Leonard's Party

The house was a two story Victorian, which had been separated by floor into a duplex. What could have been an extremely attractive and marketable property in an increasingly pricey neighborhood was a below-average house verging on the uninhabitable, due to Leonard's negligence. He had bought the home several years ago, before the neighborhood had been scrubbed and spit-shined to accommodate the influx of ladder-climbing hipsters that searched the city's ghettos for a gentrified version of slum life. Over time, the run down homes and abandoned buildings were transformed into trendy domiciles and hot spots where fashionistas and intellectual snobs would congregate. An almost identical reconstitution of the very neighborhoods they had fled to avoid getting caught in a passing fad.

The facade of Leonard's home was painted in a combination of greens that peeled in great chunks and gave the appearance of a derelict halfway house. The windows were either covered with rust laden screens or had been blacked out completely by former residents with cans of spray paint. An overgrown mess of tangled bushes, that had no right growing next to one another, battled for territory on the front lawn, each vying for sunlight by choking the life from a neighboring plant. Dead leaves covered the front walkway and piled higher each fall. The surrounding homes had been remodeled and refurbished, glistening with fresh color that covered the slats and curves of wooden siding. The neighborhood society, an institution of the new residents, had tried repeatedly to reason with Leonard, explaining that he had a duty to his neighbors to keep his home looking respectable and perhaps, if it wasn't too much trouble, updated. He listened to their pleading, nodding softly, but then slowly and without malice, closed the door.

The bottom floor had remained empty since Leonard bought the home, but not for lack of interest. Almost daily some bright-eyed jittery social flip-flopper would come knocking, asking if Leonard had room to let. He would tell them no and bid them farewell. Maybe if the right person arrived at his door, Leonard would change his mind, but these people who sought to live in his vacant apartment were too self-involved, trying too hard to attach themselves to the latest and greatest. And Leonard had no intention of succumbing to a nagging tenant complaining about the faded and out-dated outward appearance of his living space.

Leonard occupied the upstairs portion of the house by himself. His living room, expansive and octagonal-shaped, contained a set of French doors that led to a dilapidated wrap-around porch that seemed to swell when the winds were strong. His bedroom was small and housed little more than dirt and a slab of eight-inch thick foam. The majority of Leonard's time was spent on the far corner of the balcony, staring at the street and sitting on a set of rusted bedsprings left by the previous owner.

People jaunted below him at various speeds and with various gaits. Many carried on at a furious pace and their bodies seemed like stretched taffy, leaving only long streaks of their forms that gave no sense of humanity. Lifeless blurs with expensive habits and important business to handle. The ones who moved more deliberately gave Leonard a chance to see their faces and wonder about their lives. There, a geriatric whose son has just dies, a twist of yellowed broken teeth slicing across his crinkled face and tears soaking his cheeks. There, a man wearing a medic's uniform and the apprehension of bad news creeping through his features, a horrible accident. And there, a woman of severe and serious reputation, a look of distance and pain in her sturdy grey eyes. These were the people Leonard felt an affection for, a profound sense of love for these slow moving folks that emanated something quintessentially human.

For sometime now, Leonard had envisioned a bizarre gathering in his home where the down trodden and slow people he watched wander past his porch would be in attendance. All of them moved just as they did on the street, only now their world was his living room; their faces exuded an air of remorse and a forced, business-like detachment. The world of trendsetters and go-getting socialites stopped abruptly and the only movement came from Leonard's living room. The falling sun sent streaks of golden light crashing through the windows and set the room ablaze. The room itself was like Leonard had never seen it, immaculately clean, the floors a smooth glittering mass of milk chocolate planks. As the people moved around him, Leonard lay on the floor with a sly grin curled about half of his mouth. He wore his only suit, a dark brown affair with a light checkered pattern that he had bought years ago. His shirt was the standard pressed, starched, and stark white. Around his neck hung a plain knit yellow tie that matched the handkerchief in his front pocket. He absorbed every flinch, every slight change in expression in the faces of his guests, despite his eyes remaining transfixed on the ceiling. It was as if Leonard was everywhere at once, as if he had internal access to every pair of eyes in the room. Chunks of emerald green glass was crunched into smaller and smaller shards as the attendees moved about the room, all of them acting with even hands, attending some unknown task. Sunlight reflected off the jagged edges and shot dots of refracted light across the walls. The world bled intense color as it only can in the unhinged realm of the imagination. The vividness of Leonard's party often sent him into an uncontrollable fit of crazed laughter, his body doubling up on itself as the images flooded his brain.

