross street. Then, the vehicle’s weight triggers the light to change. At 4:30 am every Monday, I sense the green change to yellow through my eyelids, and then to red, just before the rumble of the garbage truck pulls over to the curb. I stretch on my bed and sit up as the hydraulic arms lift the green dumpster and shake its contents into the back of the truck.

Most nights, I never remark the changing of the light. The closest businesses are a few blocks away, all of them lining the busier street. Even the few bars situated in the neighborhood don’t draw many patrons after midnight. And the customers that do show up tend to stop in only for a nightcap, seeking that last libation to send them off to spinsville before they stumble home to their nearby apartments. I’ve often joined them there, holding a whiskey glass under my nose to inhale its strong vapors, ignoring the slurred conversations occurring all around me, and simply enjoying the warming heat of a barrel-strength bourbon caressing my insides.

I live in a rather spartan apartment. It is basically one big room. Behind a pocket door is a shower and toilet. The kitchen is a small tiled area near the door that exits into the stairwell I use to access my digs. The range is a two-burner stovetop and an oven that barely accommodates my frozen dinners. My bedroom is a corner of the basement I demarcated with a couple bookcases. It contains a single mattress I keep on the floor. The rest of my furniture consists of two wooden chairs and a folding table where I sit eating my dinner alone. I also have a couch that sags in the middle from where I play video games on the smallest flat screen one could buy. The TV sits on a shelf made of a board and two cinder blocks.

I keep more books than furniture. Both of the shelves that bound my bedroom are stuffed full. Books are first stored traditionally, spines facing out. Paperbacks are stacked wherever there’s room; on shelves, next to the TV, in the cubbies of the cinder blocks, in tall piles on the kitchen table and one of the chairs. There’s even a small stack on the floor next to my bed from which I read before turning off the overhead light to recline in the green glow coming from the street.

On occasion, when sleep eludes me, I’ll stand at the foot of my bed and look out through the lone window, watching the traffic light sway in silence to the wind. Sometimes a motorcycle will pull up to the intersection from the side street and wait and wait and wait. The biker, not heavy enough to set off the weight sensors, will often drive off in a rage, gunning the engine, killing the quiet with a loud [brap! bap! bap!].

Last night, I found myself, again, suffering insomnia. I stared listlessly through the pane, a dirty bit of glass I couldn’t even open to the outside world. Suddenly, I could sense a change in the outside air. The grass seemed to stand up, like the hairs on your arm when you pass a static charged balloon over them. I peered toward the intersection and saw a vessel slowly descending. It was about the size of a minivan, though rounder. It hovered, just above the pavement, slowly rotating. Once the front of the vehicle was in line with my window, it stopped spinning. Instinctively, I ducked down, though there was no way anyone could see me as no lights were on in my apartment. After a moment, I stood back up. The vessel was gone, but the grass still pointed straight up, not even swaying to the breeze.

This morning, I called in sick to work. I’m not sick, I just didn’t think it mattered. I spent all morning looking through my books, searching for my favorite: Alice in Wonderland. I’ve been sitting at the foot of my bed since the sun went down, knees drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped around my legs, left cheek resting on one knee. The traffic light hasn’t changed from green for hours. My eyelids grow heavy…

I sense the green change to yellow through my eyelids, and then to red. I raise my head and slowly stand up. I walk over to the doorway and twist the knob. My legs move me automatically up the steps and towards the intersection, as if hoping a vehicle may await me there.