Rooms

Quince wads pack gaps in particleboard. Yellow newspapers underlay linoleum. The apartment is a nicotine an atlas of a blotched sky can be read on the ceiling. He has a friend that he visits once a week; she will stand in front of him to masturbate. Her apartment walls are paper thin. She tells him that at night her neighbors scratch on them; she thinks they are writing to her. Later they go out to a small pub, sit quietly in a corner holding hands until closing time. One day she is not there. He scans the headlines, obituary columns, the classified ads --- there is no news. Weeks pass. Her parents live in Surrey, he can't find them in the phone book. He stops looking for the lost.