He spent many hours of everyday dwelling on this odd fantasy, as his life was by all accounts uninteresting, a stark contrast to fast paced and ever changing lifestyles of a large number of people surrounding him. A tremendous relief of pain and loneliness would wash over Leonard's heart whenever he retreated to the imaginary gathering, although it was obviously an unhappy event for everyone else involved. It was the only thing he seemed to have, the only truly possessed and controllable aspect to his life, that and his home. The world changed so dramatically in every conceivable manner and without relevance that almost nothing made sense to Leonard. He knew his imagination, he knew his mind, and he knew his home, but little else seemed to rest congruously with him. The world was too strange now, too far beyond Leonard's sensibilities to ever return to him.

The world continued to move past his porch, and he persisted in watching it. Alternately pleased with the inching past of people and disgusted with the rapidly increasing number of blurry outlines moving too fast to be seen, to fast to be absorbed into the fantasy. Recently, he had gone full weeks without seeing one person clearly, which maddened him to the point of public outbursts. One day in a bout of rage, he screamed off his porch at the faceless streaks that went slicing across the sidewalk. They moved faster and faster, even as his voice reached a fever pitch. Tears streamed down Leonard's face and the taste of salt filled his mouth. He wondered why these people never listened to him, why they never heard him begging for them to stop, to slow the world down and make things easier. As he sobbed Leonard thought of his party. The broken glass, the golden light, his brown suit, the gray-toned people from the street, it was all there, except this time he noticed something new. An invitation with smooth black curves. Leonard slept soundly that night, a sleep that had eluded him for years.

He awoke early the following day and went about preparing his apartment in anticipation of his guests. The task of cleaning was long and arduous; his house was covered in a thick filth and cobwebs formed in every angled nook possible. As he swept, clouds of gray came billowing in dense plumes from the floors and collected in Leonard's nostrils leaving the stench of dust pulsing through his head. The bathroom was laden with rust stains and soap scum, a disgusting brown tinge that tainted white porcelain. Loose hairs and shreds of tissue that congregated around the base of the toilet vanished. He filled bag upon bag with bits of trash that lay strewn about the apartment. Each step leading from his front door to the main hall was swept, vacuumed, and mopped. He scrubbed the walls until his sponge was black with soot. He worked ceaselessly for hours on end until everything smelled of bleach and Pine Sol.

With the cleaning complete, Leonard set to dressing himself. The fresh underwear and socks came first. Then the pressed and starched shirt, with its stiff sleeves and crisp collar. One leg at a time the pants arrived at Leonard's waist. Two-tone tan and taupe wingtips slid onto Leonard's feet and a yellow knit noose slipped around his neck. Lastly, the jacket crept up his shoulders and took its place. His body dressed and the party soon at hand, Leonard left to buy the champagne. He floated down the street between the buzzing pedestrians that had once drawn his rage. He smiled broadly and without pretense, a joy of unparalleled dimension burbled from his soul and out his face. He drifted in and out of the liquor store, and before he knew what had happened, Leonard was standing at his doorstep holding the bottle of champagne staring at his reflection in the glass paned door. He unlocked the door, turned the handle, and entered his pristine apartment. Up the stairs and to the left, the living room. Leonard set the champagne on the floor, the curve of its side rocking back and forth looking for a place to rest. He drove the heel of his shoe into the bulk of the bottle, sending emerald glass and bubbling liquid spilling across the floor.

It was now time for Leonard to take his place. He reached inside his coat and pulled from its breast pocket the glistening black solicitation, the calling card that would bring the world into Leonard’s living room; waiting to burst and break all it touched. An invitation to the world, a party with misery and all her friends. Leonard placed it to his temple and eased his finger back, sending a hunk of metal careening through his skull, shredding bone, then exploding out into the room taking with it bits of bloody pink and the torment of a fractured, lonely life. The body dropped to the floor, its back against pine, and its eyes staring upwards. Half of its mouth curved in the grin of satisfaction. As the sun began to set, bars of golden light stacked themselves throughout the room, their edges reflected about the walls by the broken glass that lay around the body. Soon the world would be in that living room, crunching green glass under its feet, wearing expressions of regret and purpose. Soon people with badges and bags would be in that living room, people who’ve seen this a hundred times before and never adjusted. People with low-slung heads and hearts, weighed down by the world’s truth, would be in that living room, people who’ve seen the face of death and recognized it as their own. Hoping they can do this one more time without falling to pieces, without filling their hands with tears. Soon the party would begin.